5 ms·

Kinda OT, but I feel Philip K. Dicks' A Scanner Darkly is a much more realistic depiction of today (even for the year it's set in - 2006), especially the situat

by as1mov 7y ago

Kinda OT, but I feel Philip K. Dicks' A Scanner Darkly is a much more realistic depiction of today (even for the year it's set in - 2006), especially the situation surrounding the mass surveillance issue. I'll highly recommend the movie adaptation of the novel, it's one of the more faithful ones. It seems to get lost among all the big-budget blockbusters that the other adaptations were.

caiocaiocaio 7y ago
I'm kind of surprised the movie isn't more famous, considering the high quality and the powerhouse cast.
- typon 7y ago
  Because a lot of people find the animation style weird. I love that movie though
  - js2 7y ago
    The style is known as rotoscoping: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping A Scanner Darkly was made by Richard Linklater. He used the same technique in Waking Life. Recently, it's also used in the Undone Amazon Prime series (recommended).
  - twic 7y ago
    If we're talking about overlooked movies with weird animation styles based on books by titans of '70s science fiction, i'll mention The Congress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHBl43lMJY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHBl43lMJY0 It is, IMHO, better than that trailer suggests.
Apocryphon 7y ago
The novel was set in June 1994, the movie came out in 2006. The film's setting has often been described as an America that has "lost the War on Drugs", which is depressingly apt considering the opiate epidemic.
- yters 7y ago
  It's weird that everyone points to the opiate epidemic as somehow signifying something major, when it's just the same drug epidemic that has already ravaged the inner cities decades ago. The only difference with the opiate epidemic is the drug dealer is the neighborhood doctor, so the risk barrier has been lowered to fit the middle class more subdued risk palate. Same weird thing as will the mass shootings. Mass shooting has been going on for a very long time in the inner cities, but it's only a big thing once middle class kids and adults start shooting everyone up.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    That novel was written at the height of the War on Drugs, and meant to describe that then-present situation. I suppose there's some novelty in how it unintentionally predicted that widespread drug abuse would continue to be a problem even in a high-tech future. And given the twist at the end of A Scanner Darkly, perhaps there's some extra resonance there?
  - allovernow 7y ago
    >Mass shooting has been going on for a very long time in the inner cities, but it's only a big thing once middle class kids and adults start shooting everyone up. Inner city "mass shootings" are phenomenologically distinct from the more modern mass shootings you blame on middle class kids and adults. The former are born of gang warfare, with specific targets and associated collateral damage, while the latter are much more random and difficult to explain. It's dishonest to group them together as certain groups do, particularly those who cite mass shootings as evidence for the need for gun control. The two problems have different causes and different solutions.
minxomat 7y ago
I was reminded of that when I saw people using a crude contraption inside a helmet to project different faces onto their own in order to evade facial recognition.
robocat 7y ago
A Scanner Darkly ends with the most gutting personal note by Philip: """ This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed–run over, maimed, destroyed–but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. “Take the cash and let the credit go,” as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime. There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful. If there was any “sin,” it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene… deceased To Ray… deceased To Francy… permanent psychosis To Kathy… permanent brain damage To Jim… deceased To Val… massive permanent brain damage To Nancy… permanent psychosis To Joanne… permanent brain damage To Maren… deceased To Nick… deceased To Terry… deceased To Dennis… deceased To Phil… permanent pancreatic damage To Sue… permanent vascular damage To Jerri… permanent psychosis and vascular damage . . . and so forth. In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The “enemy” was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy. — Philip K. Dick, 1977 """

by as1mov 7y ago

caiocaiocaio 7y ago

I'm kind of surprised the movie isn't more famous, considering the high quality and the powerhouse cast.

typon 7y ago
Because a lot of people find the animation style weird. I love that movie though
- js2 7y ago
  The style is known as rotoscoping: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping A Scanner Darkly was made by Richard Linklater. He used the same technique in Waking Life. Recently, it's also used in the Undone Amazon Prime series (recommended).
- twic 7y ago
  If we're talking about overlooked movies with weird animation styles based on books by titans of '70s science fiction, i'll mention The Congress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHBl43lMJY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHBl43lMJY0 It is, IMHO, better than that trailer suggests.

Apocryphon 7y ago

The novel was set in June 1994, the movie came out in 2006. The film's setting has often been described as an America that has "lost the War on Drugs", which is depressingly apt considering the opiate epidemic.

yters 7y ago
It's weird that everyone points to the opiate epidemic as somehow signifying something major, when it's just the same drug epidemic that has already ravaged the inner cities decades ago. The only difference with the opiate epidemic is the drug dealer is the neighborhood doctor, so the risk barrier has been lowered to fit the middle class more subdued risk palate. Same weird thing as will the mass shootings. Mass shooting has been going on for a very long time in the inner cities, but it's only a big thing once middle class kids and adults start shooting everyone up.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  That novel was written at the height of the War on Drugs, and meant to describe that then-present situation. I suppose there's some novelty in how it unintentionally predicted that widespread drug abuse would continue to be a problem even in a high-tech future. And given the twist at the end of A Scanner Darkly, perhaps there's some extra resonance there?
- allovernow 7y ago
  >Mass shooting has been going on for a very long time in the inner cities, but it's only a big thing once middle class kids and adults start shooting everyone up. Inner city "mass shootings" are phenomenologically distinct from the more modern mass shootings you blame on middle class kids and adults. The former are born of gang warfare, with specific targets and associated collateral damage, while the latter are much more random and difficult to explain. It's dishonest to group them together as certain groups do, particularly those who cite mass shootings as evidence for the need for gun control. The two problems have different causes and different solutions.

minxomat 7y ago

I was reminded of that when I saw people using a crude contraption inside a helmet to project different faces onto their own in order to evade facial recognition.

robocat 7y ago

A Scanner Darkly ends with the most gutting personal note by Philip: """ This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed–run over, maimed, destroyed–but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. “Take the cash and let the credit go,” as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime. There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful. If there was any “sin,” it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene… deceased To Ray… deceased To Francy… permanent psychosis To Kathy… permanent brain damage To Jim… deceased To Val… massive permanent brain damage To Nancy… permanent psychosis To Joanne… permanent brain damage To Maren… deceased To Nick… deceased To Terry… deceased To Dennis… deceased To Phil… permanent pancreatic damage To Sue… permanent vascular damage To Jerri… permanent psychosis and vascular damage . . . and so forth. In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The “enemy” was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy. — Philip K. Dick, 1977 """