In the 1950's Philip K Dick stumbled across the news that Eisenhower recommended people buy their own bomb shelters because they'd be more likely to take proper care of them. There were two problems with this for the paranoid, anti-establishment sci-fi author. It perpetuated a growing fear of Cold War catastrophe that no matter how nice your day was going, doom was hanging over your head. And it encouraged the consumer to buy his way out of every problem. These two ideas, consumerism and anxiety, formed the cornerstone of his short story, "Foster, You're Dead!" Which was recently adapted into a brilliant hour long episode of the anthology series, Electric Dreams available on Amazon Prime. The episode in question is #6 in the ten episode series, and it's re-titled "Safe and Sound", but don't worry, you don't have to watch any of the previous episodes. Each one functions like a short story (obviously, because that's what they were based on) and has no connection to the others. So I recommend just bopping on over to Amazon Prime briefly (you know your friend has a password they'll lend you) to check out this one in particular because it is far and away better than the other Black Mirror rippoffs this series was designed to produce. In the original story, Foster begs his dad for a new bomb shelter despite his dad's opposition and skepticism to the perpetual fear-mongering of politicians. But social pressure and paranoia accumulate for Foster and he inevitably manages to convince his dad to get a top of the line shelter just before the news breaks: the Soviets have developed a new bomb. The shelter is obsolete. Everyone will have to upgrade. In the Amazon version, the society is modernized to reflect our own security vs freedom, post-911 status-quo and given a little Dystopian futurism for flavor. It's also gender-swapped, but that's no big deal. The truth is that Dicks' original short story was extremely simple and focused. Afterall, he was a working writer in those days and you gotta keep 'em coming. But the producers of this episode had the time and creative energy to take it a little further, adding new layers and nuances to flesh out the source material into something far more inspired. It's partly the reason they changed the title, unlike most of the other episodes in this anthology. Foster doesn't fit in at school in the city. She's from a small-town bubble community in the country where they reject invasive technologies. Except that everyone from the "bubbles" are suspected terrorists who live off the grid with something to hide and everyone in the city is told by the media to fear them. All the other kids wear their entire identity on a pair of bracelets that stand in for both social media and smart phones and she doesn't have one. She feels the pressure, but at home she gets lectured that it's a slippery slope of surrender to the big bad government-media system. Her mother is an activist and they're only in the city so she can negotiate on behalf of the bubbles. Already the show is tackling almost every hot button issue of the last fifteen years simultaneously in a brilliant stroke of succinct worldbuilding. We have social-media obsession, immigration anxiety, terrorism, teen rape culture, libertarian extremism, school violence, false flags, fake news, fear-mongering, using the education system to spread propaganda, authoritative governments promising protection, conspiracy theories, consumerism, tribalism, peer-pressure, preemptive arrests, mental health, single parenting, and... geez! That was just off the top of my head. And these are not flippant elements of the episode, nor are they simple issues to address, but by overlapping them in such an economical arrangement, this hour-long episode is able to tackle any three of them within any sixty-second segment.
Long story short, Foster signs up secretly for these bracelet things that connect her to the web and the "system", but she isn't very good at using them. She calls tech support and develops a relationship with the tech support guy, who no one else can hear, who abruptly gets her involved in missions to fight suspected terrorism within her school. Except as the plot develops, it turns out that to stop the terrorists, she has to pretend to be one herself and execute a smaller-scale "fake" attack to beat them to the punch, and somehow that'll save lives and draw them out. Sounds suspicious, right? And it gets worse. The "hear-gel" she rubs behind her ears to listen to the tech support guy is a prototype which no one else has ever heard of. Did I mention her father used to hear voices, too before he died? If you're expecting a twist by the end of the episode, you're not wrong. Afterall, when she tries to enlighten the paranoid city-dwellers in class that not everyone from the "country" is a terrorist -- and in fact, she's never even known one, much less several -- they simply explain that not everyone knows they're terrorist a until they're activated (a callback to another of Dick's popular stories, Imposter). So we're not stuck wondering if her mother is right when she claims there has never even been a truly confirmed terrorist attack (she says they're always fake) or whether she herself is in fact the unknown school terrorist she's investigating with tech support, and she doesn't yet know it. But it's not the kind of story where "seeing it coming" really matters. There are several kinds of twists that occur, but not of the Sixth Sense or Fight Club variety meant to pull the rug out from under you and blow your mind. These are the kind that challenge your perception of yourself and the world you live in which is so easy to take for granted. The whole thing exists in a world where trust is both blind and frowned upon. Everyone is always giving each other these looks like, "you don't fall for that that, do you?" And you can empathize with Foster's difficulty in navigating these murky waters when she's getting it from both sides. She wants to be open-minded and understanding, but... How can anything be sure?The genius of this story is that, as a science-fiction, anything is plausible. When she starts to doubt the tech support "voice", it suddenly begins to garble due to "connection problems" which can only be solved by laying the sun and picking up a transmission off of some ants crawling up a tree. Sounds insane, but... it is science fiction, so... maybe? I won't spoil the ending(s), even though I'd really like to deconstruct it and discuss it's implications, but suffice to say, it circles back to the source material when it reaffirms Dick's two primary themes of consumerism as a solution to politicized fear-mongering. Sudden Doom can come upon you from anywhere, anytime, and the only way to be safe is to buy the latest upgrade. I try not to get caught up emotionally in these kinds of issues because I realize that thinking with your emotions is exactly what makes you susceptible to propaganda and marketing like this. I'm not big on conspiracy theories or fear-mongering whether it comes from the establishment or is anti-establishment (don't forget, this works both ways) but I appreciate a good story that knows how to articulate its argument without being preachy. When you can tackle a tough topic and still trick your audience into forgetting which side you're on as the writer. Show don't tell. Restraint. Most shows and movies would succumb to preachiness to make sure nobody misses the point. But in this episode, they go so far as to have the anti-establishment mother actually apologize for getting carried away, putting the show's entire message at risk with complex and contradictory nuances. But these kinds of compromises only make the conclusion that much harder of a gut-punch and enhance the story's realism and fairness when the pull back the curtain. The terrorists may be real in the end, and the fear at least a little bit warranted, and the new upgrade might actually help keep people safer, but none of these truths change the fact that the government and the corporations are still colluding behind the scenes and manipulating us. Is it possible both sides are sorta right but also frighteningly wrong? When Apple teams up with the US government to start selling terrorist missile defense features on your next smart phone, remember, you've been warned!
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