FC: The top 12 most Luddite films of all time

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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From: jtmcc () uswest net
Subject: Top 12 Most Luddite Films Named...
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 05:34:39 -0700

> From THE LUDDITE READER
Niche marketing's worst case
http://www.ludditereader.com

PRESS  RELEASE
Contact: Jerry McCarthy
303-271-7695

Top 12 Most Luddite Films of All Time Named

(Denver, Colorado; December 15)  What is the most luddite film of all
time?  The top 12?  Maybe these questions have never come up, but here
are the answers anyway.  The Luddite Reader website today announces the
Luddite Top 12.  The most luddite film of all time is Godard's
Alphaville (1965),  the only film in which the central character
actually says, "Technology, hah!  Keep it!"  Alphaville also features
the most luddite character name of all time: Lemmy Caution, a
comic-bookish detective played by the durable, somewhat eroded Eddie
Constantine.  And the top twelve films?  They are:

1. Alphaville (Godard, 1965)
2. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926)
3. Tie: A Nous La Liberte (Rene Clair, 1931) and Modern Times (Charlie
Chaplin, 1936) 
4. Tie: Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) and Young    Frankenstein
5. Fahrenheit 451 (Francois Truffaut, 1965)
6. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
7. Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)
8. The Gods Must Be Crazy (Jamie Uys, 1984)
9.  Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
10.  Robocop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
11. They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)
12. Gattaca (Andrew M. Niccol, 1997)

Why 12 and not 10?  Well, our favorites couldn't all fit in 10.  In
fact, we left one very important film out, so here's an additional
category:

Missed congeniality: Jonah Who Will Be 25 In The Year 2000 (Alaine
Tanner, 1976)  That's fifteen, if you are counting.

Some of these have been sequelled, of varying degrees of quality
(Terminator, The Gods Must Be Crazy, and Robocop, and the champion
property of all time: Frankenstein, produced in 80+ varieties, including
Frankenpooh and Frankenweenie, a Disney dog) and knocked off by cheap
imitations. Another Terminator is assuredly in the works and a Mel
Gibson remake of Fahrenheit 451 has long been rumored, but the rest of
the list is fairly safe from remake, or is it?  Imagine Bruce Willis as
Lemmy Caution in Alphaville2: Die Hard Disk; a Tim Burton / Madonna
Metropolis; or Jim Carrey in Modern Times.  Worse things have happened
to better people.  

But why these fifteen twelve great films?  Here's why:

#1 Alphaville  (Godard, 1965) - The only luddish film in which the
protagonist actually says, "Technology, hah! -- keep it!"  Lemmy Caution
(Eddie Constantine) establishes the archetype of the Luddite detective
(spy/assassin; agent 003) in this wordy classic that critic Carlos
Clarens called "Science Poetry."   In another galaxy (a Ford Galaxy, if
you must know) Caution enters Alphaville, a technocracy ruled by the
Alpha-60 computer, to retrieve or kill its creator, a Dr. Nosferatu
(formerly Dr. von Braun). Clarens described the Alpha-60 this way: "a
giant electronic computer that processes, classifies, and programs the
life data of its residents.  This control has brought about a cult of
absolute logical behavior and those who do not conform to it (i.e.,
those who show some emotion) are ruthlessly destroyed by execution
during staged acquacades, or by submitting to the persuasion to commit
suicide.  To abet this law and order of the machine, words are kept in
place by changing meaning, some being suppressed altogether while new
editions of the bible/dictionary are issued daily." Caution kills
Nosferatu, causes Alpha-60 to autodestruct by feeding it poetry, and
rescues Nosferatu's daughteer (Mrs. Godard).  It's a film both
pretentious and funny, more amusing to talk about afterward than it is
to watch. 

#2 Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926) The film that established the beauty of
robots as well as the question of who can remain (and know they are
assuredly) "real" in a culture which is replacing humans with machines.
It's all here: dehumanization of work; polarization of society;
unionism; marianism; robotics; and art direction that has influenced
science fiction films ever since.

#3 Tie: A Nous La Liberte (Rene Clair, 1931) and Modern Times (Charlie
Chaplin, 1936) - Two benchmark films about working in factories.  A Nous
is the original, depicting the boss as a thief (literally), fascist
factories, and the prison-like tyranny of factory worklife.  Chaplin
lifted this concept for the most memorable bits in his last tramp film,
Modern Times, which played on the haplessness of the factory worker as
demonstrated by the Tramp.  Chaplin comments on the Taylorism movement
for worker efficiency in both the speedy assembly line scene and the
automatic worker feeding machine scene.  Of the two films, Modern Times
has become more emblematic, perhaps because stills of Charlie caught in
the gears of a giant machine have become one of luddism's most widely
seen icons.

#4 Tie: Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) and Young Frankenstein - The
original Frankenstein has become a genre unto itself.  "It's alive!"  It
is the Ur-film [after Metropolis] of modern mad science.  It remains the
prime example of the message that  things you make may turn on you.  It
is also, with Metropolis, one of a only a few examples of the
expressionist theatrical style on film.  No other film has ever spawned
as many derivative descendents, including such screen gems as "Jesse
James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" (1966).   Mel Brook's Young
Frankenstein used the original props and has one genuinely remarkable
scene which pokes fun at the marketing of the acceptability of science
and technology: Dr. Vicktor Frankenstein puts on a show with his monster
and they sing and dance a duet of "Putting On The Ritz."  The
townspeople are not fooled.  What monsters are we creating?
               

#5 Fahrenheit 451 (Francois Truffaut, 1965)  In the future, most people
live in fireproof houses and the job of firemen is to burn books for the
state, to protect the populace from ideas that might make them unhappy. 
Fahrenheit 451 is Ray Bradbury's parable of how technology destroys
heritage and self-knowledge, and how television anesthetizes the
populace.  The underlying message of this film is that you don't have to
physically burn books (the title refers to the temperature at which
paper burns) to "burn" books.  It is also the canonical film about
censorship.  The book is probably the most widely assigned luddite text
in US high schools.  This is probably the most likely luddite film to be
remade, although it will be difficult to find someone who does angst
better than the late Oskar Werner.

#6 Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)  If we can make real-looking
androids, how can we be sure who is real, or even if we ourselves are
real?  And if we can create an android (replicants, they are called
here) that looks like Daryl Hannah, why can't we make future Los Angeles
look like someplace you might want to live? Most importantly: if we
create a near-human consciousness, what rights do we endow it with? 
This film is Phillip K. Dick (from his novel "Do Androids Dream of
Electronic Sheep") made technoir through the Hollywood blender. 
Important as much for its art direction as for its message.

#7 Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)   As if you didn't have enough to
worry about...  The evil future is sending cyborgs back to crush the
prenatal spark of humanity [by killing the not-yet-pregnant mother-to-be
of a hero of the future (the leader of the rebel forces, no less) who
hasn't been born yet - got that?].  Arnold Schwartzenegger gives the
performance he was born to play: a cyborg who says, flatly, "I'll be
Baaaaack!"  And keeps his promise.  Message: in the future, when
machines get the upper hand, we become the cockroaches.

#8 The Gods Must Be Crazy (Jamie Uys, 1984)  Our trash is still pretty
advanced technology in much of the world. This film is the apotheosis of
the returnable bottle.  A noble savage encounters less than noble
civilized folks on his way to the edge of the earth to dispose of some
disruptive technology, a soda bottle thrown out of an airplane and into
the desert habitat of his tribe.   The message?  Don't assume that our
technology is good for everybody.  Currently inexcusably out of print.

#9  Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)  In the future, the machine that will
be most dangerous will continue to be the bureaucracy.  In a bureaucracy
no one admits to hearing you scream.  Brazil presents a bleak dystopian
future where a literal (smashed) bug causes the
film's hero big trouble.  Robert DeNiro plays the kind of handyman that
we are all going to need in the future.

#10 Robocop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)  Luddite paranoia on film: the threat
of high-tech outsourcing.  You say your job is killing you?  This is
worse.  Your job has killed you, and you come back as a cyborg owned by
the evil outsourcing company that made your job hell in the first place,
and you are tormented by UHF reception problems in your memories of your
former family.  A really well done satire of cold-blooded corporate R&D
run amok, comic book heros, and action films.

#11 They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)  Ever get that feeling, at about 10
in the morning, that maybe the world is run by a bunch of ugly aliens in
some kind of Amway scheme, and that they are keeping you compliant with
subliminal messages everywhere such as "consume," "Don't question
authority," and "sleep,"  that you could see if only you had these
special sunglasses?  Beyond luddite paranoia and into the bounds of
schizophrenia, this is the primo educational film about subliminal
messaging and may even be Noam Chomsky's favorite science fiction film.

#12 Gattaca (Andrew M. Niccol, 1997)  The database as enemy.  If your
company has a DNA code instead of a dress code, "casual friday" can be
murder.  Great technoir film about the future uses of genotyping.  In
the future, faking your resume to get a great job may include faking
your DNA. Interesting and gross title sequence (once you understand what
you are seeing).  Gore Vidal as the hero's boss (!)   "Jerome," the
hero, wants to fly in space, with the Gattaca Corporation. But he is
naturally conceived and born, not genetically engineered to be perfect,
as Gattaca requires all employees to be.  So he can clean the toilets
with Ernest Borgnine (Marty!) or find some way to fake his way in.  A
murder investigation complicates it all. Set in Frank Lloyd Wright's
last design, completed posthumously, the Marin Civic Center.  Medical
histories and treatment databases already limit employment for many
(cancer survivors particularly).  This film provides an extreme example
of how the uses of such knowledge might become, ab ovo, even more
controlling in the future.

More:  And now, our missed congeniality selection: Jonah Who Will Be 25
In The Year 2000 (Alaine Tanner, 1976)  This is the best film ever made
about people resisting development (and about the failure of
resistance).  Luddism is really not about machines, it is about
considering humanity and community before technology and development,
without measure against the holy standards of profit and efficiency and
markets.  This film is about a group of people who gather on a farm and
resist local developers.  It has one scene that is unique in the history
of film and that will never be equaled in Hollywood: the characters
gather around a dinner table and sing a song to the unborn child Jonah,
in the hope of his future.  Since this film has been made their hopes
seem to have been misplaced, and at least one reviewer has speculated
that Jonah has become an MBA.

There are informative websites for several of the top 12 Luddite films:

Alphaville
http://members.aol.com/Clypark/alpha.html

Modern Times
http://wso.williams.edu/~dgerstei/chaplin/machines.html

Frankenstein
http://us.imdb.com/M/title-substring?frankenstein

Fahrenheit 451
http://www.destgulch.com/movies/f451/

Blade Runner
http://www.tyrell-corporation.pp.se/


Terminator
http://www.movieprop.com/tvandmovie/terminator/

Gods Must Be Crazy
http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/gods-must-be-crazy-II.html

Brazil
http://www.trond.com/brazil/

Robocop
http://www.robocop-pd.ca/

They Live
http://www.toptown.com/dorms/creedstonegate/they/they.htm

Gattaca
http://www.sciflicks.com/gattaca/


The Luddite Reader continues to track luddite films, books, and music,
along with  news and luddish content links, at its luddsite:
http://www.ludditereader.com.  Updated twice monthly, The Luddite Reader
regularly features a book, film, musical selection, and a recommended
link for luddish interests.  The Luddite Reader is the website for the
technology dysphoric, phobic, paranoiac, and the merely cranky.  It
features selected books , films, music, and other resources for folks
who would like to turn their backs on technology, if only they could be
sure that it would not sneak up on them so.


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