This is Stuff You Like, you can call me Ursa, and...MILLENNIALS.
THEY DON’T KNOW ANYTHING, AMIRITE!
Oh wait I am a Millennial.
Clearly I don’t know anything.
But if you've been watching the show for the last four and a half years, you'll know that
that's never stopped me before!
Today’s topic is Advantageous, which started as a short, which then got funded partially
by me on Kickstarter and was turned into a full length feature film.
You can watch the short on YouTube, or you can watch the feature film on Netflix, or
on iTunes, and you might want to do that before we start.
If not, you might like it if you like quiet introspective near future scifi featuring
Future LIZZIE BENNET.
No, really.
Jennifer Ehle, man.
Weren't we talking about Millennials?
Not yet, wait for it.
The spoileriffic plot rundown goeth thusly: in the nearish future, Gwen Ko is the spokeswoman
for a company which does...cosmetic surgery on people.
She needs extra money to get her daughter into a good school, without which the kid
will definitely and totally become a child prostitute or a homeless person or a depressed
crying person or possibly all three.
BUT Gwen gets fired for being too old.
She goes to various family members but because of...reasons...that doesn’t work out so
well.
So she decides/is manipulated into deciding that what she should do is volunteer for her
ex-company’s new process, where they transfer the consciousness of one person into an entirely
new body.
Except what they actually do is copy all your memories and then you kinda...die, and your
clone, basically, wakes up in a different body with all of your memories.
Gwen’s choice at this point is pretty stark, but she decides: for the sake of my daughter
I will die, basically, and trust a copy of my memories in a brand new body (a younger
body without epicanthic folds because you know, ageism AND racism, it's like a two for
one) to look after her.
And the clone doesn’t have that visceral connection to the daughter Jules, and the
clone is in constant pain and has breathing trouble and they have some issues and it’d
break your heart, but the ending is hopeful.
A little bit hopeful anyway.
But it is, and can only ever be, a PERSONAL hope, because dang, society went and got messed
up.
Yeah, it’s pretty dark.
I mean, not in a gory way, but in a ‘wow, they really went there’ kind of way.
There is so much in it: social commentary and ageism and commonplace terrorism and sexism
and racism and robots, sort of...not many actual robots, which was a little bit disappointing,
I do like a robot or two, but there are plenty of artificial intelligence-type things going
on.
And how much we control our lives, which is that whole agency vs. structure thing we talked
about way back in episode 50 with Serenity.
And when morality takes a back seat to desperation and SO MUCH CRAMMED IN THERE, you should watch
it.
Right.
MILLENNIALS!
OK first of all, there of all there's a Chrome extension which changes any instance of 'Millennial'
or ‘Millennials’ into 'snake person' or 'snake people'.
Which I find completely hilarious, but that's probably only because I am a snake person.
A couple of the reviews of Advantageous talk about how it’s a movie about Millennials.
And both Gwen and Jules have the hallmarks.
Gwen also has ageism working against her, but she is, essentially, a spokesmodel for
this creepy company, in spite of having a graduate degree.
She talks about teaching, which is something she did while she was at graduate school,
but Jennifer Ehle points out that hey, we don't need flesh-and-blood teachers any more.
So we've got the combination of shrinking job pool, and you’re not getting any younger,
and there doesn't seem to be any kind of social safety net, so how will you provide for your
daughter?
And as for Jules?
Well, as one of her friends puts it at the start of the movie...ONLY ONE OF YOU CAN BE
THE WINNER.
And that’s what happens when the job pool is shrinking and shrinking, and when you are
talented and focused and educated but probably totally screwed.
And if you are not all of those things then you are DEFINITELY totally screwed.
Jules is being hothoused because only hothousing will give her a tiny, tiny chance of success
in this world, otherwise she will definitely definitely end up a dead homeless addicted
child prostitute.
Or similar.
It’s similar to, if more extreme than what’s happening in the modern day:
You got your self-checkout machines which may be possessed by evil spirits, but they
do reduce the need for workers.
All those low-paid, low skill jobs?
All of those jobs you’ve ever had where you thought, ‘geez, a trained monkey could
do this job!’...well.
The trained monkey is coming, and it has software.
So CGP Grey tells me, and he's usually right.
Every technology we create is designed to make our lives easier, and that’s either
the greatest thing that’s ever happened to humanity ever, and we’re all going to
end up in a world a la Ryk Spoor, where nobody needs to work, they only do it for funsies,
or it’s going to kick off terror and war and punk-themed apocalypses.
There is a scene in Advantageous where Gwen is on the phone to a recruiter whose name
is Drake, and something on her resume has been red-flagged.
And I should point out that this is her second conversation with them.
And there's this moment of dawning...horror?
Recognition?
Resignation?
as she realises that she’s talking to a robot.
Because it's not giving her proper human-people answers.
One of the most compelling things about Advantageous is how plausible it feels.
Of course the robots have taken all of our jobs.
Of course education is now basically just ‘desperate job training, perfection required’.
We seem to be trying to head in that direction anyway.
Which just means that the less advantaged get further behind and the more advantaged
pull out all the stops to safeguard the future of their children.
Gwen feels powerless.
She has no control over her life, but she can make a choice that might, and you know
what, it’s still a might, save Jules from a life of homelessness, despair and possible
child prostitution.
Every one of Gwen’s choices is driven by fear and desperation, but there’s an individualism
there too.
She doesn’t join a rebel movement or fight the power or...whatever.
There is no Hunger Games revolution in Gwen’s life.
Because any offbeat thing will kill her already fragile chance at a new job, and more than
that, will cold-bloodedly murder any chance Jules has for advancement.
Gwen looks at the agency vs. structure debate and takes the opposite path to Mal Reynolds
or Katniss Everdeen: no, I will protect me and mine first, and the rest of the world
can go hang.
It’s not always comfortable watching, and there is so much in there which I haven’t
touched on, like the themes on motherhood and women are seen as the ‘safer’ sex
to have mass unemployed, but really you should go watch it and try for yourself.
And also, let’s hope that when the robots come, and take all of our jobs, the future
looks more like Ryk Spoor's Grand Central Arena than it does Advantageous.
Because that would SUCK.
And that's our lot for this episode!
So if you like the show and you would like to support it:
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or you can follow me on Twitter which is @JillBearup or on Tumblr: sursumursa.tumblr.com
And I will see you next time for the episode which will come up on the screen as if by
magic right now.