Invasions

One of the charms of Star Wars was the contrast of robots and serfs, space ships and lords. High technology and feudalism.

If you follow US politics (don’t, it’s a really really bad season), you’re seeing the beginnings of something quite similar: a 21st century version of medieval culture and power dynamics.

Instantaneous access to every fact – and any fiction disguised as fact. World-ending weapons in the hands of a cabal propping up a cult.

Our popular imaginary for the last ~15 years has been so busy re-staging the 9/11 attacks, (suppressing the invasion of Iraq), that it has failed to express the emerging dystopia.

Every blockbuster ends with the literal destruction of the world, rather than its substitution with a deadly simulacrum.

In short, we’ve had too much of this:

And not enough of this: