At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Preface
Two things interest me in Tomorrowland. That a magical token discloses to the right person a utopia co-located with everyday reality and that the administration of this utopia broadcasts despair back to our plane. What I am not much interested in is the plot. The future has lost faith in itself, in the technological fulfillment of the promise of capitalist development, and that loss of faith undermines our ability, here and now, to solve our problems. Faith is restored, as it must be in Hollywood, by the destruction of the blocking industrial structure.
The film’s working title was "1952", which resonates personally. The loss of faith occurs during the lifetime of a character who we first meet at the 1964 New York World’s Fair which, again, strikes a chord with me. Nevertheless, I have no trouble recognizing that it is only in a world where nostalgia has replaced memory that disillusionment with technical progress begins in in the second half of the 20th century. On ground level the religion of progress, like the poetry of colonial glory, did not survive the first World War. It hangs on only in regions that are well protected from the working classes.
In 2015 even the Disney Company acknowledges that the spell of Epcot, wretched long before 1982, has reached the dustbin. It must be resmelted before it can be brought to market in the 21st century. But here the movie fails. The performances of our hero and heroines enchant. Raffey Cassidy who portrays the robot, Athena, is particularly charming. But they are betrayed by the limits of the story.
By admitting that we are all of us living in a crisis that is global, the story allows us to contemplate more than its plot would explicitly allow. Science-fiction has often portrayed the development of a new society within the old. Usually by displacing it in time or in space, a utopia. This film uses a mechanism borrowed from quantum theory, and increasingly called upon in popular storytelling, to place the two worlds in parallel dimensions. Today and tomorrow coexist. As portrayed here, however, the future is no longer the future. Once a heaven of mass transit and space flight it is now no more than a scolding autocrat warning us of our imminent doom. How it got there, and how our odd couple of exiles were tossed out is elided.
Nothing is offered to take us across the gap in the story between the ’64 Fair and the current future. But I think I can speculate on why this part of the story is missing. The explanation can be found in the situation that we live in, that we see everywhere. It is the failure of the imagination of a dominant social class that can no longer see a way out that will maintain its hold on power.
Which brings us to the Tomorrowland token. With the token we are able to see that the two worlds coincide. Tomorrowland is not another planet like Bogdanov’s Mars or LeGuinn’s Annarres. It is not the glorious future of our present system as it was for Disney and the ’64 World’s Fair. Where we actually stand now, facing reality, it is the invisible presence of another world right here alongside the one we are permitted to see. In the film the relationship between the two is magical, the token is a magical key to an alternate universe from the quotidian universe. But it is magical only because the film’s creators were uninterested in showing what it is in truth, dialectical.
It cannot surprise that a production with the imprimatur of a Hollywood studio would mystify our historic predicament. But it is to the credit of the film’s creators that they have put as much work as they have into expressing a radical truth that is there whether they have consciously included it or not. Two worlds can only coincide as negations of each other.
The film’s working title was "1952", which resonates personally. The loss of faith occurs during the lifetime of a character who we first meet at the 1964 New York World’s Fair which, again, strikes a chord with me. Nevertheless, I have no trouble recognizing that it is only in a world where nostalgia has replaced memory that disillusionment with technical progress begins in in the second half of the 20th century. On ground level the religion of progress, like the poetry of colonial glory, did not survive the first World War. It hangs on only in regions that are well protected from the working classes.
In 2015 even the Disney Company acknowledges that the spell of Epcot, wretched long before 1982, has reached the dustbin. It must be resmelted before it can be brought to market in the 21st century. But here the movie fails. The performances of our hero and heroines enchant. Raffey Cassidy who portrays the robot, Athena, is particularly charming. But they are betrayed by the limits of the story.
By admitting that we are all of us living in a crisis that is global, the story allows us to contemplate more than its plot would explicitly allow. Science-fiction has often portrayed the development of a new society within the old. Usually by displacing it in time or in space, a utopia. This film uses a mechanism borrowed from quantum theory, and increasingly called upon in popular storytelling, to place the two worlds in parallel dimensions. Today and tomorrow coexist. As portrayed here, however, the future is no longer the future. Once a heaven of mass transit and space flight it is now no more than a scolding autocrat warning us of our imminent doom. How it got there, and how our odd couple of exiles were tossed out is elided.
Nothing is offered to take us across the gap in the story between the ’64 Fair and the current future. But I think I can speculate on why this part of the story is missing. The explanation can be found in the situation that we live in, that we see everywhere. It is the failure of the imagination of a dominant social class that can no longer see a way out that will maintain its hold on power.
Which brings us to the Tomorrowland token. With the token we are able to see that the two worlds coincide. Tomorrowland is not another planet like Bogdanov’s Mars or LeGuinn’s Annarres. It is not the glorious future of our present system as it was for Disney and the ’64 World’s Fair. Where we actually stand now, facing reality, it is the invisible presence of another world right here alongside the one we are permitted to see. In the film the relationship between the two is magical, the token is a magical key to an alternate universe from the quotidian universe. But it is magical only because the film’s creators were uninterested in showing what it is in truth, dialectical.
It cannot surprise that a production with the imprimatur of a Hollywood studio would mystify our historic predicament. But it is to the credit of the film’s creators that they have put as much work as they have into expressing a radical truth that is there whether they have consciously included it or not. Two worlds can only coincide as negations of each other.
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