2023-12-31 05:30:00
The economy in popular works (6/7). During this holiday season, BFM Business explores the way in which the economy works in popular works (comics, music, films). A series in seven episodes with today an apocalyptic film, The Book of Eli.
The doomsday clock has struck. Nuclear war has pierced the ozone layer. The earth’s surface was charred, leaving only a handful of survivors a few decades later. Nothing grows anymore and the animals are all dead except for a few cats. Humans have adapted to this new world. The strongest, and especially the most violent, dominate. The weakest have only two choices: suffer or perish.
This scenario is that of the film The Book of Eli, a postapocalyptic film released in 2010 and directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, with Denzel Washington in the title role. The story takes place in a devastated California where the past of this former world tech capital has been forgotten for ages.
A little nod to the world before: the hero’s iPod. Thanks to him, he is undoubtedly the last human on the planet to listen to music. But this fiction is above all an allegory of two visions of society: one Marxist, the other religious or in any case spiritual.
A survivalist consumer society
In this scenario, the earth has become a primitive chaos with communities under the yoke of tyrants who guarantee nothing to their population. To eat, you have to hunt. To get dressed, you have to look for forgotten corpses that still have their clothes. On the other hand, as is often the case in American films, there is no shortage of weapons and ammunition.
Hygiene is not a priority. Water is rare (and therefore overpriced) and to obtain soap, you must have the means to barter them in the rare stores set up in makeshift camps or in the ruins of cities of the old world.
To obtain goods, one must either pledge allegiance to a local dictator, donate oneself, or have the means to barter. The values of the past (gold, diamonds, currencies, luxury objects, etc.) are no longer worth anything. Even gangs of looters are not interested in it, preferring to steal what was previously found in second-hand stores, recycling centers or garage sales.
Now, the smallest mundane object in the world before has become precious, like KFC finger wipes. For example, our hero exchanges a few of these wipes and a Zippo lighter to be able to recharge an electronic device.
Recreate power
Education that might make it possible to recreate a livable world with rules and a vision for the future. But for this, a minimum education is necessary and the vast majority of survivors have never attended school. Apart from the oldest survivors, no one knows how to read or write anymore.
For Carnegie, the film’s villain played by Gary Oldman, the book is a weapon. A wacky and ruthless dictator of a small town, he views books as the last element of power. He seeks them out and appropriates them to deprive the population of access to knowledge.
He has thousands of books brought to him by illiterate mercenaries. But only one is missing, which, in his eyes, has inestimable value, the one with which he will be able to impose his law without dispute: the Bible. This book is for him the opium of the people. But all the Bibles were burned during the war.
Eli has the last copy of this book which he fiercely protects. Refusing to let anyone approach or touch it, Eli is merciless to those who want to take it from him. If for Carnegie, the Bible is a tool of submission, for Eli it is the last means to restore humanist rules to the world. But for that, you have to share your message.
True wealth
Will the “bad guy” manage to appropriate this Bible? Difficult to answer this question without revealing the ending of the film. We can reflect on the role of the book. If it’s just a paper object that you store on a shelf, it’s useless. In fact, only its content is important, as presented by science fiction author Ray Bradbury in the famous Fahrenheit 451 became popular thanks to the film by François Truffaut.
The author describes a world where those in power see books as a danger for humans who discover through them the reality of a system and encourage them to seek happiness. Possessing one is strictly prohibited. A firefighting unit was also created to burn all the works without distinction. To avoid falling foul of the law and preserve knowledge, groups are created with the mission of learning the content of books by heart.
Eli’s book is ultimately worth nothing or not much as an object. Better to learn the message it contains. As Carnegie does not know, true wealth, true power is not in the possession of the Bible. The real wealth, that which gives value to the world, is humans and, with them, what they create or produce and not what they own.
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