The movie
Elysium had some things going for it. A visually interesting experience, good special effects, emotionally involving because of some decent acting by Matt Damon. However, there is something gauzy about it, paper-thinness to the narrative, as though the filmmakers were distracted from good storytelling by expending their energies on other agenda. In this film Damon plays Max DeCosta, a factory worker whose workman's comp consists of a bottle of pills to hold him over until he dies later that week, where the people that own the company have the technology to heal anything (yes,
anything) quickly and easily in a less than a minute. That technology can only be found on the space station (Elysium) where those with the right political or economic connections live away from the squalor and pollution of Earth.
Conservative and liberal commentators alike have remarked on the obvious and self-conscious symbolism of Elysium. The whole thing hinges on what
Milton Friedman deplored as "building a highway to Fort Knox": give non-citizens access to public benefits for doing us the favor of showing up and they won't stop coming when there are no more jobs to be had; they simply won't stop coming.
Many political buzzwords are shoehorned into the script, and even on my first viewing they stuck out like a sore thumb. Drew Zahn at WorldNetDaily
briefly sums up the many ways the movie telegraphs what social issues you are to have in mind as you watch the film:
For starters, if the human-smuggling ships that try to reach Elysium were called “unauthorized ships” or “unwelcome ships,” it would fit an apolitical story. But when they’re called “undocumented ships” … the allusion to today’s illegal immigration debate is obvious.
I mean, c’mon. In what believable future of computer technology, where paper and filing cabinets had been eliminated 100 years prior, would anything be called “undocumented?” It’s a glaring, dare I say “heavy-handed” (as Damon denied) “message” (as Blomkamp denied).
Furthermore, if the unauthorized people who landed on Elysium were called “invaders” or “intruders,” it could be an apolitical movie. But when they’re called “illegals”? Who do you think they’re talking about?
And when “deportation” ships send the “illegals” who came on “undocumented” vessels home – and when everyone on earth speaks Spanish, while the language is unheard on Elysium – this isn’t coincidence. This is a political statement.
And finally, when Elysium’s military guardian justified her “homeland security” border-enforcement brutality by saying she was just “protecting our liberty,” it made no sense in the context of the film, but was clearly put there as a snide slap at tea-party types, some of the last people in this country who even remember what “liberty” means. The makers of “Elysium” sure don’t.
Neither are they particularly good at economics (but then again, what leftist is?). In the end, it appears the film had been all along a vehicle for hyping universal health care. And in “Elysium,” like in most leftists’ understanding of health care, this panacea is perfectly free and available to all, if only the greedy and selfish would release it to the masses.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/when-a-movie-is-or-isnt-propaganda/#4FPPluChuBXbWzDf.99
For starters, if the human-smuggling ships that try to reach Elysium were called “unauthorized ships” or “unwelcome ships,” it would fit an apolitical story. But when they’re called “undocumented ships” … the allusion to today’s illegal immigration debate is obvious. . . . Furthermore, if the unauthorized people who landed on Elysium were called “invaders” or “intruders,” it could be an apolitical movie. But when they’re called “illegals”? Who do you think they’re talking about?
And when “deportation” ships send the “illegals” who came on “undocumented” vessels home – and when everyone on earth speaks Spanish, while the language is unheard on Elysium – this isn’t coincidence. This is a political statement.
And finally, when Elysium’s military guardian justified her “homeland security” border-enforcement brutality by saying she was jusjust “protecting our liberty,” it made no sense in the context of the film, but was clearly put there as a snide slap at tea-party types [or possibly to capitalize on lingering anti-Bush sentiment], some of the last people in this country who even remember what “liberty” means.