Elysium: Ugh

Some films make racial and class assumptions that can be analyzed. Others openly try to say something meaningful about race and class. Some of the latter fail miserably. Witness Elysium (2013).

In the future of Elysium, 2154, Los Angeles has become an almost entirely Hispanic city (gasp!), and the rich/white (no distinction made) people have escaped this utter chaos (oh the humanity!) by living on a luxurious satellite colony that orbits the earth (white flight much?). The intentional metaphor of the film is one for present-day America and the world- both are segregated in many ways on class and racial lines, sometimes both at the same time. More specific to the film’s intention, there is an obvious disparity between some predominantly immigrant Hispanic communities of L.A. and some predominantly white communities in the same city. Fair point. Despite this seemingly sympathetic allegory for the plight of some Hispanic illegal immigrants, the film takes its premise and polishes it with superficiality from a white perspective that ignores theories and nuances of race and class, and rounds it all out with a comfortable white savior complex.

Enter Matt Damon. Damon plays Max DeCosta. Max’s last name is never mentioned in the film and thus we presume, because we are looking at Matt Damon, that Max is white. It’s quite a lazy and offensive afterthought to make his last name DeCosta. But don’t worry, we don’t know he’s supposed to be Hispanic until the credits roll, which makes it better, I guess? (worse, much worse).

Max is the sole white American man (or apparently sneakily Hispanic man) in a sea of Hispanic faces in futuristic, dirty, dismal Los Angeles. Spanish is identified as having become the lingua franca of L.A. as someone tactlessly says “now everyone speaks Spanish” (press 1 for Spanish, white people!). But thankfully for the illiterate white American contingent in the audience there are hardly any subtiltes, because somehow everyone ends up speaking English ten minutes into the film.

But Max is different. Part of making him the hero and protagonist of the film is his visible racial difference. He is the lone white man amongst the Hispanic citizens on Earth. When he gazes up at the sky and wishes for Elysium, the white audience is supposed to sympathize with him (how did the white guy get stuck on earth while all of the other white people are in the cool space colony?) So Max sticks out like a sore thumb in the landscape of Hispanics, and thus we know that he must be the protagonist of the film.

In many scenes, the Hispanic population serves as background, a United Colors of Benetton ad contrasted against Max’s whiteness. There’s even the classically racist scene of Max walking through the “bazaar” where Hispanic merchants are hawking their wares- the exotic “other” in the background, the white main character in the foreground- that belongs in another offensive movie about the Middle East.

Also, the Hispanic people and other poc aren’t just oppressed and impoverished back on earth- they are portrayed as common stereotypes of “ghetto” people- inspired by violence, gang facial tattoos, and in one scene a woman in a skimpy skirt grinds on a man while he lazes on the couch drinking a beer.

Perhaps the most malignant quality is that the Hispanic and other people of color on earth can’t seem to do anything about their circumstances.

Luckily for the Hispanic people on earth, Max, the white savior, is going to…save them! The ho-hum average white working class American male becomes the hero of the film, a very aggrandizing experience for the white audience. Max eventually saves the day by triggering a computer to give all of the earth people an automatic Elysium citizenship, which rounds out the metaphor for Hispanic immigration to the US and other poc’s immigration to other “white” countries.

At the end of the film, the liberated earth citizens celebrate, and (offensive scene incoming) an African boy (wait, how did this become about Africa? Doesn’t matter, it’s someone of color)  runs shirtless, in slow motion, with a beaming smile to welcome the heroes’ spaceship as it lands back on earth. “Thank you Matt Damon for freeing us.”

So, the people of color (yes, there were no other white people on earth besides Max, which seems to say that all white people were rich enough to escape earth, which is problematic in and of itself) do not liberate themselves. They can only find freedom and Elysium citizenship through Max’s heroism. If we played out the metaphor, it would be tantamount to Matt Damon passing out American green cards to everyone in third world countries. White savior down to a tee.

The film is using a heavy-handed metaphor to say that America is segregated on class and racial lines, and that Hispanic groups immigrating to the country are often persecuted. There is a scene where Max’s Hispanic girlfriend and her daughter make it to Elysium but they are identified by a drone as “illegals” and they come under attack, a clear nod to the persecution of illegal immigrants in the United States.

But wait a minute- they speak English fluently, even though they are in the purely Spanish speaking Los Angeles of the future.  They almost seem like a Hispanic woman and her daughter who live in present-day L.A. So, in this metaphor, are they recent Hispanic immigrants? Legal or illegal? Did their family emigrate from Mexico in the 1950s or Guatemala in the 1990s? What if they are American citizens of Hispanic descent, or rather- Americans? This is where the film’s extended metaphor starts to break down. The Hispanic population of America (53 million) who have been living in Los Angeles and the rest of the U.S. for generations- you know, Americans- where do they fit into this “impoverished Hispanic illegal immigrant” metaphor? The answer is the filmmakers don’t care about these questions. The Hispanics in the film are just assumed to be lower class and illegal by the nature of the metaphor- it’s a fait accompli. So why can’t anyone from the Hispanic population on earth afford to travel to Elysium? Are there any affluent Hispanic people on earth in 2154, and if so, why haven’t they opted for Elysium? We will never know, because understanding the historical, social and economic nuances at play is irrelevant to the filmmakers.

The film could be a lot more relevant to these issues if a Hispanic leader led thes people on Earth to their liberation, but this of course would be too threatening to white audiences. Instead, we get Max, played by white Matt Damon, with a Hispanic name tacked on in the credits.

Nothing about Max is Hispanic. He walks, talks and acts like the actor Matt Damon, who walks, talks and acts like an average  white American male. Oh wait, he occasionally speaks Spanish to the Spanish-speaking people of L.A. in the film, but this seems more about giving Max “street cred” with the “others” on earth than it is about giving him a real Hispanic identity. Oh, and in flashbacks to Max’s childhood the director inserts a nun who tells him the story of Elysium (right? because Hispanics are Catholic?). Face, meet palm.

Max can’t have a Hispanic identity in the film, or be played by a Hispanic actor, because then white audiences wouldn’t be able to sympathize with him. It is egregiously problematic that Max is described as Hispanic in the credits (Spanish last name) but vanilla white in the action onscreen (nothing Max does is culturally Hispanic, or something Hispanic audiences could say is representative of any facet of Hispanic identity).

So, Elysium attempts to say something about race and class, but like another big-budget predecessor which made the same attempt, Crash (2004), it barely scratches the surface of these issues, instead serving up a safe understanding of these problems for white people, with an even safer avenue of analysis through the white savior Matt Damon.

In short: movie tries to say something about class and race, but totally phones it in, offending everyone in the process.

Finally, my favorite scene in the film: Elysium’s secretary of defense (played by Jodie Foster) is shown in a quick shot checking her state-of-the-art watch, which has a large BVLGARI logo on it. So while trying to criticize class stratification, the film also offers a luxury brand the opportunity to enforce its class distinction with a product placement that capitalizes on that very same class stratification going on in the film. If that’s not comedy, I don’t know what is.

September 25, 2012- “Come, Holy Spirit” by Czeslaw Milosz

Come, Holy Spirit

Come, Holy Spirit
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow
covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.

 

Czeslaw Milosz, 1961

 

Milosz’s poem doubles as a prayer, and it is derived from the sacred hymn “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” attributed to Rabanus Maurus, a 9th century writer.

Here is the original hymn, translated from the Latin:

Come, Holy Spirit, Creator blest,
And in our souls take up your rest;
Come with your grace and heavenly aid
To fill the hearts which you have made.

O Comforter, to you we cry,
O heavenly gift of God Most High,
O fount of life and fire of love,
And sweet anointing from above.

You in your sevenfold gifts are known;
You, finger of God’s hand we own;
You, promise of the Father, you
Who do the tongue with power imbue.

Kindle our senses from above,
And make our hearts o’erflow with love;
With patience firm and virtue high
The weakness of our flesh supply.

Far from us drive the foe we dread,
And grant us your peace instead;
So shall we not, with you for guide,
Turn from the path of life aside.

Oh, may your grace on us bestow
The Father and the Son to know;
And you, through endless times confessed,
Of both the eternal Spirit blest.

Now to the Father and the Son,
Who rose from death, be glory given,
With you, O holy Comforter,
Henceforth by all in earth and heaven. Amen.

 

Milosz struggled with his faith throughout his life. Is his poem, in contrast to the certainty of the hymn, an admission of his agnosticism?

Milosz, in an interview with the Paris Review, discusses his faith’s role in his poetry:

But the trouble is that writing religious poetry in the twentieth century is very difficult. We are in a largely postreligious world. I had a conversation with the present Pope, who commented upon some of my work, in particular my “Six Lectures in Verse.” Well, he said, you make one step forward, one step back. I answered, Holy Father, how in the twentieth century can one write religious poetry differently?

 

For the full interview, click here