June 13, 2009
Vital signs: negative
[Ultra-compressed notes on T4]
If you're reading this, you are the resistance.
And right on cue: Terminator: Salvation delivers the scorched earth mythscape for our year zero. Earth as ground zero, an ultramilitarized zone in the grip of an ongoing catastrophe. Everything in ruins: a fictional diagram of Now. CGI finally codes for CyberGothic, the battered future returning as an infernal landscape bolted together out of Black Metal nightmares, Apocaplyse Now choppers, towering War Of The Worlds-like megacidal machines and videogame ballistics.
Accelerationism as thrill-ride, deep-cooled in cold libido, which the final few minutes of sentimentalism can't recuperate for humanist overcode.
Narrative compressed into speed blips. Dialogue as junglistic soundbites.
'What just happened?' 'Judgement Day'.
It really believes it's human. (Like you do.)
You are a good man. (Echoes of Roy Batty's taunt to Deckard: 'aren't you the good man.')
Cyborg catatonia.
Symbolic exchange and machinic death.
The difference between us and the machines is that we bury our dead.
There is no fate
Posted by mark at June 13, 2009 01:09 AM | TrackBack