"Y: The Last Man" Season 1 Review [Mild Spoilers]

The show blasts through the virus apocalypse part implausibly fast: a single day in the first episode. But that's fine, to quickly establish the show's axiomatic question: what if all the men in the world suddenly die?! 

... Except for one privileged slacker and his capuchin monkey. Which is perhaps a link to "Outbreak" [1995] which also featured a capuchin. "12 Monkeys" [1995] depicted a post viral apocalypse, but doesn't really feature any particular monkey, ironically.

[My collage] Y: The Last Man promo material also echoes some visual themes from virus movies.

Anyway, more specifically, it's everyone with a Y chromosome who dies. So, refreshingly, we see plenty of trans men, including a central character. There's a recurring theme around the flip in how male-presenting individuals are perceived, but new issues for them. Having an overwhelmingly female cast is also fantastic, interesting and pretty much unique. Perhaps on par with "Orange is the New Black"?

It excels in doing what I loved "The Walking Dead" for: exploring fundamental social psychology, once social niceties and norms get stripped away. But with a focus on varied and opposed female perspectives, feminism and what that can mean to different women. Such ideals get subverted, in one of the scenarios, with anger against men stoked and exploited to control a group. Showing how the fiercest anti-man agenda can be as manipulative and damaging as any patriarchal hegemony.

Covid-19 (Part 3) - Life under lockdown

Out for our 3rd weekly shop.

Exploring the pandemic situation, continuing from:
• "Covid-19: a deadly wake-up call to exponential growth?"
• "Covid-19 (Part 2) - Daily Updates"

Index:

• 2020-04-18 Sat - Misplaced Animosity
• 2020-04-19 Sun - Divided States
• 2020-04-20 Mon - Food Shortages?
• 2020-04-21 Tue - Through the floor!
• 2020-04-22 Wed - Perspective
• 2020-04-23 Thur - More Science Sumaries


► 2020-04-18 - Misplaced Animosity:

[Daily Mail]

• I've been somewhat horrified at the general appetite (seen in posts from of some of my old Facebook friends) for martial law and/or capital punishment, effectively. I.e. marking anyone taking an unnecessary walk in a park as "not for treatment", in the case they ever get infected. Punishment fits the crime grim poetry.

That last coming from one of the most caring individuals I know, in response (I believe) to a litany of pictures like this one (right), from the [Daily Mail]. Flattened, zoomed in perspectives making everyone look far closer together. Seemingly just trying to stir up resentment and outrage, for viewership and quite possibly to undermine public solidarity and help usher in crony capitalist friendly authoritarianism (for the papers owners).

Above is closer to the real story of public spaces - drone footage of Birmingham city centre on a sunny Saturday afternoon. It's usually heaving with crowds, but is now deserted! [Twitter Video]


It also looks like over 90% of rail travel is gone, 80% of London bus trips and 65% of other road travel too (right). [BBC]


78% of people self isolating, as of the beginning of April [Ipsos MORI]. Pretty impressive adherence to measures (and an unprecedented economic change).

Despite all this, UK public is still being focused on the rare black sheep amongst us, and bad optics in occasional photos and videos. It's our 10'000 year (or so) old memetic predilection for social scandal, coupled with a cognitive incomprehension for relative scale and rarity.

Sense8 and Technological Empathy

This show has a decidedly slow, somewhat uncertain first episode or two. But stick with it for gradually evermore rewarding viewing. Part of it's virtue is in not having to justify its creation with a pilot episode and not feeling the need to simplifying it's backstory into a 18 second opening montage (iZombie, for example). Here, the viewer is asked to absorb the rich background texture as the plot is resolved, rather than marching straight into a clockwork orrery of comic book waypoints.

The international settings initially brought to mind "H+: The Digital Series", an insanely ambitious YouTube serialised sci-fi from 2012, which I really liked. I was then briefly worried by a reference to a drug "DMT", since this was (ab)used as the axiom for "Lucy" (2014).

Screen capture montage from title sequence.

But Sense8 settles down comfortably into more of a Cloud Atlas feel, with unlinked or loosely linked character narrative sections spread spatially around the world, instead of echoing through time (as in the 2012 movie). This parallel should be immediately obvious given the shared production personnel (Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski) and signature acting talent (South Korean, Bae Doona). I think this series far more successful than that film, avoiding any 'yellowface makeup' [1] awkwardness and utilising a host of beautiful real-world settings from the actual cities involved (probably awesome in 4k video).

Sense8 is far more critically worthy than the silly sci-fi-action romp Jupiter Ascending, from earlier this year. Although this series similarly 'deviates from typical gender dynamics' [2], it also escapes the prerequisite blockbuster explosion festival, stilted script and cardboard acting. It achieves a distinct, waltzing poetry with punctuated by serendipitous plot alignments.

There is a heavy emphasis on exploring emotion, cultural identities and sexualities, family, close friendships and even religion. Showing the overwhelming interpersonal similarities despite great diversity. If ever a piece of fictional work aspired to present contemporary global humanity in it's entirety, this would be it.

I hope this sci-fi-lite framework will appeal more to a universal audience (i.e. feminine positive). It's great that it manages to totally drop CGI reliance. It's inspired in comparison to current typical superhero movies/series, copy-pasted comic book stylings. Far from the old sci-fi standard, white American dystopia/space-opera.

So don't expect a Heroes (2006) all action plot. This is far more reflective, mostly good for chilling out. But the threads do dance together for a triumphant peak about 2/3rds the way through, the like of which I've not experienced from the Wachowski's since the culmination of the original Matrix (1999). It is certainly watchable and gets increasingly compelling, perfect to semi-binge over a several days.

Discussion and spoilers below...

Victims of memetic selection: Pee Lady and the Purrminator

Whilst writing a condensed summary of Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine" is still a future aspiration I have nonetheless mentioned some of it's ideas ('memes' if you like) in passing, where they apply to otherwise unrelated blog entries. This quick piece, however, is purely a rumination on memetics in contemporary culture.

In an evolutionary anthropological discussion of the origin of memes, over 2 million years ago in our hominid ancestors of the time, Blackmore considers that it would have been very difficult to know what memes to select for, from a point of view of the (selfish) genes. Once imitation of ideas (i.e. memes) existed in a population, they would spread and change host behaviour at a rate orders of magnitude more rapid than genes could hope to (through survival of the fittest individuals). Hence human genes only provide vague heuristics for meme selection (i.e. what things humans find intrinsically interesting/captivating). Here are some of apparently inbuilt selection criterion:

• Copy the most obvious memes (simplest, most fully understandable, least likely to be miss-copied).
• Copy the most popular memes (others finding it worthwhile indicates memetic usefulness, best not to be left out just in case).
• Copy memes for: sex, food, winning battles, gossip (each has strong genetic survival advantages for our social hominids).

Fashion sense, joke telling/humour, altruism, and religiousness are largely products of run-away sexual selection for mates that are good at spreading memes in general. This is due to the selection pressure applied by memes on genes, and appears to have had the same effect on hominid brain size as Peahen's sexual selection has had on Peacock's tails. But I digress; the point is that humans have these built in hot topics with universal appeal.

+ 'Pee Lady' (AKA Wendy Lewis): recently gained notoriety for urinating on a World War II memorial [1,2].

[From the Telegraph.co.uk]

This non-event only got so much media coverage because there was CCTV footage of the (frankly inadvertently) sinister act (perfect for TV news and article photographs. Also, the helpful camera operators called down a rapid response police team that caught her in the heinous act of fellating some bloke. Add to this her 'colourful' past that made her a perfect instant target for hate from the oldest generation, and her having to attend a court hearing to face charges.

Beyond the Death of Silver Screen Space Operas

Contents:

1. Back to the Future Moon

2. Dystopia Blues

3. Other (space) Sci-fi Worthy of the Title

4. Back into Deep Space, TV and Further Discussions

== Back to the Future Moon ==

During a Facebook message thread, started (1.5 months ago!) on the topic of the new movie "Moon" (as yet still unseen by myself): I was whinging about the implausibility of of the setting and it's possible efficacy as pro human space-flight propaganda (when I consider any question of such pursuits moot). We started discussing a (potentially) similar movie and the genre in general. The following is a quote from one of my good friend's comments (my reply turned into this blog entry):

"I also thought Sunshine was a disappointment, but mostly because of the way the climax of the film declined into teen-slasher territory. Its important for sci-fi to be realistic enough to suspend disbelief, but I think any film ultimately has to make compromises with the story. That the idea of jump-starting the sun is preposterous to me doesn't make the film less interesting. Like all such films its about the journey rather then the destination."

I absolutely agree that it's entirely valid to have a major violation of reality (and any subsequent deviations that directly stem from that) in a movie (TV series or book), in order to explore another (entirely unrelated) topic.

My gripe is that no, so called, “sci-fi” films set in space have actual been about sci-fi since the early 70s, when there was a slew of them: “2001 a Space Odyssey”, Solaris, “Silent Running”, etc. Since then space has been used solely as an alternative backdrop for movies that I think belong more predominantly to other genres:

- Action blockbuster (Independence Day, Armageddon)

- Fantasy adventure romp (Star Wars, Fifth Element)

- Horror (Event Horizon, Alien)

- Western (Firefly/Serenity)

- Psychological Thriller (Sunshine)

- Comedy (HHGTTG, Space Balls, Mars Attacks)

Remakes don't count! (e.g. War of the Worlds, Solaris, The Day the Earth Stood Still). The only exception I can currently think of is the 1997 film "Contact" (and that's based on a novel from 1985). [I dug up some more possible exceptions later: see below]

One might argue that culture has moved on from the moon landings era obsession with space travel (hence no market for traditional space sci-fi). That is part of it. But I don't think it's a case of maturing beyond unrealistic fantasies: interplanetary human colonisation and encounters with unimaginatively biological aliens (inexplicably intent on genocide). Space just went out of fashion. The movie industry is fixated on recirculating the same old ideas, albeit with updated technobabble and stunning visual effects. But a lack of innovation by Hollywood is not limited to this specific genre, for sure.

Remakes are the most obvious aspect of this. Then there are tributes to the heyday of the genre: "Moon" appears to be one, but seeing as no cinemas within 25 miles of me deigned to show it, I haven't found out yet. This cinematic commission might seem a little odd given it's critical acclaim and coincidence with the 40th anniversary of the moon landings. One can only assume the film's distributors weren't on good enough terms with most cinema chains. Or the easy money to be made, by devoting 3 screens entirely to Harry Potter, outweighed any desire to provide choice to customers. (and 'the industry' wonders why there's so much pirating)

[Above: Mark Kermode reviews Moon.]

The remaining class of Features, are only ostensibly original; where there should be some solid concepts, there is just the watered down echoing of dependable old favourites. A near universal bias towards a certain area of the sci-fi 'idea space'.

== Dystopia Blues ==

The most immutable theme is the Orwellian Dystopia. So much is planted firmly at the foot of films like "THX 1138" and "Fahrenheit 451"; it's a genre of it's own: Blade Runner, Escape from New York, Demolition Man, Gattaca, Equilibrium, Minority Report, Aeon flux, Children of Men, The Island....

Much of the general public seems to have unconsciously accepted technological advance as synonymous with a gloomy, dystopian future. Any, self proclaimed, fictional utopia is *always* shown to be flawed and dystopian, probably a fascist dictatorship too.

I would go as far as to blame this (in part) for the new romanticism permeating our culture: a rosy fantasy vision of the past; the perceived superiority of organic food, and the false environmentalism of living off your own land, for examples. Somewhat reminiscent of the revival of mysticism in pre-Hitler Germany (and other countries): a backlash to the impersonal horrors of industrialism and WW1.

Maybe, if films had been pushing the frontiers of sci-fi, in the process depicting *some* instances where progress provides mostly boons to society, there would be more for people to be positive about in the mid-distant future.

Keanu (i.e. devil's advocate): "u couldn't have a story line where nothing goes wrong and everyone's happy: it'd be boring!"

Obviously I'm not suggesting that; there is drama and strife aplenty in my favourite sci-fi novels, that also harbour pro-progress sentiments. OK, so I'd be expecting a lot for a major film company to bank-roll a feature based in or around Vinge's Technological Singularity (for the moment at least). Even if they went with one of Stross's books, those leave human kind (as we know it) sidelined into unfavourable positions, because of a Singularity. Besides he was only first published this millennium: far too avant-guard for popularisation! It seems there's a 20-30 year period before hard sci-fi ideas can be de-classified for widespread media consumption. Ironic, given that they're generally outdated within 10-15 years, these days.

However, Iain M. Bank's has been writing stories set in his "Culture" universe since 1987. In many ways they're pretty damn bleak: often, most of the main characters get killed off just before they might have reach a happy end. But there is an ever present, positive leitmotif: the galactic civilisation of "The Culture" itself. An unmistakable utopia, where an anarchy of super-intelligent, yet emotional, machine minds (embodied in space ships and entire planets) altruistically cater for a race of near-humans. Because of their near god-like control of matter, it's trivial to provide for the humans' every whim, however lavish by today's standards. The tribulations come in dealing with other, less advanced civilisations, and characters there-in.

I would be overcome with joy (caring not of being proven wrong) if a film were based on the substance and spirit of any of those novels. I think it would easily make sufficiently compelling viewing for a contemporary audience too, with: action, violence, plenty of scope for overblown use of CGI, prolific sex and drugs. However, because the latter two aspects are presented as entirely acceptable, without any drawbacks, I expect this vista would be considered, by our current 'powers that be', too liberal to be shown to the general public. Not that there's any political bias in our media of course.

Perhaps that is part of the problem: an (implicit) conspiracy not to show people how good they could have it, to prevent dissatisfaction with their continuous drudgery in the pursuit of material possessions. “Nothing is perfect” or comes for free!? (not even the 'best things in life'!) Anything that equips imaginations, highlighting society's blind spot to alternatives to the current monetary system, would be a most dangerous heracy. [But more on that when I finish distilling my thoughts on Douglas Rushkoff's "Life Inc." into a blog entry.]

== Other (Space) Sci-fi Worthy of the Title ==

+ Deep Impact - A glaring exception to my earlier moan. Although it had a near identical plot to Armageddon, it is it's total antithesis. This is a sci-fi movie with good science throughout! Even the name of the nuclear pulse propulsion spacecraft, used to rendezvous with the comet, is a reference to the real world “Project Orion”, abandoned in 1963 because of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Also, although nuclear bombs are used to blow apart the comet (twice), the result is a much more realistic semi-fail, with an epic tidal wave wiping out much of America (and presumably other parts of the world too; I never said it wasn't US-centric). Released in the same summer as Armageddon (1998) it somehow opened more strongly at the box office. Armageddon did end up grossing more worldwide ($555M vs $349M), but then it cost twice as much to make. So not a total fail for science there.

+ Spielberg has an unparalleled track record here, with: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “E.T.” and “A.I.”. If he manages not to totally eviscerate the live action remake of “Ghost in the Shell” (1995), my all time favourite film, then he may move even further up my list of favourite Directors. Perhaps then the original, and “Stand Alone Complex” series too, might reach beyond anime fans watching “Adult Swim”. We'll have to wait until 2011 to find out though (22 years after the cutting-edge manga).

[Above: "Tank Wins" by Me; Composition from parts of the end of G.I.T.S.]

A.I. (and E.T.) was (were) largely designed for lacrimation (i.e. 'weapies'), but they had undeniably high conceptual production values. A.I. was somewhat of an epic tale of a robot boy, with a strong message that artificial beings can be every bit as human as ourself. Unfortunately most people I know had fallen asleep by the end, which is the most interesting part (from a futurist's POV): he is dug up and revived by advanced aliens, who are actually told to be the descendent of machines, if one pays attention. Naturally, I'm not keen on the ultimate ending: apparently it's impossible to turn 'Pinocchio' into a "real boy", so he gets 1 "perfect" day with his mommy before dying. OK, it made me cry a little (more from the sentiment of the little robot teddy bear than anything else, mind), but it's still an utter pile of religiousisational gash!: why *not* be able to turn him into a biological boy? He was clearly within a simulation during his perfect day; why not persist there, walk off into the sunset, live and grow with other sentient simulations (of other 'revivers', play on survivors)? Buying into the singularity thing (Tiplerian or otherwise) might be too much, but getting that close to it and then turning around and producing the usual line of: all life is finite, death is the natural order, we should just enjoy the rare good moments and be satisfied....: Bah!!!!

+ Matrix - (including Reloaded), though again I had high hopes for the conclusion of this arc that were brutally murdered by Revolutions: you expect us to believe that after swiftly dispatching humans, the super-advanced, conscious programs of the machine world had just sat and twiddled their thumbs for thousands of years?!!... Even if they had been inexplicably confined to the surface of this one planet, with the capability of simulating an entire world, would they not also have simulated a plethora of other worlds/ecologies/levels and types of intelligence??!! If it's too difficult to visualise these, at least give us a hint they, or something interesting exists...

+ Terminator - up to T2 only, which was largely an action shooter with some brilliant chase sequences. It also largely responsible for founding public expection of human extermination by future A.I.. But at least it raised awareness, and the sucessively advanced terminator robots imply perpetual progess beyond the influence of human creativity.

+ Titan AE - though animated and puerile (and the "pure energy" beings posses no features of such) it has a genesis device spaceship that is kind cool in a retro/steam-punk kind of way.

+ Vanilla Sky (remake of the Spanish original, "Open Your Eyes", featuring the same lead actress) - very impressed that this turned out to be set in a simulation, with Tom Cruise having been resurrected from cryogenic storage. Disappointed there wasn't any hint of events outside the simulation, but was to be expected.

+ Minority report - hmm, kind of; though clearly a distopia, it had a few pieces of hard science-futurism in.

== Back into Deep Space, TV and Further Discussions ==

+ Surprisingly, Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3 largely met my standards. Although action heavy, dark themes replaced whimsical swashbuckling, and there was even a brief nod to the conspicuous lack of (trans)human level AI in their universe. [previously blogged]

+ Star Trek - As the films go, the first, "Star Trek the Motion Picture", is clearly high concept sci-fi that happens to use the established characters from the fictional universe. Because of it's lack of profitability and critical reception, Gene Roddenberry lost creative control of the sequels, probably why their priorities appear to have been turned around: action adventure in a space setting.

If there is a missing link that bridges between the space sci-fi of the 70s and the new millennium, it would undoubtedly be the "Star Trek, the Next Generation" franchise (including most of “Voyager” and the earlier “Deep Space 9” series). Perhaps an episodic structure, and lower costs made this the ideal vestal for space-fiction proper. In my late teens I rejected Star Trek, to an extent, cringing that my earlier self had accumulated the Star Trek fact files in a search for further inspiration/answers to the future. Of course, as a profit extending item of merchandise for hardcore, geek fans, they contained no such revelations. Also, I became painfully aware of how deeply uncool Star Trek appreciation was, thanks largely to a high school peer nicknamed "Trekky". Getting into bona fide sci-fi novels, such as A.C. Clarke's “2001” quadrilogy (that I read in reverse order), also helped foster disdain for the Star Trek universe.

From an even greater retrospective height, I can appreciate the value of the Star Trek series; they introduced me to a plethora of sci-fi, philosophy and psychology concepts. They may even be significantly responsible for shaping my world view and interests in science and technology that took me to degree level studies. I only regret that kids (like me) growing up in the 00s won't have had access, to such a good stepping stone, into sci-fi literature and beyond. Contemporary 'sci-fi' series have gone the way of the space-opera movie: concentrating on drama, character development and TV-soap style story arcs, while focusing on contemporary or nostalgic issues and replacing any humanist philosophy with Hollywood style Christianity.

The TV section of the Wikipedia article on Sci-fi confirms and clarifies my view. The 90s were actually somewhat of a hay-day for good sci-fi TV with: "Babylon 5", "SeaQuest DSV" and even "Red Dwarf" (though primarily comedy) and "The Outer Limits" (despite close similarities to "Goose Bumps"; a child oriented horror mini-novel series). There were some inspirational episodes of the X-files too (even if we never did conclusively discover the "Truth... Out There"). The one episode I most strongly remember enjoying (involving a human having been uploaded to the internet) turns out to have been written by William Gibson (the Godfather of cyberpunk novels). However, that episode, "Kill Switch" (series 5), and his latter collaboration, "First Person Shooter" (series 7), were among the last ever examples of Sci-fi authors working with TV production. It is no wonder that science (particularly physics) graduates are in such steep decline. I hope the current (3rd rate) sci-fi, and reruns of shows from the glory days, are enough to inspire *some* of our next generation into sci/tech related vocations.

[Edit 2014-10-21 - Minor corrections and kermode video fixed.]