Posted by T Smith
(here)
This movie almost merits its own thread, or maybe a mention in the
mind-control thread. Underlying the blatant predictive programing, the more subtle programing depicts the following worldview:
The character with the highest morals, who keeps his head and maintains some degree of community and humanity during the meltdown, is Black. I have no problem with this by itself, except the writers portray all the White characters just the opposite. The White protagonists isolate into their own interests, are narcissistic, and self-serving--and in short, somewhat unjustly privileged. Whereas George (the Black protagonist) doesn't turn his back on strangers even at risk to his daughter and himself. In contrast, Danny, the White gun-clinging prepper (a stereotype that knocks you square on the head), is willing to kill a long-time friend before sharing a couple iodine pills with a sick teen.
The underlying implication is White people are self-serving and can't be trusted. George's daughter, the jaded young Black woman whose snarky attitude and sharp wit, influenced (presumably and by implication) by the hard-knocks of institutional racism, explicitly says so.
White people can't be trusted. I'm actually somewhat surprised the authors, to their credit, bestow Julia Robert's character with some redeeming qualities at the end--she is obviously struggling with (what I would argue as) socially-engineered racial divisiveness, isolated individual identity, and atomized self-interest. But in the end she is self-reflective and acknowledges her shortcomings.
As for Ethan Hawke's character (who is such an unsubstantial character I don't even recall his name); he is utterly emasculated, weak, and cowardly, and has no clue whatsoever what is going on. If it weren't for Amanda (Robert's character), the family would have perished ten times over during the course of the film. Hawke's character, however (who teaches at the college level and presumably is not incompetent) is nonetheless completely vacuous, absent, and helpless and says so himself when he is begging the prepper for medicine for his son. According to the writers, this scene (among others) provides a glimpse of how men in society will behave after sh*t hits the fan. While George maintains his humanity, Hawke's character abandons a woman in need on the roadside, and, later admits,
"...I have no idea what I'm supposed to do right now. I can barely do anything without my my cell phone and GPS. I am a useless man." This character is a quintessential copy of Henry Kissinger's idea of a "useless eater" if ever there was one.
The privileged White children in the film are vacuous and fully removed from reality and are quasi non-functional humans without social media and mediated entertainment. The young Black woman and Amanda, both jaded and bitter, are well entrenched in reality and well aware of what's going on, but are suspicious and distrusting of each other throughout, just as the authors would have us believe is normal.
I'm not suggesting these are not human traits, nor are they necessarily implausible scenarios. But this movie is a prime example of how prejudices and pre-conceived conceptions are engineered.
Predictive programming in video games/Movies/Popular culture
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