Rollerball: Multinational Dystopia Has Arrived

[scarabus]

For quite a while now I've been thinking about how the nightmare world depicted in the 1975 film Rollerball seems eerily similar to the world in which we live. The film was written by William Harrison (based on his own short story "Roller Ball Murder"), directed by Norman Jewison, and starring James Caan. (The film was re-made in 2002, but I'm told that version is much more about pointless violence and much less about chilling political reflection than was the original.)

Rollerball is a dystopia, set in 2018. In Orwell's 1984 the world is divided among a small number of multinational political units. In Rollerball it is divided among a small number of multinational corporations. The latter seems much closer to our world, doesn't it. Apart from that, the horrors are horribly similar.

Think about Iraq. Most of the dying, crippling, and other suffering is borne by U.S. troops, their families, and the Iraqi people. Most of the profit is taken by multinational corporations like Blackwater, KBR, and CACI. The cost of the war is being borne by the present generation of U.S. citizens (indirectly via the crippling of our economy) and will be borne by many generations who will be stuck with the deferred "credit card" bills.

The wealthiest of the U.S. corporations and plutocrats gain much more than they lose because of this war. Remember the chilling moment in the film Fahrenheit 9/11 when the guy at the lectern says to the gathered "haves" and "have mores"—those Bush identified as his "base"—"There's a lot of money to made in Iraq. A lot!" Collusion between firms like UBS (of which one of McCain's closest advisers was an officer) collude with the government of Liechtenstein to shelter and hide that money so that the plutocrats can buy new toys while the American middle and working classes take it up the yang!

But it gets better. Consider Fishman's book, China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World (Scribner 2005). China is, in effect, inextricably both a single "holding company" and a nation state. In other words, China is a multinational corporation! And China holds our paper. How is the war being financed? By issuing bonds. And who is purchasing those bonds? China holds most of the paper, Saudi Arabia at lot, and the rest spread around. China holds the mortgage on the U.S.; and if our succeeding generations can't manage to pay the principal and interest? China will own the U.S.

In a nice irony, in the film Rollerball the multinational corporations that control the world play out their rivalries and provide distracting "circus" entertainment for the plebes via the game rollerball. It's sorta like roller derby in form, combined with Aztec basketball in its lethal consequences. Hmmm..... What's happening right now in totalitarian China, Inc.? Oh, yeah. The Olympic Games (sic).

Cross-posted at http://www.agrippinaminor.com/wp/