About a month ago, my lady love and I rented some movies. She picked out a Mexican sci-fi movie Sleep Dealer based purely on the cool looking cover, and I'm sure glad she did.
[Note: Some spoilers follow, but I've tried to keep them to minor details that don't affect your viewing pleasure.]
The movie might be called a post-colonial re-reading of The Matrix, much the way Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is a re-vision of Jane Eyre. Set primarily in Mexico, the film is set in a possible near-future where the neo-colonial corporate exploitation of developing nation labor has become nearly total; it dictates not only commercial activity but also has become the default political position and has at its disposal the full exercise of American military power. So, in other words, a logical extension of today's world.
The major "sci-fi" element is something called "node technology" -- not unlike the technology in The Matrix that directly connects the human body and mind into a virtual world. Nodes can be used to communicate thoughts directly from one person to another or through the internet (first-person documentaries produced directly by the mind of the observer/writer, for example). But in the film, the most important use for this technology is the outsourcing of labor. Workers in Mexico (and, presumably, other economically subordinate countries) hook in to robots in first-world countries like the US and perform all forms of manual labor remotely -- construction, driving cabs, busing tables, cleaning, etc. The American consumer benefits from the labor of these workers without ever having to see them and thus possibly feeling the guilt of exploiting another person; all they see is their avatar, a remote controlled robot.
This technology is made profitable and dominant by a nearly 100% secure border, which, like all other elements of imperial power in the film's world, is both corporate and military. In fact, border control and foreign military excursions have become part of the US entertainment industry: on a popular reality show, viewers watch as military drones -- remote controlled by American soldiers via nodes -- hunt down and kill "terrorists," who are more often than not simply people struggling to survive in a world where the necessities of life are controlled by someone else and who accidentally fall afoul of the law.
The main story concerns a young Mexican man who, due to various circumstances, must go to Tijuana (a modern city and central hub of Mexico's international node labor) to work for a "Sleep Dealer" -- a labor factory where workers hook into nodes that connect them to menial jobs all around the world. The factories are so-named because of the extreme, deadening exhaustion that the workers experience after their shifts.
What is perhaps so great (and disturbing) about this movie is its simultaneous technological distance from and political proximity to our world. Like the best socially conscious sci-fi, it is truly uncanny, alien and eerily similar at the same time. One of my favorite stylistic elements of the film is the gradual reveal of the sci-fi technology elements: the life in the rural Mexico of the film could be taking place today, or 50 years ago, while the world of the US is futuristic and sleek. Yet its contrast with the extreme technological development of American society is really not so different from the way real, modern life is, effectively, science-fiction to the lives lived in the rest of the world. [Hell, just yesterday I had problem installing some new software on my computer. I connected with tech support via the internet, and a technician in India took control of my desktop and installed the program for me. Talk about node technology and virtual outsourcing!]
The film also makes some unsettling points about the operation of oppression in the modern world. In order to survive, Rudy must work for the very forces that oppress him; he builds the very tools that control his life and, in effect, thanks them for the opportunity to subsist via his own enslaving. He must not only be approved to enter the node factory, but he also must enter a code just to leave: he's not even permitted to quit. The factory has complete control not just over his death, but his life as well. There are numerous other interesting avenues for analysis of the film, such as its gender politics: the effeminizing effect of the nodal outsourcing technology, which "penetrates" the worker; the way gender relations are changed via the new connections, etc. Yet the film also explores the positive aspects of such technology: its potential for creating human interconnection, the intimacy of communication between friends/lovers, the possibilities for resistance through the creation of human networks in opposition to corporate/military control, etc.
The film's cgi special effects will probably seem a little dated to 2010 audiences, but that's a minor point that will only bother you if you are really looking for it. For anyone interested in sci-fi and the various social/political issues the film deals with, it's a great movie. It would be especially interesting to watch with a film like The Matrix either by yourself or, for my teacher friends, in a class. The Matrix is also all about power and exploitation, but it takes place in a predominantly middle-class, "first-world" context. Sleep Dealer reveals that even if the beautiful and relatively privileged people of The Matrix are victims of oppressive ideology, there's another level below them. The victims of The Matrix are the rulers of Sleep Dealer; for all our recognition of our own "oppression," it relies on a further level of subjugation that can often be invisible to us when we focus only on our own suffering.
