Hollywood Utopia

168 Hollywood Utopia
As in many conspiracy-based narratives, the enemy remains unseen but is closely
linked to the malign forces of government and capitalists controlling the masses
below. This allows the text to focus on the effects of such blatant manipulation
without necessarily having to appreciate the causes or even pinpoint the enemy. In
the final sequence our individualised hero performs a provocative final hand signal
of defiance in the face of such cover-ups. Asserting a form of voluntarist rebellion,
Heston holds up his blood soaked hand and clenched fist, while voicing his anger
against the conformist and corrupt system which is guilty of the ultimate taboo of
recycling human flesh back into the food chain. The individual must do all in his
power to defend the truth and ‘protect the innocent’ remains the potent message.
Nevertheless, these altruistic, American sentiments are couched within ‘local’
regressive 1970s attitudes and values. In particular, the commodification and
objectification of women described as ‘furniture’, bought and sold within the
dominant patriarchal environment, is apparently legitimised by the Charlton
Heston character, who remains the moral centre of identification in the film.
There is little evidence of older people within this dystopic habitat except for the
aged human experience of Heston’s friend Sol Roth, played by Edward G.
Robinson, an academic, aesthete type. Roth understands books and the ‘finer
things of life’, like good food and wine, and also remembers the halcyon times
before ecological meltdown. Whether due to genetic preconditioning or not, Roth
checks into what looks like a transport station for his final ‘departure’. Two
handmaids minutely question his favourite colour, together with other final wishes,
while helping him out of his clothes and placing him on an altar bed. They provide
him with a drink that turns out to be an elixir of death. On leaving the enclosed
space, which represents a futuristic mausoleum, an audio-visual ritual/spectacle
begins.
For the first time in the narrative, bright natural colours are presented, unlike the
washed out, muted evocation of an overpopulated dystopic city with no hope or
sanctuary. At last Roth has all the visual, even spiritual, space that he requires,
which was severely lacking in the diegetic future world view created by the film, in
which even conventional sites of sanctuary like churches were adapted primarily as
massive refugee sites rather than fulfilling their true function. Finally, he can
quietly observe the controlled sublime spectacle accompanied by the growing
cacophony of uplifting classical music from the pastoral symphony. Close-ups of
flowers dancing in daylight, displaying their natural beauty, fill the giant screen,
followed by similar therapeutic stock romantic images of streams and mountains,
even flocks of sheep observed from high up in the clouds.
We, as audience, assume that such over-determined stimulus corresponds with the
fantasy dream world of the old man, reminding him of the ‘purity’ of life and nature
before the structures of this futuristic environmental society and ‘Soylent Green’,