Week 14: Satire and Sci-Fi
Write a post about how what you read, listened to or watched for this week explores issues of the present by placing them in the context of an imagined future.
For this week I listened to the first radio episode of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since the first episode was more of an introduction to Arthur Dent and his friend Ford Prefect who turns out to be an alien and saves him from aliens when they destroy Earth. The issue presented in the episode was how a highway in the middle of an old, sleepy town and it reflects on how industrial buildings are pushing into living communities where they are not welcome. The indirect solution was the aliens just so happened to destroy Earth!
The movie Downsizing more directly addressed issues of the present, which is that the environment and Earth is being destroyed because of human waste. However, instead of cutting down on waste or creating alternatives for packaging etc, they choose to downsize the problem...which creates other problems and brings along problems from the regular sized world to the mini world. The truth to Leisuretown is that it is filled with primarily white, middle to upper classed families, and hides the fact that there are slums that contain minorities outside the walls of the town. This problem exists in our world too, cities are shown to be glamorous, rich and successful, but there are people existing in the same vicinity who are struggling. The problem of a wealth divide does not disappear just because humans have been shrunken down, they are simply brought with them in a smaller version. Additionally, by downsizing, this creates further problems, such as the sudden increase in the value of downsizing currency from regular currency. This creates economical issues as people don't have to work anymore since they're set for life with the money they have now.
For this week I listened to the first radio episode of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since the first episode was more of an introduction to Arthur Dent and his friend Ford Prefect who turns out to be an alien and saves him from aliens when they destroy Earth. The issue presented in the episode was how a highway in the middle of an old, sleepy town and it reflects on how industrial buildings are pushing into living communities where they are not welcome. The indirect solution was the aliens just so happened to destroy Earth!
The movie Downsizing more directly addressed issues of the present, which is that the environment and Earth is being destroyed because of human waste. However, instead of cutting down on waste or creating alternatives for packaging etc, they choose to downsize the problem...which creates other problems and brings along problems from the regular sized world to the mini world. The truth to Leisuretown is that it is filled with primarily white, middle to upper classed families, and hides the fact that there are slums that contain minorities outside the walls of the town. This problem exists in our world too, cities are shown to be glamorous, rich and successful, but there are people existing in the same vicinity who are struggling. The problem of a wealth divide does not disappear just because humans have been shrunken down, they are simply brought with them in a smaller version. Additionally, by downsizing, this creates further problems, such as the sudden increase in the value of downsizing currency from regular currency. This creates economical issues as people don't have to work anymore since they're set for life with the money they have now.
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