And you say "Wings over the World" is based in Basra? As in Basra, Iraq? Why Basra? (Is any reason given?)
That's the only Basra I could think of. (I am sure there are others, in the same way that "Ithaca" is not a unique place name, but I am also confident that's the most prominent.) There's never a reason given. Given some of the other symbolic things Wells does in the script, I can conjecture that he chose it because it's located within the bounds of ancient Mesopotamia, so once again civilization rises out of the Fertile Crescent, but I don't have any proof. Also in that case I feel his argument would be stronger if we saw anyone involved with Wings Over the World who was not white, but I don't believe anyone involved in the making of the film was thinking that way.
I get the sense from your review that the movie embraces this as a goal? ... That seems very 1930s, somehow.
Yes. And also kind of 1950's, which makes it weirdly—for real—ahead of its time. It's even more insistent than Norman Bel Geddes and the lure of the beautiful streamlined future; progress is programmatic, inevitable. Most of what turns me off the finale is not the idea that humanity should go to the stars, because I think that's both reasonable and attractive, but the idea that humanity is commanded to go to the stars in fulfillment of its destiny as foreseen by the percentage of humanity that knows what's best for all the rest. Wells seems to have missed the democratizing as well as the stratifying power of technology. If the whole point of Wings Over the World is to end belligerent, counterproductive little regimes like the Boss' Everytown, where the man at the top gets the guns and the petrol and everyone else scrounges for themselves as best they can, and to replace the endless energy-squandering competition for resources with a society in which everyone is well-fed, well-educated, and with equal access to the miracle science of the future, then the evolution of a technocratic elite is not only unpalatable, but implausible. This is a future where everyone has television screens not only in their houses, but on their desks, portable, tablet-sized, and anyone who wants can step into a studio and make a city-wide broadcast. And yet the airwaves are not full of everyone having their say, only the antagonist at the right moment, after which the crowd mills around muttering to itself and then storms the space gun. I don't blame Wells for not foreseeing social media or the internet, but I do blame him for failing to credit what he would probably have called "the masses" with the ability to think for themselves and—in a society that gives everyone a platform for it—make their multitudinous opinions known. There's also the fact that he doesn't at all take into account how art or other social movements would respond to the changes created by the scientific advances he prescribes, but I get that Wells basically wasn't interested in art except as a means of promoting ideas. Like I said earlier, I defaulted to rooting for the girl who just wanted to go to the stars.
no subject
That's the only Basra I could think of. (I am sure there are others, in the same way that "Ithaca" is not a unique place name, but I am also confident that's the most prominent.) There's never a reason given. Given some of the other symbolic things Wells does in the script, I can conjecture that he chose it because it's located within the bounds of ancient Mesopotamia, so once again civilization rises out of the Fertile Crescent, but I don't have any proof. Also in that case I feel his argument would be stronger if we saw anyone involved with Wings Over the World who was not white, but I don't believe anyone involved in the making of the film was thinking that way.
I get the sense from your review that the movie embraces this as a goal? ... That seems very 1930s, somehow.
Yes. And also kind of 1950's, which makes it weirdly—for real—ahead of its time. It's even more insistent than Norman Bel Geddes and the lure of the beautiful streamlined future; progress is programmatic, inevitable. Most of what turns me off the finale is not the idea that humanity should go to the stars, because I think that's both reasonable and attractive, but the idea that humanity is commanded to go to the stars in fulfillment of its destiny as foreseen by the percentage of humanity that knows what's best for all the rest. Wells seems to have missed the democratizing as well as the stratifying power of technology. If the whole point of Wings Over the World is to end belligerent, counterproductive little regimes like the Boss' Everytown, where the man at the top gets the guns and the petrol and everyone else scrounges for themselves as best they can, and to replace the endless energy-squandering competition for resources with a society in which everyone is well-fed, well-educated, and with equal access to the miracle science of the future, then the evolution of a technocratic elite is not only unpalatable, but implausible. This is a future where everyone has television screens not only in their houses, but on their desks, portable, tablet-sized, and anyone who wants can step into a studio and make a city-wide broadcast. And yet the airwaves are not full of everyone having their say, only the antagonist at the right moment, after which the crowd mills around muttering to itself and then storms the space gun. I don't blame Wells for not foreseeing social media or the internet, but I do blame him for failing to credit what he would probably have called "the masses" with the ability to think for themselves and—in a society that gives everyone a platform for it—make their multitudinous opinions known. There's also the fact that he doesn't at all take into account how art or other social movements would respond to the changes created by the scientific advances he prescribes, but I get that Wells basically wasn't interested in art except as a means of promoting ideas. Like I said earlier, I defaulted to rooting for the girl who just wanted to go to the stars.