Welcome to Elysium! Debating IR Concepts and Scenarios through Sci-Fi Leticia C. Simões ([email protected]) Mario Afonso Lima ([email protected]) The purpose of this paper is to link Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium to International Relations as a way to produce new debates and points of view. The movie depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which the wealthiest has fled to live in Elysium, leaving the poorest on Earth to deal with all its problems. In Blomkamp’s fiction it is possible to perceive concepts such as colonialism, power struggle, scarce resources, migration, logic of state creation and power concentration. Although it isn’t the main perspective on the movie, it is possible to debate issues of sustainability, self destruction, elite’s power, as well as technological access. Perhaps, the most intriguing exercise in thinking IR through Elysium is the scenario analysis after the end of the story, making it possible to develop several scenarios, from an utopian reality similar to Kant’s perpetual peace, to a darkest nightmare of an all scale war and a collapse of life in Earth (and in Elysium) PAPER PREPARED FOR PRESENTATION AT THE. FLACSO-ISA JOINT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, BUENOS AIRES, JULY 2014. THIS IS A PRELIMINARY DRAFT VERSION. PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT CONSENT. Introduction Movies are a very interesting teaching tool in classroom once it enables greater interactivity between teacher and students. Numerous movies have been used to instigate and promote students debates and understanding of several subjects. Documentary, political thrillers and historical movies are among the most common genre used in classrooms. However, the useful movies aren’t limited to these genres alone. The use of lighter themed movies can sometimes trigger an easier understanding, once the student’s acceptance is normally increased with blockbusters with an accessible language and easily accessed through cinemas and online streaming. Science Fiction’s movies come into this category. They normally don’t have a complex political background, sometimes they don’t even mention countries and nationalities. Nevertheless, they can be powerful tools to exemplify some behaviors and concepts analyzed in political science and International Relations without the need to apply these in real situations and at the same time casting some light onto applied theories. Gigi Gokcek 1 illustrates the use of unconventional movies in classrooms as a way to teach the “digital natives” 2, creating a fast-paced environment that can be easier accepted by students. Henceforth, up to date movies becomes an excellent tool, since it deals with a language similar to their own. Movies tend to be constructed based on scenarios close to reality, making possible to draw direct comparisons with real world politics. Sci-Fi Movies such as Inception, or Star Trek, can be used to debate several theories and even Star Wars is a good example of how to identify IR theories in each character. This paper does not tend to debate one theory or another, instead, our proposition here is to highlight how Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium 3 can be used in a classroom an effective way. In this sense, we tend to explore Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, a science fiction that shows a post-apocalyptic world, due to the environmental destruction of Earth, and the 1 GOKCEK, Gigi. Integrating Action-Adventure, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi Films into the International Studies Curriculum: How Unconventional Movies Can Become Conventional Pedagogical Tools. ISA 2014 Annual Convention. Toronto, 2014 2 Those who were born under the heavy influence of the technological world, being exposed to it since an early age 3 Blomkamp, Niell. Elysium. Hollywood, 2013 creation of a space satellite – Elysium – as a way to separate the rich and powerful from the average population 4. While people on Earth live in a chaotic political and economical environment in a zero tolerance policy enforced by the police officers, Elysium residents enjoy access to technology, welfare and security, including the certainty of non invasion of Elysium territory by Earth residents. The Elysium plot works as a background for debating moral and political issues as well as International Relations and Political Science theories, models and concepts. However, probably the most striking feature of Sci-fi movies, in this specific case Elysium, is the possibility of generating scenarios of a near and far future giving the chance to bring forth the analysis based on the movie to more tangible scenarios based on our political context. This paper is divided into four sections apart from introduction. The first one, “Welcome to Elysium”, exposes the movie’s plot highlighting its most important aspects not only to the story construction but also to the didactical feature we explore along the paper. The second section, “Classroom Dynamics”, illustrates how Elysium can be linked to concepts and theories of International Relations, also pointing out some debating themes in order to generate more than just technical discussion in classroom. The third section “Elysian Peace or Underworld? Scenario Planning through Elysium” is dedicated to present the scenarios planning capability presented by the movie and with that, functioning as an exercise of scenario creation and application. Lastly, the conclusion presents some of our finding regarding the specific use of Elysium sci-fi in a humanities classroom. Welcome to Elysium! (Warning! It contains movie spoilers) The year is 2154 and the Earth is over populated and decimated by pollution and disease. The chaotic scenery on Earth is pictured in a post- apocalyptical Los Angeles turned into a giant slum, with a messed up environment, lack of jobs, scarce basic resources, poor medical attention, almost any technology access and zero tolerance robot 4 This theme has been explored by the Pixar’s movie Wall-E. The link between Wall-E and International Relations, especially the environmental order, has been explored by Porf. Guilherme Dias at La Salle-RJ. police force. But the catastrophic situation on Earth not even remotely reminds the life on Elysium, a high-tech space station, just beyond Earth's atmosphere. If Earth shelters the commons citizens, mainly workers and their poor families, Elysium is inhabited by entrepreneurs, millionaires, investors, governors and their families. Elysium has better air quality, all the Elysian are above the law, beautiful mansions, controlled population, access to technology, a large security scheme protecting the entire ‘satellite’, and a machinery, present in every Elysium home, capable of curing all existent diseases called ‘Med-Bays’. While people on Earth struggle to survive, the citizens’ welfare is the most important issue in Elysium, which also appears to be the current political core, where all the decision-making takes place. Once life in Elysium is so much better than on Earth, the poor families from Earth all want to go live there in order to improve life quality, or sometimes in a desperate attempt to use ‘Med-Bays’, since medical care on Earth is outdated and overloaded. However, the access to Elysium is restrict only to those how can afford it, and anyone how tries to enter into Elysium without authorization is apprehended and sent back to Earth, or in worst cases, shot down in airspace. Illegality doesn´t impede outlaws from Earth with access to some amount of technology, to send spaceships to Elysium full of people that can pay for it and is desperate to leave Earth. The story revolves around Max, a poor boy raised on an orphanage on Earth that dreams to live in Elysium, and later, in his young adult years, becomes a thief in order to survive. After arrested and serving his sentence, he tries to reestablish himself, even in parole, and starts to work as a peon in one of the Armadyne Co. factories, the technology company that built Elysium and is also responsible for government armament, including the police robot force that patrols Earth. Max works in the production line of those robots and after a radiation accident at work, due to the employer’s negligence with its workers, Max discovers he only has five days to live. Facing the certain death, Max decides to get an illegal transport to Elysium in order to use a “Med-Bay” to save his life. As Max doesn´t have enough money to pay for a ticket to Elysium, he asks Spider, a mix of coyote and hacker who rules this kind of parallel business, for help. In exchange for the ticket, he offers his work force and Spider accepts, but the task Max will have to face to guarantee his travel to Elysium is not easy: he has to obtain the brain data from an Elysian citizen that by any chance is on Earth. Spider wants it all: from bank passwords to classify information. To do so, Max has to use a plug to steal the brain information from the target and transfer all the data to his own brain. As a way of vengeance, Max chooses the Armadyne CEO, the same one how owns the negligent company responsible for his accident, as his target. What he didn´t know was that the Armadyne CEO was involved together with the pragmatic Secretary of Defense Delacourt in a scheme to execute a coup d’état against President Patel. In exchange for a lifetime contract with the government, the Armadyne CEO, also responsible for the creation and development of Elysium’s automated system, had to rewrite the code that rules Elysium in order to depose the President empowering the Defense Secretary. When the Defense Secretary discovers that the CEO is dead and that Max has the rewrite code in his head she triggers a group of mercenaries to capture Max and take him to Elysium so she can have the code to put her plan in practice.