"Elysium"...science fiction or socialist propaganda?

Over the weekend I went to see the movie "Elysium", with Matt Damon. The movie involves a segregated strata of the have-nots on Earth living in a grafitti covered cesspool of rubble and ruin, and the wealthy who live in complete luxury on a space station complete with swimming pools and medical beds that instantly heal everything from Lukemia to people with faces half blown off. Much of the plot involves the have-nots trying to sneak onto the space station to escape the cess pool they're living in and the arrogant wealthy using and abusing the have-nots to the point where they even get offended at the have-nots breathing the same air they do.

At first the movie gripped me for the political commentary it made about the human population running itself into the ground, and I started daydreaming how the environment the movie depicted would play out in the real word...and my head instantly started short circuiting.

Why? Well for starters, every single leader of social justice, liberalism, and equality you've ever heard of- Obama, Al Sharpton, Oprah Winfrey, Dianne Feinstein, Michael Moore, just to name a few- are all the very mega wealthy people the movie depicts as self serving...and if you genuinely think people like Oprah Winfrey, a woman who wants us to feel sorry for her becuase she had difficulty buying a $40,000 purse in Switzerland, would willingly live down in a grafitti covered cesspool rather than a magnificent space mansion then you're naive as hell.

This got me to look critically at the movie in a new light, and I noticed some other disturbing things- in the movie, most of the "have-nots" were unemployed and were pretty much sitting around doing nothing. Silly me, but if you have nothing else to do then how about cleaning up that rubble and garbage lying all around you? And while you're at it, how about grabbing some paint and getting rid of all that grafitti that makes it look like a cesspool? The garbage and grafitti isn't going to go away by themselves. At the end of WWII the Germans didn't just sit around and feel sorry for themselves that their cities were all bombed out; they got together and cleaned up all the bombed out ruins to rebuild again, and their cities were a hellf of a lot worse off than the cesspools depicted in the movie.

More and more I began seeing that this was less a sci-fi movie and more of a socialist propaganda where the lower classes sit in squalor of their own making (it ain't the wealthy spray painting graffitti on everything), but instead instead of trying to improve their lot in life, the normal path of action is to continue to sit in their squalor and demand the wealthy share what they have. Of course at the end of the movie the have-nots managed to force the wealthy to share what they have and everyone lived happily ever after and children danced in the streets (come on now, you knew that's how the movie was going to end befire you even saw it)...which incidentally is the exact same message every socialist regime portrayed in their goals to spread the wealth. Problem is, in the real world, socialism always fails because sooner or later you always run out of other people's money. The movie never did exactly comment on that part.

Then there's the other observation- the super duper medical beds central to the plot. In the movie all it took was a few minutes sitting in these medical beds to be healed and it depicted the wealthy as being self serving, uncaring snobs for not sharing their medical whiz-bangs with the have-nots, and in the end, the have-nots get to lie and tan themselves in these beds to their hearts content. Compare this with Obamacare, where liberals claim to be bringing better health care to the masses...but in the real world, we don't have magic medical beds- we have doctors who need to physcially examine patients and have tests done...and the greater the number of patients (and let's face it, people WILL start going to doctors more often once it becomes free) the less doctors will be available and the more likely health care will be rationed. For some reason the movie neglected to show the part where someone dying from a stroke had to wait his turn on the medical bed becuase the parents with the wheelchair bound children got to it first.

SO I ask you, am I seeing things that aren't there or am I seeing yet another stunt Hollywood liberals are pulling to sell their "share the wealth" socialist theology to a gullible population?

Oh I dunno.

I thought it was a movie.

reply to post by GoodOlDave


You believe what you want. The fact that the star belly sneeches do not want to share while the rest of the world suffers seems like the norm here in the usa. Who destroyed the earth in the movie? The peasants or the rich or everyone? The poor sheep have always been led to slaughter. Same old Dave.

Jay Z and his Lady shut down a hospital just so there son can be born. So I guess it is already happening in real life.

To OP:
Even though what you posted about the movie's end were pretty general they were still pretty critical. Could you put a "possible spoilers" sign above the text so other people don't make the same mistake as I did?

My dad saw the movie and he had a similar comment, though not directly political. He told me the ending...

SPOILER
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(((The poor people wanted the same health system available on the "rich" planet. He said in the end, you see the poor people in space craft heading towards the planet. My dad said, "I guess it was a happy ending, but I kind of felt bad for the rich people. How are they going to handle all these people coming en mass to their planet?" He said the ending left off too abruptly and didn't go into enough detail about how the two worlds dealt with what happened at the end.

I haven't actually seen the film yet, but I was under the impression that Matt Damon's character basically sets out to save himself.
If this is the case, I don't agree that it's very socialist.
A socialist version would have Matt Damon setting out to create equality and fix things for everyone, not just save himself.
IMO.

reply to post by GoodOlDave


The fact is that your grandchidlren will probably live in the hellish nightmare, as provided to us in that movie. I take it you do not belong to those mega rich in the movie which means you are basically screwed.

Let me tell you why. And I speak from knowledge and experience.

Where do you have your savings? BoA, Capital One Bank, Citigroup, Chase? Well, when the proverbial sh..t hits the financial fan, your savings will be wiped out, within 24 hours might I say. These seemingly invulnerable bank giants will crumble and go bust, and allowed so by the elite. Do you know why?

Because the elite, of which I have met several, during my 20s and 30s, have their money in such banks and names like; Julius Baer Group,, WIR Bank, Pictet & Cie, Lombard, Odier, Darier, Hentsch & Cie and so on. These banks sits on trillions of dollars in private assets from the megarich and are practically unknown to the common 'I trust my american bank, whooaa' crowd.

The mega rich will just yawn when the great collapse comes because then they know the new electronic SDR currency will be activated in Basel and spread world wide as a 'solution' to the worlds financial crisis.

Well the thing with an electronic currency common and accpeted everywhere is that the elite can control the likes of you and your grandchildren perfectly. Why? Because if you do not obey they just revoke all your accounts and you cant even pay for one single meal of food for yourself or your children.

Such control invokes apathy in human beings (trust me there is a good research report on this) and they become basically obediant sheep that do anything told to them by the TPTB (this phenomenon was especially noted by the Nazis in their concentration camps). I speak of an elite that have managed to remain invisible behind the scenes, laughing their asses of at each pool party in their mega mansions.

There is more of course that I could explain to you. But the reality of Elysium is rapidly approaching so I think you might live to eat your words (grins).

***SPOLIER***


I, too, went to see 'Elysium' over the weekend. I had a slightly different 'take' than the OP, however. For example, the reason the earth was a 'cesspool' was largely because people, for the most part, spent their time trying simply trying to survive. There were several wide-angle shots of people picking through vast garbage dumps looking for food and survival necessities. When survival hangs in the balance, picking up trash or painting over graffiti isn't a very big priority. Look at the many places where these 'cesspools' exist today around the world and you'll see the same thing.

To me, the movie wasn't about healthcare. The elites had stripped the planet of resources, polluted it and used the spoils thereof to build their gated-country-club-in-the-sky. Anyone could go. You just needed the money for the ticket. Good luck with that. The elites had clean water, clean air, an abundance of everything basically. And they (Jodi Foster) were hell-bent on keeping the riff-raff out --- the latter working tirelessly to get in.

At the movie's end, when Elysium's OS was hacked, they had medical assistance teams ready to be dispatched in an instant but heretofore sitting idly by while the people on earth suffered and died. So they had the resources to help. They just chose not to. You can call the movie socialist propaganda but it is a reflection of reality now. I think politically you are confusing left/right with up/down. Of course the wealthy 'political left' would abandon us on earth if given a chance. It'll be the 99% here on earth --- both left and right --- bound only by our common lack of affluence watching the L33TS on Elysium --- both left and right --- living the good life. Just like it is here, Now.

Socialists propaganda trying to pass itself off as science fiction fantasy.
It's pretty see through .... really.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Socialists propaganda trying to pass itself off as science fiction fantasy.
It's pretty see through .... really.

And thats why, dear, you will remain on the ground,and your future grand kids too, starving slowly, while the future elite will be unreachable up there in the sky. It is the ingrained stupidity and denial by the masses that makes this movie a possibility coming true with each year of such social misjudgment.

Thee eilte counts on the fact that by then you have devolved so much as a human being that you are not reckognized as a human being anymore, but an animal in need of basic food and shelter, to cope with the hard labour required by them to keep sustaining their heavenly abodes

This was first depicted in Star Trek with William Shatner in "The Cloud Minders"




link where I believe the creators of 'Elysium' stole their idea.

Yet both versions carry merit as they depict a probable outcome from the dismal situation we are living in today.

Half the movies out there are done with political narratives. Avatar got a lot of attention as being anti-military. Elysium is so over the top obvious in its attempt to incite class envy. Out of Time has a very similar narrative.

reply to post by johncarter


Such drama. Dude.
It's a move by left wing Hollywood that's trying to sell Obamacare. That's it.

The Director, being South African, has made both of his big summer movies "District 9" and "Elysium" to be parodies of what happened in South Africa in the mid to late 90s. Each movie is a fairly accurate representation of South Africa, and to a lesser extent, Rhodesia.

What happened. The socioeconomic term brain drain coupled with an influx of immigrants too quickly for the society to handle. The average IQ of a sub-Saharan African is right around 80. There is no conjecture about this, and racism has nothing to do wit it, it is quite a matter of fact. All the smart South Africans, black, white, Indian (lots of Indians, Gandhi was South African), colored, who were literally keeping the country held together fled. Overwhelming immigration, crime, and economic factors contributed to this brain drain. What was left was a country that was accepting sub-Saharan immigrants almost unchecked. Assimilation was almost non-existent, crime shot through the roof, and the remaining infrastructure had no hope of supporting the population. To top it all off, there were very few people with the education, smarts, training, or talent to keep it all together. The people flooding the country have little to no skill, little to no education, not necessarily the smarts, and massive birth rate. Unfortunately they haven't the capability to improve their lot in life, even if some wish to do so. So the squalor in South Africa, over the last 20 years, has become an enormous burden, and for the foreseeable future, looks to only get worse.

To put it shortly, South Africa and Rhodesia turned into 3rd world countries in 20 years because of the mentioned factors. I think the depictions of Los Angeles in the movie reflect the director's experiences quite accurately. There is a distinct repetition of events that happened in South Africa in the last 20 years vs the last 10 years in LA. Who knows if his depiction is right or wrong in the end, but considering that LA is on the verge of bankruptcy, with social programs being supported by an increasingly dwindling population, I can certainly see the similarity.

I think in the two movies he's made, Neill Blomkamp has basically done a brief history of South Africa with a sci-fi twist.

It was making a point. Its a depiction of a particular kind of dystopia. It requires everything that can go wrong on our current path to do so and continue to do so. It also requires inequality to exist purely for the sake of it and for all the rich to be bad on purpose.

It was a critique of what happens when you allow power and wealth to centralise too much and as such a critique of our current situation of crony capitalism and captured government.

It was not really a critique of properly functioning capitalism and it certainly did not suggest socialism as any kind of answer to pursue.

I thought it was ok, but I was expecting better. It was a little ham fisted. Although the visuals were sublime.

Although I struggle at times, I detest the notion of socialized anything.
I fear the revolting hoards, more than the brutally illuminated.
Wealth is usually nurtured by the industrious, poverty awaits those unfortunate souls who know not how to serve the needs of their fellow "man"

I don't know the answers, but envy for the industrious is not it.
It is all too often incorrectly expressed, that :
"I am poor, because you are rich".

Originally posted by johncarter

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Socialists propaganda trying to pass itself off as science fiction fantasy.
It's pretty see through .... really.

And thats why, dear, you will remain on the ground,and your future grand kids too, starving slowly, while the future elite will be unreachable up there in the sky. It is the ingrained stupidity and denial by the masses that makes this movie a possibility coming true with each year of such social misjudgment.

If my grandkids are starving it will be because I will be sitting in garbage and squalor blaming all my problems on rich people, rather than getting of my ass, cleaning the place up, and growing food. If there's any ingrained stupidity and denial by the masses it will be from their inability to understand that it's a stupid bird that craps in its own nest. It isn't the rich going around spraypainting graffitti all over the place and it certainly isn't the rich committing crimes with AK-47s. It's the human trash who care little about the welfare of others or their surroundings, and if they don't care about the welfare of others or their own surroundngs then they're certainly not goign to care about crapping on it and making it even worse. What kind of solutions can you expect from such people except "none"?

Like I said in my OP, this isn't the first time this scenario happened. At the end of World War II Germany's cities were all pounded into rubble, and the germans civilians all pitched together to clear out the rubble to rebuild. There's a hill in Berlin that was originally a gigantic pile of rubble dumped there from cleaning up the wreckage. The question is, instead of sitting and moping about how the only way they can get by is by helping themselves to what other people have, what's stopping them from at a very minimum picking up a can of paint and painting over the graffitti?

Originally posted by johncarter

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Socialists propaganda trying to pass itself off as science fiction fantasy.
It's pretty see through .... really.

And thats why, dear, you will remain on the ground,and your future grand kids too, starving slowly, while the future elite will be unreachable up there in the sky. It is the ingrained stupidity and denial by the masses that makes this movie a possibility coming true with each year of such social misjudgment.

Thee eilte counts on the fact that by then you have devolved so much as a human being that you are not reckognized as a human being anymore, but an animal in need of basic food and shelter, to cope with the hard labour required by them to keep sustaining their heavenly abodes

It's not all the masses, only the die hard pro capitalists that had it good and still have it good resulting in their fanboy/girl - ism, but not for long anyway and when that day comes they'll realize they were wrong, until then they'll continue to be in denial, because unless it affects them personally it doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest... just good old fashion ignorance...

reply to post by rom12345


If that was only the case. The fact is, most of the 'wealth' that's been created this decade has been 'paper wealth' in the financial/banking sector. They don't make anything. There is no industriousness involved. I don't deny anyone the fruits of their labor but creating artificial wealth by manipulating financial markets, creating esoteric investment products, and outsourcing labor so you can line your bank account. Yea, I have a huge problem with that.

Big big spoiler warning. You should thank me I'm saving you 2 hours of your life.

If you have read the book Atlas Shrugged Elysium is pretty much the sequel to the book set 200 years later. Just imagine Galt's Gulch in space.

Basically the big bad white people have had enough of being forced to work themselves to death to support the lazy who have overpopulated the earth and built a self sustaining* space station to live on. You can almost hear them throwing the keys to Earth saying "Here - Take it! We're leaving!!!" I have a hard time seeing people who just want to be left alone as the bad guys.


This is a liberals worst nightmare. No one left to tax. Society goes downhill from there. The cities are dirty, decayed and the technology has not appreciably progressed. It is overpopulated and the supposed 'hero' is an illiterate thief who is on parole and works in a factory pushing a button. When he load in the next set of metal parts to be radiation treated he doesn't line the pallet up correctly and the door jams. He is ordered by a supervisor to go into a chamber where the. Anyone with 'half' a brain would wedge something in the door to keep it from closing and trapping him while he is inside (Or better yet perform an actual lock out tag out protocol) of course the hero doesn't have half a brain and he gets locked inside and doused with radiation***.

You have the ex childhood sweetheart who has the obligatory sick child (Of course no father is in the picture or even mentioned) Since the medical technology on earth has not progressed since the white** people packed up and left so research isn't real big on a prior non producers list of fun things to do for a living when other peoples money isn't there anymore.

Things that drained all sympathy for the supposed victims.
They seem to be able to buy beer but still live In filth (Dude- a broom and windex is cheaper than beer and lasts longer)
The poor think that it is completely acceptable to break into a 'rich' person's house and use their facilities(Medical care in this case) Just because the 'rich' built it for themselves Dammit the poor deserve to have it just as much as the people who made it. Forget that "Thou shalt not Steal', 'Thou Shalt not Covet' Things altogether.

In Short save your time and watch back to back obamacare and La Raza propaganda for two hours and you get the same message. 'the unemployed poor need healthcare and the people who work all day need to work harder and do without to pay for it because the poor need to save their money for beer. If the people who have worked to get ahead try to leave because they are tired of paying for everyone else to live on the fruits of their labor hunt them down, break into their house and take their stuff.


*The only ships (except for one) that seemed to be coming from earth are packed with people who have not been invited to the space station. So the space station is not being supplied from earth.
** Matt Damon and the hired gun bad guy are the token whites left on earth. 85% of the rest are Mexican and you see one or two blacks until the end where they get free health care for all then all you see is the blacks in the screen shot
***If a person was dosed with enough radiation to kill in five days they would not have had the strength to run around and would have been in too much pain to do more than vomit.