|
|
|---|
Demolition Man
This movie, starring Sylvester Stallone, is something more than its title (and the
previews) suggest. It is certainly a very violent film, with Stallone and Wesley Snipes spilling blood and bodies
all over the place. But it is also a rather tongue-in-cheek look at the
possible outcomes of present-day trends.
The premise is that in the mid-90s,
the level of violence in Los Angeles exceeds even the tolerance of
laid-back Californians, and they succumb to the plans of a would-be
Messiah named Cocteau. By the 2030s, he has set
up a society where everybody's whereabouts are known (by an electronic
device surgically implanted in their hands) and where behavior
is carefully monitored. There is no cholesterol, fat, meat, toxics, air pollution, noise pollution, smoking, guns.
Because of AIDS and other diseases, there is no sex, at least no
"exchange of bodily fluids." I leave it to you to find out what Stallone and his pretty policewoman friend do on their
first date.
Anything "bad for you" is
illegal. Bad language is forbidden: when someone utters profanity, a
ticket comes out of a nearby machine removing a "credit." There
is, of course, no money; only electronic transactions of "credits"
monitored by the government. Criminals are frozen and programmed (while
frozen, I gather, though I find that hard to believe) via
electrodes attached to the head, to learn new skills and habits.
Everybody walks around with Polyannish
dispositions, at least on the outside. This is the ultimate Nanny State.
Its cultural barrenness is
symbolized by its popular music, which consists of 1950s and 60s
commercial jingles, believe it or not. And because of the "franchise
wars," all restaurants in the area are Taco Bells!
Understandably, when Simon Phoenix,
the Snipes character, escapes from his ice prison and runs around killing
people, the police are quite incapable of dealing with him. They have
never seen real violence, and they have no idea how to deal with
anyone so barbaric. Thus they release the Stallone
character, John Spartan, who apprehended Phoenix in the 1990s. Sly shows
the wimpish police how to fight.
It turns out that Phoenix's escape
was actually arranged by Cocteau, who wants him
to go underground and kill the leader of what he considers a rebellious
group. Actually, the rebels are just plain folks, who treasure their
freedoms and don't want to live in Cocteau's New
Order. They like their guns and their junk food; they like to cuss.
Unfortunately, they have a hard time getting food; most of the time they
"have to" steal it from the world above. So they stage raids on
the New Order from time to time. This irritates Cocteau
no end, who sends Phoenix to dispose of them. Unfortunately for the plan,
Phoenix kills Cocteau (among many others) and
puts himself in control of things, briefly, until Stallone
gets to him. How could Cocteau have been so
stupid as to believe that he could control that mad dog Phoenix?
Especially after he programmed Phoenix in his ice cube to be even badder than he was in 1995? But in this sort of movie,
logic is a luxury.
While we're on the subject of logic,
whatever happened to the daughter that Spartan just had to find? After the
beginning of the movie, we never hear of her again. Perhaps they decided
to save her for Demolition Man II.
The chases and violence are rather
long and tiresome. I don't take them very seriously, for it is mostly
choreography, but I suspect some people might be nauseated by it.
What is interesting, of course, and
often very funny, is the social satire. The movie takes as its targets, as
few have, many liberal notions: "political correctness" and its
attempts at thought control, extreme environmentalism, government
activism, the tendency of liberal governments to "protect us
from ourselves." The film sides against all of this and in favor
of the plain folks who love freedom.
But to my mind, the plain folks,
though presented as much more attractive people, are not much better than
the New Order gang. Their goal is autonomy. They don't want to take orders
from anybody, and the freedom they want is to shoot guns, cuss,
smoke, listen to rock music, and steal. I think if I lived among
them, I'd find the New Order rather attractive.
So the film presents two
alternatives: extreme liberalism and secular libertarianism. More or less.
The extreme "liberals" also prohibit abortion; but didn't the
filmmakers know that there is a vast difference between the anti-abortion
mentality and the mindset that says "what's bad for you is
illegal?"
At the end, with Cocteau
and Phoenix out of the picture, Stallone brings
together representatives of the two groups and tells them to find a happy
medium somewhere. But is that the answer for society? A happy medium
between totalitarianism and anarchy? Those seem to be the alternatives
apart from Christian standards. The film's value is to make that plain.
Apart from biblical revelation, how can anyone determine where the prerogatives of government end and the rights of the individual begin? The difficulty of this question pressures secular political theorists toward the extremes of totalitarianism and anarchy. Scripture, however, places both government and the individual under God and establishes the limits for both. Without it, Stallone's happy medium society seems destined to fall again into chaos or tyranny. And that will doubtless set the stage for the sequel.