Yesterday’s Tomorrowland

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

America takes pause on a big holiday weekend requiring little in the way of real devotions beyond the barbeque deck with two profoundly stupid movie entertainments that epitomize our estrangement from the troubles of the present day.

First there’s Mad Max: Fury Road, which depicts the collapse of civilization as a monster car rally. They managed to get it exactly wrong. The present is the monster car show. Houston. Los Angeles. New Jersey, Beijing, Mumbai, etc. In the future, there will be no cars, gasoline-powered, electric, driverless, or otherwise. Mad Max: Fury Road is actually a perverse exercise in nostalgia, as if we’re going to miss being a nation of savages in the driver’s seat, acting out an endless and pointless competition for our little place on the highway.

The other holiday blockbuster is Disney’s Tomorrowland, another exercise in nostalgia for the present, where the idealized human life is a matrix of phone apps, robots, and holograms. Of course, anybody who had been to Disneyland back in the day remembers the old Tomorrowland installation, which eventually had to be dismantled because its vision of the future had become such a joke — starting with the idea that the human project’s most pressing task was space travel. Now, at this late date, the monster Disney corporation — a truly evil empire — sees that more money can be winkled out of the sore-beset public by persuading them that techno-utopia is at hand, if only we click our heels hard enough.

Another theme running through both films is the idea that girls can be what boys used to be, that it’s “their turn” to be masters-of-the-universe, that men are past their sell-by date and only exist to defile and humiliate females. That this message is really only a mendacious effort to rake in more money by enlarging the teen “audience share” for the reigning wishful fantasy du jour is surely lost on the culture commentators, who are so busy these days celebrating the triumph and wonder of transgender life.

The reviewers are weighing these two movies on the popular pessimism / optimism scale. These are the only choices for the masses: whether to be a “doomer” or a “wisher.” Both positions are cartoon world-views that don’t provide much guidance for continuing the project of civilization, in case anyone is actually interested in that. It’s either rampaging id or the illusion of supernatural control, take your pick. I find both stances revolting.

Anyway, it’s interesting that the real Fury Road of the rightnow runs from Syria into Iraq starring ISIS. There is a growing sentiment in the news media (including the web, of course) of a sickening déjà vu with these developments. The old familiar talk of air strikes and ground troops infects the wifi transmissions. Maybe we should think about sending Charlize Theron over there with a few vestigial male sidekicks to load her assault rifle. How else to git’er done? Nobody knows.

Memorial Day is a dreary moment to have to face this onrushing calamity of rocket-propelled medievalism rampant — all those poor American soldiers blown up and mangled the past twelve years.  It’s also interesting that the news media is totally out-of-touch with the biggest prize on the great gameboard: Saudi Arabia. You think ISIS overrunning Iraq is bad news? Wait until the ordnance starts flying around Riyadh. Notice, too, that there’s no news coming out of Yemen on the base of the Arabian peninsula, a failed state with a population nearly equal to its neighbor. If we have any idea what’s going on there — and surely the Pentagon and NSA do — then it’s not for popular consumption.

This is ironic because if the trouble happens to spread into Saudi Arabia — and I don’t see how it will not — then we’ll find out in a New York minute how America’s future is not about monster trucks, cars, dirt bikes, holograms, phone apps, and all the other ridiculous preoccupations of the moment.

Note: JHK’s 2014 Garden Report is finally up

The new World Made By Hand novel

!! Is now available !!

Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist

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My local indie booksellers… Battenkill Books (Autographed by the Author) … or Northshire Books
or Amazon

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Welshman
Welshman

The “Dark Ages” are coming and the Middle East is the staring point due to oil. Memorial Day is nothing more than honoring war mongering.

geo3
geo3

Saudi’s sourcing a bomb via Pakistan…perhaps planning a final clearance event?

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

I saw both films and thought both reflect our culture in their own way. And it’s true, both marginalize Men.

taxSlave
taxSlave

Women are great until hard work needs to be done.

Men will be slaves to pussy, same as its always been.

Stucky

I mad Ms Freud a bit angry yesterday. All day I promised her we’d go to the movies in the evening … and it would have been one of those two movies. Then I thought about it, and re-watched the trailers, and I just couldn’t pull the trigger.

Why? CGI = fake fake fake fake fake bullshit. At least the old James Bond movies, Smokey and the Bandit, etc etc … REAL cars blew up or, at worst, models. Now actors “act” in front of a green screen and all you really “see” are computer pixels. I can’t suspend disbelief enough to enjoy it.

Not to mention that Mad Maxx is beyond retarded. In a post apocalyptic world where in the fuck do they get all that gasoline? How do they maintain they vehicles? How do they build them in the first place? And they all look real healthy. Where in the fuck does the food come from?? It’s all a crock of shitery. So we went to Rita’s and got lemon ice.

Goldorack
Goldorack

You completly, utterly missed the point Stucky. just like Kunstler

Both movies are nothing but entertainment, and don’t strive to depict a realistic future.
Only in the Disney movie, you have a slight taste of propaganda from times to times.
digital effects in the disney too, but in the other hand, a decent amount of real vehicules was crashed during the Mad Max shooting.
And to say the least, whatever consideration you mentioned, 99% of viewers didn’t gave a flying fuck to. what I know, is that I liked both. that the last MM reminded me of the 2nd one, wich I love just like the first. I still ride a Kawasaki Z because I never forget. you just missed a great and delirious show.
as for Mad Max being a crock of shitery, it just gave in the 80’s the signal for the wars in the middle east from today, that are related to the control of oil and water above all.
Have a look to the vehicules the Ukrainians made from scratch, during the first stages of their war, and you’ll see if that’s that much ridiculous… for your other questions, answers are in the movie.
you’re becoming an elderly
when it’s too loud, you’re too old. fuck yeah!

Stucky

Goldorack

Of course I realize it’s just entertainment. But, for me, even entertainment requires a decent plot, a story, to be entertaining. Two hours of blowing shit up via fake CGI doesn’t cut it.

When I’m not interested in a plot or story, I watch porn.

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