Elysium: More Class Segregation in the Future

Rating: 8/10 (13 December 2015)

This movie is about "white flight" at the scientific and futuristic level. If you weren't convinced that the majority of this country is going to be Latino in a few years, this movie, which takes place in 2154 will surely convince you. It's an incredible movie, a direct rip off of race relations in this country, stripped from the annals of white interpretation, dipped into a batter of intergalactic bullshit, and the put on the screen so that viewers, especially the Millennials, will think that "man, this couldn't happen" when, in reality, it's already happening right in the face of these young idiots. This is a story about Trey and Max, a cute Latina and a white dude who grew up together in the slums, or that is, what is left of Earth. He has adapted as they grew up and went their separate ways. She was smart and left to become a nurse. He was a hustler, car thief and thug who ends up doing blue collar assembly line grunt work in some hi-tech factor (don't forget this is the 22nd century). They pledge themselves to each other with tattoos, but it's not much more than that. In reality, Max would be a black man from the South in the 1940s working in the most hazardous areas of any plant or factory. But all they have to do is steal this reality, flip it, make the hard working guy a white boy, and these Millennials – who know about as much about history as a wino knows about building a laser gun – won't know the difference. While working for corporate giant Armadyne, Max's boss forces him to repair a machine and Max gets caught in it and is exposed to a fatal dose of radiation (shades of Yaphet Kotto in "Blue Collar," where he was intentionally locked in a paint room at a car factor and died). Of course the boss who assigned Max to "fix it" knew it was hazardous and as Max is carried out of the radiation filled chamber, the boss disappears. This is the way they treated black men during the 1940s in the foundries in Detroit when it would get so hot their work boots would literally melt. At any rate, Max doesn't die, but is told by the doctors that he has only five days to live. While he's at the hospital he runs across Frey, who has returned and is working as a nurse. They begin to rekindle what they once had. As both "We're the Miller" and "2 Guns" made clear, Latinos are the order of the day. "Elysium is no exception. The part of the world they are in, America, is not predominantly Latino and I didn't see three blacks together throughout the entire movie. At any rate, Frey's young daughter has a physical disability. Now, we've established the relationship, we have to talk about context. "Elysium," is what the white man's goal is in real life: more segregation, this time based on class, not just race. They get all the good stuff – space, land, good health care, clean air, luxury – and the vast majority of people don't get squat. Is this not the way it was during "white flight" in the 1960s when blacks move to the city and white folks immediately packed up, left and created "the suburbs"? This movie featured Latinos because that is the trick that is being used on the Millenials. Just as "World War Z" had a global, somewhat "third world" flavor, and "2 Guns" had a Mexican flavor, "Wolverine" had a definitive Asian flavor, and "Lone Ranger" was Native American, so it is with "Elysium" and its thrust toward Latinos from top to bottom: love interest, bad guys, corporate brains and so on. This "multicultural cast" dupes young people into thinking that everybody's the same, while the racist message of these white boys coming out as winners in every single scenario, is ingrained in their minds and as such, the myth of white supremacy is maintained. Sure, it's a movie NOW, but the theme is so typical of him: he creates another world, basically a giant satellite revolving around polluted earth, where only the wealth can live. In other words, for whites only. Wasn't that the same way it was during the days of legal segregation and isn't that the way it still is with all these "gated communities" and "upscale habitats"? And as it is in real life, Elysium is the place where there is fresh air (ala the suburbs) and where you can get top notch medical care, including cares for all diseases. Meanwhile, earthlings inhale polluted air, live in the midst of squalor and suffer from high population density in high crime. In other words, a re-creation of the ghetto and barrio.