The Atomic Submarine

Imagine those fighting COVID-19 as the crew of the resolute USS Tigershark, boldly patrolling the Arctic Ocean, guarding against micromanaged wherewithal. In television and film.

Sometimes you don't need to worry so much about Olympian heights and infernal crevices, you can just adapt the golden narrative mean to whatever random idea happens to inspire you.

Sometimes editing gets in the way of the cultivation of free spirits, and naysayers and critical conjurors would have only ruined crafty good times.

Sometimes it's important to have multiple characters who are never really developed, yet keep keepin' on tried tested and true, to a formulaic instinct lock stock incandescent.

Sometimes you don't need bells and whistles, nooks and crannies, rhyme nor reason, you don't even have to use music to keep your film laidback, restless, thawed.

Sometimes questions or second takes only blind a unique vision, whose primordial circumspects would have never been sighted otherwise.

Sometimes when you're tasked with finding striking exemplars of independence, you need to look beyond considerations like applicability, to construct a more robust scenario.

Sometimes there's not much of a point but peeps find purpose in a lack of recognition, proceeding onwards sure and steady without projection, forecast, recall.

Sometimes you simply love somethin' that isn't overflowin' with shoulds and s'post'as, something that no one else seems to get but for you guarantees resolve.

Sometimes meaning isn't meant to be profound, it's more of a relaxed Sunday afternoon expression, perhaps achieving momentary awestruck ends, but without desires to influence or motivate.

Sometimes time is of the essence, so not much time is taken, yet something still comes together, with definitive shape and yield and texture.

Sometimes you need a little context, sometimes simply nothing at all, sometimes there's periodization, at others, essential breakdowns.

Sometimes not taking your time and advancing posthaste full-throttle, creates something larger than life, in the hearts and minds of curious imaginations.

Sometimes things seem so serious, so stressed out and commandeering, best to tune it all out and proceed without ever contemplating repercussion.

There have to be reasons why The Atomic Submarine is in the Criterion Collection, perhaps its total lack of assumption justifying free form collocation.

There's a certain charm no doubt that generates magnetism when you act without thinking.

And you still manage to pull it all off.

Preferred protracted transfers.

Battleship

Wasn't expecting to find a social democratic aesthetic at work in the latest alien invasion flick, Peter Berg's Battleship, but it's there, disguised in a maritime cloak, paying respect to multicultural nautical subjects, and demonstrating how an inclusive team excels.

As if the spirit of Battleship Potemkin is alive and well and theorizing what the Soviet Union's navy would have looked like after a century of reforms inspired by the courageous mutiny, distancing itself from its revolutionary heritage by codifying and transferring its content to 21st century American propaganda.

To battle a plutocratic blitzkrieg.

Can the aliens in Battleship be legitimately thought of as plutocrats?

Well, as environmental laws are repealed or gutted and scientific research is ignored in favour of religio-economic fanaticism (the misguided belief that the free market can do no wrong), the planet (or Canada at least) becomes more and more polluted. The 1% have the means through which to 'purify' their resources by purchasing expensive speciality ethically produced items without using credit excessively.  If fracking ruins their neighbourhood/district/region's water supply, they can move, easily, potentially beforehand after setting up the extraction.  Keeping abreast with technological advances, they can purchase or commission devices that can decontaminate their water even if they do stay while mitigating additional toxic effects.

The aliens who land in Battleship are technologically advanced, possess suits that shield them from that to which they cannot acclimatize (while protecting them from critical repercussions), are uninterested in the concerns of the citizens whom their policies disturb, and are using the military to pursue interplanetary colonialism.  

Sounds like fundamental plutocratic behaviour to me.

The international sailors who confront them however represent different ethnicities, socio-economic contingencies, genders, historical periods, and physical disabilities.

It's a well rounded group.  

They have no armour to protect them from the polluted Earth and must collegially improvise a strategic plan.

Not to naively present this social aesthetic as being ideally fine and dandy.

Before the invasion takes place egos collide and disorder persists.

Yet after a reason to work towards a collective goal presents itself, unity is restored.

The hierarchy within is troublesome yet look at how inclusive it is. Everyone has a voice regardless of rank whose logic is taken into consideration. When Lieutenant Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) suddenly finds himself in command and must make an immediate decision, his subordinate isn't afraid to challenge him in the pursuit of an alternative objective. Hopper even relinquishes command when it becomes clear that Japanese Captain Yugi Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) is a more suited candidate.

The fact that the confrontation takes place within a force field which separates the combatants from the world at large suggests that Battleship does indeed present a popularized plutocratic/social democratic dialectic insofar as these elements have been isolated and subjectified within an impenetrable ideological vacuum (let's find a way to represent these opposing approaches by creating a fictional polemical context within which they can aggressively interact), one which removes the concealments everyday life often necessitates.

The plutocrats through their blind ambition accidentally create a space within which their adversaries are capable of launching a constructive protest.

Because no matter how polluted things are, their adversaries are still capable of absorbing the sun.