What would such movie look like?
Our Age will not disappear without a trace
Let’s assume they still make movies two thousand years hence. It doesn’t matter whether it will be a movie on celluloid or one in digital format or any other – new – technology. We know a movie when we see it. A story to watch and enjoy. It might be a wild experience in 3D with surround sound and shaking floors and any other virtuality to make it feel ‘real’.
We are still busy making movies in our own time about civilizations long gone, so it is highly feasible to project a similar interest of our descendants in the distant future. There are some good considerations for their interest in keeping the memory of the 20th and 21st centuries alive. We will leave a lot of footage for them to watch in the first place. It will be hard for our Age to disappear in oblivion for a considerable time.
Better than 'real life'
Nevertheless we may speculate about the nature and content of a future movie about ‘us’. Much of our modernity will most likely be depicted as primitive or at least as hopelessly obsolete – for instance our internal combustion engines fuelled by oil derivatives, roaring on highways and in cities, our conflicts, our world depletion and mass poverty, and most likely our devastating urbanization in many parts of world, and so on.
Some pieces of history will be subject of reconstruction, perhaps with the aid of ‘real life footage’, not dissimilar from – but substantially better than - the early experiments in our own time with computer aided reconstructions of Hitler, Roosevelt and Churchill (see Discovery Channel’s recent experiment). They will for instance allow future movie watchers to get a much closer and highly realistic view of Kennedy’s assassination (his remains might already be taken to a museum for public viewing, much the way we exhibit a good number of Egyptian pharaoh’s) or of other decisive historic developments such as the gradual extinction of species and the rise of CO2 in our atmosphere. We don’t really know, of course, what aspects of our history will prove of interest for our descendants in 4000.
For many of these projections, two thousand years may even be an unnecessary long wait. Much can already – technically - be achieved in our time or in just a few decades. And indeed, many products of our own Science Fiction have had an immediate impact on the short term, thus in our own time. The outstanding example is the Stanley Kubrick movie 2001 – A Space Odyssey, which greatly inspired NASA’s design of Apollo 11, the spacecraft sent out for Man’s first landing on the Moon.
The perspective will be pure speculation only
But the perspective, which people of 4000 AD take of our Age, will be their perspective. We cannot pre-empt that perspective. Still we could try and make a leap forward and look back at the main headings of our centuries. Population explosion, mass production, mass media, mass consumption, mass extinction… all leading to a firm grip of humanity on the prime conditions of our planet. This is not a small achievement, by any standard and - most likely – in any perspective, whenever it is taken.
But this is where realistic projections almost instantly come to a full stop. For we do not know what ultimate – or even intermediate – implications all of these and related achievements actually will have. A movie about us will depict above developments as precursors to a further development, possibly including yet other explosions or – alternatively – the move of mankind towards restraining them.
Furthermore the Western World as we define it today, may still ‘exist’, or whatever world prevails in the future may still have its firm roots in our definition of civilization and in our predominantly European heritage. And this includes all civilizations on either side of the Atlantic.
But it may be not so. There may a massive discontinuity. A movie about ‘us’ could be made by descendants of those who at one point conquered our world and changed it beyond recognition. There might still be the memory of adversity and of our world as being ‘bad’ and the new world being ‘good’, or at least better. We cannot tell. But let’s not exclude that people in the future will look at our celluloid and digital footage largely with disgust and possibly misunderstanding, like the way we look at documentaries of Adolf Hitler’s mass meetings and overzealous propaganda, not to speak of filmed scenes of Auschwitz and the overall aftermath of our horrendous wars.
We cannot 'know' our time because we don't know our future
We tend to look at the pre-WW II years largely as a foreshadowing of the War and the subsequent economic boom of the fifties and the sixties. But we could also look at the twenties and the thirties as the founding years of mass pop culture, the hysteria of the Nazi’s and other similar fascist movements just being an unfortunate – and disastrous - intermission of this essential development.
Basically we cannot predict the way people will look at us in two thousand years because we do not know what is going to happen in the mean time.
Mass hysteria as much as mass pop culture and mass consumption are hypnotic for the larger part of humanity. The Western World has simply created a much friendlier version of human submission to the richness of the happy few than earlier versions of slavery and mass labor. It may still create a similar sense of disgust in the future.
But no civilization so far has drawn disgust only. We do not perceive the old Egyptians or the Greeks and the Romans as outright primitive or barbaric. On the contrary. They can all be seen as building blocks leading to us. Why, we even had a full Renaissance not so long ago that revived the heritage of Greece and Rome to compensate for the cultural, humanitarian and scientific stagnation during more than thousand years of Christianity in our part of the world.
Will there be another great period of stagnation, after which our Twentieth Century heritage will emerge as the prime source of inspiration for a new Renaissance? Most certainly, our time will continue to have its merits in the eyes of future moviemakers (and historians alike, no doubt). Our time brought Einstein and the advent of the Atomic Age. Our time created technologies in a spur never, never before achieved in any civilization. They must count.
The great struggle for any future moviemaker about our time will be how to deal with the many contradictions. Our explosive scientific and technological growth will be offset against our remaining vulnerability for humanity’s vices and superstition. They may look at our world in great confusion and depict us both as highly developed or ‘modern’ but still backward in our political and societal outlook. One cannot overlook the murderous realities across the planet throughout our time.
Our time is a concert
Most likely people in the future will adore our music. I am convinced of that. Much of our music was written for eternity. So, perhaps, a movie about our time will start at the birth of Johan Sebastian Bach, going via Mozart and Debussy to the icons of pop and any relevant successor in the immediate future.
I believe it would be an interesting project to make a movie of our time as if we had already reached the 40th Century. It is like Science Fiction in reverse. A projection of the future leading to a picture of us.
It could be a romantic picture at the level of fictitious individuals, similar to the romantic movies we construct of Biblical times. But is could also be a historic movie of some kind. Some piece of our history blown up to show to people of the future, made by people of the future. We could try and make such movie with their eyes, with their resources and knowledge of our age. In order to do this we would also have to make a few assumptions about their sense of art and drama, of course.
Such a project will indeed be Science Fiction only, even in reverse. But it would be a nice addition to all the other legacies on celluloid we leave behind to watch and, hopefully, to enjoy for many ages to come.
Our Age will not disappear without a trace
Let’s assume they still make movies two thousand years hence. It doesn’t matter whether it will be a movie on celluloid or one in digital format or any other – new – technology. We know a movie when we see it. A story to watch and enjoy. It might be a wild experience in 3D with surround sound and shaking floors and any other virtuality to make it feel ‘real’.
We are still busy making movies in our own time about civilizations long gone, so it is highly feasible to project a similar interest of our descendants in the distant future. There are some good considerations for their interest in keeping the memory of the 20th and 21st centuries alive. We will leave a lot of footage for them to watch in the first place. It will be hard for our Age to disappear in oblivion for a considerable time.
Better than 'real life'
Nevertheless we may speculate about the nature and content of a future movie about ‘us’. Much of our modernity will most likely be depicted as primitive or at least as hopelessly obsolete – for instance our internal combustion engines fuelled by oil derivatives, roaring on highways and in cities, our conflicts, our world depletion and mass poverty, and most likely our devastating urbanization in many parts of world, and so on.
Some pieces of history will be subject of reconstruction, perhaps with the aid of ‘real life footage’, not dissimilar from – but substantially better than - the early experiments in our own time with computer aided reconstructions of Hitler, Roosevelt and Churchill (see Discovery Channel’s recent experiment). They will for instance allow future movie watchers to get a much closer and highly realistic view of Kennedy’s assassination (his remains might already be taken to a museum for public viewing, much the way we exhibit a good number of Egyptian pharaoh’s) or of other decisive historic developments such as the gradual extinction of species and the rise of CO2 in our atmosphere. We don’t really know, of course, what aspects of our history will prove of interest for our descendants in 4000.
For many of these projections, two thousand years may even be an unnecessary long wait. Much can already – technically - be achieved in our time or in just a few decades. And indeed, many products of our own Science Fiction have had an immediate impact on the short term, thus in our own time. The outstanding example is the Stanley Kubrick movie 2001 – A Space Odyssey, which greatly inspired NASA’s design of Apollo 11, the spacecraft sent out for Man’s first landing on the Moon.
The perspective will be pure speculation only
But the perspective, which people of 4000 AD take of our Age, will be their perspective. We cannot pre-empt that perspective. Still we could try and make a leap forward and look back at the main headings of our centuries. Population explosion, mass production, mass media, mass consumption, mass extinction… all leading to a firm grip of humanity on the prime conditions of our planet. This is not a small achievement, by any standard and - most likely – in any perspective, whenever it is taken.
But this is where realistic projections almost instantly come to a full stop. For we do not know what ultimate – or even intermediate – implications all of these and related achievements actually will have. A movie about us will depict above developments as precursors to a further development, possibly including yet other explosions or – alternatively – the move of mankind towards restraining them.
Furthermore the Western World as we define it today, may still ‘exist’, or whatever world prevails in the future may still have its firm roots in our definition of civilization and in our predominantly European heritage. And this includes all civilizations on either side of the Atlantic.
But it may be not so. There may a massive discontinuity. A movie about ‘us’ could be made by descendants of those who at one point conquered our world and changed it beyond recognition. There might still be the memory of adversity and of our world as being ‘bad’ and the new world being ‘good’, or at least better. We cannot tell. But let’s not exclude that people in the future will look at our celluloid and digital footage largely with disgust and possibly misunderstanding, like the way we look at documentaries of Adolf Hitler’s mass meetings and overzealous propaganda, not to speak of filmed scenes of Auschwitz and the overall aftermath of our horrendous wars.
We cannot 'know' our time because we don't know our future
We tend to look at the pre-WW II years largely as a foreshadowing of the War and the subsequent economic boom of the fifties and the sixties. But we could also look at the twenties and the thirties as the founding years of mass pop culture, the hysteria of the Nazi’s and other similar fascist movements just being an unfortunate – and disastrous - intermission of this essential development.
Basically we cannot predict the way people will look at us in two thousand years because we do not know what is going to happen in the mean time.
Mass hysteria as much as mass pop culture and mass consumption are hypnotic for the larger part of humanity. The Western World has simply created a much friendlier version of human submission to the richness of the happy few than earlier versions of slavery and mass labor. It may still create a similar sense of disgust in the future.
But no civilization so far has drawn disgust only. We do not perceive the old Egyptians or the Greeks and the Romans as outright primitive or barbaric. On the contrary. They can all be seen as building blocks leading to us. Why, we even had a full Renaissance not so long ago that revived the heritage of Greece and Rome to compensate for the cultural, humanitarian and scientific stagnation during more than thousand years of Christianity in our part of the world.
Will there be another great period of stagnation, after which our Twentieth Century heritage will emerge as the prime source of inspiration for a new Renaissance? Most certainly, our time will continue to have its merits in the eyes of future moviemakers (and historians alike, no doubt). Our time brought Einstein and the advent of the Atomic Age. Our time created technologies in a spur never, never before achieved in any civilization. They must count.
The great struggle for any future moviemaker about our time will be how to deal with the many contradictions. Our explosive scientific and technological growth will be offset against our remaining vulnerability for humanity’s vices and superstition. They may look at our world in great confusion and depict us both as highly developed or ‘modern’ but still backward in our political and societal outlook. One cannot overlook the murderous realities across the planet throughout our time.
Our time is a concert
Most likely people in the future will adore our music. I am convinced of that. Much of our music was written for eternity. So, perhaps, a movie about our time will start at the birth of Johan Sebastian Bach, going via Mozart and Debussy to the icons of pop and any relevant successor in the immediate future.
I believe it would be an interesting project to make a movie of our time as if we had already reached the 40th Century. It is like Science Fiction in reverse. A projection of the future leading to a picture of us.
It could be a romantic picture at the level of fictitious individuals, similar to the romantic movies we construct of Biblical times. But is could also be a historic movie of some kind. Some piece of our history blown up to show to people of the future, made by people of the future. We could try and make such movie with their eyes, with their resources and knowledge of our age. In order to do this we would also have to make a few assumptions about their sense of art and drama, of course.
Such a project will indeed be Science Fiction only, even in reverse. But it would be a nice addition to all the other legacies on celluloid we leave behind to watch and, hopefully, to enjoy for many ages to come.
1 comment:
Hi Theo,
I was just asking a similar question today and I decided to do a bit of web research to see what was out there and found your blog. I am studying Theatre and just getting ready to write an essay for the end of term. Studying classic plays from Greece 2000 years ago made me ponder the question, what (if it even exists) would theatre performances be like in the year 4000 AD? Would people be looking at the plays of this century trying to decipher our meanings and the way we speak. How will they speak? Perhaps language is no longer necessary. If I write a play and it survives for 2000 years what message would I want to leave in it for them, what is universal? It is interesting to imagine, but as you say we are limited to our perspective and it is difficult to know what their perspectives may be.
Thanks for your thoughts, great minds think alike.
Cheers, Aarhon
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