HUGE AND LONG POST ABOUT THE MOVIE "IN TIME"
that's what I get for mentioning it, right? people asking me to really talk about it :)
which is fine - the only other thing I want to post about is huge[er], and will be hard, and I'm still working on it.
to start with, let me state that I wasn't expecting to be able to see this movie. the people I used to go see movies with the most - my dad and my best friend - don't want to push me in the wheelchair [and I'm not capable of pushing myself all that far], so I mostly only go to movies with Pete.
who does NOT like anything political.
and this movie is nothing BUT anvilicious politics.
MULTIPLE. GIANT. FUCKING. ANVILS.
so I was a bit shocked when Pete suggested it. in fact, when I looked up movie times, I didn't even list it as a possibility, assuming that he'd have no interest. and he said "wait - I thought In Time was still playing?" and I said "well, yeah, but you don't LIKE politics" and then he reminded me that he's actually be FOLLOWING the OWS-type movements, and thought the movie was relevant.
so. I got to see it. yay!
moving on...
this truly is a HUGE post. in OpenOffice, it's 12 1/2 pages long. and i'm just saying, those of you who asked for this got what you asked for :D
this is the outline: basic synopsis, then a less-long-than-it-was discussion? Tutorial? About the economic and political principles that the society of this movie are based on; after, it's mostly plot summary, until we get to THE ONE, HUGE, SOLE, SINGLE, SOLITARY PLOT PROBLEM OF CHTHONIC PROPORTIONS. No, really - this ONE THING kept throwing me completely out of the story. It never lasted long - and aside from THIS, the movie was awesome. Then, there are fridge logic issues that showed up later, of course - all the best stories have 'em :) these are the footnotes at the end.
for a general plot synopsis, I steal from IMDb:
"Welcome to a world where time has become the ultimate currency. You stop aging at 25, but there's a catch: you're genetically-engineered to live only one more year, unless you can buy your way out of it. The rich "earn" decades at a time (remaining at age 25), becoming essentially immortal, while the rest beg, borrow or steal enough hours to make it through the day. When a man from the wrong side of the tracks is falsely accused of murder, he is forced to go on the run with a beautiful hostage. Living minute to minute, the duo's love becomes a powerful tool in their war against the system
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/
MULTIPLE. GIANT. FUCKING. ANVILS.
first, let me quote myself [since it was that post that prompted the several requests]
"wow, was that movie the exact perfect movie to demonstrate the EXTREME problems with pure, unadulterated, uncontrolled Capitalism"
second, originally I was writing this post and LJ froze, and I don't even know. it was about 5 times as long as this post is at THIS point, and was mostly me defining "Capitalism" vs "capitalism"; "Capitalism" vs "Socialism", etc.
I wonder if LJ was protesting my long and convoluted explanations? so I'll be as brief as possible, but to understand the anvils, one must first understand the principles [and it's my guess that the ONLY reason the studio execs allowed this film to be created and distributed as-is was their almost definitely accurate assessment of the American public - that, for the most part, we don't UNDERSTAND what the actual definitions of any of these things are. people throw around "socialist" as an insult on a regular basis, while refusing to understand that the very fucking network they're USING to throw those insults is the result of a socialistic government program. Most people don't understand basic economics and believe we live in a Democracy. They don't know the difference between Socialism and Communism, often believing they're the same. They don't know the difference between Capitalism and Mercantilism. And etc.]
basics, then.
***WARNING:ECONOMIC/POLITICAL THEORY. PLEASE SKIP TO NEXT SECTION IF THIS BORES YOU***
little-c capitalism is the ECONOMIC theory. it revolves around the idea of a "free market". what "free market" means, in this context, isn't "free things", but rather an UNRESTRICTED [by any agency other than the market itself] market. it is the belief of those who are proponents of the economic theory of capitalism that free markets regulate themselves by what they call "the invisible hand".
the invisible hand is a pretty phrase that means "self-regulating through positive feedback." the problem with this is that it's self-regulating through positive-feedback only. I don't mean positive in the sense of "happy". I'll quote from Wikipedia:
"Positive feedback is a process in which the effects of a small disturbance on (a perturbation of) a system include an increase in the magnitude of the perturbation. That is, A produces more of B which in turn produces more of A.[1] In contrast, a system that responds to a perturbation in a way that reduces its effect is said to exhibit negative feedback. These concepts were first recognized as broadly applicable by Norbert Wiener in his 1948 work on cybernetics.
This does not work in economics. A great example of an attempt at positive feedback in regards to the economy is "trickle-down economics". Supposedly, by allowing the richest to pay LESS in taxes while earning MORE from everything else, their increased net worth will "trickle down" to those below them; they'll buy more goods, which will in turn stimulate production, increasing profits for corporations, which will in turn hire more workers and/or pay them more, allowing those further down the economic ladder to, in turn, buy more products which stimulate production more which increases profits more which hires more people for more money, which in turn means those even further down will by more products...
except this assumes that ALL producers, all employers, and all consumers are "Rational". By "Rational", economists mean is that the richest WILL spend more, because as it trickles down the ladder, it also increases THEIR position. that the employers WILL pay workers more, hire more workers, because more workers with bigger paychecks means that they have more people to buy the things they sell. that producers will continue to increase the number of X product, and adjust the price DOWN, due to the growing number of purchases allowing them to create more at a lower initial investment, thus allowing them to lower prices because the item is now cheaper to make/distribute.
THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN.
the richest DO NOT buy more after a tax cut - they're so rich, an extra 3% of their income doesn't actually change what they buy, because they were already buying as much as they wanted. when their net worth increases - through any means, tax cut, higher returns, pay raise, etc - they bank it. oh, they may bank it in stocks, but they're still just banking it, and the ONLY people to profit from that are the stocks people. as a further issue, most rich people are A) greedy, and don't WANT to share, and B) conscious of their relative position as opposed to their absolute position - in most cases, to mix metaphors, they'd rather be the big fish in the small pond and NOT increase the pond size and take a bigger cut of a bigger pie, if it means that OTHER fish grow bigger. there is no "trickle down" from the rich in these instances. there can't be. imagine a dictator of a small country who has absolute control over everything in it, and is insanely rich compared to every other person in the country. it's quite true that if he allowed more freedoms and increased trade and etc, that he'd become MORE rich - but at the same time, many of the people who are currently in poverty, whom he controls and measures his status in relation to, would ALSO become rich. that means his RELATIVE worth isn't as big anymore. and YES, this is actually quite un-sane, but that doesn't mean it isn't real. it's VERY real - why do rich people oppose a single-payer system? they don't want to share a doctor's waiting room with poor people. [the blather about "not paying for other's health care" is actually bullshit - they pay more NOW than they would under a single-payer system. but I've written about that before]
employers DO NOT raise wages just because profits have increased. and they don't necessarily hire more workers, either. this is because, generally, the employers and producers are the SAME PEOPLE. they have greater profit - and may decline to expand, because that means the price-point stays high. so workers don't increase, and prices don't decrease, because they probably make more money over-all now [again, this probably isn't true, and is un-sane, and really boils down to the same rational for why the richest don't spend more.]
this isn't universally true, of course. in certain fields of employment, there is enough actual competition of recruitment that employers/producers must either pay workers more or take a hit to profits. but competition of recruitment is the ONLY form of market pressure that results in improved wages, it's a very tenuous advantage, and it costs more every year to acquire the education necessary to enter into one of the fields where competition of recruitment is functional.
and most employers prefer it that way. sure, they'd get BETTER workers with more loyalty and drive if they paid more - but that means their employees might become their economic equals.
PEOPLE ARE NOT RATIONAL. individuals can, and generally ARE, rational, but people AS A WHOLE are not rational. the difference between micro- and macro-economics hinges on this difference, but proponents of both little-c and Big-C capitalism INSIST on applying micro principles to macro situations.
and thus is born Big-C Capitalism.
this is the political ideology that "the free market" is not just the BEST, but the ONLY, way to run EVERYTHING. not just production of goods that people don't NEED, but in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, in food production, distribution, and retail; in basic housing; in basic water supply and heating supply; in government itself. Capitalism is why Corporations are now legal persons able to donate MASSIVELY to political campaigns.
Unrestrained Capitalism leads to Oligarchical Economics leads to Monopolizing Economics.
an Oligarchy, in economics, is when there are only a FEW suppliers of X. think OPEC [the oil-producing nations] and how they completely dominate the oil market, charging MUCH more than is necessary for even 200% percent profits. in an Oligarchy, these few suppliers work together on key things - they set prices, for example, and anyone breaking that price will be ganged up on and either brought to heel or driven out of business altogether.
a Monopoly, obviously, is when there's only ONE supplier, who can set whatever prices [and etc] they want. we, in the US, have laws against Monopolies, but they aren't as comprehensive as they could be, have been weakened greatly, and are NOT universally applied.
in both instances, there are two different types of economic control: vertical and horizontal. in vertical control, the company[ies] own everything from the raw good to the distribution [and often the retailer who sells the final product]. like if a books publisher owned all the trees [or whatever they're making paper out of]they need, all the cotton [for hardbacks, sewing] they need; all the glue plants [obvious] they need; they owned all raw materials they need to make ink, the ink makers; they own all the printing equipment they need; they employ all the editors and agents they need; the own the advertising company; they own the distribution service; they own all the Barnes&Nobles. [I know I said "they need" a lot in there.]
in short, at NO point are they buying ANYTHING from anyone else [aside from the stories themselves, and they try REALLY hard to contract the authors so they own them, too].
in horizontal control, they own ALL the book retailers. they don't own presses or ink or editors, but EVERY book sold? is sold by THEM.
both types of control are common in both Oligarchy and Monopoly economic systems. the railroads and Railroad Barons were broken because of the vertical monopoly, especially of steel and coal. the long-distance phone monopoly was broken because of the horizontal control. we still experience both, to an extent, because most areas of commerce are INCREDIBLY difficult to enter, if one is not already rich. it's inevitable, ANY pure-capitalistic - in either sense - endeavor will eventually turn into first an Oligarchy, then a Monopoly. note how our elected officials are almost universally rich - they HAVE to be to even begin to compete in politics. we live in a Political Oligarchy. note how most new restaurants and bars/clubs close within a year, because the start-up costs are astronomical for the non-rich, and most places can't even BREAK EVEN the first year. I could cite examples for DAYS, but it's not necessary - even my Youngest Sister [the blondest person in the world, I SWEAR] can name a dozen businesses or commercial endeavors off the top of her head that only the rich can do.
one last aspect that's VITALLY important here: the concept of a sum-zero system. for instance, the world's oil supply is a sum-zero system; there's only so much, and for entity A to have more, Entity B must have less.
the PROBLEM is that, in MANY areas of economics, it doesn't HAVE to be a sum-zero game. but it's the ingrained idea of sum-zero economics that makes rich people want to keep poor people poor - they literally don't UNDERSTAND that the whole pie can get bigger.
this is the OTHER basic economic concept that In Time is built around.
***DISCUSSION OF GENERAL ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL THEORY OVER***
what we have, in this movie, is both an economic and a political Capitalism that has progressed to Oligarchy and is almost to pure Monopoly.
it's also, quite literally, the PUREST form of Capitalism possible. we hear, all the time, that "time equals money.". right now, we are paid X amount per hour [or portion thereof] that we work. we then spend that money on goods and services. then we work some more to get more money so that we can continue to purchase goods and services.
the basic concept, this "Pure Capitalism", has eliminated the middle-man of cash [which replaced barter], and now one is "paid" in literal time.
because, as the spiel from IMDb explains, you live "for free" for 25 years - at which point, you both A)stop aging and B)have exactly one year of "time" before you die, unless you somehow - work, investment, robbery - earn more time. if something should happen to prevent you from working [and you don't start off rich] you "time out". you die.
there are ways to get "time". you can work. you can steal. you can gamble. you can be gifted.
of course, anything that one would pay for is ALSO paid in "time". the rent, food, power, clothing, so on and so forth.
this society is our own, writ large. the main character, Will, lives in the worst area [ghetto, really] where people LITERALLY live day-to-day. he wakes up, and has 18 hours of life.
we know this, because EVERYONE has a CLOCK [bio; their skin cells form a digital readout of their personal time] on their left arms. who needs a watch, when you can literally look at the seconds of life you have remaining? *ANYONE* can see what amount of "time" ANYONE has [unless they cover their arm]
he walks out of his bedroom and bumps into his mother - who I assumed at first was his girlfriend. that whole stop aging at 25 thing. it's his mother's 50th BDay.
she gives him 30 minutes so he can "take a lunch break", and then goes off on a rant about how they owe something like 8days of time in rent, and 20 hours in electricity [I'm making up the times - I was so horrified by the concept that the actual numbers slipped by altogether]
he goes to work. the price of a cup of coffee has increased, overnight, from 3 minutes to 4 minutes.
dude, at this fucking point in time, Will won't live to see TOMORROW - and he spends 4 minutes on a cup of coffee.
after his work day, he isn't paid what he'd been paid the day before - the price paid per finished item had gone down.
again, on both of these. there's a mention that the same thing had happened in the recent past - price of things bought increased, price paid for work/items sold decreased.
later, at a bar, Will runs into some random dude who has over a century on his clock, who is being stupid, hanging out in the POOREST area, and a gang of time-thieves comes in and are going to "steal" this guy's time.
Will stupidly but noblely helps him run away and hide.
they talk. guy spouts off a line, something along the lines of "For a few to be immortal, the majority must die".
remember that sum-zero economic system? that's this.
except, says has-a-century-dude, this isn't TRUE. he says that there *IS* enough time for EVERYONE to live, for centuries if not for forever. [and we don't meet anyone who claims to be older than a couple of centuries. we aren't given ANY dates - we know this system has been around for, at minimum. 75 years, because there's a "time cop" whose been one for 50 years, and one LITERALLY cannot work a legal job until 25*. for all we know, the system is only as old as the oldest claimed aged of less than 2 centuries, except we have no PROOF of that age. if we take it as a given... except he, said oldest claimed age, seems to have grown up with this system fully in place, not as a "new" system, but as one that's been around for a while. if it *IS* older than oldest claimed age, we have the most STAGNANT culture fucking EVER on display, here. other than the medical advances - which are awesome and huge in scope; illness is GONE in toto - all of which were finished BEFORE the "time" system [since it was the culmination of the medical advances that allowed the time system - if they hadn't been able to prevent every disease ever AND "freeze" aging at 25, it wouldn't have worked at all. this brings up a new side issue, that I'll explore later**]
anyway. Century-dude and Will continue their conversation, Will chastising century-dude and century-dude essentially saying “I'm fucking old and I want to die now.” Will gives him a lecture on not “wasting” his time, offended that a Rich Dude would just throw away his time.
And now we're at the portion where the ONE, SOLE, SINGLE, SOLITARY HUGE PLOT HOLE THAT PISSES ME OFF STARTS TO SHOW.
Century-dude, after he wakes up but before Will does, grabs Will's right arm [left arm has clock, right arm is where you exchange time... except I think *sometimes* that wasn't consistent, and I'm not sure if that was accidental or not] and give to Will all but 5 minutes of his time.
WHAT?!
I'll come back to the “what”.
Will wakes up a few minutes later, sees a note written in the dirt of the window, takes off to try and save century-dude from his suicide. Century-dude is sitting on the railing of a bridge
This is a THING that bugged me, but isn't the plot hole - the Time Police find the body of century-dude, and automatically it's assumed that it was theft/murder. Then they get video, but said video ONLY shows Will standing at the bridge, then running away. It doesn't show century-dude's death. It doesn't show Will's arrival AFTER century-dude times out. Just Will standing there, NO century-dude in frame, then Will running away.
Then he gives his best friend a decade. Then he goes off to meet his mom - he has a CENTURY now, he's going to take her someplace nice for her Bday! [I knew she was going to die even BEFORE this scene started. Of course she would. Sigh]
his mom goes to get on the bus back to where they live from the place she worked. She has 1.5 hours left.
Inexplicably, the price of the ride has DOUBLED since yesterday, from one hour to two.
The bus driver is an utter dick, won't let her ride and pay after she gets to her son. She desperately notes that it's a two hour walk [much shorter by bus, obviously] and driver says “better run then”.
She takes off running. There are a couple of side-tracks, where she deviates from the fucking path and tries to get a random stranger to give her some minutes - minutes, I'll add, that she wouldn't have fucking needed if she hadn't wasted the fucking time to try and get them. erm, sorry.
The bus shows up at the bus stop where Will is waiting for his mom with flowers - he drops them and starts running towards the place his mom works.
And she dies LITERALLY 2 seconds before he can give her time.
Of COURSE she did.
And the next thing we see, Will's all dressed up, has called a limo to pick him up, and spends several years getting to the most expensive living area. [it doesn't take years to get there - he loses them from his clock. That's going to happen a lot]
He's seen by Sylvia in the hotel he's staying at [Sylvia becomes the love interest later] then Will and Sylvia meet while Will's playing poker with her father. [there's this side convo of “life used to be a bit simpler - is she my mother, my sister, my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter? One can no longer tell by looking” sort of thing,] then Sylvia's father introduces her to Will as his daughter and she invites him to a party.
At the party, she ditches her body guard, and they go skinny dipping for a few, she bemoaning the lack of LIVING rich people embrace - half spoiled rich girl, have caged nightingale. [and her acting was phenomenal, BTW]. And then TIME COPS, and they're TAKING all but 2 hours from Will, enough to “process” him, and here's the giant WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!?!?!?!?
so - I'm not TOO upset and/or disturbed that one can GIVE time to one who isn't actively participating. It's sort of like reverse-pickpocketing money into someone's pocket [like when CERTAIN friends of mine refuse to take gas money despite driving all over creation for me]
[on the other hand, I AM pissed that the Time-cops KNOW how much time century-dude “lost”, and Will has earned MUCH more than that, since - but they take ALL his time, including the vast majority of his time that is legit in every sense, and no one DISPUTES that the rest is legit. SERIOUSLY? sigh]
BUT WHO AND HOW AND WHY AND WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING WHEN THEY DECIDED THAT TAKING TIME DIDN'T NEED CONSENT?!?!
when ANYONE could walk up to a person who is unable to physically stop them and steal their time?!?! [THIS, BTW, is why Sylvia's whole fucking family employs a veritable ARMY of bodyguards. ]
I grant, there are small parts of the plot that are based on this... oversight of titanic proportions.
Let me explain my outrage. They have tech and medical skill to CREATE this time-instead-of-cash-or-barter system. They even had enough foresight to create a secondary means of storing time, in these little stamp-looking devices, so that one could HAVE a century but only carry a few days at a time, to prevent theft of ALL one's time [though this presumes that one has enough EXTRA time to first buy, then USE, said device]
but NO ONE, at ANY point during the creation OR after the implementation of the clock, thought to add a proviso that one must CONSENT to their time being taken?
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING?!?!.
two points: 1 - some of the scenes that show one stealing time happen when/where the owner of said time is unconscious. So there's going to be the “justification” - either the victim, being unconscious, is unable to *stop* said theft, or “the plot of stealing time from an unconscious person requires that one does not need to consent”. I agree with NEITHER justification [though I WILL concede that theft-of-time from an unconscious character *could* be a metaphor for rape, but still makes no sense from the societal viewpoint]. In the first case, I can NOT fucking believe that stealing time is something that happens but NO ONE at ANY fucking point adds a modification so that giving time requires active consent - and that assumes that NO ONE on the creation team for the clock system was smart enough to foresee the problem. In the latter, all you need is for the person to NOT be unconscious, but being threatened with death. Which, BTW, still allows the rape analogy [IF that was actually something intended, and isn't me seeing something I want to be there. Not that I want there to be rape! But I want there to be a conversation about rape, about how unconscious people ARE raped, instead of this whole “well, zie didn't say No, so...” that happens all too fucking often, because if there's no “no”, then somehow it isn't rape, which is utter fucking bullshit. And I don't CARE if it was “unconscious because of medical reason” or “unconscious due to alcohol/drug use”. And I want there to be a conversation about rape, where not fighting because there's a fucking WEAPON or CONVINCING THREAT held to your fucking head is STILL RAPE - because, yeah, people DO still fucking say “but zie didn't fight!”. And when someone replies “Yes, because zie had a fucking GUN held to hir head!” I'm suck of fucking hearing “but zie STILL should have fought!” - because if you don't, quite literally, fight to the fucking DEATH to prevent someone from raping you, there's STILL a loud fucking vocal minority who INSIST you SHOULD have fought to death and that death is better than rape. And now I have to go break things, brb]
ok, so continuing my protestation of this GIANT FUCKING PLOT ISSUE; if all you need to “take” someone's time is your right hand [?] touching THEIR right hand [?***], then we now have a new version of pickpockets - just wander thru a crowd, stealing a few minutes here, a few minutes there...
that's a PROBLEM. And it would NOT be restricted to ONLY the poor.**** and even if it's “full-forearm-grip”, you'd STILL have pickpockets doing it.
Ok, back to plot.
Time Cops want to arrest Will, he somehow gets away and takes Sylvie hostage. She somehow acquired the “knowledge” that Will “murdered” century-dude - despite the Time Cops not ever saying WHY they wanted Will or were taking him into custody to ANYONE but Will - and that, in a closed room.
also: there's this whole THING of head-Time-Cop NOT CARING whether or not Will did, in fact, STEAL the time he has. He doesn't CARE. The ACTUAL crime that he feels Will is guilty of is “being a poor person who is now rich.”
social mobility: not for the poor.
So, Will grabs Sylvia and takes off in his brand new car [that cost a couple of decades, IIRC].
At some point, he asks her for some time. She REFUSES [and Will, being The Good Guy, doesn't force her to] and she refuses ONLY because she “knows” this thing that no one ever told her.
And, remember the gangster guys from waaaaaaaaaaay back, who were wanting to steal century-dude's time? They [SOMEHOW] know EXACTLY where to place spikes on the road, that go off when the attached video camera and it's facial recognition software pegs Will. Spikes deploy. Car goes screaming off-road into a ditch. Gang appears. Lead gangster is PISSED that Will's down to less than an hour. He notes Sylvia's decade, and steals all but maybe 10 minutes. He'd have taken it all except the other gang members keep shouting at him to “come ON!” because she's a rich bitch and cops'll be here ANY MINUTE.
Sylvia wakes up, sees all her time gone, looks at Will, who wakes up just a few seconds later.
AMAZINGLY, being that Will's arm is covered, she DOESN'T automatically assume this “murderer” that's kidnapped her stole her time. No, really - that really, really bugged me. She believes that Will was capable of stealing a century+ from and then KILLING century-dude, but never even fucking CONSIDERS that Will might have taken her time? He totally could have been pretending to be out.
She LITERALLY keeps going on about “how does one just LOSE time”. She doesn't EVER consider that maybe ANYONE stole it. Especially not Will. He's a thief and murderer, but he wouldn't steal from HER. Even though he stole HER. Anyway.
They're close enough to his home town that they walk. They go to his best-friend's apartment. Best-friend's wife opens door, holding their baby, and is INCREDIBLY hostile.
Turns out that he drank himself to death, with one year of that decade Will gave him.
And did you know that if you die and still have time on your personal clock, that time is just LOST. again, WHAT THE FUCK. This isn't the BIG HUGE ONE SINGLE SOLITARY SOLE ISSUE, of course, but it's a HUGE secondary issue. Seriously - that time should fucking be INHERITABLE.
Dead-best-friend's-wife won't give them the time of day - just tells Will that it's all his fault that his best friend died, because what the fuck kind of friend shares their largess when they unexpectedly win the lottery? Yeah, fuck you, Will, for caring about your friends and trying to help them!
[yes, I'm being a bitch, and no, in real life I would NOT ever say that in a way in which the grieving survivor hears, but FUCK! This is the Giant Fucking Anvil About Alcohol and/or Addiction, an extra bit of moralizing thrown in to placate someone, i'm sure. the ONLY plot-worthy reason for this death is to show and/or teach Will that poor people don't DESERVE to be anything BUT poor. and that's the Head-Time-Cop's stance, true - but i really, REALLY wonder if that message was actually the main POINT?! or was it added to placate rich studio execs who, like the rest of the 1%, are TERRIFIED of the poor not being poor? or was it JUST to show that some poor/oppressed people aid in their own oppression? that would be good. or was it REALLY just for the Morality Anvil? that would be bad. *OR* was the entire point just to make it HARD for Will and Sylvia to survive? that's it's most BASIC function, but it has all these incredibly fucked up connotations...]
Will and Sylvia have *minutes* left [in part because Will gave some of HIS to Sylvie - this, AFTER she refused to do the same for him. Anywhoo] and he notes she's wearing “real” diamond earrings.
They rush to the pawnshop, and the only reason they get service is Will puts his boot under the door, and Sylvia rolls her earrings under it. [and then the pawnbroker opened the door and gave them like 3 days - instead of just taking the earrings, like he COULD have. I mean, he cheats them excessively, those earring cost YEARS, but I mean if he's going to cheat them THAT MUCH, why the fuck would he pay at ALL?! Sometimes, characterization is WEIRD. That sort of character, who'd rip them off that much, would TOTALLY have just kept them without paying. Anyway]
Will takes Sylvia to his old place, lets her wear his mom's clothing, and tells her some of his life. She stops believing that he's a thief/murderer. Stockholm Syndrome kicks in.
the next day, Will tries to “ransom” Sylvia back to her father. His demand? That Daddy give X amount of time to the charity. He has 24 hours.
Daddy doesn't pay. They've got less than a day on each of their clocks [same amount of time]
Will takes Sylvia to a pay-phone thing, and has her call her dad. They both have guns, because the gangsters or something. I'm actually not sure WHY Sylvia has a gun at this point, but Will gives her one as they're walking towards the phone. HE wants her to call and get a ride back home - he didn't actually intend to kidnap her and etc, and feels REALLY bad, he's terrified she's going to Time Out and it'll be HIS fault because he took her hostage, etc.
SHE wants to give Daddy shit - why didn't he love her? He just PROVED he didn't love her, because if he DID, he'd have paid the fucking ransom, it's fucking CHUMP CHANGE TO HIM! She's half-yelling at him, turns to where Will's seated on the ground on the other side of the street, and sees Head-Time-Cop sneaking up on Will with a gun pointed at his head.
She shoots Head-Time-Cop. Sadly, she doesn't kill him. Then she grabs Will and they run. Again.
Then she helps Will break into the local Time Bank and steal a LOT of time.
Then they go to other banks. And more. And most of what they steal, they just give away.
Head-Time-Cop is PISSED. He keeps saying things like “Will thinks he's helping, but he's NOT!” did I mention that the story of Will's father's death, as told by his mother, is wrong? Will's father somehow acquired a LOT of time and tried to give it to the have-nots. And that's why Head-Time-Cop killed Will's father, because the poor MUST stay poor - giving them time is just “wrong”. Because Head-Time-Cop KNOWS that it's his JOB to make sure ONLY the rich have enough time to not have to worry DAILY about dying. [the other Time-cops don't actually seem to agree with his assessment as to their function, but don't argue because he's been a Time-cop for 50 years.]
stuff happens, some of it dramatic or whatever.
And then: ironic twist ending. Head-Time-Cop FINALLY corners them. Will tells him that if he's planning on taking them into custody, he'll need to give them time - they both have less than 5 minutes.
Startled and shocked, Head-Time-Cop looks at his OWN clock - he'd been about to download his pay when he saw Will and Sylvia, but stopped to pursue them.
He has 10 seconds left.
He Times Out.
Will and Sylvia go *insane* for a bit - they'd given themselves up because they were so close to Timing Out themselves - and then Will realizes that Head-Time-Cop must have NOT downloaded his time [because A) Will figured out, before the “we'll need time, oh wait you've Timed Out” conversation, that Head-Time-Cop was from the ghetto, too, and so wouldn't carry much time on his person, bcuz ingrained habits of NOT having your time stolen because you had more than a day; and B) he was so fucking focused on running down Will and Sylvia for the crime of giving poor people time, he'd HAVE to have forgotten to download his time in the heat of the moment, because OTHERWISE he wouldn't have Timed Out] and they both start running to his car, Will shouting over and over at Sylvia to “run faster”. He slides into the car, downloads ALL of Head-Time-Cops accumulated time [there's a system in the car that downloads it from the main office], and in a repeat of his mother's death scene, runs back to Sylvia. Except, THIS time he gets to her WITH two seconds to spare.
Then, some months later, the social order breaking down [they'd stolen A MILLION YEARS from Sylvia's father, for one, not to mention all the fucking banks, and all the OTHER people with the most time keep harassing Daddy about it, he keeps swearing it's under control until it's not anymore, and people are crossing into ANY area they want, because they ALL have DECADES] they pull up to a building roughly 10x the size of the Pentagon. Sylvia says “I TOLD you there were bigger banks”, Will replied “You almost missed your calling”, and they start walking up the steps, guns drawn
Fade to Black
*why? I get that, after 25, the clock STARTS, at which point you have "one year" of life - which, if you're poor, you DON'T, because you have to pay to stay alive. further, if you can't EARN money, and can't spend that year before 25, that puts a HUGE burden on parents, having to feed and clothe and shelter you from their own lifespan. that's actually incredibly fucking SADISTIC. there's a little girl, can't be more than 10, who asks Will for a minute - she has a storage device that one can store time in. Will teases her that she's got YEARS before she has to have more time or die, and she replies "still got bills to pay". it's heavily implied that she, and a slightly older boy who MAY be her brother, are orphans, and they live [sometimes - we also see her squatting in what I think was a warehouse] at a charity place that, when it can, gives away time to people. one must assume that, if she *IS* an orphan [as opposed to the daughter of the people who run that specific charity branch] that her parent(s) fucking Timed Out trying to take care of her. now, her ONLY means of support are illegal. she doesn't have anyone [parent, older sibling, guardian, whatever] to purchase food and clothing and etc for her. WHY can't under-25 people earn money? I actually *DO* get [at least my reason for] them not being able to SPEND their "free year" - some parents [and random evil criminal others] would TAKE that year from kids [and there sits another example of the ONE, SOLE, SINGLE PLOT PROBLEM I have.]. the only reason I can see for the system to be set up in such a way that people under 25 canNOT acquire more time [legally] is that they WANT people to die as early as possible. which, I mean, that's heavily inferred, but honestly? they NEED the poor to reproduce so that they continue to have beat-down, uneducated, illiterate, ignorant grunt labor; my best guess as to the average life-span of the poor is about 35*+... which means that they're not even actually able to replace their numbers. and there's a LOT of talk, all over the movie, that the poor MUST be kept always wondering if they have enough time to sleep, that's the ONLY way for the rich to be rich - but there's also the continual implication that the poor are, in SOME way, necessary to continue this "civilization". which I assume is actually pretty much the same reason why, during the Industrial Revolution, the very poorest were necessary to the "civilization" - they made the goods that made the OWNERS of the means-of-production rich. [with a nice side-order of "social inferiors"]. yet they continually raise the time-prices of things, to make it harder for people to actually live beyond 25, they prohibit legal means of earning time *before* 25, and if people really are dying at the average age I'm guessing, it's not a system that can continue. unless they're actually attempting to practice something like class or economic genocide - if the VERY poorest all die, then the "just" poor can take over those jobs, and the "worst" or "lowest" element will be gone... but that just means that the "just" poor will become the *very poorest*, and the cycle continues. I'm NOT saying that there isn't a good rational [from the place of the storyline and the way many, if not most, rich people think] - I'm just saying that this? is another of the giant anvils about the evils of pure C/capitalism. the rich are actively trying to kill the poorest, but using methods that aren't immediately apparent as genocidal actions - which isn't all that far from what the rich are doing TODAY, now is it? the people who can MOST AFFORD to pay taxes, who wouldn't even NOTICE paying another 3% in taxes, whose tax rates have been dropping steadily for decades while their income [both gross AND net] has increased exponentially, are the ones demanding not only LOWER taxes [but ONLY for themselves] but the elimination of programs that are, all too often, the ONLY thing between the poor and death. [and how many are "pro-life" demanding that WIC and Food Stamps be cut, despite the fact that the MAJORITY of funds in both programs feed CHILDREN?!?!?! oh, yeah, they fucking LOVE children! until they're born...] on my bleakest, most depressed days, I've wondered if the richest and most powerful WERE actually actively attempting to kill off [or, rather, force to die off] those of us who are poorest. and the "poorest" are disproportionately "non-white" in our country, leading one to wonder if it's racism, classism, or both? then again, the MOST racist of the rich, who seem to feel that non-"white" people aren't people, seem to hold "poor white trash" in the same negative regard they hold non-"white" people. and the most classist just hate ALL poor people, with the same tones of "but they aren't real people!]
*+ how I came to 35. more gut than anything, really. item the first: Will's father died when he was young, IIRC he was 8? and while it was a tragedy in Will and his mother's life, it seemed fairly common. there's only a couple of scenes in the "ghetto" that doesn't include a "Timed Out" corpse SOMEWHERE. Will talks about how, when he turned 25, he almost immediately went from having a full year to having less than a week - back bills and so forth. if one misses a single day of work, they're likely to die if they don't have more than 24 hours - but it's made QUITE clear that if one has more than a week [hell, more than a couple of DAYS] on their clock, there are gangs that WILL take it. [because no one CARES if time is stolen from poor people...]. Will gave his best friend a decade, and best friend proceeded - in about a week, total, unless there are LARGE lapses of time somewhere - to drink himself to death. the continually rising prices that were the most direct cause of Will's mother's death - she wasn't the only person to Time Out on screen because of the price-hikes [where, again, inference leads one to believe price hikes happen at least monthly]. the various conversations with rich people and the Head-Time-Cop about how the majority had to live truncated lives to balance the greedy immortality of the uber-rich - and a throw away comment that went something along the lines of how the poor people had life spans similar to the life spans poor people have had for almost all of recorded history - it's only been in the last century that the average life span of the not-rich rose over 50, and only in the past 300 or so years that it rose above *40*. so, the life span of 35 *IS* a guess, but it seems right. if anyone has anything that says differently, PLEASE share!
*they're "frozen" at 25 - the reproduction? does not work. if they're "frozen" at 25, women? can't age, baby can't gestate because it REQUIRES aging to gestate. it's possible that reproduction can ONLY happen [at least for poor people?] before 25 - certainly, Will's mom had him before 25 [he's 28 in the movie, and the first day is his mother's 50th BDay] but, pregnancy and birth are the ONLY thing, aside from accidents and/or violence, that would require medical attention [because I don't care how perfect our DNA becomes, there WILL always be complications in pregnancy] and I'd imagine that health care is INCREDIBLY expensive - unless it's absolutely free. no indication is given either way. but I'm just saying - people CAN'T use their time in any fashion, before age 25. which means either medical care *IS* free [at least for maternity] or that, among the poor, they're somehow having to pay, a LOT probably, to have kids, when they're not capable of doing so!. also - WHY WOULD THEY? granted, no one seemed to have more than ONE kid, but... if you're having kids BEFORE 25, how the FUCK are you paying for food and diapers and I don't even KNOW what all - are YOUR parents paying to feed both you *AND* your child? [again, out of their OWN FUCKING LIFESPAN]. and if you wait til you're 25 [and there's some system i don't understand in place to ALLOW gestation] and you ALREADY wake up with so little time you have to work a double fucking shift just to LIVE long enough to get to work again later, why the FUCK would you have kids? and honestly, HOW DO YOU PAY FOR IT?! did BC completely disappear? become so incredibly expensive no one could afford it? or - and I LIKE this notion - did reproduction move from a thing we have no personal physical control over [i.e. we have to abstain or use an outside method, barrier or prevention of ovulation/sperm production, or abortion] to something one must actually DECIDE to have happen [both parties have to decide to, respectively, ovulate and produce sperm]? THAT would be awesome, and WOULD be in line with all the OTHER medical advances - but again, it doesn't say, and ALSO means WHY THE FUCK WOULD THE POOR PEOPLE DO IT?! I mean, the mother can't even guarantee that she'd be able to earn enough time to get thru labor [if over 25] and LITERALLY has no way to care for the child if under 25! is there some sort of "have a baby, get time" program? that would ALSO make sense [they continue to need laborers, after all, poor people to do the lowest of jobs. except for the apparent genocidal policies...]. except, again, people under 25 CAN'T spend time. maybe it's handed out in one of the time containers? there are lots of transactions that are from person to machine, so...? and does that mean that there's some age before 25 when reproduction "turns on", or does it mean, since it's now a completely controlled and voluntary physical action, one can control it from the moment they first become fertile?? they just have to "will" it, so no one in the government or whatever CARES if, say, a 13-year old has a kid?
this is bugging me an awful fucking lot, for something I didn't think about until I wrote the above about the culmination of medical advances...except, i mean, i AM me, and it's the sort of thing i obsess over. as a complete and total side-note, have i mentioned in the past hour how fucking RELIEVED i am that i FINALLY got a doctor to steralize me? but that's a different post. anyway.
*** again, I don't KNOW for sure that it was SUPPOSED to be “right hand/wrist/forearm to right hand/wrist/forearm”. Pete pointed out that the scenes where we CLEARLY see time change hands [no, really, pun NOT intended. For once] it looks like the old-fashioned, grip-each-other's-forearm sort of “handshake”. [to press inner wrists together?] But there are LOTS of scenes where we DON'T get a close-up where it looks to be less involved. Like when century-dude gives his time to Will, he's *very* careful to NOT jostle him, and I'd imagine the “forearm-to-forearm grip” would be the sort of thing to AUTOMATICALLY wake up people, or at least poor people who would fear that anyone they don't know REALLY WELL AND TRUST IMPLICITLY will steal their time. then there's the gangster stealing Sylvia's time - it looks as if he's merely holding her hand. And there's a scene where I SWEAR one person used their left arm. And several scenes where it appears to just be a not long and apparently minor brush of hand. the giving/receiving of time to/from a device is specifically to the wrist directly below the palm; maybe it's inner-wrist-to-inner-wrist; maybe it's any-part-of-right-hand/forearm-to-wrist, where the person recieving/taking time places, say, a finger on the wrist of the person zie is receiving/taking time from, and the whole "forearm handshake" is just the way most of society does the exchange, as the polite way, the performance of "manners".
****I can totally see the rich assholes who set up the system WANTING it to be easy to steal time from poor people. Part of the standard ways to control a majority population who has no political power, but could *easily* turn into a mob, is to create situations where they, or at least SOME of they, will prey on each other. But I repeat - this predation would not be exclusive to the poor. not just in the sense that ONLY the poor would be robbing and robbed - again, the army of bodyguards - but in the sense that rates of criminal theft are just as high among the rich. the METHOD of theft may - or may not - differ [amusingly, rates of shoplifting are equal between the most and least rich populations]; ponzie schemes are one example, fraud, predatory lending and other “white collar crimes” are actually slightly MORE common, per capita, than out-right left of cash [by which I mean “percentage of the population of the group in which X crime is most prevalent”. If we ONLY looked at the top 10% of people by income and/or net worth, there's a higher rate of these types of crimes committed by that top 10% than there is of the equivalent type of theft-type crimes in the lowest 10% of people by income. now, the rates may be skewed a bit, because theft-type crimes committed by the NOT-rich are almost always either individual theft from a single person, or stealing from a business - and the "stealing from a business" is equally common among the highest and lowest populations [the middle class is the *least* likely to steal], while individual thefts are NOT commonly committed by the rich - no, when the RICH steal, they steal from large numbers of people.]. In a society where EVERYTHING is paid for with literal time, and “going broke” doesn't mean just hardship but actual DEATH, even your best friend of 80 years, with whom you played as a child, may be tempted to steal from you, if it's “steal or die”. And that's just the people who wouldn't steal unless it WAS life or death - there's a certain mindset that's common to certain segments of the population - and not JUST the rich - who just steal. For some, it's a game, a way to show that they're superior; for others, it's a way of proving to themselves that they possess whatever virtue stealing makes them think they have [“good business sense”, or “cut throat business person” or whatever]. For some, it's pure kleptomania - and rates of kleptomania are higher among those who were raised with a silver spoon [because, after all, there wasn't anything they COULDN'T buy - including “forgiveness” for stealing. And sometimes, it's not just “spoiled rich kid syndrome”, but rather the belief that because they're rich, and were BORN rich, that they have the RIGHT to take whatever they want. This is especially common among those who never, ever had to WORK for ANYTHING as a child - for those to whom money isn't something that's “real”, because they just are given what they need and want by a parent or guardian, because they were never taught that “X dollars equals a loaf of bread; Y dollars equals a meal at A restaurant” and etc, and isn't necessarily a mean or sadistic impulse, just a disconnected one - but it can ALSO be a mean/sadistic sort of thing, even if not consciously so - X person has Y item and said person is not as WORTHY as the person who feels they have the RIGHT to whatever they want, so they just TAKE Y item... because if X DID deserve to have Y item, X would either be that person's equal, and “clearly” isn't, or if X DID deserve to have Y, X would/could have STOPPED the theft.].
My point: theft WILL happen, rich or poor; if someone wants to steal from you. THEY WILL.
given that point, WHY is it possible AT ALL to take time from someone without active consent? *OR*, why don't the RICH have such a system set up for THEMSELVES?! i mean, masterful genetic manipulation, but they can't give *just* the rich a, i don't know, a firewall? is it because the system was introduced and was so "good" that no one at ALL is truly capable of evaluating it? or is it fear that this "firewall" would somehow trickle down to the poor ANYWAY? or a desire to see anyone who loses hir fortune be as badly off as the poor, so introducing such a firewall means that former-rich won't be AS miserable as the still-rich want? or is it a method of control by those [like Daddy] who actually run the corporation or government or WHATEVER entity it is that "creates" and distributes time? a way to control even those who are the social, economic, and political equals of the "Time Lords"? [sorry - couldn't resist].
this one issue, that BIG GIANT SINGLE SOLE SOLITARY THING that bothers me, continues to bother me. because it makes no sense to have this system, that required SO many advances and the mass restructuring of society on EVERY level, and yet not have that basic protective "firewall".
and i REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wonder if this was a specific choice on the part of the people who created this movie, or if it really was just something the writers and etc just... overlooked.
THAT discussion should wait for a different post :)
which is fine - the only other thing I want to post about is huge[er], and will be hard, and I'm still working on it.
to start with, let me state that I wasn't expecting to be able to see this movie. the people I used to go see movies with the most - my dad and my best friend - don't want to push me in the wheelchair [and I'm not capable of pushing myself all that far], so I mostly only go to movies with Pete.
who does NOT like anything political.
and this movie is nothing BUT anvilicious politics.
MULTIPLE. GIANT. FUCKING. ANVILS.
so I was a bit shocked when Pete suggested it. in fact, when I looked up movie times, I didn't even list it as a possibility, assuming that he'd have no interest. and he said "wait - I thought In Time was still playing?" and I said "well, yeah, but you don't LIKE politics" and then he reminded me that he's actually be FOLLOWING the OWS-type movements, and thought the movie was relevant.
so. I got to see it. yay!
moving on...
this truly is a HUGE post. in OpenOffice, it's 12 1/2 pages long. and i'm just saying, those of you who asked for this got what you asked for :D
this is the outline: basic synopsis, then a less-long-than-it-was discussion? Tutorial? About the economic and political principles that the society of this movie are based on; after, it's mostly plot summary, until we get to THE ONE, HUGE, SOLE, SINGLE, SOLITARY PLOT PROBLEM OF CHTHONIC PROPORTIONS. No, really - this ONE THING kept throwing me completely out of the story. It never lasted long - and aside from THIS, the movie was awesome. Then, there are fridge logic issues that showed up later, of course - all the best stories have 'em :) these are the footnotes at the end.
for a general plot synopsis, I steal from IMDb:
"Welcome to a world where time has become the ultimate currency. You stop aging at 25, but there's a catch: you're genetically-engineered to live only one more year, unless you can buy your way out of it. The rich "earn" decades at a time (remaining at age 25), becoming essentially immortal, while the rest beg, borrow or steal enough hours to make it through the day. When a man from the wrong side of the tracks is falsely accused of murder, he is forced to go on the run with a beautiful hostage. Living minute to minute, the duo's love becomes a powerful tool in their war against the system
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/
MULTIPLE. GIANT. FUCKING. ANVILS.
first, let me quote myself [since it was that post that prompted the several requests]
"wow, was that movie the exact perfect movie to demonstrate the EXTREME problems with pure, unadulterated, uncontrolled Capitalism"
second, originally I was writing this post and LJ froze, and I don't even know. it was about 5 times as long as this post is at THIS point, and was mostly me defining "Capitalism" vs "capitalism"; "Capitalism" vs "Socialism", etc.
I wonder if LJ was protesting my long and convoluted explanations? so I'll be as brief as possible, but to understand the anvils, one must first understand the principles [and it's my guess that the ONLY reason the studio execs allowed this film to be created and distributed as-is was their almost definitely accurate assessment of the American public - that, for the most part, we don't UNDERSTAND what the actual definitions of any of these things are. people throw around "socialist" as an insult on a regular basis, while refusing to understand that the very fucking network they're USING to throw those insults is the result of a socialistic government program. Most people don't understand basic economics and believe we live in a Democracy. They don't know the difference between Socialism and Communism, often believing they're the same. They don't know the difference between Capitalism and Mercantilism. And etc.]
basics, then.
***WARNING:ECONOMIC/POLITICAL THEORY. PLEASE SKIP TO NEXT SECTION IF THIS BORES YOU***
little-c capitalism is the ECONOMIC theory. it revolves around the idea of a "free market". what "free market" means, in this context, isn't "free things", but rather an UNRESTRICTED [by any agency other than the market itself] market. it is the belief of those who are proponents of the economic theory of capitalism that free markets regulate themselves by what they call "the invisible hand".
the invisible hand is a pretty phrase that means "self-regulating through positive feedback." the problem with this is that it's self-regulating through positive-feedback only. I don't mean positive in the sense of "happy". I'll quote from Wikipedia:
"Positive feedback is a process in which the effects of a small disturbance on (a perturbation of) a system include an increase in the magnitude of the perturbation. That is, A produces more of B which in turn produces more of A.[1] In contrast, a system that responds to a perturbation in a way that reduces its effect is said to exhibit negative feedback. These concepts were first recognized as broadly applicable by Norbert Wiener in his 1948 work on cybernetics.
This does not work in economics. A great example of an attempt at positive feedback in regards to the economy is "trickle-down economics". Supposedly, by allowing the richest to pay LESS in taxes while earning MORE from everything else, their increased net worth will "trickle down" to those below them; they'll buy more goods, which will in turn stimulate production, increasing profits for corporations, which will in turn hire more workers and/or pay them more, allowing those further down the economic ladder to, in turn, buy more products which stimulate production more which increases profits more which hires more people for more money, which in turn means those even further down will by more products...
except this assumes that ALL producers, all employers, and all consumers are "Rational". By "Rational", economists mean is that the richest WILL spend more, because as it trickles down the ladder, it also increases THEIR position. that the employers WILL pay workers more, hire more workers, because more workers with bigger paychecks means that they have more people to buy the things they sell. that producers will continue to increase the number of X product, and adjust the price DOWN, due to the growing number of purchases allowing them to create more at a lower initial investment, thus allowing them to lower prices because the item is now cheaper to make/distribute.
THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN.
the richest DO NOT buy more after a tax cut - they're so rich, an extra 3% of their income doesn't actually change what they buy, because they were already buying as much as they wanted. when their net worth increases - through any means, tax cut, higher returns, pay raise, etc - they bank it. oh, they may bank it in stocks, but they're still just banking it, and the ONLY people to profit from that are the stocks people. as a further issue, most rich people are A) greedy, and don't WANT to share, and B) conscious of their relative position as opposed to their absolute position - in most cases, to mix metaphors, they'd rather be the big fish in the small pond and NOT increase the pond size and take a bigger cut of a bigger pie, if it means that OTHER fish grow bigger. there is no "trickle down" from the rich in these instances. there can't be. imagine a dictator of a small country who has absolute control over everything in it, and is insanely rich compared to every other person in the country. it's quite true that if he allowed more freedoms and increased trade and etc, that he'd become MORE rich - but at the same time, many of the people who are currently in poverty, whom he controls and measures his status in relation to, would ALSO become rich. that means his RELATIVE worth isn't as big anymore. and YES, this is actually quite un-sane, but that doesn't mean it isn't real. it's VERY real - why do rich people oppose a single-payer system? they don't want to share a doctor's waiting room with poor people. [the blather about "not paying for other's health care" is actually bullshit - they pay more NOW than they would under a single-payer system. but I've written about that before]
employers DO NOT raise wages just because profits have increased. and they don't necessarily hire more workers, either. this is because, generally, the employers and producers are the SAME PEOPLE. they have greater profit - and may decline to expand, because that means the price-point stays high. so workers don't increase, and prices don't decrease, because they probably make more money over-all now [again, this probably isn't true, and is un-sane, and really boils down to the same rational for why the richest don't spend more.]
this isn't universally true, of course. in certain fields of employment, there is enough actual competition of recruitment that employers/producers must either pay workers more or take a hit to profits. but competition of recruitment is the ONLY form of market pressure that results in improved wages, it's a very tenuous advantage, and it costs more every year to acquire the education necessary to enter into one of the fields where competition of recruitment is functional.
and most employers prefer it that way. sure, they'd get BETTER workers with more loyalty and drive if they paid more - but that means their employees might become their economic equals.
PEOPLE ARE NOT RATIONAL. individuals can, and generally ARE, rational, but people AS A WHOLE are not rational. the difference between micro- and macro-economics hinges on this difference, but proponents of both little-c and Big-C capitalism INSIST on applying micro principles to macro situations.
and thus is born Big-C Capitalism.
this is the political ideology that "the free market" is not just the BEST, but the ONLY, way to run EVERYTHING. not just production of goods that people don't NEED, but in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, in food production, distribution, and retail; in basic housing; in basic water supply and heating supply; in government itself. Capitalism is why Corporations are now legal persons able to donate MASSIVELY to political campaigns.
Unrestrained Capitalism leads to Oligarchical Economics leads to Monopolizing Economics.
an Oligarchy, in economics, is when there are only a FEW suppliers of X. think OPEC [the oil-producing nations] and how they completely dominate the oil market, charging MUCH more than is necessary for even 200% percent profits. in an Oligarchy, these few suppliers work together on key things - they set prices, for example, and anyone breaking that price will be ganged up on and either brought to heel or driven out of business altogether.
a Monopoly, obviously, is when there's only ONE supplier, who can set whatever prices [and etc] they want. we, in the US, have laws against Monopolies, but they aren't as comprehensive as they could be, have been weakened greatly, and are NOT universally applied.
in both instances, there are two different types of economic control: vertical and horizontal. in vertical control, the company[ies] own everything from the raw good to the distribution [and often the retailer who sells the final product]. like if a books publisher owned all the trees [or whatever they're making paper out of]they need, all the cotton [for hardbacks, sewing] they need; all the glue plants [obvious] they need; they owned all raw materials they need to make ink, the ink makers; they own all the printing equipment they need; they employ all the editors and agents they need; the own the advertising company; they own the distribution service; they own all the Barnes&Nobles. [I know I said "they need" a lot in there.]
in short, at NO point are they buying ANYTHING from anyone else [aside from the stories themselves, and they try REALLY hard to contract the authors so they own them, too].
in horizontal control, they own ALL the book retailers. they don't own presses or ink or editors, but EVERY book sold? is sold by THEM.
both types of control are common in both Oligarchy and Monopoly economic systems. the railroads and Railroad Barons were broken because of the vertical monopoly, especially of steel and coal. the long-distance phone monopoly was broken because of the horizontal control. we still experience both, to an extent, because most areas of commerce are INCREDIBLY difficult to enter, if one is not already rich. it's inevitable, ANY pure-capitalistic - in either sense - endeavor will eventually turn into first an Oligarchy, then a Monopoly. note how our elected officials are almost universally rich - they HAVE to be to even begin to compete in politics. we live in a Political Oligarchy. note how most new restaurants and bars/clubs close within a year, because the start-up costs are astronomical for the non-rich, and most places can't even BREAK EVEN the first year. I could cite examples for DAYS, but it's not necessary - even my Youngest Sister [the blondest person in the world, I SWEAR] can name a dozen businesses or commercial endeavors off the top of her head that only the rich can do.
one last aspect that's VITALLY important here: the concept of a sum-zero system. for instance, the world's oil supply is a sum-zero system; there's only so much, and for entity A to have more, Entity B must have less.
the PROBLEM is that, in MANY areas of economics, it doesn't HAVE to be a sum-zero game. but it's the ingrained idea of sum-zero economics that makes rich people want to keep poor people poor - they literally don't UNDERSTAND that the whole pie can get bigger.
this is the OTHER basic economic concept that In Time is built around.
***DISCUSSION OF GENERAL ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL THEORY OVER***
what we have, in this movie, is both an economic and a political Capitalism that has progressed to Oligarchy and is almost to pure Monopoly.
it's also, quite literally, the PUREST form of Capitalism possible. we hear, all the time, that "time equals money.". right now, we are paid X amount per hour [or portion thereof] that we work. we then spend that money on goods and services. then we work some more to get more money so that we can continue to purchase goods and services.
the basic concept, this "Pure Capitalism", has eliminated the middle-man of cash [which replaced barter], and now one is "paid" in literal time.
because, as the spiel from IMDb explains, you live "for free" for 25 years - at which point, you both A)stop aging and B)have exactly one year of "time" before you die, unless you somehow - work, investment, robbery - earn more time. if something should happen to prevent you from working [and you don't start off rich] you "time out". you die.
there are ways to get "time". you can work. you can steal. you can gamble. you can be gifted.
of course, anything that one would pay for is ALSO paid in "time". the rent, food, power, clothing, so on and so forth.
this society is our own, writ large. the main character, Will, lives in the worst area [ghetto, really] where people LITERALLY live day-to-day. he wakes up, and has 18 hours of life.
we know this, because EVERYONE has a CLOCK [bio; their skin cells form a digital readout of their personal time] on their left arms. who needs a watch, when you can literally look at the seconds of life you have remaining? *ANYONE* can see what amount of "time" ANYONE has [unless they cover their arm]
he walks out of his bedroom and bumps into his mother - who I assumed at first was his girlfriend. that whole stop aging at 25 thing. it's his mother's 50th BDay.
she gives him 30 minutes so he can "take a lunch break", and then goes off on a rant about how they owe something like 8days of time in rent, and 20 hours in electricity [I'm making up the times - I was so horrified by the concept that the actual numbers slipped by altogether]
he goes to work. the price of a cup of coffee has increased, overnight, from 3 minutes to 4 minutes.
dude, at this fucking point in time, Will won't live to see TOMORROW - and he spends 4 minutes on a cup of coffee.
after his work day, he isn't paid what he'd been paid the day before - the price paid per finished item had gone down.
again, on both of these. there's a mention that the same thing had happened in the recent past - price of things bought increased, price paid for work/items sold decreased.
later, at a bar, Will runs into some random dude who has over a century on his clock, who is being stupid, hanging out in the POOREST area, and a gang of time-thieves comes in and are going to "steal" this guy's time.
Will stupidly but noblely helps him run away and hide.
they talk. guy spouts off a line, something along the lines of "For a few to be immortal, the majority must die".
remember that sum-zero economic system? that's this.
except, says has-a-century-dude, this isn't TRUE. he says that there *IS* enough time for EVERYONE to live, for centuries if not for forever. [and we don't meet anyone who claims to be older than a couple of centuries. we aren't given ANY dates - we know this system has been around for, at minimum. 75 years, because there's a "time cop" whose been one for 50 years, and one LITERALLY cannot work a legal job until 25*. for all we know, the system is only as old as the oldest claimed aged of less than 2 centuries, except we have no PROOF of that age. if we take it as a given... except he, said oldest claimed age, seems to have grown up with this system fully in place, not as a "new" system, but as one that's been around for a while. if it *IS* older than oldest claimed age, we have the most STAGNANT culture fucking EVER on display, here. other than the medical advances - which are awesome and huge in scope; illness is GONE in toto - all of which were finished BEFORE the "time" system [since it was the culmination of the medical advances that allowed the time system - if they hadn't been able to prevent every disease ever AND "freeze" aging at 25, it wouldn't have worked at all. this brings up a new side issue, that I'll explore later**]
anyway. Century-dude and Will continue their conversation, Will chastising century-dude and century-dude essentially saying “I'm fucking old and I want to die now.” Will gives him a lecture on not “wasting” his time, offended that a Rich Dude would just throw away his time.
And now we're at the portion where the ONE, SOLE, SINGLE, SOLITARY HUGE PLOT HOLE THAT PISSES ME OFF STARTS TO SHOW.
Century-dude, after he wakes up but before Will does, grabs Will's right arm [left arm has clock, right arm is where you exchange time... except I think *sometimes* that wasn't consistent, and I'm not sure if that was accidental or not] and give to Will all but 5 minutes of his time.
WHAT?!
I'll come back to the “what”.
Will wakes up a few minutes later, sees a note written in the dirt of the window, takes off to try and save century-dude from his suicide. Century-dude is sitting on the railing of a bridge
This is a THING that bugged me, but isn't the plot hole - the Time Police find the body of century-dude, and automatically it's assumed that it was theft/murder. Then they get video, but said video ONLY shows Will standing at the bridge, then running away. It doesn't show century-dude's death. It doesn't show Will's arrival AFTER century-dude times out. Just Will standing there, NO century-dude in frame, then Will running away.
Then he gives his best friend a decade. Then he goes off to meet his mom - he has a CENTURY now, he's going to take her someplace nice for her Bday! [I knew she was going to die even BEFORE this scene started. Of course she would. Sigh]
his mom goes to get on the bus back to where they live from the place she worked. She has 1.5 hours left.
Inexplicably, the price of the ride has DOUBLED since yesterday, from one hour to two.
The bus driver is an utter dick, won't let her ride and pay after she gets to her son. She desperately notes that it's a two hour walk [much shorter by bus, obviously] and driver says “better run then”.
She takes off running. There are a couple of side-tracks, where she deviates from the fucking path and tries to get a random stranger to give her some minutes - minutes, I'll add, that she wouldn't have fucking needed if she hadn't wasted the fucking time to try and get them. erm, sorry.
The bus shows up at the bus stop where Will is waiting for his mom with flowers - he drops them and starts running towards the place his mom works.
And she dies LITERALLY 2 seconds before he can give her time.
Of COURSE she did.
And the next thing we see, Will's all dressed up, has called a limo to pick him up, and spends several years getting to the most expensive living area. [it doesn't take years to get there - he loses them from his clock. That's going to happen a lot]
He's seen by Sylvia in the hotel he's staying at [Sylvia becomes the love interest later] then Will and Sylvia meet while Will's playing poker with her father. [there's this side convo of “life used to be a bit simpler - is she my mother, my sister, my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter? One can no longer tell by looking” sort of thing,] then Sylvia's father introduces her to Will as his daughter and she invites him to a party.
At the party, she ditches her body guard, and they go skinny dipping for a few, she bemoaning the lack of LIVING rich people embrace - half spoiled rich girl, have caged nightingale. [and her acting was phenomenal, BTW]. And then TIME COPS, and they're TAKING all but 2 hours from Will, enough to “process” him, and here's the giant WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!?!?!?!?
so - I'm not TOO upset and/or disturbed that one can GIVE time to one who isn't actively participating. It's sort of like reverse-pickpocketing money into someone's pocket [like when CERTAIN friends of mine refuse to take gas money despite driving all over creation for me]
[on the other hand, I AM pissed that the Time-cops KNOW how much time century-dude “lost”, and Will has earned MUCH more than that, since - but they take ALL his time, including the vast majority of his time that is legit in every sense, and no one DISPUTES that the rest is legit. SERIOUSLY? sigh]
BUT WHO AND HOW AND WHY AND WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING WHEN THEY DECIDED THAT TAKING TIME DIDN'T NEED CONSENT?!?!
when ANYONE could walk up to a person who is unable to physically stop them and steal their time?!?! [THIS, BTW, is why Sylvia's whole fucking family employs a veritable ARMY of bodyguards. ]
I grant, there are small parts of the plot that are based on this... oversight of titanic proportions.
Let me explain my outrage. They have tech and medical skill to CREATE this time-instead-of-cash-or-barter system. They even had enough foresight to create a secondary means of storing time, in these little stamp-looking devices, so that one could HAVE a century but only carry a few days at a time, to prevent theft of ALL one's time [though this presumes that one has enough EXTRA time to first buy, then USE, said device]
but NO ONE, at ANY point during the creation OR after the implementation of the clock, thought to add a proviso that one must CONSENT to their time being taken?
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING?!?!.
two points: 1 - some of the scenes that show one stealing time happen when/where the owner of said time is unconscious. So there's going to be the “justification” - either the victim, being unconscious, is unable to *stop* said theft, or “the plot of stealing time from an unconscious person requires that one does not need to consent”. I agree with NEITHER justification [though I WILL concede that theft-of-time from an unconscious character *could* be a metaphor for rape, but still makes no sense from the societal viewpoint]. In the first case, I can NOT fucking believe that stealing time is something that happens but NO ONE at ANY fucking point adds a modification so that giving time requires active consent - and that assumes that NO ONE on the creation team for the clock system was smart enough to foresee the problem. In the latter, all you need is for the person to NOT be unconscious, but being threatened with death. Which, BTW, still allows the rape analogy [IF that was actually something intended, and isn't me seeing something I want to be there. Not that I want there to be rape! But I want there to be a conversation about rape, about how unconscious people ARE raped, instead of this whole “well, zie didn't say No, so...” that happens all too fucking often, because if there's no “no”, then somehow it isn't rape, which is utter fucking bullshit. And I don't CARE if it was “unconscious because of medical reason” or “unconscious due to alcohol/drug use”. And I want there to be a conversation about rape, where not fighting because there's a fucking WEAPON or CONVINCING THREAT held to your fucking head is STILL RAPE - because, yeah, people DO still fucking say “but zie didn't fight!”. And when someone replies “Yes, because zie had a fucking GUN held to hir head!” I'm suck of fucking hearing “but zie STILL should have fought!” - because if you don't, quite literally, fight to the fucking DEATH to prevent someone from raping you, there's STILL a loud fucking vocal minority who INSIST you SHOULD have fought to death and that death is better than rape. And now I have to go break things, brb]
ok, so continuing my protestation of this GIANT FUCKING PLOT ISSUE; if all you need to “take” someone's time is your right hand [?] touching THEIR right hand [?***], then we now have a new version of pickpockets - just wander thru a crowd, stealing a few minutes here, a few minutes there...
that's a PROBLEM. And it would NOT be restricted to ONLY the poor.**** and even if it's “full-forearm-grip”, you'd STILL have pickpockets doing it.
Ok, back to plot.
Time Cops want to arrest Will, he somehow gets away and takes Sylvie hostage. She somehow acquired the “knowledge” that Will “murdered” century-dude - despite the Time Cops not ever saying WHY they wanted Will or were taking him into custody to ANYONE but Will - and that, in a closed room.
also: there's this whole THING of head-Time-Cop NOT CARING whether or not Will did, in fact, STEAL the time he has. He doesn't CARE. The ACTUAL crime that he feels Will is guilty of is “being a poor person who is now rich.”
social mobility: not for the poor.
So, Will grabs Sylvia and takes off in his brand new car [that cost a couple of decades, IIRC].
At some point, he asks her for some time. She REFUSES [and Will, being The Good Guy, doesn't force her to] and she refuses ONLY because she “knows” this thing that no one ever told her.
And, remember the gangster guys from waaaaaaaaaaay back, who were wanting to steal century-dude's time? They [SOMEHOW] know EXACTLY where to place spikes on the road, that go off when the attached video camera and it's facial recognition software pegs Will. Spikes deploy. Car goes screaming off-road into a ditch. Gang appears. Lead gangster is PISSED that Will's down to less than an hour. He notes Sylvia's decade, and steals all but maybe 10 minutes. He'd have taken it all except the other gang members keep shouting at him to “come ON!” because she's a rich bitch and cops'll be here ANY MINUTE.
Sylvia wakes up, sees all her time gone, looks at Will, who wakes up just a few seconds later.
AMAZINGLY, being that Will's arm is covered, she DOESN'T automatically assume this “murderer” that's kidnapped her stole her time. No, really - that really, really bugged me. She believes that Will was capable of stealing a century+ from and then KILLING century-dude, but never even fucking CONSIDERS that Will might have taken her time? He totally could have been pretending to be out.
She LITERALLY keeps going on about “how does one just LOSE time”. She doesn't EVER consider that maybe ANYONE stole it. Especially not Will. He's a thief and murderer, but he wouldn't steal from HER. Even though he stole HER. Anyway.
They're close enough to his home town that they walk. They go to his best-friend's apartment. Best-friend's wife opens door, holding their baby, and is INCREDIBLY hostile.
Turns out that he drank himself to death, with one year of that decade Will gave him.
And did you know that if you die and still have time on your personal clock, that time is just LOST. again, WHAT THE FUCK. This isn't the BIG HUGE ONE SINGLE SOLITARY SOLE ISSUE, of course, but it's a HUGE secondary issue. Seriously - that time should fucking be INHERITABLE.
Dead-best-friend's-wife won't give them the time of day - just tells Will that it's all his fault that his best friend died, because what the fuck kind of friend shares their largess when they unexpectedly win the lottery? Yeah, fuck you, Will, for caring about your friends and trying to help them!
[yes, I'm being a bitch, and no, in real life I would NOT ever say that in a way in which the grieving survivor hears, but FUCK! This is the Giant Fucking Anvil About Alcohol and/or Addiction, an extra bit of moralizing thrown in to placate someone, i'm sure. the ONLY plot-worthy reason for this death is to show and/or teach Will that poor people don't DESERVE to be anything BUT poor. and that's the Head-Time-Cop's stance, true - but i really, REALLY wonder if that message was actually the main POINT?! or was it added to placate rich studio execs who, like the rest of the 1%, are TERRIFIED of the poor not being poor? or was it JUST to show that some poor/oppressed people aid in their own oppression? that would be good. or was it REALLY just for the Morality Anvil? that would be bad. *OR* was the entire point just to make it HARD for Will and Sylvia to survive? that's it's most BASIC function, but it has all these incredibly fucked up connotations...]
Will and Sylvia have *minutes* left [in part because Will gave some of HIS to Sylvie - this, AFTER she refused to do the same for him. Anywhoo] and he notes she's wearing “real” diamond earrings.
They rush to the pawnshop, and the only reason they get service is Will puts his boot under the door, and Sylvia rolls her earrings under it. [and then the pawnbroker opened the door and gave them like 3 days - instead of just taking the earrings, like he COULD have. I mean, he cheats them excessively, those earring cost YEARS, but I mean if he's going to cheat them THAT MUCH, why the fuck would he pay at ALL?! Sometimes, characterization is WEIRD. That sort of character, who'd rip them off that much, would TOTALLY have just kept them without paying. Anyway]
Will takes Sylvia to his old place, lets her wear his mom's clothing, and tells her some of his life. She stops believing that he's a thief/murderer. Stockholm Syndrome kicks in.
the next day, Will tries to “ransom” Sylvia back to her father. His demand? That Daddy give X amount of time to the charity. He has 24 hours.
Daddy doesn't pay. They've got less than a day on each of their clocks [same amount of time]
Will takes Sylvia to a pay-phone thing, and has her call her dad. They both have guns, because the gangsters or something. I'm actually not sure WHY Sylvia has a gun at this point, but Will gives her one as they're walking towards the phone. HE wants her to call and get a ride back home - he didn't actually intend to kidnap her and etc, and feels REALLY bad, he's terrified she's going to Time Out and it'll be HIS fault because he took her hostage, etc.
SHE wants to give Daddy shit - why didn't he love her? He just PROVED he didn't love her, because if he DID, he'd have paid the fucking ransom, it's fucking CHUMP CHANGE TO HIM! She's half-yelling at him, turns to where Will's seated on the ground on the other side of the street, and sees Head-Time-Cop sneaking up on Will with a gun pointed at his head.
She shoots Head-Time-Cop. Sadly, she doesn't kill him. Then she grabs Will and they run. Again.
Then she helps Will break into the local Time Bank and steal a LOT of time.
Then they go to other banks. And more. And most of what they steal, they just give away.
Head-Time-Cop is PISSED. He keeps saying things like “Will thinks he's helping, but he's NOT!” did I mention that the story of Will's father's death, as told by his mother, is wrong? Will's father somehow acquired a LOT of time and tried to give it to the have-nots. And that's why Head-Time-Cop killed Will's father, because the poor MUST stay poor - giving them time is just “wrong”. Because Head-Time-Cop KNOWS that it's his JOB to make sure ONLY the rich have enough time to not have to worry DAILY about dying. [the other Time-cops don't actually seem to agree with his assessment as to their function, but don't argue because he's been a Time-cop for 50 years.]
stuff happens, some of it dramatic or whatever.
And then: ironic twist ending. Head-Time-Cop FINALLY corners them. Will tells him that if he's planning on taking them into custody, he'll need to give them time - they both have less than 5 minutes.
Startled and shocked, Head-Time-Cop looks at his OWN clock - he'd been about to download his pay when he saw Will and Sylvia, but stopped to pursue them.
He has 10 seconds left.
He Times Out.
Will and Sylvia go *insane* for a bit - they'd given themselves up because they were so close to Timing Out themselves - and then Will realizes that Head-Time-Cop must have NOT downloaded his time [because A) Will figured out, before the “we'll need time, oh wait you've Timed Out” conversation, that Head-Time-Cop was from the ghetto, too, and so wouldn't carry much time on his person, bcuz ingrained habits of NOT having your time stolen because you had more than a day; and B) he was so fucking focused on running down Will and Sylvia for the crime of giving poor people time, he'd HAVE to have forgotten to download his time in the heat of the moment, because OTHERWISE he wouldn't have Timed Out] and they both start running to his car, Will shouting over and over at Sylvia to “run faster”. He slides into the car, downloads ALL of Head-Time-Cops accumulated time [there's a system in the car that downloads it from the main office], and in a repeat of his mother's death scene, runs back to Sylvia. Except, THIS time he gets to her WITH two seconds to spare.
Then, some months later, the social order breaking down [they'd stolen A MILLION YEARS from Sylvia's father, for one, not to mention all the fucking banks, and all the OTHER people with the most time keep harassing Daddy about it, he keeps swearing it's under control until it's not anymore, and people are crossing into ANY area they want, because they ALL have DECADES] they pull up to a building roughly 10x the size of the Pentagon. Sylvia says “I TOLD you there were bigger banks”, Will replied “You almost missed your calling”, and they start walking up the steps, guns drawn
Fade to Black
*why? I get that, after 25, the clock STARTS, at which point you have "one year" of life - which, if you're poor, you DON'T, because you have to pay to stay alive. further, if you can't EARN money, and can't spend that year before 25, that puts a HUGE burden on parents, having to feed and clothe and shelter you from their own lifespan. that's actually incredibly fucking SADISTIC. there's a little girl, can't be more than 10, who asks Will for a minute - she has a storage device that one can store time in. Will teases her that she's got YEARS before she has to have more time or die, and she replies "still got bills to pay". it's heavily implied that she, and a slightly older boy who MAY be her brother, are orphans, and they live [sometimes - we also see her squatting in what I think was a warehouse] at a charity place that, when it can, gives away time to people. one must assume that, if she *IS* an orphan [as opposed to the daughter of the people who run that specific charity branch] that her parent(s) fucking Timed Out trying to take care of her. now, her ONLY means of support are illegal. she doesn't have anyone [parent, older sibling, guardian, whatever] to purchase food and clothing and etc for her. WHY can't under-25 people earn money? I actually *DO* get [at least my reason for] them not being able to SPEND their "free year" - some parents [and random evil criminal others] would TAKE that year from kids [and there sits another example of the ONE, SOLE, SINGLE PLOT PROBLEM I have.]. the only reason I can see for the system to be set up in such a way that people under 25 canNOT acquire more time [legally] is that they WANT people to die as early as possible. which, I mean, that's heavily inferred, but honestly? they NEED the poor to reproduce so that they continue to have beat-down, uneducated, illiterate, ignorant grunt labor; my best guess as to the average life-span of the poor is about 35*+... which means that they're not even actually able to replace their numbers. and there's a LOT of talk, all over the movie, that the poor MUST be kept always wondering if they have enough time to sleep, that's the ONLY way for the rich to be rich - but there's also the continual implication that the poor are, in SOME way, necessary to continue this "civilization". which I assume is actually pretty much the same reason why, during the Industrial Revolution, the very poorest were necessary to the "civilization" - they made the goods that made the OWNERS of the means-of-production rich. [with a nice side-order of "social inferiors"]. yet they continually raise the time-prices of things, to make it harder for people to actually live beyond 25, they prohibit legal means of earning time *before* 25, and if people really are dying at the average age I'm guessing, it's not a system that can continue. unless they're actually attempting to practice something like class or economic genocide - if the VERY poorest all die, then the "just" poor can take over those jobs, and the "worst" or "lowest" element will be gone... but that just means that the "just" poor will become the *very poorest*, and the cycle continues. I'm NOT saying that there isn't a good rational [from the place of the storyline and the way many, if not most, rich people think] - I'm just saying that this? is another of the giant anvils about the evils of pure C/capitalism. the rich are actively trying to kill the poorest, but using methods that aren't immediately apparent as genocidal actions - which isn't all that far from what the rich are doing TODAY, now is it? the people who can MOST AFFORD to pay taxes, who wouldn't even NOTICE paying another 3% in taxes, whose tax rates have been dropping steadily for decades while their income [both gross AND net] has increased exponentially, are the ones demanding not only LOWER taxes [but ONLY for themselves] but the elimination of programs that are, all too often, the ONLY thing between the poor and death. [and how many are "pro-life" demanding that WIC and Food Stamps be cut, despite the fact that the MAJORITY of funds in both programs feed CHILDREN?!?!?! oh, yeah, they fucking LOVE children! until they're born...] on my bleakest, most depressed days, I've wondered if the richest and most powerful WERE actually actively attempting to kill off [or, rather, force to die off] those of us who are poorest. and the "poorest" are disproportionately "non-white" in our country, leading one to wonder if it's racism, classism, or both? then again, the MOST racist of the rich, who seem to feel that non-"white" people aren't people, seem to hold "poor white trash" in the same negative regard they hold non-"white" people. and the most classist just hate ALL poor people, with the same tones of "but they aren't real people!]
*+ how I came to 35. more gut than anything, really. item the first: Will's father died when he was young, IIRC he was 8? and while it was a tragedy in Will and his mother's life, it seemed fairly common. there's only a couple of scenes in the "ghetto" that doesn't include a "Timed Out" corpse SOMEWHERE. Will talks about how, when he turned 25, he almost immediately went from having a full year to having less than a week - back bills and so forth. if one misses a single day of work, they're likely to die if they don't have more than 24 hours - but it's made QUITE clear that if one has more than a week [hell, more than a couple of DAYS] on their clock, there are gangs that WILL take it. [because no one CARES if time is stolen from poor people...]. Will gave his best friend a decade, and best friend proceeded - in about a week, total, unless there are LARGE lapses of time somewhere - to drink himself to death. the continually rising prices that were the most direct cause of Will's mother's death - she wasn't the only person to Time Out on screen because of the price-hikes [where, again, inference leads one to believe price hikes happen at least monthly]. the various conversations with rich people and the Head-Time-Cop about how the majority had to live truncated lives to balance the greedy immortality of the uber-rich - and a throw away comment that went something along the lines of how the poor people had life spans similar to the life spans poor people have had for almost all of recorded history - it's only been in the last century that the average life span of the not-rich rose over 50, and only in the past 300 or so years that it rose above *40*. so, the life span of 35 *IS* a guess, but it seems right. if anyone has anything that says differently, PLEASE share!
*they're "frozen" at 25 - the reproduction? does not work. if they're "frozen" at 25, women? can't age, baby can't gestate because it REQUIRES aging to gestate. it's possible that reproduction can ONLY happen [at least for poor people?] before 25 - certainly, Will's mom had him before 25 [he's 28 in the movie, and the first day is his mother's 50th BDay] but, pregnancy and birth are the ONLY thing, aside from accidents and/or violence, that would require medical attention [because I don't care how perfect our DNA becomes, there WILL always be complications in pregnancy] and I'd imagine that health care is INCREDIBLY expensive - unless it's absolutely free. no indication is given either way. but I'm just saying - people CAN'T use their time in any fashion, before age 25. which means either medical care *IS* free [at least for maternity] or that, among the poor, they're somehow having to pay, a LOT probably, to have kids, when they're not capable of doing so!. also - WHY WOULD THEY? granted, no one seemed to have more than ONE kid, but... if you're having kids BEFORE 25, how the FUCK are you paying for food and diapers and I don't even KNOW what all - are YOUR parents paying to feed both you *AND* your child? [again, out of their OWN FUCKING LIFESPAN]. and if you wait til you're 25 [and there's some system i don't understand in place to ALLOW gestation] and you ALREADY wake up with so little time you have to work a double fucking shift just to LIVE long enough to get to work again later, why the FUCK would you have kids? and honestly, HOW DO YOU PAY FOR IT?! did BC completely disappear? become so incredibly expensive no one could afford it? or - and I LIKE this notion - did reproduction move from a thing we have no personal physical control over [i.e. we have to abstain or use an outside method, barrier or prevention of ovulation/sperm production, or abortion] to something one must actually DECIDE to have happen [both parties have to decide to, respectively, ovulate and produce sperm]? THAT would be awesome, and WOULD be in line with all the OTHER medical advances - but again, it doesn't say, and ALSO means WHY THE FUCK WOULD THE POOR PEOPLE DO IT?! I mean, the mother can't even guarantee that she'd be able to earn enough time to get thru labor [if over 25] and LITERALLY has no way to care for the child if under 25! is there some sort of "have a baby, get time" program? that would ALSO make sense [they continue to need laborers, after all, poor people to do the lowest of jobs. except for the apparent genocidal policies...]. except, again, people under 25 CAN'T spend time. maybe it's handed out in one of the time containers? there are lots of transactions that are from person to machine, so...? and does that mean that there's some age before 25 when reproduction "turns on", or does it mean, since it's now a completely controlled and voluntary physical action, one can control it from the moment they first become fertile?? they just have to "will" it, so no one in the government or whatever CARES if, say, a 13-year old has a kid?
this is bugging me an awful fucking lot, for something I didn't think about until I wrote the above about the culmination of medical advances...except, i mean, i AM me, and it's the sort of thing i obsess over. as a complete and total side-note, have i mentioned in the past hour how fucking RELIEVED i am that i FINALLY got a doctor to steralize me? but that's a different post. anyway.
*** again, I don't KNOW for sure that it was SUPPOSED to be “right hand/wrist/forearm to right hand/wrist/forearm”. Pete pointed out that the scenes where we CLEARLY see time change hands [no, really, pun NOT intended. For once] it looks like the old-fashioned, grip-each-other's-forearm sort of “handshake”. [to press inner wrists together?] But there are LOTS of scenes where we DON'T get a close-up where it looks to be less involved. Like when century-dude gives his time to Will, he's *very* careful to NOT jostle him, and I'd imagine the “forearm-to-forearm grip” would be the sort of thing to AUTOMATICALLY wake up people, or at least poor people who would fear that anyone they don't know REALLY WELL AND TRUST IMPLICITLY will steal their time. then there's the gangster stealing Sylvia's time - it looks as if he's merely holding her hand. And there's a scene where I SWEAR one person used their left arm. And several scenes where it appears to just be a not long and apparently minor brush of hand. the giving/receiving of time to/from a device is specifically to the wrist directly below the palm; maybe it's inner-wrist-to-inner-wrist; maybe it's any-part-of-right-hand/forearm-to-wrist, where the person recieving/taking time places, say, a finger on the wrist of the person zie is receiving/taking time from, and the whole "forearm handshake" is just the way most of society does the exchange, as the polite way, the performance of "manners".
****I can totally see the rich assholes who set up the system WANTING it to be easy to steal time from poor people. Part of the standard ways to control a majority population who has no political power, but could *easily* turn into a mob, is to create situations where they, or at least SOME of they, will prey on each other. But I repeat - this predation would not be exclusive to the poor. not just in the sense that ONLY the poor would be robbing and robbed - again, the army of bodyguards - but in the sense that rates of criminal theft are just as high among the rich. the METHOD of theft may - or may not - differ [amusingly, rates of shoplifting are equal between the most and least rich populations]; ponzie schemes are one example, fraud, predatory lending and other “white collar crimes” are actually slightly MORE common, per capita, than out-right left of cash [by which I mean “percentage of the population of the group in which X crime is most prevalent”. If we ONLY looked at the top 10% of people by income and/or net worth, there's a higher rate of these types of crimes committed by that top 10% than there is of the equivalent type of theft-type crimes in the lowest 10% of people by income. now, the rates may be skewed a bit, because theft-type crimes committed by the NOT-rich are almost always either individual theft from a single person, or stealing from a business - and the "stealing from a business" is equally common among the highest and lowest populations [the middle class is the *least* likely to steal], while individual thefts are NOT commonly committed by the rich - no, when the RICH steal, they steal from large numbers of people.]. In a society where EVERYTHING is paid for with literal time, and “going broke” doesn't mean just hardship but actual DEATH, even your best friend of 80 years, with whom you played as a child, may be tempted to steal from you, if it's “steal or die”. And that's just the people who wouldn't steal unless it WAS life or death - there's a certain mindset that's common to certain segments of the population - and not JUST the rich - who just steal. For some, it's a game, a way to show that they're superior; for others, it's a way of proving to themselves that they possess whatever virtue stealing makes them think they have [“good business sense”, or “cut throat business person” or whatever]. For some, it's pure kleptomania - and rates of kleptomania are higher among those who were raised with a silver spoon [because, after all, there wasn't anything they COULDN'T buy - including “forgiveness” for stealing. And sometimes, it's not just “spoiled rich kid syndrome”, but rather the belief that because they're rich, and were BORN rich, that they have the RIGHT to take whatever they want. This is especially common among those who never, ever had to WORK for ANYTHING as a child - for those to whom money isn't something that's “real”, because they just are given what they need and want by a parent or guardian, because they were never taught that “X dollars equals a loaf of bread; Y dollars equals a meal at A restaurant” and etc, and isn't necessarily a mean or sadistic impulse, just a disconnected one - but it can ALSO be a mean/sadistic sort of thing, even if not consciously so - X person has Y item and said person is not as WORTHY as the person who feels they have the RIGHT to whatever they want, so they just TAKE Y item... because if X DID deserve to have Y item, X would either be that person's equal, and “clearly” isn't, or if X DID deserve to have Y, X would/could have STOPPED the theft.].
My point: theft WILL happen, rich or poor; if someone wants to steal from you. THEY WILL.
given that point, WHY is it possible AT ALL to take time from someone without active consent? *OR*, why don't the RICH have such a system set up for THEMSELVES?! i mean, masterful genetic manipulation, but they can't give *just* the rich a, i don't know, a firewall? is it because the system was introduced and was so "good" that no one at ALL is truly capable of evaluating it? or is it fear that this "firewall" would somehow trickle down to the poor ANYWAY? or a desire to see anyone who loses hir fortune be as badly off as the poor, so introducing such a firewall means that former-rich won't be AS miserable as the still-rich want? or is it a method of control by those [like Daddy] who actually run the corporation or government or WHATEVER entity it is that "creates" and distributes time? a way to control even those who are the social, economic, and political equals of the "Time Lords"? [sorry - couldn't resist].
this one issue, that BIG GIANT SINGLE SOLE SOLITARY THING that bothers me, continues to bother me. because it makes no sense to have this system, that required SO many advances and the mass restructuring of society on EVERY level, and yet not have that basic protective "firewall".
and i REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wonder if this was a specific choice on the part of the people who created this movie, or if it really was just something the writers and etc just... overlooked.
THAT discussion should wait for a different post :)