This film is powerful because it is essentially, at it's distilled core, a warning against man's attempts to create Utopian societies (which always end up as just another hell), and against man's constant attempts to go against the natural order.
If I made a list of films with "conservative values" this film would be in the top ten due to these messages. A very compelling and thought-provoking film.
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Yeah dude, Zardoz.
Deep.
You're so wrong.
shareThe OP is VERY wrong indeed. The film 'Zardoz' has a radical message and not a conservative one.
The future depicted in 'Zardoz' is one in which civilisation as we know it has fallen. This is actually pretty standard for a 1970s sci-fi movie. Every movie from 'The Omega Man' to 'Damnation Alley' and 'A Boy And His Dog' seemed a feature a band of hardy survivors attempting to claw out a living through the radioactive rubble and plague-pits. But this film is different. Here there is no visible sign of physical catastrophe. There does not appear to have been any kind of nuclear war or enviromental disaster. So how did the strange world of 'Zardoz' come about? How come civilisation broke down in such a terrible manner? It is never explained. Why are there a small minority of people living like Gods with machines that do all the work for them while the majority population scrabble for survival with nothing but the most primitive technology? It's quite the mystery.
I believe that the answer to this is economics. Karl Marx believed that technology was the driving force of social change. He maintained that the progress of society from feudalism through capitalism to eventual socialism would be as the inevitable result of technological advancement and not utopian pipe-dreams. In a nutshell, the Marxist position is that when technology becomes sophisticated enough, the industrial and agricultural workers will be redundant and machines will take their place. This is a great way for those who own the means of production to cut their costs, as robots don't need to be paid. The trade unions will complain about the introduction of this technology, but they will be dismissed as simple 'Luddites'. This is just progress, and industry has to modernise. After all, if the bosses don't go hi-tech, their competitors will. Introducing the technology will enable the owners to slash the workforce and so remain competetive in the modern marketplace. The trouble is, robots may not require wages, but they don't buy produce either. And those ekeing out a living on welfare also don't have a lot of disposable income to fling about. Productivity has never been higher, but nobody out there is buying the goods. The factory or farm is now 'uneconomic'. The owners cannot make a profit, and no business can function at a loss. So, they simply downsize, sack the few remaining employees and close up shop! The only result of this is to make the customer base even smaller. For a while the remaining farms and factories may begin to show a profit, and so it looks like the policy has been successful. Unfortunately, when next year's balance sheets are examined, it quickly transpires that there's perhaps just a LITTLE bit more deadwood to cut. Still, it's not a problem. All they have to do is burn a couple more farms or bulldoze a few more factories and they will soon be back in the black! The cycle continues, and the property-owning classes downsize still futher...
Eventually the penny drops. You can't eat money. Even a boss has to eat, whether to food is 'economic' or not. If it is no longer possible to run an industry on capitalist lines then the choice is stark. Either it must be run on communist lines or it must not be run at all. A man may have devoted his life to the capitalist system and the accumulation of monetary wealth, but even a boss needs bread in his belly, clothes on his back, shoes on his feet and a roof over his head. If he cannot obtain these things because 'money' will not allow it, then 'money' - like the trade unions and govt regulation - will very quickly become a thing of the past! The world of 'Zardoz' is obviously a communist one. But communism for who? I think that it is clear that those who owned the means of production have taken their property and retreated into fortified enclaves. There they have collectivised, abolished money and practice the philosophy of 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs' - but only amongst themselves! The disposessed rabble who's efforts created this technological utopia are excluded and left to survive as best they can. The society of the Vortex is nothing less than communism for the ruling-class! However, this alienated and sterile society carries with it the seeds of its own destruction. The citizens (the Eternals) may be long-lived, but the men are impotent and the women are frigid. There is no next generation to inherit this Brave New World. In fact, more and more citizens are collapsing into vegetative disorders or turning 'renegade'. Either one of which makes them useless to the Vortex. In fact, the authorities have been forced to turn to the despised and exiled lower-class (the Brutals), and employ them as field-hands in order to feed its growing number of dysfunctional members. This is essentially a return to slave-society. The Vortex clings on, but it cannot stand.
The elite of the brutals are Zed and his Exterminators. Those 'chosen by God' for the privilige of breeding. It was they who Zardoz levied and armed to protect the Vortex and oversee the agricultural workers. These people represent the future of the human race. Generations of selective breeding have made them the physical and intellectual superiors of the effete and parasitic eternals. This decadent collection of ex-bourgeoisie are simply left-overs from the colapse of capitalism. They are sustained by technology which is now unable to support them, and fed and protected by people that they thought they could dispense with. Without the brutals they cannot survive, and without they Exterminators they will never be safe from the encroaching masses. When the Exterminators revolt against the Vortex, it heralds the dawn of liberation. The message of the film is NOT that we must 'return to nature'. The Vortex-dwellers are destroyed, but the technology that was misused to create the Vortex network is not. The Tabernacle is gone, but the scientific knowledge that developed it is preserved. Everything is bequeathed to Zed and the brutals, or as they can now be callled, humanity. Yes, the film ends in an annihilation of the old order - but also in the birth of a new civilisation.
I would therefore submit that 'Zardoz' is, for all its flaws, one of the most profoundly radical films of the 20th century.
UPDATE: Tonight the British Film Institute are screening an episode of the documentary BBC series 'Horizon' at the Southbank Centre in London. The episode, 'Now The Chips Are Down', was first televised in 1978 and deals with the expected consequences of silicon technology on Western industries. The future depicted was so alarming that a copy was requested by the Prime Minister. Earlier this year I attended the Southbank Centre's screening of 'The Good Earth', which was followed by a Q+A with it's star Luise Rainer. Luise had celebrated her 100th birthday just days before. So it is quite possible that a smiling toddler who hair Marx may have tousled on his way to the printers was by 1978 a toothless nonagenarian watching 'Now The Chips Are Down' on TV. Perhaps he was even thinking "Is this what that old German bugger was warning us about? The Govt said it would never happen!".
Less than 18 months later, the British economy went into meltdown.
Great post, owenrcarpenter. An insightful analysis, much appreciated.
If I have seen this (and the heads seem somehow familiar) it was a long time ago. I'm going to order the DVD now.
Thank's Paglialite. There are a few other signifiers to 'Zardoz' being a Socialist tract that I didn't mention earlier on, but they might be worth ponting out below:
1) The floating stone head that is refers to itself as the god Zardoz actually bears the visage of the Roman god Janus. The god had two faces, one at the front and one at the back. This can the interpreted as a metaphor for how Marx believed that one can only determine which path a society will take in the future by analysing it's previous history. Janus was also the god of 'justice', which here can be read as the destruction of the Vortex and the bequeathing of it's technology to the Brutals.
2) The flying stone head is, in itself, strangely reminiscent of the bust of Karl Marx on top of his tomb in Highgate cemetary.
3) The red uniforms of the Exterminators can be seen as being a reference to the red shirts of 20th century European revolutionary movements.
4) The use of religion by the Eternals to keep the Brutals under control can be interpreted as Marx's assertation that 'religion is the opium of the masses', and that only through an iron commitment to strict materialism can the world progress towards socialism.
5) Finally, and this is a reference that most people will totally miss, the scene in which the miserable Brutals press themselves against the Vortex barrier in an attempt to gain access to the bounty within brings to mind the old 'Bird's Eye Country Club' advertisments from the 1980's. In this advert, smug vegetables in limos drive through ragged-assed crowds of protesting produce to enter a golden (and securely guarded) retreat. A voice-over assures us that Bird's Eye 'take only the VERY best' as the old and the sick and the lame hammer futiley at the gates. The ad was attacked by many for it's 'elitism'.
When discussing the film, I often used to refer to the Vortex as the Bird's Eye Country Club. It never failed to raise a smile,
You can write all that but write thank's? With an apostrophe? Seriously?
shareAye Kensington Communism.
And Boorman would have run into such people. It is also at the core of 1984, because the state in 1984 tries to subdue the "proles", not liberate them.
Actually, I do not think that is true. In the films based on Orwell's '1984' and 'Animal Farm', we see a BETRAYAL of the revolution by it's own leadership. In '1984', the English Socialist Party began their struggle with a sincere and heartfelt aim to create and free and equal society. It was only after they had achieved political power that the leadership discarded their principles and established a 'three-tier' society of the high (Inner Party), the middle (Outer Party) and the low (Proles). However, though this WAS the re-establishment of a class society, it was NOT a restoration of capitalism. The means of production were not returned to private hands, but were retained by the state. Interestingly, though they enjoyed many material priviliges denied to others, the Inner Party privately admitted that they could enjoy a far higher standard of living if they abandoned their programme of subjugation and re-embraced their original principles. They chose not to do so because the exercise of power was more important to them than anything else. The purpose of power was power.
In 'Animal Farm', Orwell's message is more overt. From the start, the leadership of the revolution is solely in the hands of the Pigs. Once the Men are driven from the farm, the animals take over and re-name it Animal Farm. They adopt a flag. anthem and constitution based on the principles of 'animalism', and urge animals on the neighboring farms to follow their example. The animals adopt a slogan of 'Four legs good, two legs bad' and engage in a cold war with the Men around them. However, it is the Pigs who assume the role of management and supervision, and they gradually ammend the constitution to grant themselves a position more and more akin to those of the Men they overthrew. By the end of the film, the Pigs have ended the cold war and openly discarded the constitution, flag, and even the name of Animal Farm. In a shocking act of treachery, they rear up on their hind legs, put on human clothing and make a public denouncement of the 'outdated and descredited' philosophy of Animalism. A new slogan of 'Four legs good, two legs better' is adopted, and the Men of the neighboring farms are invited in to witness the restoration of the 'natural' order. Nobody present could tell the Pigs and Men apart.
George Orwell died in 1950, but in 'Animal Farm' he accurately predicted the future of the Soviet Union. After Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Shavardnadzi adopted 'Glasnost and Perestroika' (openness and reconstruction), they swiftly wound the country up and embraced capitalism. Once industry and arigculture were restored to private hands, the citizens quickly noted that there were VERY few plutocrats and oligarchs who were not once senior officials in the now-banned Communist Party!
Now, to address 'Zardoz' once again. In all probability, the Eternals would never have considered themseves to be Communists when they established the Vortex network. They would have told themselves that this was not a programme of collectivisation, but simply one of mergers and acquisitions. They would say that the Eternals were not practising socialism within their enclaves, as the means of production were still private property. It just appeared to be communism to an outsider because everyone in the Vortex happened to be a stock-holder. The abolition of money might seem to throw a spanner into their argument, but ultimately they would still claim that the creation of the Vortex was the living embodiment of Thatcherism: A property-owning, share-holding democracy!
And they would be 100% correct!
"Actually, I do not think that is true. In the films based on Orwell's '1984' and 'Animal Farm', we see a BETRAYAL of the revolution by it's own leadership"
In many so called socialist and communist parties, the leadership is bourgeois, not proletarian. Examples of well known bourgeois revolutionaries would include Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Stalin, Luxemburg and Guevara. There are plenty of others. Many notable anarchists such as Kropotkin, and left wing writers such as Brecht had thoroughly middle class origins, which continued in their political life.
Sometimes their middle class prejudices about improving the working class are sublimated into their "revolution".
Anyeone who opposes such a system is designated a lumpen(proletarian) which is what Zed is, in some ways.
Actually in a bizarre way, I'd say the Vortex is more of a social credit system. A little known political doctrine, but an interesting one nonetheless.
I see what your driving at, Nephipaha. However, it is often noted that many revolutions are led by rogue memembers of the social class that are being targetted for destruction. This is demonstated by Arthur Frayn's deliberate engineering of Zed's enlightenment to the true nature of the Vortex - and hence it's eventual destruction. I believe that the bourgeois revolutions against fuedalism frequently numbered renegade aristocrats amoung their leadership. By the way, though Trostsky was from a middle-class background, Lenin and Stalin had very different origins. Lenin came from a minor aristrocratic family, and Stalin was a peasant. In fact, his mother and father were serfs before the emnancipation.
To address the issues you raised, if my analysis is correct the Eternals have displaced the working class and exiled them from society. They are now simply the Brutals, of no more relevance to the Vortex than animals. The division of the working-class into proletarians (those in skilled, regular and unionised employment) and lumpenproletarians (indigent and casual or seasonal workers) no longer applies. The working-class are no more. They don't work any more. They just scavenge in the wildnerness. It was only when the Eternals were forced to turn to the Brutals and conscript them as field hands that they had any social function once more.
As for Zed, he is most certainly NOT lumpenproletarian! Not in any way, shape or form! If anything, the Exterminators represent what Lenin described as the 'labour aristocracy'. They are the elite of the Brutals, not the underclass. These men and women were selected for their strength and intelligence by Frayn, and given the 'privilige' of breeding. The Exterminators were bred as a caste of soldier-scholars from their very beginning. If he were questioned by the authorities, Frayn would have said that the Exterminators were marshaled to guard the slaves and defend the Vortex. In fact Frayn was clearly - from their very first inception - breeding nothing less than a revolutionary army.
And he prepared Zed as their leader!
Stalin definitely was NOT a peasant. His father was a shoemaker, and employed at least five people. (See "Young Stalin" by Montefiore) Of course he played this down. Mao was a "peasant", but from a very well off peasant background. Lenin's background was extremely complex. Kropotkin was also a Russian prince.
Taking an alternative view, I suppose Brutals could even be seen as a kind of middle class sandwiched between the Vortex and the real workers. I was going to say bureaucratic, but they are hands on. They are used against the interests of the Zardoz workers, and constitute a kind of police force... Or they protect the revolution from other elements.
There's more than a little of "The Time Machine" in Zardoz. The Eternals are somewhat like the Eloi, and the Brutals have a bit of Morlock in them, although the relationship is different through the film.
Thank you Nephibaha for your interesting tidbit of information from Montefiore's work 'Young Stalin'. I have read numerous texts on Stalin by authors ranging from devoted Marxists such as Issac Deutscher to fervant anti-communists like Ian Gray. All of them have consistantly cited Stalin as having a 'peasant background', albiet of a higher level than most of his fellows. However in all fairness Russian is quite a difficult language to translate. So the word 'peasant' could here be interpreted to include a very broad number of roles. In the same way as a trainee Private and a full Colonel could both list 'soldier' as their occupation without fear of being called a liar.
I would agree with your observation that there a clear parallels between the Eloi and Moorlocks of 'The Time Machine' and the Eternals and Brutals of 'Zardoz'. Though of course in Wells's work it is the Moorlocks who have seized control of the means of production, and it is the Eloi who have been reduced from all-powerful masters to the status of mere cattle. It is also interesting to note that though Wells's time-traveller realises that he really should be sympathetic to the Moorlocks as they are the oppressed masses in revolt, his loyalties can ultimately be found with the poor little expropriated Eloi. Thereafter the time-traveller does everything he can to aid the Eloi in their plight, even if it means annihilating the Moorlocks down to the last individual.
I guess that if 'The Time Machine' is anything to go by, HG Wells was a bit of a 'Kensington Communist' himself!
You make a lot of good points, but I think your seemingly ideological devotion to Marxism misleads you in the end.
First of all, the original threadstarter is indeed wrong. So-called conservatism is not the answer to Utopias-gone-wrong. One only needs to learn about ideas and thinktanks working towards things like "The New American Century" to see the goals of conservative Utopias.
To address what you say about Marx, though: You make Marx out to be something like an expert on technological progress and robots. I don't see that much techno-trend-forecasting in Marx's work. Marx has many great criticisms of the industrial revolution, but as far as a future forecaster he has huge blindspots. Since Romanticism, humanity developed far more interiorities and mental complexities than Marx's rigid materialism can account for. Marxism itself sells a set of Utopian ideals, and for the life of me I don't think we can tell whether Marx actually believed in half of what he said, or if he just said what he said to sucker gullible proletarians and self-hating bourgeoisie. In terms of consolidating his contemporaries' criticisms of industrial/capitalist society, Marx is great; but in terms of selling the future, he is a writer of fairy tales--very good fairy tales that many people would like to believe, but fairy tales nonetheless.
Perhaps the world has benefited from certain arm-chair revolutionaries believing in Marxism--or at least believing in it whenever they refrain from indulging in their own bourgeoisie captialist pursuits--Who's to say?
But the tactic of dismissing Stalin, Mao and the others as "betrayers" of Marxism is claptrap. Marxist dogma is itself a technique to bring such dictators into power. The "workers revolution" by the people FOR the people is a fairy tale--it can never happen because real elites would naturally always move into positions of exploitative power over non-elites. This is simply the way of the world. Marxism is only sold so that the leading bourgeoisie propagandists of a nation can rise to power. Saying Stalin wasn't a "real" Marxist is like saying George Bush isn't a real Christian Conservative. On a grade-school level, these things might be superficially true, but one sacrifices deeper understanding by playing these pedantic games, and one misses the real point and effect of such ideologies (not to "do good", but to manipulate gullible groups of people into fighting for you). After all, one could argue that Bush betrayed his Christian faith by going to war, and betrayed Conservativism by expanding the role of the Federal government via the Patriot Act. But to argue such things is to behave like a child, to argue on a naive level, and to miss the overall effects of what really goes on in the world: ideological dogmas (attractive to non-elites) are mouthed by elites to gain power. Indeed, this is WHY these dogmas are drawn up and written down in books in the first place: so they can be used as tools to manipulate people. In every country--no matter whether communist, capitalist, socialist, monarchical, whatever--the elites, by and large, keep power and preserve it "within the family" from generation to generation, through "revolution" after "revolution". Arguing that Stalin is not a Marxist is like saying that no one who has ever been somewhat responsible for killing someone can be a Christian. Preserving the name and ideology of Marx (or Christ) in such a way has no other service other than to make him easier for non-elites to pointlessly fawn over and worship...and to make it easier for the NEXT group of useful masses to fall for the same trick (or a variation of it) the next time around.
There are often scared reactions whenever someone brings up the name of someone who is a sacred cow to certain groups or a bugaboo to others. Often in America, the name Marx is shunned for no real reason; politicians distance themselves from anything that seems vaguely connected to something Karl Marx might say, simply because it sounds scary to American ears. This ignores the huge positive influence that Marxism has had; it has contributed to many great social reforms worldwide. However, there's also the other side of Marxism, and there's the fact that taken as wholesale ideology Marxism is simply propaganda to goad the working class into destroying the middle class. Why destroy the middle class? Because a middle class poses the only genuine threat to the small ruling elite. After the middle class is destroyed, the lower class and the gullible middle-class Marxists who fought against their own interests can simply be dictated to and led around as the children they are--period. This is simply the way of things, and I'm not demonizing any group here. If the elites can succeed in tricking people in these ways--I guess Darwinism gives them the right to be superior.
Marxism sells the people a fairy tale that "history is inevitable"; in other words, don't worry about anything, don't second-guess, and don't notice the men behind-the-scenes who will always take over after "the people" win "their" "revolution". Marx was funded by very rich men (call them the capitalists of then-nascent corporations, call them elites) to write his half-true, half-deceptive mind-screw of an ideology. To take Marx's every word to heart is to be propagandized, no matter how smart you are, how good your intentions, or what degrees you hold. Marxism was drawn up as a mass of half-truths and half-misleading directives for certain do-gooders to follow. Anyone who understands mass psychology knows that you don't miss the opportunity to draw up and financially support such a persuasive ideology full of genuine criticisms and insights about the ways of the world, without also loading it with misinformation to control mid-level scholars and intellectual people.
Actually, Alphadel, I think that you misunderstand my position here. My only intention is to establish that the 'message' of Boorman's film is leftist-radical rather than rightist-conservative. Whether I am one who whole-heartedly subscribes to Marxist philosophy as the only solution to the political, social and economic crisis we cuurently face, or one of those who sincerely believes that Marx was a power-hungry, vicious-minded demagogue who's doctrine was worse than anything before or since is totally irrelevant to the issue at hand. The only question is, does 'Zardoz' have a political message that is more consistant with that of the Socialism than that of Capitalism. I believe that, when you employ a Marxist analysis, you will most certainly find that it does!
Your reference to the fact that Karl Marx was bank-rolled by his long-time friend and collaborator, Fredrich Engels, only reinforces my argument. Engels owned a factory and was a very successful businessman. Yet he diverted much of his profit-margain into funding Marx and the Communist International. Fredrich Engels was nothing less than a class-traitor! His position is mirrored in the film 'Zardoz' by that of Arthur Frayn. This man is one of the most respected figures in the Vortex, and he owes his priviliged position to the dispossession of the Brutals and their exile to the wastelands. He is like the rest of the Eternals in that he wants for nothing, but he is also painfully aware that everything he has, he took from the Brutals. Over the years, Arthur Frayn has grown to hate the Vortex and everything it stands for. He then spends the next several decades, perhaps centuries, working to bring the regime to an end. And he employs every one of the considerable resources the Vortex can offer him to do it!
On the others issues that you raised: Karx Marx died in 1883, and did not live to see the birth of powered flight, the asssembly lines at Ford's plant or the first combine harvester. He was not a science-fiction writer such as HG Wells or Jules Verne. Marx did not pretend to foretell the future in the specific sense of the invention of heat rays and moon rockets. However, I believe that it is clear that - in general terms - he was able to predict the crisis that 'labour saving' technology would lead too. Remember, it was Marx's belief that social change could only come about through technological progress that marked him as distinct from other socialists. Before Marx, most of the International passionately believed that communism could have been established at any time, in any period in history. George Orwell believed this all through the Spanish Civil War and World War Two. Some, like the Anarchists who follow the creed of Michael Bakunin, still do so even today! Marx went as far as to support 19th Century imperialism on the grounds that it was a 'progressive' force against fuedalism and theocracy. It was not until Lenin in the 20th Century that Marxists decided to oppose Empire on the grounds that it had served it's historical purpose, and was now a impediment to the communist struggle. Marx's argument was that society could only progress in stages, and capitalism was an essential stepping-stone in the path to socialism. It was, however, only a stepping stone because the regime was fated to self-destruct due to it's own internal contradictions. In his own words, "Capitalism is it's own grave-digger!". The formation of a Communist Party to seize immediate control of the state might be seen as pointless exercise considering Marx's position that socialism was inevitable, but Marxists would argue that it the best way to avoid the establishment of a 'two-tier' society of Haves and Have-Nots like the one depicted in 'Zardoz'. Capitalism's last - and barbaric - hurrah!
As for whether or not Stalin was a 'true' Marxist or not, I recall something which may amuse you. In the 1980's, a satirical magazine ran a on 'how to' guide to setting up your very own socialist revolutionary movement. There were various 'boxes' to tick so that prospective Commissars could define their position to the masses. One of the questions was:
The Soviet Revolution turned away from Socialism in:
A) 1917
B) 1924
C) 1953
D) It hasn't yet, but my Party will be the very first to comdemn it when it does!
The Soviet leadership unquestionably betrayed socialism, but the vexed question of exactly when when it happened remains a matter of some debate!
I apologise for trying out a whole load of contradictory ideas, I'm trying to explore the film from different angles.
'Marxism sells the people a fairy tale that "history is inevitable"; in other words, don't worry about anything, don't second-guess, and don't notice the men behind-the-scenes who will always take over after "the people" win "their" "revolution"'
Actually Marx's theories are very suspicious of men of action such as Napoleon, it sees the revolution as the mass rising up.
I tend to think he is a better tool for looking at history, but Marx IMHO was right when he suggests that capitalism will turn into a monopoly of a handful of companies moving in ever decreasing circles rather than a "free market".
"Saying Stalin wasn't a "real" Marxist is like saying George Bush isn't a real Christian Conservative. "
Well, Stalin didn't follow Marx's historical patterns, and Bush ignored Jesus' teachings about war and poverty/the rich.
I think the USA, and the Western World, share something with the Vortex. They are both minorities controlling most of the resources, we stay rich while the majority is submerged. The entire world population can't have our lifestyle, it's just not possible, but we live in a bubble where we think televisions, telephones and cars are part of normal existence for most people. They're not. Most people in the world don't even have clean water, let alone proper electrical equipment.
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so the floating head IS a statue of Karl Marx-but this is left for only the smarter ones to catch0it is never explained in the film
shareI dunno, "The penis is evil but the gun is good." I'm pretty sure that was the slogan Ronald Reagan used to get re-elected
shareFair dues, David-2271. I think that "The Penis Is Evil!" was also the slogan of much of the Feminist Left during the heyday of Andrea Dworkin and her far-from-merry band...
share"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the wim of circumstance. And barbarism must ultimately triumph." ...Robert E. Howard. No film tells this motif more capably than Zardoz.
shareInteresting position, Diddymuck. The German revolutonary Rosa Luxemburg's wrote her 1915 Junius Pamphlet while imprisoned for opposing the war. The key note of the pamphlet was that that social conditions has progressed so far that humanity was faced with a simple choice - an advance to socialism or a collapse into barbarism.
In fact, Luxemburg's phrase 'Socialism or Barbarism' was regarded as having such impact it was adopted as a post-war revolutionary slogan. It was almost a popular as 'Power to the People' in some circles.
owenrcarpenter post made me regain faith in the so-labelled 'human' 'race'.
You should multiply! The penis is good!
;) Thanks for this superb analysis!
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Underwater Island will rise.
Thanks very much, Keyser Soze smokes, it was my pleasure. Would you believe that my entire critique of 'Zardoz' was born from a joke? It's true! I was chatting about the movie with friends back the 1980s and I made a reference to the opening scene of the stone head sailing through the air as 'like the bust of Karl Marx looking around for Highgate Cemetary'. Something just went 'click' in my brain and I decided to apply a Marxist analysis to the film. It seems to hold up quite well, even if I do say so myself.
Actually, when you consider the growth of so-called 'gated' communities in the 1980s and 1990s, aand then combine that with Prince Charles's oft-quoted idea that we should 'live where we work' we may already have the beginning of a Vortex network in the US and UK. If we then add the massive social problems created by mass unemployment and social exclusion, it could be argued that we have already created a 'brutal' underclass of dispossessed workers! I guess that only time will tell who's right on that score.
"Prince Charles's oft-quoted idea that we should 'live where we work' we may already have the beginning of a Vortex network in the US and UK."
Good points. There is one thing against it though, people genuinely like to leave the house, and/or socialise at work. Otherwise they get depressed.
I think the head is actually based on Boorman himself, but you're right, it does look like Marx.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
Is there any depth to looking at it the other way around? That the "Brutals" locked the snobby upperclass away so they could be prevented from doing more damage to the earth?
shareNah don't buy it. They didn't have the means and the damage is already done.
But it is quite a good metaphor for how a handful of people in the west with televisions, telephones, computers and condos hold the majority of the world captive for their comfort.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
I watched "The Thief Of Bagdad" last night and I can see a sure way that the Brutals could have trapped the Eternals into the Vortexes. After Abu has released the genie and the genie is going to kill him, Abu says before I die. I don't believe you came from that bottle, I think you're big but not powerful enough to fit in that bottle. The Genie says "Oh yeah, watch" and smokes himself back into the bottle, whereupon Abu corks it again.
Now when the Eternals have claimed to have done the Earth damage but it's okay because they have the technology to take the race to other planets, I can envision that it didn't take a genius to come up with "Oh yeah, demonstrate." and when they were inside, the Brutals surrounded them with such manpower that the Eternals couldn't lower their shield for fear of death. This is a possible explanation why Friend is so mumbly when Zed asks him how went the space mission? In the book, some left and are still traveling out there in space, but in the film, Friend seems a bit embarassed to talk about the "Capable of space" issue. He might not want to admit that great minds as they claimed to be could fall for such a ruse.
It's a nice idea, Mehaul, but I think that the logic falls flat. For a start, you seem to be confusing metaphors with hard reality. May tells Zed that the Vortex network was established because 'the world was dying', yet the outlands seem to harbour a pretty numerous population of Brutals. In fact, this population is so heavy that Frayn convinces the other Eternals to establish the Exterminators to police the outlands. This is obviously not a world which is facing enviromental disaster. When May says 'the world was dying' I believe that she was refering to the business world - the world of industry and commerce - rather than the physical world.
May clearly states that the older generation of Eternals were made up of the rich, the poweful and the clever. It would have been these people who owned the technology that would raise them to the level of Gods. May's generation were just in the twenties when the Vortex was established, but they would still have had their parents values and mind-set ingrained upon them. If the business world was dying that meant the whole world was dying. The technology that should have taken humanity to the stars was twisted to create the Vortex network instead of terraforming Mars or Venus.
It is never spelled out why the space programmme was 'a dead-end', perhaps it was deemed to be unecononmic and closed down like the rest of the world's enterprises. Whatever the case the Vortex network is clearly a system of fortresses rather than a string of prisons. The Eternals can come and go as they please, whereas the Brutals cannot. Life in the Vortex is luxuriant and relaxed, whereas life in the outlands is harsh and desperate. It is clear that the Eternals chose this existance rather than having it forced upon them. Most telling is the conversation between Friend and Consuella in which it is remarked that Arthur Frayn was delegated to 'control the outlands'. How many prisoners get to control the outside world from their cells? No, the Eternals got to build their space stations and off-world colonies just fine. They just build them right here on the surface of the Earth!
No, go read the book. The Earth was dying as a result of some unmentioned event. After 400 years they were now able to use the soil again to plant grain crops.
May's generation were only in their teens and younger when the Vortex was built.
And, there was a space effort that went to the stars. They just haven't bothered to send back any status reports.
We aren't shown much of the Brutals existence except for dying at the hands of the Exterminators. Where do you come up with this "They cannot go where they want" idea? Outside, the world all belonged to the Brutals except for the several Vortexes and the ONE Exterminator camp. That was on one continent, so what went on elsewhere? Don't tell me you know.
Referring back to that other movie, "Soylent Green", I could see the peoples of the world revolting and forcing the wealthy into enclaves of their own design. Whether built by us or them, it was still a prison and only the head went outside it on robotic missions from cell to cell. At times it is the warden who is the prisoner, just like the Djinn in the bottle.
No reproach but just a bit of clarificationing (He He He love that Bush)
The population in the first Vortexes were from infants all the way through the elderly. I think Friend mentions this a little when Zed is being the workhorse in the bread delivery operation. He says how Tabernacle began to control at a certain age and then any more aging was enacted as punishment. In the flashback of when the elders are announcing the closing of the Vortexes, you can see prepubescents in the audience.
There was a successful space operation that just hasn't bothered to report back to Earth as yet. (Oh there's the sequel lead-in. Zed's descendants recieve a signal from an existing vortex group in space about coming home. This way real contrast can be made betweeen two different evolutions of the same gifted societies..
Frayn and Friend intentionally set up the debate about controlling the outside as a ruse to be able to get away from Tabernacle and do some genetic engineering, or selective breeding is a better term.
The genie could do whatever he wanted to do inside the bottle, just as the Eternals could. But he wanted freedom outside while the Eternals for the most part felt free inside the prison. And in that regard one is not a remake of the other film.
"In the flashback of when the elders are announcing the closing of the Vortexes, you can see prepubescents in the audience."
Yes, Boorman's real life children in small cameos, no less!
I assumed that they grew to adulthood (twenty something) and then any aging after that was punishment.
The original older people got aged even more because they rebelled, as we find out in the renegade's rest home.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
All in the family
Mr Boorman used one daughter (Katrine)in Excaliber as the rival wife Igrayne who did the Salome dance then was raped by the husband-impersonating Uthor and as nursing mother. Another daughter as the Lady of the Lake who had to endure near freezing water for hours to get the shot right and his son as the prepubescent Mordred who was massaged by Helen Mirren (be still my heart). Isn't his wife or ex credited with the costume design of Zardoz (that is the diaper, the boots and the spiffy Egyptian headgear? Yes I've just checked the credits here and confirmed (He He He) at Wiki that Christel Kruse Boorman, his wife, did the costume designs.
>>But it is quite a good metaphor for how a handful of people in the west with televisions, telephones, computers and condos hold the majority of the world captive for their comfort. <<
Yeah, what do people in underpriviledged countries need with things like sustainable food, running water, electricity, shelter and medicine when they can have your paranoid anti-globalization misinformation and oppressive political ideologies instead?
Self-entitled *beep*
The head of Zardoz was based on Boorman himself? I guess that Charley Boorman must take after his mother!
sharei agree with your general conjecture that technology is going to wipe out the basis for a capitalist society. i see most of the arguments from this thread are historical back and forth the usual marx versus ect, and my only thought is how seemingly slow the transition will appear and then become a torrent of innovation.tea party people are really and i mean really stupid. they want to fight the labor wars of the last century parroting slogans from the fifties thinking african americans and mexicans are their mortal enemy. a socialist society is to be abhorred as ungodly and in ten years when most of the service economy, you know the 80% that is left of this country, will be administered by screens that talk, instantaneous data bases that communicate your very move and can predict your next thought. but unlike most people i don't fear a world without manufactured labor. i'm an artist perhaps like your a musician or another guy likes to play golf all day. smart people can find plenty to do when exempted from manual labor. great value will be placed on the items individuals make. great value will be placed on the freedom from useless work tedious redundant crap we all have to do in order to survive.the stupid and the timid of course are going to fear the unknown and we can be prepared for a huge social battle when the hillbilly begins to destroy the machine mostly out of fear for his soul i think. we can all have a great laugh when the hillbilly starts to look for his soul.i'm going to tell him its under a rock way far away.
shareI must concur with Rockman123 on the reason for the fall of civilisation. Technology simply outstripped the society which had created it. I don't buy the 'poisoned soil' line. This suddenly barren earth sounds too much like the result of an airborne bio-chemical attack to me. And there was no mention of either unproductive earth nor a chemical weapons attack in the movie. I think that we can safely regard the novelisation as 'non-canoniacal'. To answer an earlier point the Eternals CAN come and go as they please! The Vortex barrier is no obstacle to them. If an Eternal has business in the Outlands (like Frayn) then all he has to do is fire up the 'Zardoz' head and he's away!
It is the Brutals who are penned outside!
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This film is powerful because it is essentially, at it's distilled core, a warning against man's attempts to create Utopian societies (which always end up as just another hell), and against man's constant attempts to go against the natural order.I got the same message as you did. I don't really care to jump into the fray of all the different analyses posted here, other to say that I agree with the OP on this particular point. (As far as whether it's a conservative values" message or not, I'm not sure.)
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It's as much about class warfare. The Eternals were from wealthy backgrounds while the average ordinary folks were condemned to live outside the utopian society they established.
-"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense." -Steve Landesberg
Yep. This is a film that preaches a revolutionary message rather than a conservative one. It's all about the battle between the Haves and Have-Nots.
The Eternals had money and power, when the rest of the world went tits-up and went into economic and social meltdown they could seal themselves away with as much technology as they needed to build themselves a paradise. The down-at-heel rabble who slaved away to create that technology were exiled to the shanty-towns and ruins. Interesting how many people misinterpret such a radical film as a supporter of the capitalist system when it is so obviously against it.
Mind you, people have hailed 1968's 'Night Of The Living Dead' as a 'radical' movie for almost 50 years! I find this astonishing as I've never seen ANYTHING that preached Richard Nixon's values so clearly.
Think about it. A random group of US citizens are trapped in a farmhouse and threatened by a faceless horde devoid of any individuality or intelligence, and instead of working together to defeat the foe they allow themselves to be divided by race, generation and class. Yes, it has a 'heroic' black guy in the lead - but everyone who follows him dies because he is totally wrong-headed and unable to heed anyone's opinion but his own. The reason that he got shot by the cops after surviving the zombie attack was not through malice, but because the dumb-ass was skulking in the shadows watching them instead of calling out that he was human and needed assistance. He was killed by his own distrust of legally-constituted authority!
A clarion-call to Young Republicans everywhere, I think.
Stop losing hair over this finnegan dude; this is really about Speedo trying to expandex their market by a temporary deal with the NRA but being stalled by Chanel and its fashion warriors.
(\___/)This is Bunny! Put him on your
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(")_(")world domination