Apparently serious social commentary that is hilariously unsubtle

Cafe Society
1

Ever get hit over the head with what is apparently some sly commentary that everyone praises, but makes you laugh out loud?

Sleep Dealer 2008 film, obscure sci fi flick that has an odd title and is universally praised, the film is set in Mexico in the future where remote operators work controlling robots doing construction over the internet. Now I expected some social commentary, its a film about Mexicans doing construction work so…

Within the first 10 minutes of the film we are in the protagonists rural and poor village way out in the dusty boondocks of Mexico, they need water and don’t have a pipe so him and his father set out to fetch water. They come to a dam(with a corp’s name in english) and a fence with a robotic machine gun that points at them while a voice tells them in english and then spanish to pay 80 USD for water(the price just went up). They are then allowed to fill bags with muddy standing water while Caucasian armed guards watch them.

:dubious: Never mind the stupidity of building that large facility just to sell water to a small village out in bum fuck nowhere, what about paying those guards to walk back and forth all day. Logic be damned!

2

I am posting from a country that is building a security fence across thousands of miles of uninhabited desert. So I am not sure I am allowed to post on absurd stuff.

3

I think I’m with Evil Captor here.

When did human beings start doing things because they are logical and reasonable? I haven’t seen the film, but from your description it seems the scene is meant to be symbolic of the relationship between the US and Mexico.

4

Finally, we’ve tracked down that one film plot that doesn’t follow logic!

:slight_smile:

5

Is that all there is to the dam, just enough for that small village; or is it a reservoir feeding some distant city by pipeline? We don’t know how much 80 USD is really worth in the future. Don’t know if rural society has broken down to the point that local strongmen are taking control of basic resources.

Maybe that scene is as silly as you say, but not having seen it, it’s kinda hard to tell.

6

I’m cringing every time I see that Lorax’s orange mug on posters and billboards and sides of busses. I’m not the biggest Dr. Sues fan overall (except for this video of Oh! The Places You’ll Go! done at Burning Man), but I’m a pretty eco-conscious hippie chick and the Lorax just makes me want to make Thneeds just so I can buy them. Such a sanctimonious shrill harpy asshole.

Y’know that guy on your “side” of an argument who makes you want to scream, “Shut up shut up shut up, you’re making people hate us!!!”? That’s the Lorax for me.

7

Everything about Gattaca. Why are the bothering to test their employees multiple times a day? In case their DNA has changed in the interim? Why pretend to be someone with good DNA when you could just pay someone to hack into the database and change your records? Why do people support the system, but when someone breaches it, they just shrug their shoulders (compare to how a Black man would have been treated if it was discovered he was passing for white in the segregated South)?

8

And why do astronauts fly in business suits?!

9

I think he’s moderating his message lately, as he’s been lending his name to SUV and disposable diaper ads. :smack:

My suggestion: Half of the episodes of Star Trek TNG/DS9, which are barely-disguised morality plays about stuff going on in the news at the time. I think there was even an “Elian Gonzales” episode at one point.

10

Your analysis of Gattaca remains fundamentally flawed no matter how many times you repeat it.

11

They are also paying in US dollars, it appears that Mexico has been conquered by the USA because US soldiers are remotely flying drones inside Mexico to kill “evildoers” on live TV. There is a side plot about a US soldier of Mexican descent feeling guilty about this.

The film has some very cool ideas and images, the warehouses full of workers hooked up to the internet controlling robots all over the world. People uploading their memories to the internet and selling them, experiences basically. I liked this, I liked the idea of a sci fi film set in the future in a poor part of a country, I liked the idea of blue collar characters.

But the first third of the film is a clumsy anvil to the head.

12

Since DS9 went off the air ~a year before Elian Gonzales was ever heard of (and TNG rather before that), that would be a bit difficult.

13

I thought DS9 and TNG overlapped by two years.

14

:smack: I forgot to type “Voyager” too. (My husband has been doing a Star Trek marathon via Netflix streaming; it all starts running together.) I’ve only been watching on and off - usually when the sound filters through my headphones while I’m playing video games on my laptop - and I swear my husband was saying “this must be their Elian Gonzalez episode” at one point.

15

Nothing tops TOS for hilariously unsubtle.

BELE: Are you blind, Commander Spock? Well, look at me. Look at me!
KIRK: You’re black on one side and white on the other.
BELE: I am black on the right side.
KIRK: I fail to see the significant difference.
BELE: Lokai is white on the right side. All of his people are white on the right side!

16

In what way? I’ve yet to see anyone even dispute any of my points, let alone refute them. Unless you think saying it’s flawed is a refutation.

17

Every single episode of “24” was hilariously unsubtle in the funniest way possible. Here’s a basic summary of every storyline:

Jack Bauer: “Dammit! We KNOW this man is a TERRORIST plotting to set off NUCLEAR WEAPONS on AMERICAN soil! We MUST torture him to find out the INFORMATION!”

Gutless, liberal-leaning politician: “But you don’t really know that. And after all, this man has rights, he is entitled to due process.”

Jack Bauer: “Dammit! We KNOW this man is a TERRORIST plotting to set off NUCLEAR WEAPONS on AMERICAN soil! We MUST torture him to find out the INFORMATION!”

Gutless, liberal-leaning politician: “But you don’t really know that. And after all, this man has rights, he is entitled to due process.”

Jack Bauer: “Dammit! We KNOW this man is a TERRORIST plotting to set off NUCLEAR WEAPONS on AMERICAN soil! We MUST torture him to find out the INFORMATION!”

Terrorist prisoner makes a startling escape. Jack Bauer is pummeled, shot, stabbed, tossed out a ten story window and lands on a landmine that detonates.

Terrorist now-former prisoner makes a getaway.

Jack Bauer (with slightly mussed up hair) gets up, strides DRAMATICALLY over to the gutless, liberal-leaning politician, who stares at him in slack-jawed, looking especially effete and helpless.

Jack Bauer: “You see? You see? We could have gotten INFORMATION on the TERRORIST PLOT out of him, if you’d only let me TORTURE HIM. But YOU had to PLAY BY THE RULES! And now he got away…and now MILLIONS of…
AMERICAN LIVES
may be lost - all because of your DUE PROCESS!!!”

And then gutless, liberal-leaning politician hangs in head in shame, and Jack Bauer turns away in disgust to stride away like the true war-loving, manly-man that he is.

18

are you kidding?

19

And TNG was the one that went off the air first. I just didn’t want to get the exact numbers.

20

As others have said, *Sleep Dealer *is mostly meant to be an exaggerated depiction of what “would” happen if US policies toward Mexico were taken to their “logical” extremes.

The water stuff in the beginning was rather silly, IMHO, even by that standard.

However, the Minority Report-style scene of Mexicans operating fruit-picking robots from some workplace in Mexico was BRILLIANT. This is exactly what many Americans “want”: Mexicans to do all kinds of shit work for them, but to never bodily be present within their ever-loving sovereign US borders.