Founding sociological theorists such as Karl Marx, Emilie Durkheim, and Max Weber analyzed society in different ways, but all aimed to discover and bring to light how it functioned. The ideas of all three of these theorists, along with Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Harriet Martineau, and W.E.B. DuBois can all be found in the film Elysium, directed by Neill Blompkamp, a story about a society divided by class, status, and political implications, whose main character finds a way to overcome the struggle that the citizens of Earth are facing in comparison to the elite society of Elysium.
The film is set in a very distant future in the city of Los Angeles, which has turned into a dry and poverty stricken land, causing all the incredibly rich to set …show more content…
There is a clear divide in the classes in the mere fact that the upper classes are settled on their own settlement in space, built for the sole purpose to keep away from the lower classes, so that they are not able to experience the same luxuries, such as no poverty or any sort of health and medical problems. It is economic oppression that perpetuates the class divide amongst the citizens of Earth and Elysium, which Marx finds to be the greatest problem in society because those who control the means have the power, which is also reflected in the film. There is also alienation between the working class of those on Earth, and their work for the corporations owned by the inhabitants of the Elysium citizens. Furthermore, the alienation comes between the workers and their production and products. The factory that the main character Max works in produces machinery for the people on Elysium, something that the people of earth are meant to never experience because of the class and social divide. In McIntosh, Marx details this as “the relationship of the worker to his own activity as something that is alien and does not belong to him; it is an activity that is passivity […]” (1997:18). In terms of class relations, the society of Elysium could not exist without the labor of the workers on Earth making their machines to sustain their lifestyles and the alienation aspect makes it …show more content…
One of the earliest examples of this was shown when groups of people from Earth flew into Elysium’s atmosphere and were shot down by missiles. People from earth were seen as a threat to safety and the community function of Elysium, and ironically in a postmodern society, were treated as though it was a pre-modern society where eliminating the threat was the viable option. On Earth, robots from Elysium still were in charge of controlling crime, which shows ties in Marx’s ideas of class relations in order for the function of both societies, but the bourgeoisie still holds political power over the proletariat, despite the physical
The film is set in a very distant future in the city of Los Angeles, which has turned into a dry and poverty stricken land, causing all the incredibly rich to set …show more content…
There is a clear divide in the classes in the mere fact that the upper classes are settled on their own settlement in space, built for the sole purpose to keep away from the lower classes, so that they are not able to experience the same luxuries, such as no poverty or any sort of health and medical problems. It is economic oppression that perpetuates the class divide amongst the citizens of Earth and Elysium, which Marx finds to be the greatest problem in society because those who control the means have the power, which is also reflected in the film. There is also alienation between the working class of those on Earth, and their work for the corporations owned by the inhabitants of the Elysium citizens. Furthermore, the alienation comes between the workers and their production and products. The factory that the main character Max works in produces machinery for the people on Elysium, something that the people of earth are meant to never experience because of the class and social divide. In McIntosh, Marx details this as “the relationship of the worker to his own activity as something that is alien and does not belong to him; it is an activity that is passivity […]” (1997:18). In terms of class relations, the society of Elysium could not exist without the labor of the workers on Earth making their machines to sustain their lifestyles and the alienation aspect makes it …show more content…
One of the earliest examples of this was shown when groups of people from Earth flew into Elysium’s atmosphere and were shot down by missiles. People from earth were seen as a threat to safety and the community function of Elysium, and ironically in a postmodern society, were treated as though it was a pre-modern society where eliminating the threat was the viable option. On Earth, robots from Elysium still were in charge of controlling crime, which shows ties in Marx’s ideas of class relations in order for the function of both societies, but the bourgeoisie still holds political power over the proletariat, despite the physical