“Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.” – J.G. Ballard
Kate Shaw is immensely frustrated because of the workload she must manage. She has a number of shipments chiefly of experimental Emote Cartridges past due for delivery to the World Wellness Watch (a totalitarian regime, the current one-world government). Kate is sure of the fact that she is going to miss the deadline. Her execution is inevitable, a total obliteration from the contours of the apparently autonomous mode of existence.
The Pleasure-U Bio Drone, her trusted assistant, has been plagued by an undiagnosed mental-disease. Kate Shaw is forced to amputate its head and keep the body alive in the Pleasure Center Casket. Something normally reserved for paying the near deceased clients.
One is reminded of Alphaville by Jean Luc Godard where Alpha – 60 decides to make and alter the rules, the docile human beings must abide by. Here man is surrounded by human beings yet they are so alone, they are surrounded by artificial pleasure yet they are so depressed. The word control is the key. The mind that can create demon like machines must be immediately castrated of its capacity of thinking. The creator must forget about creation, that the art of creation has turned into a distant, almost extinct act.
The Bio Drone’s head, inside a reprogramming bag, continuously calls to Kate’s brain with strange visions. one can’t help but be reminded of 2001 : A space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. The multiple visions of the monolith, the devious machinations of Hal remind us of man’s helplessness against the brutal and ruthless ways of automatons (post human objects caring very little about the pure human breath.)
The music in the movie plays a very important role almost serving as the single most potent force tying one sequence to another rhythmically.
The scenes have been carefully structured one after another making the struggle between the human and the post human forces seem real.
Jean Baudrillard wrote :
“Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals.”
Kate Shaw being a part of the matrix of simulations must be ready for total annihilation sooner or later. Her struggle however inspiring is ephemeral and she must perish sooner or later for the smooth running of the post human machine.
George Bernard Shaw in “Man and Superman ” wrote that man created nothing when it came to creation but outperformed Mother Nature when it is about absolute acts of destruction. Kate Shaw is a victim of her own device, a demon her ancestors once created would eventually consume her and all of mankind.
