Thread: Sci-fi socialism': New Matt Damon movie

Sci-fi socialism': New Matt Damon movie predicts future where the one per cent lives on luxury space colony and earth is just overcrowded slums.... but star insists it's NOT political

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ded-slums.html

• 'Elysium' is set in a future-world where the rich elite have left earth to live in a luxury space station
• The place they've left behind is characterized by crime-riddled and poverty-stricken slums
• Critics have accused it of flaunting an 'openly socialist political agenda'
• Matt Damon and director Neill Blomkamp deny that they're making an overt statement about the widening gap between rich and poor

By David Mccormack
PUBLISHED: 12:29 EST, 8 August 2013 | UPDATED: 13:10 EST, 8 August 2013
32 shares
49
View
comments

Matt Damon’s new sci-fi blockbuster 'Elysium' has received a deluge of criticism that it is pushing a socialist agenda - inspired by the Occupy movement - down moviegoers’ throats.

Set in the year 2154, ‘Elysium’ imagines a world where the wealthy elite have abandoned an overcrowded Earth for a better life aboard a luxury space station.

While Earth is characterized by crime-riddled and poverty-stricken slums, the super-rich live in Elysium, an exclusive gated community in space complete with a cure for all illnesses and robots that enforce strict anti-immigration laws.
Scroll down for video


Matt Damon denies his new movie is an attempt to promote a socialist agency with its storyline about the wealthy elite leaving earth to live on an exclusive space station



Elysium is an exclusive gated community in space for the rich elite complete with a cure for all illnesses and robots that enforce strict anti-immigration laws


The extreme disparity between the haves and have nots in the movie bears strong parallels with the Occupy movement’s fight against social and economic inequality and the vilification of the one per cent.

The Hollywood Reporter has called it a ‘politically charged flight of speculative fiction’, while Newsmax has escribed it as ‘political propaganda’ and 'sci-fi socialism.'

More...

• Stealing the show! Matt Damon's wife Luciana grabs her share of the spotlight in a stunning one-shouldered dress at Elysium premiere
• Public school supporter Matt Damon admits he sends his kids to PRIVATE schools because they are more 'progressive'
• How does she do it? Jodie Foster, 50, looks more youthful than ever in a tight teal dress at Elysium premiere

Variety said it is one of the ‘more openly socialist political agendas of any Hollywood movie in memory, beating the drum loudly not just for universal healthcare, but for open borders, unconditional amnesty and the abolition of class distinctions as well.’

The film’s star – and renowned Hollywood liberal - Matt Damon has denied that it has an overtly political message.

L.A. in 2154 is depicted as an overcrowded, crime-riddled and poverty-stricken slums




Jodie Foster stars as Elysium’s Secretary of Defense and violent robots enforce strict anti-immigration laws






Variety has described 'Elysium' as having one of the 'more openly socialist political agendas of any Hollywood movie in memory'


‘I don’t think it is trying to say anything. It just presents the issue – the distinct difference between the haves and the have nots,’ he told Fox.

The movie’s director Neill Blomkamp has also denied that he wanted to be a political statement and said it is unfortunate that parallels had been drawn with the Occupy movement.

But critics have rubbished their denials.

‘It’s not just hypocritical to say this movie isn’t political, it’s hilarious. This is just the latest of several Hollywood movies this year to try and co-opt Occupy Wall Street plotlines into their films,” Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture at the Media Research Center, told FOX.
The scenes on earth and supposedly set in Los Angeles a century and a half from now were filmed in Mexico, while luxury space station was based on real designs for how habitable space station might look.
Is Matt Damon's Elysium 'socialist propaganda'?






Future life? The concept of people living in space stations is something that NASA has been working on since the 1970s



NASA estimates that it would cost about $828.11 billion to build a space station capable of sustaining life


This premise of people living in space might seem far-fetched considering how man's interest in space exploration has waned in the 30 years, but it could soon be within our reach.

NASA has been working on designs since the 1970s. In 1975, a report titled 'Space Settlements: A Design Study' was created in an attempt to detail the costs and needs of life in space.

The estimated price tag of a space station was about $190.8 billion, in 1975 dollars. Adjusting for inflation, the cost jumps to about $828.11 billion.

'The future takes imagination, you have to extrapolate for the technology we have today. Within the next 1000 years, the type of technology used to support a space station like Elysium could be developed,' Mark Uhran, former director of the International Space Station Division at NASA headquarters, told ABC News.

'We’re already demonstrating some of this technology on the international space station today.'
Matt Damon in Elysium official trailer






In Elysium the super rich live in an exclusive space station that orbits the over-crowded earth

Infowars.com
August 8, 2013

Neill Blomkamp’s science fiction action film, Elysium, scheduled for release on Friday, August 9, is slick New World Order propaganda. Although the film’s director and star actor, Blomkamp and Matt Damon, disagree and say the film does not carry political weight, a number of commentators say this simply is not the case.



Scott Foundas, a film critic for Variety, characterized Blomkamp’s effort as pushing “one of the more openly socialist political agendas of any Hollywood movie in memory, beating the drum loudly not just for universal healthcare, but for open borders, unconditional amnesty, and the abolition of class distinctions as well.”

“It’s not just hypocritical to say this movie isn’t political, it’s hilarious,” Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture at the Media Research Center, told Fox News. “This is just the latest of several Hollywood movies this year to try and co-opt Occupy Wall Street plot-lines into their films. Filmmakers wear their politics on their sleeves, but it helps their careers to push liberal agendas.”

Sean Smith, writing for Entertainment Weekly, casts the film in the context for class warfare. “If you are a member of the 1 percent, ‘Elysium’ is a horror movie. For everyone else, it’s one step shy of a call to arms,” he wrote.

Despite the overt allusions to class warfare and a focus on a tarnished and out-moded socialist narrative of rich-vs-poor, Elysium is primarily about immigration “reform” and the stalled effort in Congress to pass legislation legalizing millions of illegal aliens. Idealized and romanticized pet liberal causes come in second.

Elysium producer Simon Kinberg promised the film will address “immigration, health care, and class issues.” Hollywood liberals know glitzy, action-packed Hollywood films and television shows are the most effective delivery vehicle for pushing their neo-Marxist idealism on the masses. “If you think you’re actually going to make a difference or change anything, you’re on pretty dangerous thin ice. But you can put ideas in there that are real issues that are happening in the world,” Kinberg told Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan in April.

Kinberg led off with immigration – and that topic is at the very core of the film’s message.

James Hirsen summarizes Elysium‘s plot-line:

Wealthy elitists live in a place called Elysium, which incidentally is another name for the Elysian Fields, an Ancient Greek conception of the afterlife. It is a pristine utopia housed in a massive high-tech space station, where sprawling mansions abound and medical technologies have advanced to the point that all diseases are met with an instant cure.

Those who are unfortunate enough to be located outside of the Elysium realm must endure an overpopulated, poverty stricken, crime ridden, disease-filled world positioned far below the orbiting “Valhalla” in the sky.

Residents of Elysium vigorously enforce anti-immigration laws to keep the earthbound masses from entering their immaculate biosphere.

The film will undoubtedly rekindle immigration “reform,” legislation critical to the ultimate success of the globalist effort to destroy America and usher in an authoritarian one-world government and planet-wide serfdom enforced by a high-tech surveillance and police state.

This article was posted: Thursday, August 8, 2013 at 2:09 pm

http://www.infowars.com/elysium-prop...ration-reform/

Elysium: One of The Most Racist Films In History: Movie Review

Elysium Is Actually an Anti-Obamacare Parable

BY: Sonny Bunch // August 13, 2013 10:15 am

Note: Some broader plot points of Elysium are discussed below, as are some more specific plot points of District 9. So, you know, light spoilers and such.

I joked on Twitter a few weeks back that I’m extremely good at reading into films crypto-conservative messages that aren’t actually there. (See, for instance, mysuggestion that Star Trek Into Darkness postures as an anti-drone film but, in fact, succinctly makes the pro-drone case.) So, if you’ll indulge my silliness for a moment, please allow me to explain why Elysium—which has been criticized by some on the right as a not-so-subtle plea for universal healthcare—is secretly* an anti-Obamacare film.

Consider, for instance, that residents of Earth appear to have made absolutely no progress when it comes to healthcare in almost a century and a half. Broken bones are set with casts and childhood diseases like Leukemia are still deadly. Is this not a tacit admission that government interference in health care stifles innovation, just as libertarians and conservatives warned it would?

Meanwhile, as the quality of care has stagnated so has the quantity of care. Hospitals are overcrowded, wait times are long, and care is now rationed (think of Alice Braga’s daughter, who is forced to exit the hospital even though she has a life-threatening illness because there aren’t enough beds). Every doctor is a death panel in this dystopian future.

“But wait,” I hear you saying. “There have been medical advances! The wealthy people on the space station have those Magical Medpods that magically heal them! With magic!” I think it’s important to understand that we’re dealing with a metaphor here. The Magical Medpods are stand-ins for a fleet of pricey, private doctors who make house calls for the rich and famous—a situation that already exists, it should be noted, and will only grow more common as Obamacare is implemented and those who can afford it opt to pay for care with cash.

Speaking of the Magical Medpods, it’s worth pointing out that their economics make no sense whatsoever. The wealthy seem to withhold the advances from the poor for no reason other than spite—a remarkably odd idea, given the fact that the space station is replete with rapacious Randians. They are capitalists of the first order, a callous lot who would rather a man die in agony at home because the bossman doesn’t want to spring for new sheets in the factory infirmary after his skin sloughs off from radiation poisoning.** You’re telling me these disciples of the almighty dollar wouldn’t be willing to make a buck or a billion selling these Magical Medpods to the desperate plebes below? Absurd. I can’t help but feel that this childish caricature is a subtle critique of the constant attacks on Obamacare opponents, who are accused by the likes of Ezra Klein of simply being content to watch people die.***

This isn’t the first time a nominally progressive film of Neill Blomkamp’s has harbored deeply reactionary tendencies. District 9 is frequently described as a critique of apartheid (Blomkamp grew up in South Africa during the fall of the white supremacist regime). But it’s a remarkably problematic critique, if you think about it: after all, the Prawn who are forced to live in the ghettos are, by and large, mindless animals addicted to drugs**** who breed like cockroaches. Meanwhile, actual black South Africans are portrayed as machete-wielding savages who believe in witch doctors and subscribe to the notion that consuming the flesh of your enemy will grant you his strength. I’m honestly surprised more people on the left haven’t made a bigger deal about this.

Anyway, one must look below the surface to find the secret meanings of deeply political works like Elysium. Once you do, you might be surprised by what you find.

*By “secretly,” I mean “accidentally.” But it’s always fun to play Straussian for a day.

**Seriously: That’s a thing that happens in Elysium. I’m surprised the great William Fichtner, who plays the heartless billionaire, didn’t grow a mustache for that scene so he could evilly twirl it.

***I assume it’s not actually a critique at all and is, in fact, just lazy writing and/or a window into the brain of director/writer Neill Blomkamp. Forget it, I’m rolling.
****Well, technically, it’s cat food. But simple cat food might as well be Heisenberg’s blue meth to the Prawn.
http://freebeacon.com/blog/elysium-i...acare-parable/