Nicholas Jerrems
Dr. Wexler
12/6/2012
Globalizing Our Brains: The Utopian Vision Behind Babel
What if the meat you ate so innocently was contributing to a monopolized production where Genetically Modified Organisms were the norm and animals were tortured for their short existence on earth? What if making the choice to buy organic produce helped the immigrant farm worker who came to this country to make an income that he could send back home to his family in Mexico who lacked the necessities we take for granted? Everything is interconnected in this world, and the small choices you make on a daily basis can have almost instantaneous effects on people all over the world. Globalization is the primary theme presented in the film Babel, and shows how something so small as the gift of a gun, can have horrific results around the globe. Globalization is a dangerous trend in contemporary society, with mass production happening over seas and social networking connecting everyone, anywhere, anytime. One nations utopia, is another nations living hell. Lets explore how globalization is presented in the film itself, and than take a look at contemporary American life and see how the themes of Babel become frightfully relevant in our everyday lives.
Due to the actions of Yasujiro Wataya, a Japanese business man and single father, a woman was shot, a young boy in Morocco is killed by the police force, a mexican woman is deported back to Mexico, and two children come within inches of their own mortality (Arriaga) . What exactly did Wataya do? He gave a rifle, as a gift, to a hunting guide he had while on a trip to Morocco. Nothing about Wataya’s actions warranted him as a criminal, but his lack of insight to the events is the exact point the film wants to make. It is not necessarily Wataya’s fault. The fault lies within the bigger picture.
With America leading the way of the industrial revolution at the turn of the 20th century, countries all over the world decided to follow on the heels of their success. Soon, demand became larger than supply, and America had to outsource to keep up with it. This opened up a network of trade and communications on a more profound level than ever before. Babel is merely commenting on how interconnected the entire world is now, to the point were our innocent actions cannot help but sometimes having negative results. The film provides an up close view on one scenario that portrays the negative connotations of globalizing production, travel, and technology.
In Frederick Jameson’s article, “The Politics of Utopia”, he argues that there is a “dissociation into two distinct worlds which characterizes globalization today.” On one hand, you have the idealized fantasy of American “utopia”, which on the surface level, seems to be heading in the direction of perfecting human life. As a result of this false utopian ideology, third world countries suffer from poor work conditions and poverty that feed a corporate greed backed both by the business leaders of their own country, and our own. Utopia cannot exist. For one’s utopian ideal to exist, another must suffer from the production side of the line. Taking a structuralist point of view, these binaries comprise life. There is no good, without bad. There is no wealthy, without poor. If by utopia, someone means neutrality, than certainly they must be gravely mistaken, because neutrality is not pleasantness. Just ask the overabundant population prescribed high doses of anti-depressants. But than again, maybe the neutralized society is someone’s ideal of utopia.
The circumstances in Babel are a product of attempts to fulfill someone’s notions of utopia. A man from Japan, where a gun license is necessary and one understands the social repercussions of owning and using such an item, gives the gun to a small group of people, living in a third world rural setting. The children, although not innately ignorant, grow up with very differing social values and ideals. Therefore, the gun to them has less of an immediate impact in regards to its dangerous nature. The gun takes on different meaning because of the altering cultural perceptions of that item.
But how did this gun get passed down from one society to another? It is the product of travel, which ultimately is a product of technology itself. Technology has made traveling so easy that everyone and their grandmother has the opportunity to visit all parts of the world at their slightest whim. Cultures that differ in both norms and morality (which can be constructed from a perspectivist point of view coined by no other than Nietzsche himself), now have contact with one another, and the juxtapositions can be deadly, as seen in the film. It should also be noted that concepts of utopia, like morality, can be constructed on an individual basis from a perspectivist lens. Reality, in itself, lacks innate qualities, and therefore, there is no such idea as a universal “utopia.” At least this is the stance I am taking in my personal argument.
It is necessary to discuss a need for globalization in order to give a film like Babel its appeal in the first place. In Randy Martin’s article, “Where Did the Future Go?” he states that “in the three decades since the utopian promises of the welfare state have beat their retreat, finance has been in ascendance.” Despite our efforts for capital gain, the nation goes into a debt as a whole and an individual as our appetite to consume grows beyond our ability to provide. We now finance and live off of credit. It is necessity and part of the American way of life. Our obsession with consumption is creating a larger demand, which increases our reliance on outside countries to produce our products. Globalization is a by product of our thirst for consumption. Because of the products we “want”, demand for production and travel becomes higher. We provide income for many countries, but those countries in return control the products we use in our everyday lives. So much of globalization is a result of the American life style and its push to consume beyond recognition until we ourselves, are a product of capitalism.
Babel implies a lot more than it denotes. It seems like a simple story portraying the results of a “butterfly effect” type action, but in reality, it is voicing a much larger concern. Our need to “perfect” life and make it more pleasurable in Western culture, has created vast networks of communication, production, and travel, that inevitably link back to the capitalist system. The ability to travel at ease and communicate that are utilized as plot devices in Babel, are results of the capitalist push for consumption. Facebook, although seemingly innocent on the surface as a way to connect people all around the world is a business that corrals individuals into a site that they can mass market product to according to watch the individual looks up in their search engine. The ability to travel on vacation at ease is the product of companies needing to find ways to get products back and forth from continent to continent. Each and every action we perform on a daily basis goes back to America’s search for utopia, perpetuating reliance on a world that arguably may have been better off left alone.
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