Empire: Hardt responds

[Max Sawicky]

Hey, "The Road Warrior" was awesome. Great plot which shows that the
community is more important than any individual, tremendous effects, and
that sound-track -- the scenes with the Wolf Child alone are priceless.
Humongous is one of the great video depictions of a faceless, rapacious
capitalism, which has outgrown its military-industrial pedigree and taken
on a new and highly allegorical kind of mask, and faces off against Mel's
premonitory cyberpunk info-guerilla. Very progressive, compared to
Cameron's neoconservative "Terminator" or Scott's wishy-washy "Blade
Runner".

mbs:  Wha?  I can see the communal/greater good theme
well enough.  But Humongous as capitalism?  I would
say pre-capitalist (pre-feudal, actually).  Hunter/
gatherer is more like it; hierarchical (like the
good guys), but not exactly consensus-seeking.
And not without a certain joie de vivre, which
is interesting.
The real capitalism image is Tina Turner's
Thunderdome ("Bust a deal, face the wheel.")

And where is the 'info-guerilla'?  "Info"?

I'll leave Blade Runner alone, which I also love
(Robot girl, robot girl . . . ),
alone, but in re: Terminator there is a major
anti-biz theme in terms of the explanation of
the collapse of civilization -- the business-
engineered takeover of machines.  This doesn't
have much to do with the action, but insofar
as there is a politics, albeit an insipid one,
I would not call it neo-conservative.

mbs