Random Variable

“Step 1: kill the infected. Step 2: containment. if containment cannot be done then, step 3: extermination” says Stringer Bell [1] Commander Stone near the beginning of 28 Weeks Later.

A few of my friends have dismissed the film on its obviousness, its inconsistencies, and its bad acting. They’re probably right, but that’s not why I like it.

Yes it is all those things, but taken on a purely symbolic level, it’s a whole lot more. It represents the evolution of post apocalyptic movies in the last decade. If we think back to earlier dystopic visions of uninhabitable lands, we are often presented with the image of the walled, fortress city such as in Judge Dredd [2]. Code 46 [3] was probably the first film that depicted something different. The true nature of our fortresses against the outside are already here, in the present, both in the green zones of Baghdad, but in the “cosmopolitan cities” across the Middle East, London, New York etc… The older films, project what is already globally present onto the nation state. It is no surprise, that with the exception of Code 46, directed by the exceedingly cosmopolitan Michael Winterbottom, that both Children of Men and 28 Weeks Later were filmed by foreign filmmakers.

Foucault is Dead makes reference to viral politics in 28 Weeks Later. There is perhaps no more direct depiction of a viral politics than in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. In the second season, the counter-terrorism are presented with exactly a political virus, which infiltrates the minds of vulnerable people and make them commit acts of terrorism culminating in mass suicide. However, what is interesting is that the virus is engineered by a state operative wishing to impose his ideological vision on the rest of Japan. He can only do this however, with the wealth of information and simulations that can only become available in a highly securatized, technologised and weaponised society. So, we can say that the terrorists and state actors are exactly the same in this viral aspect. The terrorists work from below, using ideology, the state from above, using technology.

[1] Played by the fabulous Edris Ilba, who some of you may remember from the British vampire series, Ultraviolet.

[2] It’s crap film, yes. Also, Aeon Flux also makes the mistake of showing a fortress city in the same way.

[3] Why don’t more people like this film? Is it because Winterbottom is one of those people who intrinsically understand globalisation.