Hurricane Sandy and the Prophetic Nature of Films

Am I alone in seeing parrells between Hurricane Sandy and the movie The Day After Tomorrow? Recent images of sea water coursing though lower Manhattan compare at least superficially with the scene in the film when a massive wave surges onto the New York island as three storm systems collide over the east coast of North America.

The ability of script writers to imagine future scenarios is, of course, central to their craft. I'm interested, however, in the extent to which such imaginative work draws upon the possibility of scenarios which are both contingently possible while also being sufficiently unusual to fulfil their role as vehicles for fantasy and escapism.

Other examples include

• the election of a black President in episode one of TV series 24, seven years before Barack Obama's successful election campaign
• the creation of an all-encompassing television environment in The Truman Show, in anticipation of the Big Brother TV phenomenon
• two aspects of the film Minority Report seem relevant: one is the use of targeted individualised advertising (in the mall scene) which anticipates the current fusion of data mining with mobile technology to focus personal product promotion; the second is the concept of pre-crime, which perhaps highlights some of the ethical difficulties with entrapment-based models of crime surveillance and prevention in an increasingly autocratic age.
• the prediction of artificial intelligence in the form of the HAL 9000 super-computer in the 1968 science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey
• the presence of hand-held tablets and computers in Star Trek episodes as early as the 1960s

    

 

It was, apparently, in recognition, of the ability of some creative individuals to "see" possible future scenarios that the CIA toyed with the idea of forming collaborative working relationships with Hollywood in an attempt to draw on a different strand of intelligence to complement their more traditional information-gathering techniques. This experiment, however, did not survive the overhaul of the CIA following 9-11.

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Occupy Wall Street

Image by SheepGuardingLlama via Flickr

A small  number of activists have been camped out in New York's Wall Street for six days now, protesting against global corporate capitaism and its fruits.

Here's a short introduction to the occupation. 

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On Police Brutality

Image via Wikipedia

Without looking for it, I have recently stumbled upon a number of articles and cases of police brutality, alleged and proven.

The theme began with an article by Matthew Smith listing a number of deaths of people detained in police custody in London in recent years and outlining the apparent lack of action that has resulted from them. I commented on the piece.

Next came a series of incidents from the United States. First, an in-depth piece by New York's Village Voice on the beating up of Levelle DeSean Ming, a 41-year old taxi driver who beeped his horn as a group of drunken newly qualified off-duty police officers stumbled out of a bar and in front of his yellow cab in 2008. Another off-duty officer, not part of the group who carried out the assault, intervened, was himself assaulted by the drunken officers and has subsequently been assigned to desk duty for the last two years.

Earlier in the year, 22-year old Amit Bornstein, of Marlboro, New Jersey, was arrested at his home by Monmouth County Sheriff’s Officers for failing to appear in Court for minor misdemeanor and traffic infractions. Seven hours later Amit’s body appeared at the local hospital. Surveillance tapes of the time Amit was in police custody have been seized by the County Prosecutor’s Office and have not been released. His family are demanding justice.

With remarkable timing, i then read this by anarchist lawyer David D'Amato who argues that police abuse is the rule, not the exception.

"We can brush aside police abuse as an aberration in an otherwise sensible system, or we can correctly understand it as an unavoidable feature of a warped incentive structure designed by and for the power elite."

Maybe.

Certainly, prison chaplain and state politician Stan Moody has plenty of shocking stories to tell about reality of institutionalized injustice inside the Maine State Prison system in the United States. I've listened to others also describe the way that the prison institution tends to facilitate the brutalization of prisoners by the guards, even if the latter are perfectly reasonable people on the outside.

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