St. God’s: Unscannable Panic

16 Oct 2018 by Christopher Noessel

During Joe’s consultation with Dr. Lexus, all the clues he has been stumbling past finally begin to sink in. When Dr. Lexus asks him to pay the bill, and—thinking Joe is mentally challenged—instructs him to put his tattoo up to the OmniBro payment system, he realizes that Joe has no barcode on his wrist.

The doctor is absolutely terrified of this. He can barely conceive it. “Why come you don’t have a tattoo?” [sic] “You’re not unscannable, are you‽…You’re unscannable!!” In a panic he reaches out to his treatment panel and smashes the lower-left hand icon, shouting, “UNSCANNABLE!!” This causes a klaxon to sound and red beacon light to blink. Joe realizes he can’t stay and flees.

The panel

Dr. Lexus has a 3×4 mini-panel similar to Biggiez’ intake interface. It gets only a blurry half a second of screen time, but through the annoying power of screengrab, I can see that they’re a subset of the graphics from the intake interface.

Too bad. It was an opportunity for more hilarity, perhaps something similar to Dr. Lexus’ moronic ramblings. Think buttons for Kick Ass, Sound like a Dick, and Fucked Up. (Serious props to Jason Long for pulling these lines off so hilariously.) But let’s instead talk about mashing buttons.

Avoiding accidental activation

We want to ensure that a doctor only presses this high-cost button deliberately, but it still has to be easy to press. The classic CTRL-ALT-DELETE key chord is an example of deliberateness. It was designed to be very difficult to press accidentally. A gas station shut-off emergency shut off is an example of an emergency button that is easy to find and press.

Dr. Lexus’ panic button is the opposite of this: A high-cost button that looks like and sits adjacent to all these other presumably low-cost buttons, and even sits in one of the easiest-to-hit areas, requiring some of the least precision. The risk of accidental activation seems very high. Don’t do this.

On the other hand, it’s possible that the keyboard is aware of Dr. Lexus’ emotional state, either from lots of context cues, or the strength of his mashing, or the fact that he’s touching four buttons at once.

Affective input

Smashing is its own kind of input—it’s different than the deliberate key presses of ordinary use. It means that either the user is in some intense emotional state (angry, panicked, or…a joyful toddler, maybe?) or not actually trying to provide input, just manipulating the interface (say, picking up the keyboard to move it.) These are events which designers can consider and design for. A real world example is the mobile version of Google Maps, shake it and it presumes that you are angry and asks you for feedback.

So it’s possible—if you want to give interfaces in the Idiocracy more credit than is justifiable given the idiocracy—that the panel is detecting the fast, hard, mashing of multiple keys, and registering that as a distress call. Long-time readers may recall Zorg mashing his desktop keypad in a panic as he chokes on a cherry pit in The Fifth Element. Perhaps this interface can sit alongside it as a possible opposite.

Triple your resistance to the Idiocracy (today)

Straight from DSCC: The last FEC deadline before Election Day is in just two days. That means the final decisions are being made right now about where to allocate resources for the last weeks before November’s elections.

It also means that the final ad buys of the midterm elections are being made—and we need to make sure sane candidates have the resources they need to get their message out. Enter the DSCC.

They have a $300,000 goal, and only have until Wednesday at midnight to hit it. If you make a donation, it will be TRIPLE-MATCHED to give candidates what they need to flip the Senate and put some necessary counterbalance to the insanity coming from the executive branch.

St. God’s: Healthmaster Inferno

15 Oct 2018 by Christopher Noessel

After Joe goes through triage, he is directed to the “diagnosis area to the right.” He waits in a short queue, and then enters the diagnosis bay.

The attendant wears a SMARTSPEEK that says, “Your illness is very important to us. Welcome to the Healthmaster Inferno.”

The attendant, DR. JAGGER, holds three small metal probes, and hands each one to him in turn saying, “Uh, this one goes in your mouth. This one goes in your ear. And this one goes up your butt.” (Dark side observation about the St. God’s: Apparently what it takes to become a doctor in Idiocracy is an ability to actually speak to patients and not just let the SMARTSPEEK do all the talking.)

Joe puts one in his mouth and is getting ready to insert the rest, when a quiet beeping causes the attendant to pause and correct himself. “Shit. Hang on a second.” He takes the mouth one back and hands him another one. “This one…No.” He gathers them together, and unable to tell them apart, he shuffles them trying to figure it out, saying “This one. This one goes in your mouth.” Joe reluctantly puts the offered probe into his mouth and continues.

The diagnosis is instant (and almost certainly UNKNOWN). SMARTSPEEK says, “Thank you for waiting. Dr. Lexus will be with you shortly.”

The probes

The probes are rounded, metal cylinders, maybe a decimeter in length. They look like 3.6mm audio plugs with the tips ground off. The interface-slash-body-horror joke is that we in the audience know that you shouldn’t cross-contaminate between those orifices in a single person, much less between multiple people, and the probes look identical. (Not only that, but they aren’t cleaned or used with a sterile disposable sheath, etc.) So Joe’s not sure what he’s about to have to put in his mouth, and DR. JAGGER is too dumb to know or care.

The bay

Modeled on car wash aethetics, the bay is a molded-plastic arch, about 4 meters to a side. The inside has a bunch of janky and unsanitary looking medical probes and tools. Around the entrance of the bay are an array of backlit signs, clockwise from 7 o’ clock:

Form one line | Do not push
(Two right-facing arrows, one blue, one orange)
(A stop sign)
(A hepatitis readout, from Hepatitis A to Hepatitis F, which does not exist.)
Tumor | E-Coli | Just gas | Tapeworm | Unknown
Gout | Lice | Leprosy | Malaria
(Three left-facing arrows, orange, blue, and magenta)
(The comp created for the movie tells…) Be probe ready | Thank you!

Theoretically, the lights help patients understand what to do and what their diagnosis is. But the instruction panels don’t seem to change, and once the patient is inside the bay, they can no longer see the diagnosis panels. The people in the queue and the lobby, however, can. So not only does it rob the patients of any bodily privacy (as they’re having to ram a probe up their rears), but it also robs them of any privacy about their diagnosis. HIPPA and GDPR are rolling around in their then-500 year old graves.

Hygiene

A better solution would of course focus on hygiene first, offering a disposable sheath for the probes. They should still be sterilized between patients.

Idiocracy_diagnosis05 — Because this is such as visceral reminder, I’m nominating this as the top anti-example of affordances and constraints for new designers.

Better affordances

Second would be changing the design of the probes such that they were easy to distinguish between them. Color, shape, and labeling are initial ideas.

Better constraints

Third would be to constrain the probes so that…

The butt probe can’t reach up beyond the butt (maybe tying the cable to the floor? Though that means it’s likely to drop to the ground, which is clearly not sterile in this place, so maybe tying it the wall and having it klaxon loudly if it’s above butt height.)
The mouth probe can’t reach below the head (maybe tying the cable to the ceiling)
The ear probe should be smaller and ear-shaped rather than some huge eardrum-piercing thing.

And while modesty is clearly not an issue for people of Idiocracy, convention, modesty, and the law require us in our day to make this a LOT more private.

Prevention > remedy

Note that there is an error beep when Joe puts the wrong probe in his butt. Like many errors, by that time it is too late. It makes engineering sense for the machine to complain when there is a problem. It makes people sense to constrain so that errors are not possible, or at the very least, put the alarm where it will dissuade from error.

Also, can we turn the volume up on those quiet beeps to, say, 80 decibels? I think everyone’s interested in more of an alarm than a whisper for this.

A hidden, eviscerating joke

In addition to the base comedy—of treating diagnosis like a carwash, the interaction design of the missing affordances and constraints, and the poop humor of sticking a butt probe in your mouth—there is yet another layer of stupid evident here. Many of the diseases listed on the “proscenium” of the bay are ones that can be caused by, yep, ingesting feces. (Hepatitis A, Hepatitis E, tapeworm, E. “boli.”) Enjoy the full, appetizing list on Wikipedia. It’s a whole other layer of funny, and hearkens back to stories of when late-1800s doctors took umbrage at Ignaz Semmelweis’ suggestions that they wash their hands. (*huffgrumble* But we’re gentlemen!” *monocle pop*) This is that special kind of stupid when people are the cause of their own problems, and refuse to believe it because they are either proud…or idiots.

But of course, we’re so much wiser today. People are never, say, duped into voting for some sense of tribal identity despite mountains of evidence that they are voting against their community, or even their own self-interest.

Fighting the unsanitary butt plugs of the Idiocracy

“Action by action, day by day, group by group, Indivisibles are remaking our democracy. They make calls. They show up. They speak with their neighbors. They organize. And through that work, they’ve built hundreds of mini-movements in support of their local values. And now, after practice, training, and repetition, they’ve built lasting power on their home turf and a massive, collective political muscle ready to be exercised each and every day in every corner of the country.”

Donate or join the phone bankers at Indivisible to talk people into voting, and perhaps some sanity into Idiocrats. Indivisible’s mission is “to cultivate and lift up a grassroots movement of local groups to defeat the Trump agenda, elect progressive leaders, and realize bold progressive policies.”

St. God’s: Intake

12 Oct 2018 by Christopher Noessel

In their forecasting workshops, the Institute for the Future trains practitioners to sensitize themselves to “signals,” something that may seem banal but on reflection foretells great change or deep meaning. That story about the arctic penguins who accepted a furry remote controlled camera as a chick is one of mine. Still wrestling with its implications. This interface is another.

After Joe walks past the FloorMaster and Insurance Slot Machines, he finally makes it up to the triage desk. It’s labeled CHECK-IN, and the sign devotes a large portion of its space to advertising. He speaks to the employee there, named Biggiez, who blankly listens to him talk about how he’s feeling. As he talks, she looks down at a wide panel of buttons, floating her pointing finger above the unlabeled icons that kind-of describe common ailments.

When Joe says, “I don’t even know where I am,” she finally pushes an icon featuring a stick figure, shrugging, with two question marks floating in the space beside its sad face. In response, it lights up, we hear a ding, and a SMARTSPEEK device on Biggiez’ blouse says, “Please proceed to the diagnostic area on the right…and have a healthy day.” Joe moves on to the diagnosis bay, which I’ll discuss in the next post.

A shout-out to these icons

While I normally stick to the canon of what actually appears in the final edit, these are hilarious, and the designer has published the lot of them online, so feast your sense of humor on the whole smörgåsbord.

Behold them. They are, literally, 9 kinds of funny.

Some are slapstick. Squirting hole in butt cheek. Hole in gut. Ow, my balls.
Some point to the stupidity of the patients. Baby drop. Things-what-damaged-my-head (lightning, knife, nail, gun, bump). All the evisceration.
Some point to the stupidity of the maker of the panel. Options for gender include and are limited to (rather than, say, the much more reasonable 63:
- I cannot tell. (Alternately: They are feeling gender dysphoria.)
- They are hermaphroditic/intersexed.
- They are a female to male transsexual.
Some point to not-hospital problems. Feeling angry.
Some point to not-problems. Thinking of atoms. I recycled.
Some are nigh-impossible. Hello, I am dead by decapitation. Have I drowned? I am in such pain that I have gained a third eye.
Some show how slipshod the QA on this thing was. Two left/right arrows (when there’s nothing), two guns-to-head
Unhelpful nuance. My arm is chopped off. My leg is chopped off. My scalp, arm, and lower leg are chopped off.
Some are inscrutable. An asterisk. A takete (with no baluba). Updown.

That’s graphics carrying quite a bit of comedy load here. Readers interested in behind-the-scenes will like to know they were made by designer Ellen Lampl. (A significant portion of her portfolio is film graphics, so be sure to check it out.) In 2014 she had an interview with Phil Edwards which you can read on triviahappy.com, where she tells more about her process.

The set is even funnier because of course how could the breadth of human problems be reduced down to 48? (And these 48.) There are 14,400 codes in IDC-10 alone. What is Biggiez supposed to do if Joe was complaining about being struck by duck? IDC can handle that. (No really.)

But aside from praising the comedy, let me do my due diligence and discuss four (off the top of my head) improvements that could be made if this was a real system. Even for morons.

How about labels?

Yeah. Not a single one of them are labeled, introducing way too much ambiguity. Labels don’t always provide the specificity they need, but not having them on icons practically assures it.

Allow multiple ailments

Another failing of the panel is that is doesn’t appear to handle multiple ailments. In fact, Joe complains about hallucinations (R443), a headache (R51), and aching joints (need some help with that one, but her finger is so close to the knee icon), but she only indicates the one about confusion. You’d hope there was some way for her to touch an icon for every ailment, and then submit them but that just doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe patients just have to keep coming back to check-in to care of each thing, one at a time.

Rank urgency

The purpose of triage is first to rank the urgency of the need medical care. The gal with the baby dropping needs to be seen now, but the gal who just has some questions can wait over there for a while. How would this panel code urgency?

Urgency might be just part of the code (gun to head less than knife buried in head), but that would mean this panel would have to have separate icons for light scratch to the scalp and a gaping free flowing head wound, and they just don’t require the same levels of attention.

The panel seems to have a simple pain scale on the left of [happy | sad | neutral], but since Biggiez doesn’t touch them, it’s not clear that these work like a chorded button or some separate code for someone who comes in complaining about their base emotional state.

A better system would let you identify the problem and pain scale separately, as different facets of the complaint.

Chunk stuff

Just to make sure I’m saying the 101 layout principle: if you really had a panel of flat options, chunking them into groups helps the user understand, recall, and find items.

This points to an opportunity

So of course there are lots of reasons why this is funny as hell, breaking lots of fundamentals for a funny, body-horror kind of joke while Joe figures things out.

But I think the reason this interface has really stuck with me is that it would pass a usability test. As in, Biggiez finds it perfectly easy to use. She can scan the icons, tell them apart, select one with ease. Hell, the SMARTSPEEK even makes sure she can’t mess up telling the patient what to do next. This would get a very high Net Promoter Score. It would do well on any self-reporting satisfaction measure. And it still sucks.

Sure, it would fail an efficacy test, but what if we took on the hubris of rethinking the role of the interface here. To the point, this interface lets Biggiez just stay dumb. (And we have way too much of that in the world as it is.) What if it could make Biggiez smarter?

First draft: What if two nurses listened to the patient’s complaints side-by-side, and their codings were only revealed to each other when they’d both completed them. Then, as the patient went through diagnosis, a fedback loop rewarded the nurse who was most correct. The reward could be money, or rankings amongst peers, or almost anything really? Biggiez would have incentives to not just do the task (or have the task done for her.) She would have incentives to get better and smarter at her job.

This may not be the best actual design proposal, but I’m intrigued by this possibility. What if our interfaces could make everyone who used them smarter? Faster? Stronger? (Musical break.) What if every technology was like this? With technology everywhere, what if technology made us better instead of treated us like petri dishes for colonizing?

I am thinking about it.

Fighting Idiocracy

Another way you can help fight American idiocracy is to sign up to volunteer your time for the last weekend. As The Last Weekend notes, “Study after study shows that the most effective way to get people to vote is by having conversations with them in the four days before Election Day (Saturday, November 3rd – Tuesday, November 6th).” It’s a short commitment for that last big push before the election. Sign up now at https://thelastweekend.org/.

St. God’s: Insurance Slot Machine

11 Oct 2018 by Christopher Noessel

The other depressing thing besides the FloorMaster that Joe sees as he walks through St. God’s lobby is the insurance slot machines.

He sees a man with a blank expression and a bleeding head wound above his left eye, who stands a bank of slot machines. The backglass of each has diagonal logos advertising BLAKDIX capsules (n.b. the wallpaper advertises BONERAX), telling players they can play while they wait, and that they can WIN FREE MEDICAL CARE. The reel strips don’t show bells or fruit, but rather, pills. The blood from the head wound shines in the lights.

Idiocracy_triage02 — This is the future that the GoP and insurance companies want.

Games and games of chance don’t obey standard usability principles. The point of them is that you don’t know if you’ll get what you want. So a regular analysis won’t do.

Slot machines are fairly standardized, and the only things these particular ones seem to be missing is a paytable. If you don’t know your slot machine lingo, that’s an information table, presented on the backglass, explaining what combinations of symbols pay out and how much. Three z-packs? Congratulations! You don’t have to die of sepsis today! No player should put money in a slot machine without knowing what the payout might be. And these machines don’t have them. In the real world, this wouldn’t fly. But in Idiocracy, it’s perfect. Let me explain. Of course it’s going to get political fast.

The shock of this half-a-second beat comes from the immediate recognition that the man is bleeding, and the half-a-second later realization that he’s standing at a slot machine to try and resolve his problem. Why isn’t he getting care? Why does he accept this? Why would anyone? This is stupid, you think. And you’re right. It’s stupid and inhumane that the richest country in the world would not use some of its wealth to take care of its citizens. Yet 44 million Americans have no insurance and another 38 million have inadequate insurance. That means nearly one-third of Americans are just hoping that they don’t get sick. If they do, they risk either getting that help and going bankrupt, or living in pain, getting worse…maybe dying. Also, you know, their kids.

No one wants to get sick. So in our system, we have the uninsured gambling with their lives.

This isn’t just how it has to be. Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, with the United States being the only exception. There’s an idiotic idea that America somehow gets great medical care in exchange for this, but that’s just a self-serving lie. The Commonwealth Fund did an extensive comparison of the healthcare in 11 developed nations, and the U.S. fared the worst. And individually, we pay about twice as much per capita than other developed nations. So our system is the most expensive, AND the worst, AND abandons ⅓ of our citizens to rolls of the healthcare dice. How can it be this way? Who is in favor of this? Healthcare for profit, of course, and that’s a GoP speciality.

We know that Democrats lead the way on healthcare reform. The Affordable Care Act was remarkable for how far it got with Obama facing a historically obstructionist Republican Congress, and the GoP has been trying to undo it since. Insurance companies know that the GoP is their friend. In 2012, the insurance industry donated nearly $55 million to parties and candidates and 68% went to Republicans. They know.

Which brings up back to the slot machines. People who stand at a machine that looks like it might give them healthcare (gosh, it looks like a slot machine. It must pay eventually, right?), without any indication that it actually will, are idiots, and any system that allows this is an Idiocracy.

We have one tool to combat making this image any more of a reality, and it’s a vote.

Fighting Idiocracy

Voter suppression tactics (undertaken in the bad-faith argument against voter fraud) include closing polling places near traditionally Democrat strongholds. What can you do?

Drive them yourself

If you have seats to spare make a broadcast on social media channels. Or offer to people who may face transportation challenges.

Join Find a volunteer driver group

Carpool the Vote seems dedicated to this cause, but is currently not accepting any more sign ups, but it would be worth checking in on the site to see if they open up again. I couldn’t find an alternate system, but if anyone knows it, speak up in the comments.

Share information about discounted and free ride-shares

Lyft is offering 50% off rides to and from polling locations on election day. Unfortunately I can’t find a way to donate to Lyft so they can make it free, so I will note that Uber—though a company with a much worse track record as a corporate citizen than Lyft—has promised free rides. (People have to have the latest version of the app, so also encourage them to update it.) Get that word out to people who can use it. Post on neighborhood Facebook groups, Slack, and NextDoor channels.

Get people to the polls so they exercise their right to vote.

The FloorMaster

10 Oct 2018 by Christopher Noessel

As Joe wanders through the (incredibly depressing) lobby of St. God’s Memorial Hospital, it is at once familiar but wrong. One of these wrong things is a floor cleaning robot labeled The FloorMaster. It loudly announces “YOUR FLOOR IS NOW CLEAN!” while bumping over and over into a toe kick under a cabinet. (It also displays this same phrase on a display panel.) The floor immediately below its path is, in fact, spotless, but the surrounding floor is so filthy it is opaque with dirt, as well as littered with syringes and trash lined with unsettling stains.

There are few bananas for scale, but I’m guessing it’s half meter square. It has a yellow top with green sides and highlights. It has bumpers and some greebles and an amber display screen on top. “The FloorMaster” logo is printed on its side.

Narratively awesome

The wonderful thing about this device is it quickly tells us many things at once. First, the FloorMaster is a technology that is, itself, kind of stupid. Today’s Roombas “know” to turn a bit when they bump into a wall. It’s one of the basic ways they avoid this very scenario. So this illustrates that the technology in this world is, itself, kind of stupid. (How society managed to make it this far without imploding or hell, exploding, is a mystery.)

It also shows that the people around the machines are failing to notice and do anything about the robot. They are either too dull to notice or this is just so common that it’s not worth doing anything about.

It also shows how stupid capitalism has become (it’s a running theme of St. God’s and the rest of the movie). It calls itself the floor master, but in no way has it mastered your floors. In no way are your floors clean, despite what the device itself is telling and blinking at you. And CamelCase brand names are so 1990s, much less 2505.

Realistically stupid

So, I wrote this whole book about agents, i.e. technologies that persistently respond to triggers with behaviors that serve people. It’s called Designing Agentive Technologies: AI That Works for People. One of my recurring examples in that book and when I speak publicly about that content is the Roomba, so I have a bookload of opinions on how this thing should be designed. I don’t want to simply copy+paste that book here. But know that Chapter 9 is all about handoff and takeback between an agent and a user, and ideally this machine would be smart enough to detect when it is stuck and reach out to the user to help.

I would be remiss not to note that, as with the The Fifth Element floor sweeping robots, safety of people around the underfoot robot is important. This is especially true in a hospital setting, where people may be in a fragile state and not as alert as they would ordinarily be. So unless this was programmed to run only when there was no one around, it seems like a stupid thing to have in a hospital. OK, chalk another point up to its narrative virtues.

Fighting US Idiocracy

Speaking of bots, there is a brilliant bot that you can sign up for to help us resist American idiocracy. It’s the resistbot, and you can find it on Facebook messenger, twitter, and telegram. It provides easy ways to find out who represents you in Congress, and deliver messages to them in under 2 minutes. It’s not as influential as an in-person visit or call, but as part of your arsenal, it helps with reminders for action. Join!

Sleeping pods

9 Oct 2018 by Christopher Noessel

Use

Joe and Rita climb into the pods and situate themselves comfortably. Officer Collins and his assistant approach and insert some necessary intravenous chemicals. We see two canisters, one empty (for waste?) and one filled with the IV fluid. To each side of the subject’s head is a small raised panel with two lights (amber and ruby) and a blue toggle switch. None of these are labeled. The subjects fall into hibernation and the lids close.

Collins and his assistant remove a cable labeled “MASTER” from the interface and close a panel which seals the inputs and outputs. They then close a large steel door, stenciled “TOP SECRET,” to the hibernation chamber.

The external interface panel includes:

A red LED display

3 red safety cover toggle switches labeled “SET 1” “SET 2” and “SET 3.”
A 5×4 keypad
- 0-9 numbers
- Letters A–F
- Four unlabeled white buttons

500 years later, after the top secret lab is destroyed, the pods become part of the mountains of garbage that just pile up. Sliding down an avalanche of the stuff, the pods wind up in a downtown area. Joe’s crashes through Frito’s window. At this moment the pod decides enough is enough and it wakes him. Clamps around the edge unlock. The panel cover has fallen off somewhere, and the LED display blinks the text, “unfreezing.” Joe drowsily pushes the lids open and gets out.

Its purpose in the narrative

This is a “segue” interface, mostly useful in explaining how Joe and Rita are transported safely 500 years in the future. At its base, all it needs to convey is:

Scienciness (lights and interfaces, check)

See them pass into sleep (check)

See why how they are kept safe (rugged construction details, clamped lid, check)
See the machine wake them up (check)

Is it ideal?

The ergonomics are nice. A comfortable enough coffin to sleep in. And it seems…uh…well engineered, seeing as how it winds up lasting 500 times its intended use and takes some pretty massive abuse as it slides down the mountains of garbage and through Frito’s window into his apartment. But that’s where the goodness ends. It looks solid enough to last a long long time. But there are questions.

From Collins’ point of view:

Why was it engineered to last 500 years, but you know, fail to have any of its interior lights or toggle switches labeled? Or have something more informative on the toggles than “SET 1”?

How on earth did they monitor the health of the participants over time? (Compare Prometheus’ hibernation screens.) Did they just expect it to work perfectly? Not a lot of comfort to the subjects. Did they monitor it remotely? Why didn’t that monitoring screen arouse the suspicions of the foreclosers?

How are subjects roused? If the procedure is something that Collins just knows, what if something happens to him? That information should be somewhere on the pod with very clear instructions.
How does it gracefully degrade as it runs out of resources (power, water, nutrition, air, water storage or disposal) to keep it’s occupants alive? What if the appointed person doesn’t answer the initial cry for help?

From the hibernators’ point of view:

How do the participants indicate their consent to go into hibernation? Can this be used as an involuntary prison?

How do they indicate consent to be awakened? (Not an easy problem, but Passengers illustrates why it’s necessary.)

What if they wake early? How do they get out or let anyone know to release them?

Why does the subject have to push the lid if they’re going to be weak and woozy when they waken? Can’t it be automatic, like the hibernation lids in Aliens?

How does the sleeper know it’s safe to get out? Certainly Joe and Rita expected to wake up in the military laboratory. But while we’re putting in the effort to engineer it to last 500 years, maybe we could account for the possibility that it’s somewhere else.

Can’t you put me at ease in the disorientating hypnopompic phase? Maybe some soothing graphic on the interior lid? A big red label reading, “DON’T PANIC” with an explanation?
Can you provide some information to help orient me, like where I am and when I am? Why does Joe have to infer the date from a magazine cover?

From a person-in-the-future point of view

How do the people nearby know that it contains living humans? That might be important for safekeeping, or even to take care in case the hibernators are carrying some disease to which the population has lost resistance.

How do we know if they’ve got some medical conditions that will need specialized care? What food they eat? Whether they are dangerous?
Can we get a little warning so we can prepare for all this stuff?

Is the interface believable?

Oh yes. Prototypes tend to be minimum viable thing, and usability lags far behind basic utility. Plus, this is military, known to be tough people expecting their people to be tough people without the need for civilian niceties. Plus, Collins didn’t seem too big on “details.” So very believable.

Note that this doesn’t equate to the thing itself being believable. I mean, it was an experiment meant to last only a year. How did it have the life support resources—including power—to run for 500 times the intended duration? What brown fluid has the 273,750,000 calories needed to sustain Luke Wilson’s physique for 500 years? (Maya Rudoph lucks out needing “only” 219,000,000.) How did it keep them alive and prevent long-term bedridden problems, like pressure sores, pneumonia, constipation, contractures, etc. etc.?
See? Comedy is hard to review.

Fight US Idiocracy: Donate to close races

Reminder: Every post in this series includes some U.S.-focused calls to action for readers to help reverse the current free fall into our own Idiocracy. In the last post I provided information about how to register to vote in your state. DO THAT.
If you accidentally missed the deadline (and triple check because many states have some way to register right up to and including election day, which is 06 NOV this year), there are still things you can do. Sadly, one of the most powerful things feels crass: Donate money to close campaigns. Much of this money is spent reaching out to undecided voters via media channels, and that means the more money the more reach.

There are currently 68 highly competitive seats—those considered a toss up between the two parties or leaning slightly toward one. You can look at the close campaigns and donate directly, or you can donate to Act Blue, and let that organization make the call. That’s what I did. Just now. Please join me.

Idiocracy: Overview

8 Oct 2018 by Christopher Noessel

While reviewing fascism in sci-fi, I was reminded of how much I love Mike Judge’s under-appreciated film Idiocracy. It’s hilarious, smart, and, admittedly, mean sci-fi. Since American politics are heading to some unholy Deep Dream merger of this film and The Handmaid’s Tale, I’m refining my broad dictum against sci-fi comedy and diving in.

Release Date: 25 January 2007 (USA)

Overview

Private Joe Bauers and jaded sex worker Rita are selected by a military program—for their being very, very average—to be frozen in capsules for a year.

A mistake shuts down the monitoring agency, and they wind up frozen for 500 years instead. Over that time, because dumb people keep having more kids than smart people, the average intelligence of the population drops and drops, so that when Joe and Rita wake from the stasis pods on 03 March 2505, they are the smartest people in the world. By a lot. Society is barely hanging on, lasting as long as it has owing to the designs of some long-dead smart people.

Woozy from his long sleep, Joe wanders into a hospital where the doctor goes into a panic for Joe’s not having an ID tattoo on his wrist. For this crime Joe is arrested, tried in a sham court, tattooed, and has his IQ tested before being bussed to prison. There Joe finally realizes how stupid everyone is when he talks his way to the exit and then just…runs away.

He finds his way back to the apartment of his court-appointed lawyer whose name is Frito. Joe asks if there are any time machines, and Frito says yes, there is one. But he’s hesitant. To motive him, Joe offers a compound interest time travel gambit payout of $80 billion and Frito—who says that he likes money—agrees. They find Rita (who, clearly used to dealing with morons, is faring pretty well) and head for the time machine, but Joe’s tattoo is remotely scanned and Frito’s car is shut down automatically for harboring fugitives. The three of them abandon the car to hike. They enter a truly massive CostCo to find the time machine, but Joe’s tattoo is again scanned and he is again arrested.

This time he’s taken to the White House, where he meets President King Camacho and named Secretary of the Interior for being the smartest man in the world, according to the IQ test he took earlier. In an impassioned speech to the House of Representin’ [sic], Camacho promises them that Joe will solve the problems of failing crops, the plague of dust storms, the failing “ecomony,” acne, and car sickness; and do it all within one week. If he does accomplish it, Camacho promises, Joe will get a presidential pardon for his crimes. If not, he’ll be thrown back in jail.

Joe heads to the countryside with the Cabinet and Frito, where he is reunited with Rita. There he learns that the crops are being fed not with water but with a sports drink called Brawndo, The Thirst Mutilator™. (Brawndo’s computers had long ago identified water as a threat to its profit margins, and during the budget crisis of 2330, purchased the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Communications Commission. This enabled them to say, do, and sell anything they wanted, including requiring all crops be fed with Brawndo.)

Joe recommends they switch from Brawndo to water for the crops, which grosses everyone out because they only associate water with the toilet. Unable to convince them with reason (in my favorite scene they parrot Brawndo advertising slogans as counter evidence, “It’s got what plants crave.” “It’s got electrolytes.”) he tells them he can talk to plants, and that the plants say they want water. This convinces the Cabinet, and the sprinklers are switched over.

This causes Brawndo’s stock price to crash, and the company’s computer “does that auto-layoff thing,” firing everyone at Brawndo and causing 50% unemployment across the country. Outside the White House, a jobless mob demands revenge. Joe is taken to court again and convicted. Joe is sentenced to one night of “rehabilitation,” which is a deadly, monster truck public execution.

As Rehab starts, Rita spots a flower growing outside the White House. She and Frito rush to Rehab to save him. On route, they see sprouts in fields. Camacho saves Joe from Rehabilitation just in time as Rita and Frito broadcast video of the sprouts, exonerating Joe to the world.

Pardoned, Joe and Rita have Frito take them to the time machine, which ends up being just a dumb theme ride in the CostCo. Joe and Rita resign themselves to their new life amongst the morons. They wed, and Joe is elected President of America with Rita as first lady and Frito as Vice President. The movie ends contrasting Rita and Joe’s three kids, “the three smartest kids in the world”, with Frito’s, who are “32 of the dumbest kids ever to walk the earth.”

Bonus tracks

It’s no accident that I’m writing about Idiocracy before the midterm elections in the U.S. The American Experiment seems to be on the verge, and close to some inescapable mistakes. So, at the end of each one of these posts, since this is my country, I’m going to go full USA-centric here and share something that USAmericans can do to vote, help others vote, and reverse our own continued freefall into Idiocracy. I know I have an international readership, but please bear with me.

Today, the bonus track is about registering to vote. If you’ve done it, awesome. Find someone in your life you can convince to register. If you haven’t, you need to. Either way, below is the info you need.

Register-to-vote deadlines

Voting is the most important tool we have, but in every state but North Dakota, to do that you have to be registered ahead of time. (Seriously. Good show, North Dakota.) These deadlines are all in October. You can see your state’s deadline (and for states that allow it, a link to register online) listed alphabetically at the New York Times link below.

You may be wondering it too late for you? Note that while most states have a single deadline for voter registration, many have separate deadlines for registering by mail, online, and in-person. Find the same information from the NYT site sorted by date below. If it is, damn, that sucks, but there is still more you can do. Stay tuned to this blog for more reviews, more bonus tracks, and more calls to action.

Registration by date

07 OCT Alaska, Montana (in person), Rhode Island
08 OCT Mississippi (in person), Washington (by mail and online)
09 OCT Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana (by mail and in person), Michigan, Mississippi (by mail), Nevada (by mail), New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah (by mail)
10 OCT Missouri, Montana (by mail)
12 OCT Idaho, New York (online and in person), North Carolina (by mail), Oklahoma
13 OCT Delaware
15 OCT Virginia
16 OCT District of Columbia, Kansas, Louisiana (online), Maine, Massachusetts (by mail), Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon (note when you renew your driver’s license your are automatically registered to vote), West Virginia
17 OCT Maryland, Massachusetts (online or in person), Nevada (by mail), New York (by mail), South Carolina, Wisconsin (by mail and online)
18 OCT Nevada (online)
19 OCT Nebraska (by mail and online)
22 OCT Alabama, California, Iowa (by mail), South Dakota, Wyoming (by mail)
26 OCT Nebraska (in person)
27 OCT Iowa (in person), New Hampshire (by mail)
29 OCT Colorado, Washington (in person)
30 OCT Connecticut, Utah (online and in person)
03 NOV North Carolina (in person)
TUE 06 NOV 2018, ELECTION DAY: Florida (in person), Iowa (in person), Maine (in person), Minnesota (in person), New Hampshire (in person), Vermont, Wisconsin (in person), Wyoming (in person). In California you can show up the day of and cast a provisional ballot.

Why is strong fascism missing in screen sci-fi?

28 Aug 2018 by Christopher Noessel

In the last post, I went through every candidate movie and TV show I had collected to illustrate that we barely see strong fascism in screen sci-fi.Read about the distinctions amongst fascisms being used in the first post of this series. What we do have is…

A few dozen “weak” examples of fascism
One that has straight-up Nazis in an ongoing alternate-history dimension-hopping series. (The Man in the High Castle.)
One “pretty damned close” (Star Trek Discovery)

Why is this so? Why is strong fascism largely missing in screen sci-fi?

I don’t know the answer to that question for certain, but if you’ve read this blog, you know that that hasn’t stopped me before. Here are my best guesses.

Of course the first thing we should note is that sci-fi isn’t indebted to show fascism. Very arguably, the core of the genre concerns the effects, challenges, and opportunities of technology/science. Sometimes that means swords made out of cauterizing light. Sometimes that means green-skinned aliens. Sometimes that means software hyperevolving and abandoning its users. There’s nothing that says it must care about fascism.

But, it is a lens through which many readers prefer to do their speculative thinking, and fascism changes with technology, so it still feels like a bit of surprise to be missing.

The distinction may not be important to the story

For example, does it matter to the story that it’s fascism rather than, say, despotism? Or tyranny? Or just a bad guy? If not, the writer may not bother working out what kind of evil it is. It may not be worth it.

There may not be enough narrative time

In short formats like film, showing strong fascism takes a lot of narrative time, and must be fit in along with all the other stuff pertinent to your story. Sci-fi in particular has the narrative burden of explaining the new rules implied by its speculative technology, so doesn’t have a lot of room to also include a bunch of stuff about a political movement. If you’re telling a love story about Space Mooks discovering The Cake is a Lie, it may not make sense to go into detail about the government system wrecking things in the background, even if it informs the diegesis. A caustic boss and violent peers may be all you can “afford” to detail.

In longer or serial formats like television, you have more time, so it makes sense to me that that’s where the strongest example of fascism appeared. I note that in Star Trek Discovery we see evidence of T’Kuvma’s fascism only across several episodes rather than all at once.

Background fascism is tough

If you do go to the trouble to depict strong fascism, you then have the problem of perspective: Do you tell WWII from the leaders’ perspectives? Like Mussolini and Farinacci’s? Or from a perspective more similar to your viewership’s, like a layperson? If you tell it from the fascist leader’s perspective (as Star Trek Discovery has), you’re perpetuating the discredited Great Man Theory of historical events (though I suppose most of sci-fi commits this same error), and possibly building up empathy in the wrong place. But to tell it from the layperson’s perspective means you have to convey how and why the society is beginning to burn around them, and that leaves you with a lot of exposition or taking even more time out of your narrative and away from the lead character’s focus. Neither of these options is very satisfying. I imagine it’s a tricky place to write for.

It may not fit the tone

Fascism is a dark thing with its real-world psychological seductions, politics, racism, and ultranationalism. Fascism operates through violence and that almost always warrants a violent response to end it if the society in which it metastasizes can not resolve it through politics. That kind of violence may not fit your age group or the tone you’re going for. No parent wants their young kids watching “Paw Patrol Very Special Episode: The Pups Fight Fascism.”

Additionally, investors may want to tone down any realistic violence as they hope to be part of the next hyper-palatable Star Wars blockbuster franchise.

You have to avoid the uncanny fascism valley

If a writer pens something that feels too much like Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, it begins to feel derivative, preachy, or maybe even too on-the-nose to be believable. (If you’d told me three years ago that I’d need to put reviewing sci-fi interfaces on hold to write posts on sci-fi fascism I’m not sure I’d have believed you.)

Audiences who sense they’re watching a morality play instead of an engaging story will turn off, unless, as with V for Vendetta, or even Shadow on the Land, it is obviously the point. And for reasons noted above, those tend to be social fiction or alternate history, not sci-fi.

The fascists have to have their comeuppance

If a story does bother to put all the narrative effort to describing a dictator, and his palingenetic narrative, and how it foments violent ultranationalism amongst his authoritarian loyalists, then something damned well better happen to that dictator over the course of the story, i.e. he is defeated. It would be very depressing for the hero’s journey to play out, but no change in the background fascist government in which it happens. (I am waiting for every last fascist in The Handmaid’s Tale to get what’s coming to them. Under His Eye.) Think of this as Checkov’s Dictator. It can’t just be there and not be used.

Authors hadn’t thought it important

Another possibility is that the authors haven’t been exposed to the dangers of fascism in the real world, (or forgotten about it from history) and so couldn’t imagine why they would want to explore it in speculative ways.

***

A sea change a-coming

So there are lots of reasons why strong fascism may not have appeared in screen sci-fi. But I don’t see any reason that can’t be overcome with diligent attention (and skill), But sci-fi tends to reflect, amplify, and extend trends in the world around us, so I’ll bet we’re going to see a lot more examination of fascism cropping up in sci-fi over the next years. The green light and production processes being as relatively slow as they are, we probably won’t see a rise in strongly fascist stories until the end of 2018 and beyond.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep an eye on Star Trek Discovery to see where they’re taking that storyline, and of course rewatch V for Vendetta and The Handmaid’s Tale. Not strictly sci-fi, but awesome and on point.

A surprisingly empty survey: Strong fascism in screen sci-fi

21 Aug 2018 by Christopher Noessel

23 AUG 2108 UPDATE: Owing to commenter Mark Connelly’s smart observations, I’ve upped the total to 2. See below.

Equipped with some definitions for fascism, I turned to movies and TV shows that showcased fascism in some way to see what was there. (Reminder: This project focuses on screen sci-fi for reasons.) It’s not a big list, and I’m sure it’s not exhaustive. But I think it was a good list to start with.

HYDRA scum with a double-fist salute. Captain America: The First Avenger. (2011)

Building a list of candidates to consider

In the future it would be awesome to be able to describe some criteria and have an AI read sci-fi scripts or watch the shows to provide results. I’m sure it would surprise us. But we’re not there yet. So first I worked from unaided memory, pulling up top-of-mind examples. Then I worked with aided memory, reviewing the shows I already had in the scifiinterfaces survey. Finally I looked for shows I didn’t know about, soliciting friends and colleagues and finally augmenting with web searches for discussions on the topic and pre-made lists. I wound up with 33 candidate movies and television shows. Then I went one by one and compared them to my five aspects of fascism. That resulted in a lot of whittling down. A lot. At the end I wound up with only…2 (!)

Limits of narrative

We have to admit upfront that the stories we see in TV and movies exist in larger, speculative worlds, and we only see the parts that pertain to the story. (Unlike, say, a world book or fan wiki.) Some, like Infinity Chamber, are built around showing us only the tiniest sliver of the world and leave it up to us to figure the rest out. Over the course of a longer-format show, like television, we might even get to see a great deal of its world, but we won’t ever see everything. We see and hear stuff that happens. That means we might see some aspects of fascism and even a great deal of hinting that it’s the real deal, but we can’t be sure. So, for instance, we never see a charismatic leader responsible for the oppressive bureaucracy in Brazil, but it might just be that the story didn’t take us there.

There are even some shows with actual swastika-wearing Nazis or even Hitler in them, but in most of these we don’t see evidence of all the key aspects of real world fascism. It’s more like the show relies on your knowledge that Nazis are bad, mmkay?

So some groups or societies might be fascist, but we never see enough to say for sure. These got a question mark in the spreadsheet, and are tagged “maybe.”

Actual half-Hitler, half-dinosaur. From the Iron Sky: The Coming Race trailer.

The “almost” stuff

Describing why a show is almost-but-not-quite can be quite instructive, so let’s discuss the “almost”s. All of these examples might still fit “weak fascism” as discussed in the prior post but that’s little better than calling them “bullies,” which isn’t that useful.

Not violent

The Prisoner, the late 1960s serial, had some weird recapture balloons knocking people down, but just wasn’t violent enough to count. Violence was a romanticized ideal for Mussolini, and he suggested routine violence was important for (get this) good health. Nazis of course are almost cartoonishly associated with their horrific, at-scale violence. Violence and a fetishization of the military are key to fascists as a means for both their ultranationalism and for pursuing purity and rebirth. It just can’t be fascism without violence.

I am not a free man. The Prisoner (1967)

Other non-examples

Similarly, the society in Minority Report seemed authoritarian, but its technologies were carefully depicted as non-violent. Some were psychologically cruel, but bodily, bloodless. So it’s an almost-counts, too.

Not authoritarian

Fascists are collectivist, meaning they believe that the ingroup of pure people are more important than any individual. If pressed, they’d admit a belief that government should have a centralized power with little accountability, as long as it’s doing its questionable things to the right (wrong) people.

Authoritarian governments are very popular in sci-fi, and very often going hand-in-hand with violence. In this survey, nearly every show was authoritarian. The only way a show would disqualify is if we just didn’t see governmental power in action against its citizens.

The story in 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, happened within the context of a space exploration agency. If the individual liberties and pluralism were suffering back on Earth while the Discovery One was on its murderous, mind-expanding mission, we just don’t know about it.

HAL kills Frank, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Not ultranationalist

Going back through one of my earliest posts on the blog, I was reminded of the weird authoritarian state that Korben Dallas lives in, evidenced by the police raid of his apartment block. The built-in warrant reader. The beacons and sirens. The yellow circles everywhere for placing your hands while police do their policey business. Surely, I thought, this will be fascist.

I am a meat popsicle. The Fifth Element (1997)

But we never get the sense over the course of the movie that there is a political party that is super into being American, or fetishizing national symbols, or believing that their country/people is much much better than all the others and therefore not beholden to the same rules. If this was just, say, Walt-Whitman-type of crush on a country, it would be one thing. But when combined with militaristic violence and a charismatic leader using strong government power claiming to purify the nation, you get fascism.

Other non-examples

The AI Samaritan in Person of Interest is wholly totalitarian, but we don’t get the sense that the AI is programmed to think America is better than other countries. It’s just focused on absolute control within.
The Upper City in Metropolis certainly enjoys their class privilege born of the oppression of the Lower City, but we don’t know at all how they feel about other nations.

Not dictatorial

Mussolini and Hitler held their supporters in a thrall with their public speeches. They sold their narrative. They made people believe they really could achieve some lost state of purity and purge society of its evils. They fomented violence. In turn, their supporters had no problem letting them run roughshod over constraints to their power. There’s a good question as to whether their societies would have turned to fascism if it weren’t for these charismatic, untethered leaders. Then we come to Starship Troopers, often cited as being so gung-go military and ultranationalist that it hurts. But nowhere in the film do we see all that jingoism coming from a political, charismatic leader. And the leader is key to the palingenetic narrative, next.

Rasczak’s Roughnecks get chomped, Starship Troopers (1997)

Other non-examples:

THX 1138 and Brazil feature states that oppress by bureaucracy. Citizens have no idea what the power structure is that causes their grief.
Gattaca, in contrast, oppresses by every parent’s drive to want the best for their children and the resulting high-pressure meritocracy, needing no leader.
Children of Men violently oppresses because of global hyperscarcity, rather than dictatorial fervor.

Not palingenetic

That’s a fancy word, isn’t it? It means relating to rebirth or re-creation. I felt certain that when I watched Captain America: The First Avenger, Red Skull would be an open-and-shut case for fascism. But not so. HYDRA is certainly violent, authoritarian, dictatorial, and ultranationalist in their beliefs. But the movie shows that the organization splintered off of the Nazis because Hitler wasn’t ambitious enough. They weren’t there to reclaim a past glory or return their tribe to its former purity or cull a scapegoat.

Red skull. Captain America: The First Avenger.

The palengenetic narrative is a key element to fascism because it is the mechanism by which the dictator gets the authoritarian power they want and convinces their supporters not just to hand it over, but to throw it over and ask what more can they give. They do so because of a fear of imminent collapse invoked by the dictator, and the promise of a return to abundance/purity by purging the scapegoat in their midst. Evidence won’t support these claims, and that’s why it matters that it comes from a dictator. His authority is because he said it.

For this reason I’d also categorize the Empire and the First Order from Star Wars as something other than strong fascism. Weak fascism, maybe. They are (thanks, @artlung for pointing out that they are) ultraviolent to the point of planet-o-cide, so full marks there. But chasing rebels is a police action, an attempt to punish them for daring to rebel. It’s not the same as routing undesirables in the midst, or of reclaiming purity and lost greatness. It has no palingenetic narrative.

This political fairy tale is the thing that sets the citizenry against themselves as neighbors turn on neighbors in a wild fury. It’s what justifies the violence. It’s what justifies the dictator overstepping his role’s balanced authority.

Of course purity arguments wind up with a onion skin problem, where after purging one thing, they just find a next thing to purge, which in turn reveals a next thing, etc. etc. But fascists aren’t really long-term thinkers. They’ve bought in to the notion that there are wolves at the door and a promised land just beyond. All Great Leader needs is more guns and your loyalty, and your troubles will be over.

President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, from Idiocracy (2006).

Other non-examples:

The Hunger Games’ eponymous to-the-death contests were doled out as a tool of control, not a purging of a class of undesirables.
The Terran Empire from the Mirror Universe in Star Trek never had a golden age to which they hoped to return. They were warlike because they had only ever known war.
Idiocracy is violent, dictatorial, authoritarian, and jingoistic (if not full-fledged ultranationalist) but they have a real problem to solve, and Camacho doesn’t invoke past greatness to demand immediate change.

Now we have noted why these examples aren’t strong fascism. That is not to dismiss them. Any one of those components would be bad enough. Totalitarianism just sucks. Oligarchy. Autocracy. Theocracy. There are plenty of other super shitty ideas about government out there, but the focus of these posts is on this one, because…*gestures vaguely at everything.* Well, there is another reason, but I’ll get to that in the last post.

The not-quite-there

So if those were all examples that were missing a component of fascism, the ones in this section have a component or two that are off a bit.

The comedy nazis

It’s a risky proposition to make light of real world horrors, but I get the notion that humiliation of the dictator sends a powerful message to would-be followers. Iron Sky, Kung Fury, and Danger 5, all have Nazis and, the last two have “actual” Hitler antagonists. These gonzo shows derive part of their comedy from breaking the fourth wall and throwing believability to the wind, so any fascism they show is largely just part of a gag meant to humiliate. It would be tricky to analyze and the whole time we’d be second guessing the intent. And sure, they have fascist characters in them, but it’s only because they are historical figures, rather than any attempt on the part of the writers to illustrate fascism. But for completeness, I have now mentioned them.

I just seem to keep coming back to Idiocracy.

The so-close

There are a few societies where with just a tweak of their circumstance they can be thought of as strongly fascist.

The Martian Congressional Republic from The Expanse is damned close, except their nationalism (planetism) is derived from a fear of becoming what Earth is rather than something they themselves used to be. So it’s close but there isn’t a scapegoat.
Equilibrium and Fahrenheit 451 read as fascist, but the scapegoats are emotions and books, respectively, rather than a class of undesirable people that need rooting out.
The underground city of Topeka from A Boy and His Dog only lacks a charismatic leader, having a bored and bureaucratic committee in his place. If they were more charismatic, I’d overlook their being a triumvirate.
Zarek’s rebellion from the Battlestar Galactica reboot seemed like it had everything, but ultimately he was on the other side of a wicked problem, not bullshitting a populace to get them to give over control.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (both films) was more totalitarian, oppressive. It is so close, but doesn’t really use a palingenetic narrative to fire citizens up. It ferrets out dissent for absolute control over them: their behavior, their loyalty, and their thoughts.

The not screen, not sci-fi stuff

There are plenty of fascist-forward, awesome shows like V for Vendetta, The Handmaid’s Tale, and that are in different genres that illustrate fascism, but our focus is on sci-fi, so I have to leave these excellent shows out. The same goes for alternate history texts like Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. I know this begs the question of genre, but I have to leave that for another time.

The strongest Nazi yes

The Dick novel The Man in the High Castle is deliberately ambiguous about the source of the alternate-alternate universe audio recordings, so it is more fully alternate timeline than sci-fi. But the television series is hinting more directly that the Nazis are playing with technologies that have them (and other characters in this universe) dimension-hopping. So the TV show is more squarely sci-fi. (Again, thanks to Mark Connelly for the pointer.)

Now as we see with the comedy nazis, it’s entirely possible to wear the costumes worn by fascism but not embody it or illustrate it fully. But in this case, the show illustrates all the points of strong fascism that I’d identified in the prior post.

Violent: Like real world Nazis, Castle Nazis are violent through and through.
Authoritarian: Straight-up, strict father, hyper-empowered government as well as squelching of individualism.
Ultranationalist: True to form, the Castle Nazis believe their country is exceptional and special and better than the rest. It is part of the source of their tensions with their Japanese allies after they’ve won the war against the Allied forces.
Dictatorial: The Führer is still alive at the beginning of the series, and on his death Martin Heusmann takes the dictatorial reins.
Palingenetic: True to history, the Nazis are still trying to “cleanse” the Jewish and other undesirables from the population. The Lebensborn program is still underway.

So yeah. Fascist.

Now I don’t want to discount this show, but I do want to contextualize it. It’s entirely possible that the showrunners and writers here are not looking to work through the nature and issues of fascism, but rather being as accurate as possible to the historical and fictional sources they inherited, and in doing so, happened to depict fascism.

There is a difference in sci-fi’s consciously depicting a thing and depicting it as a secondary effect. Take for instance how the Cheronian race in Star Trek, the original series, helped audiences think through race issues. Or how pre-cataclysm Kryptonians illustrate the folly of climate change denialism. Or how Minority Report examined what society will do with strong prediction in AI. I won’t say these kinds of narrative mirrors are better, but they are certainly more instructive than accidental or secondary versions of the same thing. So for my money, in doing this analysis, I’d hoped to see an illustration of strong fascism not wrapped up in historical fascist drag.

Fortunately, there is one.

The strongest non-Nazi yes

So that leaves us, nearest to the center of the bullseye, one show that most shows every aspect of fascism in a sci-fi setting. If you want to look to sci-fi to see this revolting ideology writ there, look to…Star Trek Discovery.

Star Trek Discovery (2017)

In Season 1, the Klingons who follow Kahless fight to reunite the warring houses and refocus their fury on their lost glory days of fighting the Federation. This B story exhibits strong fascism.

Violent: The Klingons are a warrior race, violent as a matter of principle. Their lives are militaristic.
Authoritarian: Through their culture of honor, they bow to the will of the leader of their Houses.
Ultranationalist: They seek to conquer the galaxy. They look down on other cultures.
Dictatorial: First T’Kuvma, then Voq, then Kol, then L’Rell each take control as leader of the Klingons.
Palingenetic: In the first season T’Kuvma is explicitly trying to reunite the houses to take back their position against the Federation and regain lost glory. “The Empire’s resurrection” in the above subtitled screen grab.

Only one thing missing: There is no explicit scapegoat that they’re trying to expunge or using as an bullshit excuse to rile up the population. So even this example, that is closest, is still not everything we’d need to match up to the real world.

But wait, you forgot…

If you can think of other examples, be sure and leave them in the comments. I’d love to have a full collection. If you do, be sure to explain, as I have above, how your example fulfills those five points.

So, what have we learned?

That’s the mini-survey of fascism in screen sci-fi. You want a rousing weekend of cinema? Get your hands on these. I’m sure I’m missing some things. I trust you’ll let me know in the comments.

I’ll also note that if you came with me all the way through the almosts, it wound up being a bit of practice via fictional examples in teasing apart the components of fascism, and being able to tell when you’re seeing it first hand. That will also help when somebody is using newspeak to assert that the anti-fascists are the real fascists, here.

Yeah yeah pal. Sci-fi fans are not morons. We see through your bullshit.
We don’t just watch sci-fi. We use it.

***

Speaking of which, the paucity of examples leads us to ask WHY is strong fascism so absent from sci-fi? And that’s the next post.

Sci-fi interfaces and fascism

14 Aug 2018 by Christopher Noessel

I have kept a blog about sci-fi interfaces for six years as of this posting. When I began it felt like the world was chugging along fairly well, with occasional needs for pit stops and course corrections, and there was time and space for looking at minutiae.

Nowadays, when democratic institutions are under assault, xenophobia and white supremacy feel emboldened; where a deeply corrupt family that did not win the popular vote is using their positions–gotten and ill-gotten–for personal enrichment, sacrificing democratic institutions to the oligarchy, fueling constitutional crises, cuddling up to the dictator who interfered with our elections while alienating our staunchest allies, fomenting violence, spreading F.U.D., ripping families apart for political expediency…(the list extends, daily, so future readers, forgive how small and quaint this list must seem)…nowadays, writing posts to analyze imaginary machines can feel not just trivial, but like an irresponsible misuse of time.

I understand that life entails many things simultaneously, but we’re heading in the U.S.A. towards very important midterm elections, so for a while, I’m going to use this platform that I have to do my part and to combine these concerns, investigating fascism through examples in sci-fi interfaces. Yes, I’ll spill some phosphorus on interfaces along the way but in full disclosure, while there could be, there aren’t any. I’ll discuss why later. Right now I have to SMASH SOME BUGS!

To what end

Things that are good to do are often good for multiple reasons. This series of posts is no exception.

Part of my goals will be to sensitize readers to fascism via this lens: What is fascist versus what merely dresses up in its costumes.
Part will be to understand what it means for technology and interfaces to embody and enforce political ideas, because they can and do.
Part of my goals are, as always, to sharpen critical thinking and design skills in myself and the reader.
Part of my tactics are to assure you, now, that the show with the most fascism is not one you would expect. This is a good thing, because fascism merits vigilance and your ability to see through both its disguises and its bad faith (or as H.G. Frankfurt uses the term, its bullshit).
Part of my hope is to encourage you, too, to use whatever platform you have available to do you part to shine a light on and resist it.

It will entail discussing the ethics of design and of using platforms to the best of one’s abilities to do what’s right. I’m almost certainly in over my head. Hopefully I’ll get help from some smart people. I will try and keep a global perspective, but my main focus will be on the rise of Trumpism where I live in the U.S. of A.

If you are a reasonable person who has concerns and disagreements about this content, let’s discuss. If you’re one of the fascists, know that you are not welcome here.

bttf_062 — A sci-fi bully. *Back to the Future II* (1989)

Let’s start with a clarification—no—a discussion of terms. Today “fascist” can be thrown as an insult at actual fascists, at things that look very much like fascists, or mere bullies. So when I’m talking about it of course I need to clarify what I mean.

“Insult” fascism

In its least formal use, when “fascist” is lobbed as an insult, I think it’s usually to describe a person using violence for political ends. Could be citizen, could be police. Could be an established political group or a fringe one. Insult fascism is what you’re likely to hear shouted at a contentious rally, and isn’t very clarifying. It’s missing nuance that distinguishes fascism from mere bullies, or any of the other *isms that can use violence. Capitalism, Communism, Despotism, Tyranny, etc. etc. So we need to look for some more precise meaning.

“Source” fascism

Academics who study such things would link Fascism to its source, so let’s call this “source” Fascism.

The seminal document, “La dottrina del fascismo” is written in a florid and self-aggrandizing style, so not clarifying. Mussolini named his movement after the Etruscan fasces, a bundle of (weak) rods which are bound together to become strong, supporting an axe handle and blade. Metaphorically, the bundle of sticks are citizenry who bind themselves together and become a tool of violence and thereby authority for a leader. (Note that the metaphor literally asserts that its members are tools.) In this document, Mussolini does lay out a philosophy that can be used as a definition.

When we speak of source fascism, it’s a historical thing, defined by Mussolini and enacted by him and Hitler in WWII. It’s quite specific. In this academic sense, the current administration does not perfectly fit. Trump is personally an individualist. Trump probably doesn’t see violence as key to a health regimen. I doubt he is aware of “La dottrina del fascismo,” much less read it, much less base his twitter palsies on it. He’s not a source fascist. I don’t know that there are any of those anymore. Even if they’re straight up Nazis, they’re of the Neo- variety.

But outside of academic hairsplitting, the term has been genericized. Rather than referring to a specific historical ideology, people use it today more generally to describe a dark pattern that appears in modern politics. So let me talk about what it means more generically.

From the WWII Russian propaganda film *Fascist Boots on our Homeland*, hat tip to Dr. Grob’s Animation Review

Generecized, or strong fascism

Trying to move from metaphor to a more formal definition is difficult. Since Mussolini, attempts to define it succinctly have been made by well-known intellectuals and it always comes off as slippery and a bit poetic. See the Wikipedia article for Definitions of Fascism and you’ll see a list of 22 different and earnest attempts by public figures including Umberto Eco, Leon Trotsky, Franklin Roosevelt, and George Orwell.

I’m far from being a political scholar, but it seems to me that the trouble is that fascism is neither derived through reason nor followed by reasonable people, and so it resists anything as reasoned as a observastional definition or consistent ideology. Fascism is a dark thing that rises from limbic, reactionary places and, once roused, squeezes into and out of whatever shapes it can, until reason and the long arc of history exorcises it. Its adherents think they’re mad about one thing but their arguments don’t stand up to examination or evidence. That doesn’t matter to them because they don’t care about arguments. They don’t care about facts. Fascism is a primeval reaction. Like a nation-sized, violent bout of the hangries. (That sounds like I’m being flippant, but I’m earnest about it as a metaphor. Crap. There we are back to metaphors again.)

Fortunately, the diligent editors at Wikipedia have brought all those different definitions into more focus at their Fascism portal. Combining that with the Definitions of Fascism and published interviews with scholars, I’ve compiled a description of five key aspects shared by most of those sources.

Violent: Force is seen as a virtue in and of itself
- Over-the-top fetishism of military, pageantry, machismo
- A desire for violent suppression of the enemies within
  - Terrorism against the scapegoat class (see Palingenetic below)
  - Journalists
  - Parliamentarianism (anyone who insists on following protocol)
  - Dissenters of any stripe
- A desire for war and imperialism against the enemies without
Authoritarian: It presumes a strong central government power
- Government is a Strict Father (Because I said so, by Great Leader, is good enough.)
- A vague and shifting-as-needed executive power
- Laws and enforcement should be harsh
- Hostile to diversity, individualism, unconventionality
- Pressure to conform to in-group norms in appearance, social role, gender role
- Subsumed personal and political freedoms
Ultranationalist: It asserts that everything is subordinate to the exceptional state
- Industry, commerce, business exists at the whim of Great Leader
- A militarized citizenry: Our followers (true followers, anyway) are heroes who must be willing to die for this cause.
- A belief in national exceptionalism: Our country is special, and better, than other countries around the world
Dictatorial: It is headed by a charismatic Great Leader
- His (so far always a dude) legitimacy is derived from appeals to emotion
- Seen as having few limits to his power, if any
- He peddles an epic rebirth narrative (see Palingenetic, below)
Palingenetic: It invokes a mythic return to past greatness
- We must purge the impurities in our society (or the world) to return ourselves to purity and abundance.A desire to abandon or replace the current political order for a new one
- They name a specific class of people as a scapegoat and use lies and propaganda to dehumanize and attack them. (This often camps on racism.)

INF3-140_War_Effort_We_beat_'em_before._we'll_beat_'em_again.jpg

So when I say “strong” fascism or even just fascism, I mean a combination of those five things. So while Trump isn’t a source fascist, with this list in hand it’s easy to see that in modern usage of the term, Trump, his Trumpettes, and the GoP supporting him are all jack-booted fascists in this generalized sense.

Violent: Knock the crap out of him, will you?
Palingenetic ultranationalism: Make America Great Again.
Dictatorial and authoritarian: Take your pick

He wanted to have a multimillion military fucking parade, people. Where have we seen that kind of thing before?

From *Triumph des Willens*, WWII Nazi propaganda

Style fascism

We also have to note that the salient examples of fascism are actual things we have pictures of and stories about: Mussolini’s Italy and Hilter’s Germany. (See above.) These are the recognizable instances or examples of fascism that audiences and makers may have in mind when we talk on these subjects, and those associations are part of what get us in trouble when we try to suss out where it might be hiding: Eagles, high contrast red black and white graphics on banners and flags, uniformed citizens groups, flared helmets, giant military parades.

The First Order stands at attention, *Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens*

***

Let’s take these different senses of fascism (weak, strong, source, style) and these historical examples as our starting point in the next post, to draft a list of the movies and TV shows that we might use in a mini-survey. Because it almost (almost) shows up a lot.