tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7994908655803520533.post-58110800503004546282008-05-09T22:44:00.001+01:002008-05-09T22:46:55.480+01:00Here are the closing thoughts from tonight's Film Club Extra:<br /><br />‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.’ The perennial cry of the wronged sibling.<br /><br />But how about. ‘You can trust me. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ Trust brings a whole new perspective into play. The cleaner won’t steal my things. The baby-sitter won’t abuse my children. The treasurer won’t steal the money. The minister won’t abuse young people.<br /><br />All these break-downs in trust have occurred. They have occurred recently. And they have occurred not so very far from here.<br /><br />Philip K. Dick’s short story, set in 2054 and directed by Steven Spielberg, appears to be set a long time in the future but let’s recall, some of us, reading the novel 1984 and feeling it was set a long time in the future. The future creeps up on us. Philip K. Dick also wrote the short story ‘Do robots dream of electric sheep?’ which became the cult classic movie Blade Runner. The future in that story, is very bleak. In Minority Report, whilst still set in a dark world, they seem to have a key to making the future better.<br /><br />Films set in the future, often in the genre called ‘Science Fiction’ are good at asking ‘What if’ questions.<br /><br />What if we could stop crime before it happened? But push it a bit and you get, ‘What if we could stop every wrong before it happened?’ What if we could stop selfishness, greed, sin? What if we didn’t have free will? How far do you want to push?<br /><br />But, says the film to us, doesn’t a system that allows us to know, in advance, who will do these things and stop them seem brilliant. Well yes. Yes but...<br /><br />Cultural commentator Nick Pollard argues that once upon a time most philosophical enquiry took place in universities and most spiritual reflection in churches. Today, he says, most philosophical investigation and spiritual enquiry takes place in the cinema.<br /><br />The real heart of this film’s philosophical investigation is the exploration of questions about freedom and identity. Are we able to choose our future? If we are, are we morally accountable for it? Or are our actions in some way determined for us? This is the philosophical problem of determinism.<br /><br />All parenting, training and teaching is a counter to determinism. We believe that people act wrong because they don’t know right so we educate them.<br /><br />There was an accusation at the time of the murder of Jamie Bulger in Liverpool that the church had failed to teach people the difference between right and wrong. But the killers went to jail because the court found they did know the difference but still did wrong.<br /><br />Education doesn’t solve everything.<br /><br />However much I try I always seem to end up at movies which have eye surgery in them. It’s grim. But the film asks the question, ‘Do you see?’ Do you see what life would be like, how grim it would be under the surface, if we behaved like this? A vision of a crime-free utopia has an underside of back-street eye surgery. The same argument is often used in the matter of abortion.<br /><br />If we could know so much by pre-cognition or genetic analysis would we simply swab a baby and decide to keep or discard? We stray into the world of the film Gattaca which raises these issues and we may watch together some day<br /><br />So is the future fixed? Determined? Am I the luckless, or lucky, product of my genes, my environment and the quality of my education?<br /><br />St Paul beat himself up about this a lot. ‘Oh wretched man that I am,’ he said, ‘I can’t stop doing what I don’t want to do and not doing what I do want to do.’ If St Paul lived in the world of Minority Report he would have been taken out before he supervised the first murder of a disciple of Jesus, would never have become a follower himself and most of our New Testament would have been missing. Unless someone or something was determining his future perhaps, at which point I get brain ache.<br /><br />A few weeks ago a man finally went to prison for his 52nd driving offence. Are we as a society leaning in the opposite direction to the film? Are we too lenient?<br /><br />But is there a place in the world for repentance? If I stand over someone with a knife raised is it inevitable that I am going to kill them?<br /><br />The message I want to shout at the screen is this; people change. So we must allow them to live in a world of second chances. However awkward that makes it that I am, from time to time going to be the victim of sin. And of course, occasionally the perpetrator.<br /><br />But I won’t commit the sin of going on any longer so have a great weekend, whether someone is watching you or not.Trendlewoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16388402816917927847noreply@blogger.com