Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 195
Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar

6 comments

1. Vagrant Rightist says:

   September 23, 2017 at 11:05 am

   I listened to this with great interest as I did watch the film recently, only because of the ongoing discussion of Nolan’s work on Counter-Currents.

   I can’t help feeling differently to the panel in the podcast. I found Interstellar to be an unsatisfactory movie from either an entertainment or right-wing perspective. No doubt, much of it comes down to taste and my own issues, as I have gnawing problems with these kinds of movies (including 2001) and they never seem to go away, no matter how I approach them.

   These films fall into a certain category of sci-fi (which probably has a name) about being touched by some higher force – some unknown presence or Other, aliens, guiding us to a cosmic truth, or, in Interstellar’s case, humanity in the future will save us from humanity’s failings today.

   The presence in these kinds of films, always possesses some God-like qualities, but is a purely scientific secular phenomenon. Whatever it presents always seems to be drawing us back towards some kind of cosmic harmony, understanding, acceptance (sounds a bit like tolerance/diversity right ?) depicted through moments of wonder – it’s supposed to make us feel something profound about humanity’s place in the universe , but in reality just disarms us and makes us silly. Maybe I’m missing something, but that’s how I feel about Cooper getting sucked into the black hole with obligatory light show, and then in the inter-dimensional junction scene pressing on books to communicate to his daughter, and that’s how I felt about that grotesque image of the fetus in 2001/2010.

   There’s something sickly going on here, and we put up with it because we want to be impressed by special effects, or fantasy, or cinematography and so on, but the underlying message itself is a kind of neurological poison.

   I have much more sympathy with sci-fi where there are aliens that mean us obvious HARM. Like in Alien or the TV series V (which I only recently read was intended to be about Nazis.)

   As for the details of Interstellar, the now obligatory ‘magic negro’ is in this film, schooling us on black holes no less. I’m assuming this is now a mandatory requirement of studios to include this nonsense, and is now established as its own kind of science fiction.

   Also no one mentioned Anne Hathaway’s line talking about the embryos, which I don’t remember exactly, but was something like ‘genetic diversity of embryos is vital’!!! It doesn’t sound to me like they were planning our Whiteopia on another world.

   Michael Caine is deeply unconvincing as the head NASA expert, and most characters are rather emotionally two dimensional apart from Cooper and his family, where some effort has been made, although I’m not persuaded by Cooper or his motives.

   The space special effects are mostly very uninspired and don’t even compare well to 2001. The magnitude of space is not well depicted in this film, and even the interior of their space craft appears superficial, more like a set made for television than the big screen.

   In fact the special effects in general are unremarkable, although the exception to this were the waves on the first planet Greg mentioned which were effective, and there was some effort to convey the drama of the docking between the rapidly rotating craft.

   No great effort was made with the shots. Cinematography felt rushed and hammered-out, and frankly any director could have made this film and it wouldn’t have looked much different. I don’t feel Nolan was intellectually or emotionally invested in this production. It would have been a better fit for a Spielberg.

   And there appeared to be some kind of design breakdown when it came to the robot character which was ridiculous.

   So I found it difficult to enjoy as part of a wider genre of these kinds of films which don’t sit easily with me, inadequate from a general sci-fi/special effects perspective, and it had little to satisfy me as someone of the right.

   I didn’t know what I was supposed to be feeling from it, but what I did feel I didn’t like.

   1. Buttercup says:

      September 24, 2017 at 7:28 am

      Movies based on Copernician Spaceology will always be somewhat alienating to anyone inclined to a different cosmological perspective to the secular humanist one.

2. Rick Lee says:

   September 23, 2017 at 5:26 pm

   Greg,

   I really enjoy these discussions on modern cinema/culture from a Rightist perspective.

   Are you aware of the English director, Ben Wheatley? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wheatley

   Two films in particular you will, from a metaphysical standpoint, find very interesting: ‘A Field in England’ and ‘Killlist’. (He also directed the film adaptation of Ballard’s ‘High-Rise’)

   Another film, from the director Shane Meadows, that might take your fancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man%27s_Shoes_(2004_film)

   Finally, it would also be great to read/hear your take on popular fiction. In particular, I’d relish your opinions of Luke Rhineheart’s ‘The Dice Man’ and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s ‘We’.

   In hope and with thanks,

3. Emil P says:

   September 23, 2017 at 11:30 pm

   I think these podcasts is great. But I don’t know how you feel about it, but have you ever thought about putting it up on places like Preaker besides this website?

4. Kudzu Bob says:

   September 24, 2017 at 5:21 pm

   It is likely that the character and actions of “Doctor Mann” are a not-so-subtle dig at climatologist Michael E. Mann, the high priest of the Climate Change cult, particularly when one recalls that “Doctor Mann” fakes data that suggests that the planet that he has landed on is far warmer than it really is.

   Also, my impression of why “Doctor Mann” resorted to murder was in order to to preserve his lofty reputation as “the best of us.”

5. Logical Meme says:

   September 25, 2017 at 1:42 pm

   I agree with John: a segment on Children of Men (2006) might be worthwhile.

   SPOILERS AHEAD:

   Based on the 1992 novel by the late crime fiction writer P.D. James, the story is set in future dystopian England, not so much a ‘Mad Max’ world of total anarchy but more an ‘Escape From New York’ world, where basic government functionality barely manages to take place amidst daily terrorist events, kidnappings, and the like. There is pollution, urban decay, and (for reasons not explored in the film, but we can gather had something to do with nuclear or chemical warfare) the entire world is infertile: people cannot have children. Pregnancies simply terminate well before the due date. We infer food shortages and government rations. People with sufficient means live in giant skyscrapers above the city, while in the streets below it is a no man’s land, the ghetto sections being total war zones.

   The military is everywhere, with tanks rolling down the streets. Government advertisements asking citizens to report illegal immigrants are everywhere. (Illegal immigrants from non-western countries have, naturally, created the dystopian mess to begin with). England has sealed its borders. The police are forever rounding up illegals, detaining them, and expelling them.

   Unassimilated Muslim immigrants (the ‘parallel society’ phenomenon reaching its logical conclusions) form guerrilla armies across England, seeking to overthrow the government. In the extraordinary penultimate scene, we see a Hezbollah-like, ragtag (but uniformed) platoon of Muslim insurgents marching through an embattled, mostly destroyed cityscape. Before we see them, complete with green, Hezbollah-styled bandanas covering all but their eyes, we hear their uniform chants echo through the alleyways: “Alluha Akhbar!”

   Things are so bad, the government includes “Quietus” suicide kits (with all the colors and ad-lingo of a contemporary lifestyle enhancement pharmaceutical product) with its ration kits.

   I’m not sure if the source is P.D. James or Cuarón’s directorial license (Cuarón also co-wrote the screenplay), but there’s a fair amount of P.C. flourishes throughout the film: The Gestapo-like tactics of the “Homeland Security” police, and the latter’s callous disregard for and disrespect of the illegal immigrants they round up, is ham-fisted, moustache-twirling Hollywood villainy. Many of the illegal immigrants detained (held in small, crowded cages, like animals… itself a bit over the top) more resemble emaciated, East European, Holocaust survivors than they do Muslim immigrants, an obvious attempt to draw some sort of misplaced historical analogy.

   A radical, Antifa-like, terrorist group called ‘The Fishes’ are a militant group of Leftists claiming to be an ‘immigrants rights’ group. There is something of an insurgency coalition formed between the radical Muslims and the radical leftists. Doing the illegal immigrants’ bidding, they are source of much of the film’s bloodshed. Thoroughly paranoid in their conspiracy-theorizing, they blame coffee shop bombings not on muslims but on the government. (The sequence with the dreadlocked-wigger is particularly terrifying.)

   The ‘miracle birth’ element of the film’s ending contains obvious Christian overtones (P.D. James was, I believe, a conservative-leaning Christian, which if true surely served to frame her novel’s entire perspective.)

   From a purely technical point of view, Children of Men contains some brilliantly choreographed, single-shot sequences, the most famous being a six-minute-plus scene in which the protagonist Theo is first captured by The Fishes, narrowly escapes their clutches, only to flee to an even more dangerous situation involving government tanks and artillery. It is a most impressive sequence and had to have been a nail-biter for the Director and all involved.

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