The self-censorship to appease an algorithm is dystopian. I'd much rather just read your essay than listen to a disfigured recording of it over the same short loop of images from the movie I've seen in a dozen other video essays.
Beyond that, yes, LARPing with guns is dangerous.
It's hard for me to get out to see a movie in the theater, so I'll catch this one at home in a few months, but I trust Alex Garland to show me something interesting, and I'd be far less interested in seeing this movie if the people who castigate the film and film-maker for fence-sitting liked it. If it became a cause celeb of the NPR/NYT set, I'd have no interest in it.
Finally, I don't think Margaret Atwood would agree that this film is science fiction since it doesn't feature robots, time travel, or giant squid from Saturn. If this film is science fiction, then Oryx and Crake is science fiction. Atwood insists that it isn't.
I prefer a more expansive definition of science fiction which would encompass Civil War and Oryx and Crake, but I also like science fiction that puts significant distance between itself and the contemporary political/social scene. I don't make a habit of reading so-called literary fiction because, when I do, it often comes across as such a slanted take on reality that it feels dishonest.
I read "When the Killing's Done" by T.C. Boyle for a book club a few years ago. The characters were such obvious masks for the author's ideological pet peeves the whole book came across as a screed rather than a story. It would have felt more honest to make the invasive rats into rat people and turn the channel islands into a nature preserve planet on which the galactic park service was about to exterminate the invasive rattlings.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing Civil War at home later this year.
The self-censorship to appease an algorithm is dystopian. I'd much rather just read your essay than listen to a disfigured recording of it over the same short loop of images from the movie I've seen in a dozen other video essays.
Beyond that, yes, LARPing with guns is dangerous.
It's hard for me to get out to see a movie in the theater, so I'll catch this one at home in a few months, but I trust Alex Garland to show me something interesting, and I'd be far less interested in seeing this movie if the people who castigate the film and film-maker for fence-sitting liked it. If it became a cause celeb of the NPR/NYT set, I'd have no interest in it.
Finally, I don't think Margaret Atwood would agree that this film is science fiction since it doesn't feature robots, time travel, or giant squid from Saturn. If this film is science fiction, then Oryx and Crake is science fiction. Atwood insists that it isn't.
I prefer a more expansive definition of science fiction which would encompass Civil War and Oryx and Crake, but I also like science fiction that puts significant distance between itself and the contemporary political/social scene. I don't make a habit of reading so-called literary fiction because, when I do, it often comes across as such a slanted take on reality that it feels dishonest.
I read "When the Killing's Done" by T.C. Boyle for a book club a few years ago. The characters were such obvious masks for the author's ideological pet peeves the whole book came across as a screed rather than a story. It would have felt more honest to make the invasive rats into rat people and turn the channel islands into a nature preserve planet on which the galactic park service was about to exterminate the invasive rattlings.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing Civil War at home later this year.