August 14, 2013

"Elysium"

From my movie review of Elysium in Taki's Magazine:
Elysium, another science-fiction fable from young Boer refugee Neill Blomkamp about the horrors of mass immigration and nonwhite overpopulation, isn’t terribly amusing to watch. But at the meta level, the career of Blomkamp, whose mother dragged the family off from Johannesburg to Vancouver after a 17-year-old friend was shot dead by black carjackers, is one of the funnier pranks played on the American culturati’s hive mind in recent decades. 
I’ve read over a hundred reviews of Blomkamp’s two movies, and virtually no critic has noticed that he does not share their worldview. 
Not at all. 
... Much like Blomkamp's District 9, an allegory inspired by Zimbabwean illegal immigration to Johannesburg, Elysium is another Malthusian tale about open borders, set in a dystopian 2154. By then, Los Angeles has been completely overrun by Mexicans, who have turned it into an endless, dusty slum that looks remarkably like urban Mexico today. (Blomkamp filmed for four months in Mexico City.)

Read the whole thing there.

And here's the end of the Wired profile of Blomkamp that is the most insightful piece I found:
The director finds it unfortunate that observers are already drawing parallels between Elysium and the Occupy movement, a phenomenon that he says wasn’t even a consideration. Blomkamp identifies as neither liberal nor conservative, which doesn’t stop people from ascribing all sorts of agendas to him and his films. The focus group comments for an Elysium test screening bear this out: “Some people said, ‘This guy’s a racist!’ and other people, ‘He’s a liberal!’ It’s like, well, which is it?” 
It’s a good sign, in his view, that the film provokes such disparate reactions. But he doesn’t care for the idea that by making two Big Theme movies he’s bound to be branded a political filmmaker. “That would be the worst calamity of my career,” Blomkamp says. Though given that he’ll soon be back shooting in Johannesburg, it’s easy to imagine worse calamities. Around his neck, tucked under his T-shirt, Blomkamp wears a talisman bearing the Latin phrase Dominus custodiat unum (“May God bless you and keep you”). It’s a gift from Tatchell (his wife), intended to keep him from getting shot on return trips to his homeland. 
He’d better hold on to it. Within six years, Blomkamp hopes to buy a skyscraper, maybe 40 or 50 floors, in downtown Johannesburg—a place to stay when he’s in town. He insists it’s not such a crazy dream; since the crime rate skyrocketed downtown in the late ’90s, so many high-rises went vacant that they can now be had for a relative pittance. He envisions the building as his own version of Blade Runner ’s Tyrell Corporation headquarters. 
It sounds a lot like his own little version of Elysium, I point out. “Exactly,” he says. “That’s exactly what I want.”

Blomkamp is likely referring to the Ponte City skyscraper, because one of the last shots in District 9 is of Ponte City (the oval skyscraper with a "Vodacom" sign on the top). The Wikipedia article on the building points out the symbolism:
Ponte City is a skyscraper in the Hillbrow neighbourhood of Johannesburg, South Africa. It was built in 1975 to a height of 173 metres, making it the tallest residential skyscraper in Africa. The 54-story building is cylindrical, with an open center allowing additional light into the apartments. The center space is known as "the core" and rises above an uneven rock floor. Ponte City was an extremely desirable address for its views over all of Johannesburg and its surroundings. 
Core of Ponte City filled up with five stories of trash.
During the 1990s, after the end of apartheid, many gangs moved into the building and it became extremely unsafe. Ponte City became symbolic of the crime and urban decay gripping the once cosmopolitan Hillbrow neighborhood. The core filled with debris five stories high as the owners left the building to decay. There were even proposals in the mid-1990s to turn the building into a highrise prison.[2]

Buying Ponte City would be a massive rigid digit by Blomkamp.

A South African friend explains:
Ponte always had an interesting history.

In the old South Africa, it used to be a staging post for immigrants - white ones as it was in a whites area. But it was always a place people got out of as soon as possible. Ifyou watched the recent Judge Dredd movie, Ponte City's structure and atmosphere was very much like the castle of hell portrayed in the film.
The building had such an oppressive atmosphere and symbolic presence (on top of the ridge that is the watershed between the atlantic and indian oceans) that it was a magnet for people wanting to commit suicide by throwing themselves of the highest floor into the core. Access was very easy and little security.

After the fall of apartheid it became a magnet for immigrants from the rest of Africa. The crime lords moved in and now it is too dangerous to go there to commit suicide and has fallen off the public (white) imagination except for the cocacola and Vodacom(mobile) adverts placed on the top of the tower. 
To the white imagination the centre of town is a black hole..a place like hell with a sign written above it abandon all hope ye who enter here. (i've been a few times to art galleries that are still situated there ….but most people think we are crazy to do that..maybe I am) 
There are a number of attempts by (mostly jewish) entrepreneurs to revive areas in the town centre aided by our ever incompetent town council, but it has not captured the (white) public imagination.
Washington DC in 2505 in Idiocracy
Los Angeles in 2154 in Elysium
By the way, I haven't seen anybody mention Elysium's several references to Idiocracy.

Elysium sign similar, but not as funny
The most obvious are the discouragingly incompetent name-signs on the outside of hospitals. But Blomkamp's buddy Sharlto Copley, as the bad guy South African mercenary, uses at least one catch line from Idiocracy, and may have used more; but I could barely understand a sentence he said.

92 comments:

FredR said...

The details of his Tijuana escapade don't seem plausible to me. When corrupt Tijuana cops arrested me for no reason, they only threatened me with a couple days in jail, and I paid them off with $20.

Anonymous said...

World War Z and now this. Hmmm.

Maybe we should henceforth call 'creative' urban gentrified utopias 'elysiums'.

Germania failed but Homosia seems to have been realized, and there are elysiums in all the rich cities like San Fran, Chicago, New York, and etc.

Matthew said...

Subtle messages in film don't get through. All people will take away from "Elysium" is that border enforcement is heartless, that people have the right to cross them illegally if it serves their interests, and that everyone coming here illegally would die if they stayed home (nevermind that life expectancy for Mexicans in Mexico is roughly the same as their life expectancy here).

Steve Sailer said...

Yeah, when I was threatened with arrest by Mexican cops for drinking a non-alcoholic beer on the Baja beach next to James Cameron's "Titanic" set in 1996, I only had to slip one cop $20 to be let loose.

Anonymous said...

Why do some critics think it's pro-open-borders when it seems all the problems on earth were caused by open borders?

It seems to me that the movie is saying that if we have open borders, the rich and powerful will just find another way to stay above it all. In the US, it's via gentrification. In the future, it may be through stratification(literally).

Anonymous said...

Inflation.

Anonymous said...

Was it "ow my balls" or
"Go away batin'" ??

Dan in DC

Anonymous said...

I wonder if METROPOLIS started this stuff with its upper world and under world and etc.

But then, METROPOLIS took a lot of its ideas from timeless mythologies about the god world, human world, and underworld.

It seems like the futuristic world is dividing into two extremes, those of the gods and those of the subhumans(with no realm of the humans in between), and Marx wrote about this too in his view of capitalism.

If in the mythologies, there were the god world, human world, and the underworld(of monsters and subhumans), in dystopian science fiction, there's often just the world of the neo-gods(powerful humans with godlike technology) and the world of the 'subhumans'. It's like there's no place left for humans anymore.

In BLADE RUNNER, it's like Tyrell is like a god but most of the humans of LA are like subhuman mutants. Deckard is like the last man or human alive, neither god nor subhuman. (But then, he might be a replicant, in which case he is both subhuman--robot slave--and a god--robot with power beyond man).

Damon's character seems similar in ELYSIUM. There are gods above and subhumans on earth. But Damon's character is the last human, neither god nor subhuman.

IDIOCRACY played on this theme too, with its main character as the last 'average guy' left alive, but the joke was he was the smartest guy in the future where everyone is a subhuman dummy. No Elysium in IDIOCRACY.



Anonymous said...

Elon Musk, Neill Blomkamp, Charlize Theron,...

I just don't know what so many have against African-Americans?

Anonymous said...

Maybe the world of Idiocracy has an Elysium station, but no one on Earth remembers anymore what the hell that thing is in the sky.

Anonymous said...

From apartheid to suitheid.

Trolly said...

Steve is always seeing some pro-HBD message that no one else sees. District 9 didn't strike me as a message about the evils of unlimited immigration.

These White hipsters are not remotely pro-HBD and certainly not pro-White. I think we live in la-la land if we think, "deep down", these fellas know the truth and are on our side. Yes, Idocracy did, on some level, but District 9 did not.

The fact that liberal Whites move away from the Hells they create in NO WAY means they understand HBD.

Anonymous said...

"Blomkamp, however, is unusual in that he barely tries to hide his worldview. So the NLDs just make up for him a worldview more acceptable to themselves."

Boy, that sounds like mental/moral masturbating. Maybe the Liberal elites are so full of hate for the 'right', they are into masturHating.
Even if something isn't really 'leftist' or 'liberal', they pretend it is and masturHate to it.

"In dumbed-down 21st-century America, who will notice?"

I dunno. Americans seemed to have been fooled a lot in the past. I mean past foolery led to current foolery. I mean all those morons in the 80s re-fighting the Vietnam War and winning the Cold War through RAMBO and ROCKY IV weren't the brightest bulbs.

Anonymous said...

"Steve is always seeing some pro-HBD message that no one else sees. District 9 didn't strike me as a message about the evils of unlimited immigration."

The movie that I still can't believe got made is Tim Burton's PLANET OF THE APES. I mean that was woah!!!!

I recall ESCAPE FROM NY upset some people long ago. Mostly liberals.

One thing for sure, liberal hatred of TWILIGHT and M. Night Shymalan shows they are not always clueless.

SIXTH SENSE, though much lauded, was different in making a woman than the man the villain. Woman, not the man, killed the kid.

UNBREAKABLE is racially sort of weird.

SIGNS was very pro-family and in awe of Mel Gibson when Hollywood was beginning to feel icky about him. And gibby was a victim of a person of color who killed his wife in a car accident, and that poc was played by shymalan himself.

As Andy Nowicki noticed, THE VILLAGE has a subtext about white fear of urban crime.

THE HAPPENING is a religious film with strong Christian overtones. The scene where the husband talks to his wife(in a separate building)though a speaking tube suggests that the answer is not to be found in physical flight but in spiritual union.

Though only scripted by Shymalan, the redemptive character in DEVIL is a white male which violates most HOllywood script formulas.

And so many libs flipped out over TWILIGHT. So they aint always dumb.

Anonymous said...

This reminds me when Sailer was pushing forward one of his commenter's dumbass theories on Planet of the Apes as a tale of HBD and black people.

Anonymous said...

White Space Flight.

Anonymous said...

Libs may be dumb but nothing is dumber than National Review's lists of the best 'conservative' films.

Anonymous said...

Is Blomkamp double-subversive or doubversive?

He pretends to make a movie that subverts 'white privilege', but it also subverts political correctness?

FredR said...

"I wonder if METROPOLIS started this stuff with its upper world and under world and etc"

Isn't the obvious origin HG Wells "Time Machine"?

Anonymous said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355628/left-vs-redskins-dennis-prager

How about Thinskins? Maybe all libs should be called that.
And since so many only give lipservice to their 'ideals' while acting totally contrary, maybe they should be called lipservers as well.

Anonymous said...

"Isn't the obvious origin HG Wells "Time Machine"?"

I suppose if we count GULLY'S TRAVELS as sci-fi, it was there before TIME MACHINE.
Interestingly enough, the character of BATTLE ANGEL(manga/anime) is named Gally. I wonder if that was an allusion to Gulliver.

Laputa island in GULLIVER inspired Miyazaki's greatest work CASTLE IN THE SKY. It's too bad that far more people know him through the worthless SPIRITED AWAY.

And who can forget ZARDOZ?

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen/read/nor appreciate the themes, plot or subtexts of the Twilight books and movies--I only know it's about attractive vampires--but could someone explain to me how it's subversive in HBD terms as a couple of posters have suggested.

spacehabitats said...

Although I haven't seen the movie, it is clear from the trailer that Elysium perpetuates one very tragic myth; that L5 type space habitats would be so expensive that only the richest elite of society would be able to afford to live there. This is no more true than it was of the American frontier. Once the infrastructure was in place to build such habitats using extraterrestrial materials (asteroids or lunar soil catapulted into space using solar powered electromagnetic mass drivers) the number and size of such colonies would be virtually limitless. Creating such an infrastructure would be FAR less expensive than even the most modest human expedition to Mars, let alone the fantastic and ridiculously expensive terraforming of that planet.

It may be true that the rulers of a tyrannical global government would choose to keep the unwashed masses from enjoying the unlimited freedom of creating their own space habitats, but it would be precisely because they wanted to keep the rest of humanity in chains, not because of any economic or technological constraints.

Anonymous said...

Blomkampf.

Maybe Blomkamf is a reluctant 'progressive'. Ideally, he wants to live in a safe white society. But the white global elites all decided to punish white-ruled South Africa and lectured to white Afrikaners to get along and become one with the dark masses. And so, South Africa ended apartheid and embraced black rule, and it's been hellish for so many whites.

And things are changing rapidly in the US and EU demographically. Whites will lose majority status in the US in a few decades, and EU could well be majority non-white in the future too. And European masses are told by the white elites to 'join with dark masses and be one with them.
Now, ideally, whites wanna remain white and live in safe white communities, but if their communities have been ruined forever by elite globalist policies, there is nothing left for whites to do but join with the dark masses to bring down the elites(if only out of revenge).
Similar kind of feeling seem to underline HUNGER GAMES.

Two big films of 2013.

One written by Jewish guy, son of Mel Brooks and it ends in Israel. WORLD WAR Z.

The other one, ELYSIUM, written/directed by South African guy whose ideas about his native land has deeply impacted his creative vision.

Interesting. There was some of that in Albert Camus too, who grew up in Algeria and refused to see the world in simple black/white terms favored by the French left.

In the West, the narrative is evil 'racist' whites in South Africa finally put in their place by noble blacks led by kindly Mandela. Blomkamp knows better just like Camus knew more about Algeria.

But with Israel, the narrative is generally different, ranging from more nuanced--"let's listen to both sides"--to hysterically pro-Zionist.

Baloo said...

Me, I mostly find subtle messages in Japanese anime, so thanks to Steve for keeping track of actual movies. Seriously, linked and riffed on here:
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/08/elysium-reviewed.html

Anonymous said...

"I haven't seen/read/nor appreciate the themes, plot or subtexts of the Twilight books and movies--I only know it's about attractive vampires--but could someone explain to me how it's subversive in HBD terms as a couple of posters have suggested."

Even though I disagree with much of what Trevor Lynch says, he makes some salient points. I disagree with him that Meyer was being consciously subversive. She just wanted to tell a good story, but TWILIGHT turned out to be 'subversive' by default because PC-ness of our culture prefers stuff like GIRLS.

Marlowe said...

Idiocracy is really about what happened to the USA during the nineteen seventies. I think Alien (1979) takes place in the same 'future'.

In the med-lab, Capt. DALLAS and ASH examine the alien facehugger attached to Kane:

Dallas: How are we gonna get that off him? HOW ARE WE GONNA GET IT OFF?
Ash: Just a minute ... just a minute ... I've got to get some instruments ... Good ... if I make an incision here and try to remove one of the digitals from his face
Dallas (dumbly): You're gonna do what?
Ash (irritated): Finger. I'll try and get his finger off.

I think Capt. Dallas of the Nostromo (Joseph Conrad would have shuddered at the thought of him commanding a vessel) was one of those 'tards who had a really kick-ass life as a space-pilot. Up until his ship blew up. And the Weyland-Yutani company was originally (in the mind of the model designer) British Leyland-Toyota. BL was a state owned British car manufacturer notorious during the '70s and early '80s for the lousy quality of its vehicles.

Sam Lively said...

So the $100+ million budgeted brainlessly plotted, ham-handed liberal propaganda was really just an elaborate satire? The world most expensive dog whistle.

Aaron Sorkin must be a sleeper cell conservative.

Anonymous said...

Liberal utopias should be called Nauseums.

Anonymous said...

It's fitting that Hillbrow was once represented in Parliament by the anti-apartheid Zionista Helen Suzman.

Sam Lively said...

My reading of Blomkamp's ideology is liberal techno-utopianism informed by multicultural realism.

He posits that multiculturalism will produce an overpopulated third world hellhole, but he believes that white technology can uplift it, if only white avarice and nativism can be thwarted (ideally by a sacrificial white semi-cyborg like Matt Damon). I think that's why he wants to buy a skyscraper in downtown Johannesburg (the most dangerous place to be white in Africa, as I was warned by a missionary when I had a one-day layover there) - to open up Elysium to the masses.

The quality of the screenwriting was just too poor for me to buy the elaborate satire angle. The movie was heavy-handed in every way, not just ideologically. And I don't think Jodie Foster's willingness to stick by Mel Gibson (though I imagine you are also thinking of her white avenger role in Brave One, but I think that was more of lesbian power trip) merits a serious re-interpretation of her character. Her performance was right in line with the white bad guys of unironic liberal fantasies like Dances with Wolves and Avatar. As a reviewer I can't remember said, she's like Tim Robbins - a leftist who struggles with authenticity when she's tasked with portraying a caricature of a right-winger.

Anonymous said...

"When corrupt Tijuana cops arrested me for no reason, they only threatened me with a couple days in jail, and I paid them off with $20."

That same $20 got me off the hook for speeding in Sonora. For $900 I could be mayor of TJ for a day.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

James Bowman once wrote this excruciating explanation of how "dystopic" was a solecism because it would imply the alternative "eutopia" instead of "utopia" ("no place") and thus completely miss the meaning inherent in Thomas More's coinage of the word. Judging from some other reviews of this film I think that anti-"dystopia" project might be a lost cause for the moment

Anonymous said...

Can someone explains the subtext of twilght that supposedly angers libs? All I remeber was damn Mike Dexter got bit by a vampire.

Power Child said...

It's interesting, this tie-in to Idiocracy. I always thought that the only thing missing from Mike Judge's movie, the thing that would have made it so hauntingly accurate that it could no longer survive as a plausible comedy, was the existence of a thin upper crust of white elites, the liberal half of whom have tricked themselves into thinking they have everyone's best interests in mind.

Elysium seems to have picked it up from there.

Anonymous of 8/14/13, 2:31 PM said:

Maybe the world of Idiocracy has an Elysium station, but no one on Earth remembers anymore what the hell that thing is in the sky.

What I want to see now is the follow-up, where Luke Wilson digs up a telescope and he's like "Hey, did anyone else notice this big ring-looking thing in the sky?"

President Camacho: "Gimme dat thing!" Looks through the telescope. "Yo! Genius boy just found us a spaceship!" Then, turning to America: "And WE GON' GO UP THERE, AND BRING IT DOWN HERE SO WE CAN MAKE IT THE MAIN ATTRACTION AT COSTCO!" Wild applause.

Idiocracy 2: Bringing Down Elysium

Dave Pinsen said...

Kim Stanley Robinson tackled some of these themes in his Red Mars trilogy, with some hard science fiction (e.g., space elevators instead of space shuttles into orbit) and speculations about a post-capitalist, post-singularity economics thrown in.

Anonymous said...

I have a question for the commenters who've seen the movie:

Is Blomkamp really a politically incorrect guy? Is he a race realist? Is anything like that detectable in Elysium? Or is Steve just seeing what he wants to see in it?

I'm asking this as a person who's seen what he wanted to see in things many times, just to be later bitten in the ass by reality.

Dave Pinsen said...

"Even though I disagree with much of what Trevor Lynch says, he makes some salient points. I disagree with him that Meyer was being consciously subversive. She just wanted to tell a good story, but TWILIGHT turned out to be 'subversive' by default because PC-ness of our culture prefers stuff like GIRLS."

What a mess that article is. Twilight subverts PC because it features an attractive (mostly) white cast, and smarter-than-their-years teens with some sense of propriety? That's true of most teen movies, from John Hughes to Judd Apatow, isn't it?

As for the Twilight's vampires, Meyer doesn't give them enough negatives to make them tragic figures. Anne Rice's vampires get caught in the sunlight and they die; Meyers' vampires just sparkle inconveniently. You wonder what they are so moody about.

Anonymous said...

It seems like the futuristic world is dividing into two extremes, those of the gods and those of the subhumans(with no realm of the humans in between)

Have you seen the 2002 remake of HG Wells's The Time Machine?

I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but the second half of that movie is simply OBSESSED with the very likelihood which you are describing.

Guy Pearce made it about five years after LA Confidential.

PS: My God, I just realized that Guy Pearce was involved with a remake of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

That was the scariest movie I ever saw as a child.

It really deeply scarred me.

For a long, long time.

Cail Corishev said...

Not that it matters to the story, but in the category of sloppy journalism, "Dominus custodiat unum" means "May the Lord keep (safeguard) one." Presumably "one" refers to the one wearing it. "May the Lord bless you and keep you," which is from Numbers 6, is "Benedicat tibi Dominus et custodiat te."

Anonymous said...

"Is Blomkamp really a politically incorrect guy? Is he a race realist? Is anything like that detectable in Elysium? Or is Steve just seeing what he wants to see in it?"

He's a survivor who learned the hard lessons of life and the world. Though an 'Aryan', he went through a experience that is very Jewish-like. Minority status, persecution, Afro-pogroms, exile, and etc.

Just like Jews had to hustle to survive and thrive in an environment that saw them as Christ-killers, 'Aryans' are increasingly discovering they must hustle to survive in the globalized world. There is no more blood and soil security for 'Aryans' in South Africa, and maybe not even in Europe with massive demographic changes.
If Jews had been marked as 'Christ killers' for centuries, 'Aryans' will be marked as 'Jew-killers' as Holocaust-cult is the new religion of the West. Just look at all the fuss over Paula Deen over what she said 30 yrs ago. And look how even George Zimmerman was initially Aryanized until images of him made this ludicrous.

So, Blomkamp is a survivor-hustler, a kind of Jewishy-'Aryan'. Especially if you wanna work in Hollywood(dominated by Jews), you gotta be able to play it both ways.

Ironically, Mel Brooks' son is like an Aryan-Jew since he believes and defends the blood-and-soil-ness of Israel.
Things have become reversed.

PS. I wonder if the pop-fascist style is far more prevalent in Hollywood and popular culture because homos have become so prominent in culture, indeed in some circles more powerful than Jews. Homos have a natural predilection for 'fascist' aesthetics with its clean lines, beauty cult, idealized depictions of power and strength.
Maybe there is much more homo power in Hollywood, and maybe homo cultural elites are far more tolerant of the fascist style(even if homos remain on the 'left' politically).

Anonymous said...

Anonymous: Elon Musk, Neill Blomkamp, Charlize Theron,...

Anonymous: Maybe the world of Idiocracy has an Elysium station, but no one on Earth remembers anymore what the hell that thing is in the sky.

Have you guys seen Charlize Theron in 2005's AEon Flux?

Not only does it have a mysterious object flying around in the sky, but it also has a walled city.

And even a very explicit warning that revolution [and especially revolutionary zealotry] is not always the moral choice when attempting to salvage a society.

Plus, of course, Miss Theron in her prime.

All in all, a highly underrated movie.

[As is Miss Theron's other masterpiece, The Devil's Advocate.]

Harry Baldwin said...

One written by Jewish guy, son of Mel Brooks and it ends in Israel. WORLD WAR Z.

You didn't see it, did you? It doesn't end in Israel. The Israeli wall fails and they get swarmed by zombies.

"World War Z" is the best movie I've seen this year as far as pure entertainment. Gripping from start to finish with some great action sequences.

Anonymous said...

And I don't think Jodie Foster's willingness to stick by Mel Gibson... As a reviewer I can't remember said, she's like Tim Robbins - a leftist who struggles with authenticity when she's tasked with portraying a caricature of a right-winger.

Don't kid yourself - Jodie Foster is a staunch opponent of the Frankfurt School.

And Tim Robbins is actually a fairly conservative guy who has made political contributions to the likes of MICHELLE BACHMAN!!!

Anonymous said...

"What a mess that article is. Twilight subverts PC because it features an attractive (mostly) white cast, and smarter-than-their-years teens with some sense of propriety? That's true of most teen movies, from John Hughes to Judd Apatow, isn't it?"

He seriously overstates his case, but TWILIGHT did unnerve a good number of liberals. It was set in mostly white NW. Feminists saw endorsement of abusive relationships because the Indian woman with scar on her face sticks by her man. That Bella decides to have the kid was seen as pro-life message.
The physical prowess of white vampires was greeted with the kind of hostile booing Duke basketball got from rival schools. And 'abstinence' is a four-lettered word among Liberals, even though TWILIGHT isn't about the virtues of abstinence. Bella, the central character, doesn't believe in it but holds out til marriage only because Edward insists. And Edward holds out not out of any commitment to the ideal of abstinence but because he loves her so much that, out of respect, he wants to do everything the proper way. Abstinence is about suppression of sexual drive. TWILIGHT is about heightening of romance via ritualism to increase the pleasure. It's like kids wanna wait til Christmas to open the presents because it's more special that way.

Personally, I don't give a crap about social issues surrounding TWILIGHT. I just find much of it mesmerizing, especially parts 1, 2, and 4.

Trevor Lynch is onto something though. While movies and tv shows about attractive or likable young white people have been common, TWILIGHT goes beyond showing attractiveness. It really goes all out in reveling in the cult of beauty. The characters are not merely attractive or sexy. They really glow and radiate with beauty, and that level of beauty worship has generally been frowned upon. Is it 'white nationalist'? No. Is it Mormon propaganda? No, while Meyer is clearly informed by the culture from which she sprung--who isn't--, I don't think she was consciously pushing any kind of agenda. At least I didn't get such feeling from the movies as I haven't read the books and don't want to.

"As for the Twilight's vampires, Meyer doesn't give them enough negatives to make them tragic figures. Anne Rice's vampires get caught in the sunlight and they die; Meyers' vampires just sparkle inconveniently. You wonder what they are so moody about."

We associate vamps with horror but TWILIGHT isn't horror. It's fairytale or modern myth. It's not about the dark and macabre. It's about romance and beauty. Cullens are like a family of immortal gods.

As I recall, the only moody one is Edward Cullen. Why? He didn't choose to be a vampire but he is one. He found a kind of peace with immortality but Bella steps into his life, he madly falls in love with her(and she with him), and he is forced to make a decision he doesn't wanna make.

Anonymous said...

James Bowman might be the most intelligent (at least critically) alive he just can't write very well.

Anonymous said...

"And Tim Robbins is actually a fairly conservative guy who has made political contributions to the likes of MICHELLE BACHMAN!!!"

If this is true, it must have been over Israel and nothing else.

(He was great in SURE THING and HIGH FIDELITY).

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/santafeinst

Pinker live.

Steve in Greensboro said...

I'll just watch "The Cloud Minders" again.

Anonymous said...

"He's a survivor who learned the hard lessons of life and the world."

Just because he's a Saffer doesn't mean he understood those lessons. Charlize Theron adopted a black kid recently. I'm never going to see Elysium. I rarely watch movies. Don't really know what people find in them. But I've read a couple of other reviews of this one, and their authors were not seeing the things that Steve saw in it.

Dennis Mangan said...

Either Neill Blomkamp is the Leo Strauss of filmmakers, or Steve is the Leo Strauss of critics, not sure which.

Anonymous said...

Neill Blomkamp left South Africa within a few years of the blacks taking over. That tells me that he's either a conseravtive or a hypocrite. I'm not sure which, but it's hard to read a conservative message in a film where the "illegal alien" is the hero and the "border cop is the villain. Is he being subversive? Maybe. But that's not the message people will take from his film. Blomkamp needs to be a little more straightforward if he wants his message to get through.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

And who can forget ZARDOZ?"

I always figured John Boorman had reactionary leanings. "Deliverance" and "The Emerald Forest" were definitely not liberal movies.

Mr. Anon said...

"Although I haven't seen the movie, it is clear from the trailer that Elysium perpetuates one very tragic myth; that L5 type space habitats would be so expensive that only the richest elite of society would be able to afford to live there. This is no more true than it was of the American frontier. Once the infrastructure was in place to build such habitats using extraterrestrial materials (asteroids or lunar soil catapulted into space using solar powered electromagnetic mass drivers) the number and size of such colonies would be virtually limitless. Creating such an infrastructure would be FAR less expensive than even the most modest human expedition to Mars, let alone the fantastic and ridiculously expensive terraforming of that planet."

Hey, if it makes you happy to believe that, knock yourself out. I guess the grass is always greener out in space.

Whiskey said...

Steve sees things that James Kilpatrick at VDARE does not.

Now, either Steve is right, or Kilpatrick is right. They cannot both be right.

I agree with Steve on a lot of things, but not here. He's just wrong. Wrong, wrong, all wrong.

This is more of the attack on ordinary White people, as evil, flawed, and profiting from Third World misery. Dances with Avatars, etc. Good, sacred object non-Whites, and evil Whites who want to keep traditional White ways of life especially technology going.

It is the usual idiot-liberal view of technology. Whites "steal it" by well, producing it. And not "sharing it" with the Third World which we can see is dysfunctional but dysfunctional in terms of the movie because it is a White-run slave labor camp.

Accurate in the West Indies in 1720. Not today.

But this is just one more eternal war in White people making war on other White people. And hating the essence of Whiteness, that is social change through ruthless technology adoption for advantage.

Whiskey said...

As for Blomkamp, he's made out alright. He has no home, and he's been well compensated for that. He's shown no interest, compassion, or even caring about other White South Africans ethnically cleansed out of South Africa. Indeed, he's adopted the usual hostility by making a White South African a major villain. A Boer who speaks the same language he did growing up.

All evidence suggests Blomkamp has been eager to rake in bucks, and big ones, making people who could plausibly be his cousins into the bad guys, and non-Whites who are not in any way related to him, as heroes and sacred objects.

Whites as minorities will not be "Jews." Jews in Europe were tiny in number, useful in medicine and finance, but otherwise outside a society that really did not need them in any way. Europe 1100-1900 did not need Jews to produce Wool (White gold), farm, explore, marshal armies, captain navies, or produce the majority of the fighting men.

Non-Whites in the West, in Europe, and in America, are utterly concentrated in Cities, and are like the cities utterly, completely, dependent upon White wealth transfers for survival in a way that Christians in Europe were NOT dependent upon Jews.

At a certain point, it will be low IQ mass numbers with no real skills or even literacy up against high IQ, small numbers, decentralized angry men (and women) able to produce home-built city killers. Don't like anti-White tax laws and legal third class citizen status and the like? Use your smarts to produce a "city killer" that could consist of merely bringing the grid down for two weeks.

Imagine a nearly totally Black/Hispanic NYC ten years from now, without power, for two/three weeks. That's nothing to people out in the rural areas who are often off-grid anyway. Its a death sentence to low IQ people who depend on the EBT.

Elysium fails on the fundamentals of science fiction. Verne got much right in his Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Blomkamp gets nearly everything wrong, including the likelihood of rural Whites able and willing to strike back at poorly run non-White cities.

I don't see any Mestizos or Blacks in "Mountain Men" or those Doomsday Preppers.

Aaron Gross said...

Milius' politics wasn't exactly "overlooked." Dirty Harry was widely denounced as fascist when it came out. I think Milius once shouted, on the set of a different movie, "I'm the only fascist on this set!" The liberal dweebs in Hollywood knew full well that Milius was sort of a quasi-fascist, but they were happy to hire him to write and/or fix their scripts.

Douglas Knight said...

What is the history of the quote "Fascism for the blacks, capitalism for the English and Jews, and socialism for the Boers"? In 1991, Arthur Miller said "state socialism for the whites...and fascism for the blacks," but who added the other details? and when? Maybe Moorcraft in 1994?

Steve Sailer said...

It's something I read somewhere, perhaps in the Economist in the 1980s. I tried to look up the original when I wrote the District 9 review but didn't have much luck.

Anonymous said...

"Neill Blomkamp left South Africa within a few years of the blacks taking over. That tells me that he's either a conseravtive or a hypocrite."

To be sure, you can flee from something and still remain true to it. Trotsky fled communist Russia but still remained loyal to communism. Indeed, many Jewish communists in Stalin's Russia sought refuge in the West but still remained close to the principles of communism and tried to undermine the west.
They thought Russian communism had failed cuz it betrayed true communism, which they themselves supposedly embodied.
So, it's possible that Blom believes in multiculturalism but feels that the south african version has failed.
Who knows? He's probably confused himself.

Anonymous said...

"Charlize Theron adopted a black kid recently."

White elites are marrying high-class blacks or adopting black babies. This is true of cons too. BLIND SIDE.

White masses are a body without a head.

Anonymous said...

In the 1960s and 70s many Britons emigrated to South Africa, as it was the prime spot to emigrate to, even out-ranking Australia.
Many skilled construction workers emigrated, and they helped build many of Johannesburg's tall buildings.
In those days, South Africa was seen as the up-coming nation of the future.

Anonymous said...

"By the way, I haven't seen anybody mention Elysium's several references to Idiocracy."

A fantastic motto for the ag lobby just occurred to me:

"Mexicans. They're what plants crave."

Anonymous said...

"Elysium" is meant to appeal to a broad spectrum of people. This is the Hollywood modern idea of selling a product to maximize profit.
Itz just like when an adult takes his child to see a kid's movie, there are imbedded adult themes that cannot be understood by children.
What producer would invest that kind of serious money and not expect maximum profit. The people writing this stuff are very clever. They probably are laughing all the way to the bank.
The conservative and liberal will only see their own side.
The brainwashing in the USSoA is very subtle and begins very early. Remember folks "we're all born equal" and don't dare deviate from that thought or you will be punished, ostracized or minimized.
Some can even lose their jobs and be sent to retraining camps.

Big Bill said...

"So, under no borders, all those brown people will still need a white hero to lead them, like in Lawrence of Arabia on down."

Make that "Lawrence of LA-bia"

Big Bill said...

"nevermind that life expectancy for Mexicans in Mexico is roughly the same as their life expectancy here"

Oddly enough, life expectancy for older Mexicans in Mexico is greater than life expectancy for older Mexicans in the USA.

Anonymous said...

http://youtu.be/jDSSQSHIrvc

Anonymous said...

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/cairo-massacre-after-today-what-muslim-will-ever-trust-the-ballot-box-again-8762021.html

Democratization without US invasion/occupation but turning like Iraq.

Egpyt's Tiananman moment.

Svigor said...

Jumbo shrimp
Military intelligence
anti-racist liberal
anti-apartheid Zionist


As a reviewer I can't remember said, she's like Tim Robbins - a leftist who struggles with authenticity when she's tasked with portraying a caricature of a right-winger.

My favorite example of this is Scott Bakula try to play Archer's evil analogue in the mirror universe episodes of Enterprise. The man was manifestly unable to wrap his head around the idea that fascists, like liberals, and everyone else, think they're the good guys. That, or he was just unable to even imagine himself seen as a villain by others. He definitely smacked into a brick wall in front of millions of viewers. It was painfully bad. The message I got from it was that he's got about a mile of libtard holier-than-thou in his intestines.

I think Milius once shouted, on the set of a different movie, "I'm the only fascist on this set!"

Way I read it, IIRC, he was trying to explain to another producer-Jew that Arnold wasn't a fascist. He said something to the effect of, "Arnold's no fascist. I'm a fascist." That's the kind of thing I would say, lol. I love Milius, but whoever cut his more absurd and juvenile scenes from Apocalypse Now saved that movie. The Director's Cut is a disaster. Even worse than the new, "improved" Akira.

Pat Boyle said...

Film critics missing the message and/or film directors being so inept as to garble the message - is an old story. It is at least as old as the "New Wave".

I took a film class in college. The prof explained how we were to arrange our shots so as to avoid the "jump cut". We have film magazines that held about two minutes of film. If we were showing a guy walking down the street or going though a door we had to be careful to match the shots so the actor didn't just suddenly appear some distance ahead as if by magic. We were also warned to shoot someone going to the left always going to the left otherwise it looked strange.

But then he told us that Jean Luc Goddard became famous and was hailed as a genius because of his 'new look'. His shots were filled with jump cuts because he didn't know any better.

Giuseppe Sinopoli the Italian opera conductor likewise became famous for his interpretations which were unlike those of others because he was incompetent. He never learned how to conduct properly and it made him a star.

Antonioni was a far left moralist who was shocked by the goings on in 'swinging London'. He tried to denounce the depravity that so offended his old fashion Stalinist sensibilities in 'Blow Up' but his filmic syntax was so inept that he was praised for his 'cool' and detached non-judgmental manner.

If a film maker avoids a heavy hand and allows the audience to draw its own conclusions he risks critics completely misinterpreting what he was trying to convey.

When I saw District 9 I thought it was an argument for genocide of South African blacks. Certainly the prawns standing in for blacks were hideous and they proved to be dangerous and deadly to humans. I kept thinking as I watched - kill them all, kill them now, before they kill us. I think that is the simplest and most logical reaction to the story as presented. I was always a bit surprised that what I took to be a pro-genocide film was critically praised.

From what you say of Elysium Blomkamp again promotes the immediate genocide of Mexicans. I guess this proves you can get away with the most radical solutions if you muddle the message enough.

That Rodeo clown was just too clear in his message.

Albertosaurus

Douglas Knight said...

fascism for the blacks: let me spell out my sources. It is widely reported that Arthur Miller coined the basic phrase "state socialism for the whites...and fascism for the blacks," probably in 1991 in the Nation. The only place I can find the longer phrase, other than you, is Paul Moorcraft's book African Nemesis. I'm not sure when it was published. Moorcraft says "there is said to be socialism for the Afrikaners, capitalism for the English-speaking whites and Indians, and fascism for the blacks.

Anonymous said...

whatever her politics, Jodie Foster will always be boss to me. She's the Warren Beatty of lezbos. From Kim Basinger to Gillian Anderson she's racked up the hottest bisexual bedpost count in Hollywood. Over the last two months there have been strong rumors about her bagging Lilo and Jamie Lee Curtis. /and/ she tried to make a Leni Reifenstal biopic...Mel Gibson isn't the only nut/idealist.

FredR said...

Elysium has an Indian president, and there was some other movie I saw I can't remember now with an indian president recently. Maybe this is a trend, like those black presidents back in the day? Americans definitely seem to be more comfortable with Indian leaders than East Asian ones.

Anonymous said...

"Elysium has an Indian president"


Indian = mulatto president?

Jody Foster = pants suit Hillary?

Steve Sailer said...

Dear Douglas Knight:

Thanks for a source for the quote: "Moorcraft says "there is said to be socialism for the Afrikaners, capitalism for the English-speaking whites and Indians, and fascism for the blacks."

So, it was around before Moorcraft's 1990 book. I might have seen it in National Review in the 1970s, or in Conor Cruise O'Brien's long 1986 article on South Africa in the Atlantic. I recall seeing it in reverse order, with the punchline being "socialism for the Afrikaners."

Anonymous said...

"But then he told us that Jean Luc Goddard became famous and was hailed as a genius because of his 'new look'. His shots were filled with jump cuts because he didn't know any better."

It's 'Godard', and it isn't the issue of the what but the how. The how, if inventive enough, can make something wrong seem right.

"Antonioni was a far left moralist who was shocked by the goings on in 'swinging London'. He tried to denounce the depravity that so offended his old fashion Stalinist sensibilities in 'Blow Up' but his filmic syntax was so inept that he was praised for his 'cool' and detached non-judgmental manner."

Ludicrous. While Antonioni wasn't trying to be hip, he was not a Stalinist-moralist but a Marxist-existentialist. And he knew exactly what he was doing in BLOW-UP. There was nothing 'inept' about it. It was highly original and influential at the time.

People think something has no value if it looks easy or simple, but the power is sometimes in the imaginative process than in the technique. In terms of technique, most people can learn to draw a pretty decent Charlie Brown or Snoopy after a few weeks of practice. I drew tons of Snoopy as a child. But only Schulz, a genius, could have dreamt up the Peanuts universe and its unique characters. It's not difficult to draw Linus, but one man could have invented him in look and appearance. Lucy too. Wonderful stuff.

While BLOW-UP make look 'inept' because it's not as showman-ish like the works of Hitchcock, it opened up new possibilities because no one had seen or captured reality like Antonioni. Coppola of THE CONVERSATION and DePalma of BLOW OUT were certainly inspired by it.

Marlowe said...

Coppola of THE CONVERSATION and DePalma of BLOW OUT were certainly inspired by it.

And Mel Brooks of HIGH ANXIETY.

Gottlieb said...

I think our whole system is a great iq test or logical test. We are all in a big maze and many people des-informants give us the exit(truth) of the same. But naive people (and generally lazy intellectual or foolish) fall into the trap.
I think the best way to eugenize a population is through to controlled dysgenic. Dumb down much of the population and create a culture of herd, definitely the smarter will come off this way intellectually corrosive and will cling to the islands of excellence, like a magnet.

Anonymous said...

http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201308152316-0022983

Constweeracy.

I guess doing this for Wiki wasn't enough. But then, entire US media and government work like this.

Anonymous said...

"Blomkamp is now working on a comedy with Die Antwoord and is also planning a mysterious fourth movie which he warns is likely to get him banned from Hollywood."

Can I get a source on that, please? I can't find him talking about it.

Anonymous said...

I've always felt that the great directors show their hand with the music.

As utopia/dystopia celluloid fanatasies go, both of the following scenes were pivotal:

Gattaca, 12-fingered pianist

Fifth Element, opera diva

If the proles listen to gangsta rap in Mexifornicated Los Angeles, but Jodi Foster listens to classical music in Elysium, then you'll know damned well who has Blomkamp's sympathies.

Douglas Knight said...

Conor Cruise O'Brien's "What Can Become of South Africa?" seems to have been reprinted in a couple of books scanned by google, so I don't think the phrasing is in that article.

Anonymous said...

"Trotsky fled communist Russia"

He didn't flee. He was physically pushed over the Turkish border.

Anonymous said...

Elysium was better than Prometheus. :)

-meh

Jim Bowery said...

"We're the Millers", which is doing well compared to "Elysium" at the domestic box office, appears to be a sermon about white privilege at the border. From the Wikipedia article (I haven't seen the movie):

Returning to the border, the Millers attempt to look like an ordinary family but are stopped when a drug sniffing dog barks at their RV. They are pulled to the side and as their RV is about to be inspected, four illegals scramble out from under the RV and the officers take off after them, allowing the Millers to leave.

Anonymous said...

"Elysium" is meant to appeal to a broad spectrum of people. This is the Hollywood modern idea of selling a product to maximize profit."

It could be lots of Jews, even Liberals, have lots of anxieties that white conservatives have(obvious from WWZ by Brooks), but they cannot express such views themselves(in order to maintain the multi-culti coalition against conservative whites), and so, they use this Blomberg the Afrikaner guy to make movies that are borderline iffy about open borders and what it may all lead to. The STATED message of ELYSIUM is leftist but its SHOWN images undermine PC pieties.
Imagine someone at a dinner table lecturing about good manners and refinement while constantly pounding the table, using foul language, and shouting loudly. There is a disconnect or dissonance between the stated message and the performed act, and sometimes, actions speak louder than words. And maybe this action movie speaks louder its spoken words.
I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. I'll wait for DVD as I don't feel like seeing Matt Daaaaaaamon by paying 10-20 bucks.

Expressive dissonance.

Anonymous said...

"Although I haven't seen the movie, it is clear from the trailer that Elysium perpetuates one very tragic myth; that L5 type space habitats would be so expensive that only the richest elite of society would be able to afford to live there. " - You need conscientious people when outside is a 3 degree kelvin vacuum. that chops out a significant portion of the human race, and from their perspective, only the richest elite could live up there in the first place.

It is interesting to note that there are more than enough resources in the asteroid belt to sustain truly absurd numbers of human beings, but getting at them requires a bit more social capital than can be found in the 3rd world.

Anonymous said...

"So the $100+ million budgeted brainlessly plotted, ham-handed liberal propaganda was really just an elaborate satire? The world most expensive dog whistle." - Yeah, this is Poe's law in action.

Anonymous said...

I like Bloomkamp's sense of innocence. He states he was arrested for doing nothing. I guess drinking and driving down the middle of Tijuana (to pick up hookers I presume) counts as doing nothing. I mean it's Mexico you know, it's lawless down there. You can do whatever, fiesta time! If the cops hassle you, you can just offer them money. What a corrupt country!
Typical egoist hypocritical disrespectful douche. The type of young dumb macho mentality that gets young men in all kinds of trouble. Makes good action flicks, though.

Anon87 said...

Check out the trailer on Youtube for the new documentary on Milius. Sam Elliot's comment about who Milius makes movies for says it all.

john marzan said...

an alternative Los Angeles future to neil blomkamp's elysium.

Spike Jonze's "Her"

http://www.indiewire.com/article/spike-jonze-why-are-there-no-brown-people-in-your-future-los-angeles

can you review this?

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