Rob the Gob

This morning there was news regarding the fall in the rate of inflation. Good news, you’d think, but apparently not. ‘This could herald a period of deflation’, we are told. After a brief consideration of the possibilities of this (at first innocuous-sounding) process, anyone realises that there would be serious negative consequences. Non-the-less, I get the impression that the only reason it was interpreted in that way was due to the strong desire of everyone to see a series of essentially minor events as a global catastrophe. We crave disaster, though we simultaneously fear it – every single thing that is ever reported on is sensationalised to a degree.  The head of Barclay’s Bank isn’t getting his bonus this year (putting him millions out of pocket – shame). Most people are cheering this, I’d think, but we are also soberly told that such things are portents of horrors to come. I can think of nothing that would diffuse this media generated tension better than showing it for the ridiculous nature of what it is – and the best way to do this is disaster fiction! Show how bad it could really get – bells, whistles and explosions, and everyone will feel twenty times better about it. It’d be cathartic. In short, by revelling in some things that really we should be respectfully scared of, we can move a long way towards understanding it. Play is how we learn, kids.        I’ve recently attended a comics conference (actually it had a more pretentious title than that, but non-the-less, that’s what it was). I was struck (but really, really not surprised) by how many of the stories involve total global catastrophe, but how nothing reflected the consequences of any financial crisis past or present. It’s a dull apocalypse, that’s for sure, and the comics industry avoids heavy material like an acrophobic agoraphobe with a chronic fear of elastic and Australians avoids bungee jumping. There are publications that deal will serious issues (‘Maus’ and ‘Palestine’ spring to mind), but who on earth could write something about this crisis? It’s just DULL. Occasionally you see something in wider fiction set during the era of the great depression. There are many fine novels, for example, and a few films. There are even TV programs about the appalling consequences of Thatcherism that are lurking about my brain (‘gizajob’), but to my knowledge there’s very little speculative fiction written about future financial crises. It’s just not a very sexy topic. It seems fine to set a narrative within a financially difficult period as a kind of historical analysis, but nobody’s very interested before they happen. Except for news broadcasters – and if they had their way we’ll all have shot ourselves in the face with despair long ago. So, could this be changed? Could there actually be a decent Disaster movie, book or comic made out of a financial crisis?

            There’s a certain delight to be found in the mongering of doom, even just in the internal monologue. I was truly convinced that I’d be killed by nuclear fire as a boy. It didn’t help me to act responsibly to be constantly expecting to be told that my life was only going to last for another four minutes.  I remember watching a program about meteor strikes and being terrified not that a big ‘Dino-killer’ would strike but that a Tunguska- sized impact almost anywhere in the northern hemisphere would ‘accidentally’ start a global thermonuclear exchange. Actually, that wasn’t as unlikely as it sounds. Lots of the films made at that time reflected this common conception of the way the world would end – essentially in a giant fireball. The only real escape  from thoughts of this kind came not from avoiding them, but from embracing them. Catharsis is a wonderful thing. Post-apocalyptic stuff obsessed me, books about comet impacts, films about the consequences of  the inevitable Armageddon. This persisted in the common consciousness (and my own) just long enough to produce films like ‘Deep Impact’ (black president anyone?) and Armageddon, and even the quite recent TV series ‘Jericho’. These semi-realistic disaster movies were mother’s milk to huge sections of society, and really are the model for the perfect disaster story: Firstly, you can buy the possibility. Secondly, there are clear and rather spectacular events to goggle wide-eyed at. How many times have you seen New York destroyed by a tidal wave? Never boring, was it? Thirdly, there are fundamental changes to human life, long-term stuff that we’ll have to deal with, and many, many opportunities for spectacular heroism. Fourthly, and most importantly, it’s something that we don’t understand the full consequences off and that frightens us because of that.   

            The ‘fun’, ‘sexy’ topics for doom-mongering in the media have shifted a little in the last few years. Eighteen-year-olds today were born after the fall of the Berlin wall, and it’s certainly been a while since the people who were filled with Cold War paranoia sat firmly in the centre of target demographics for disaster movies and conspiracy theories. A few themes have stayed for writers to play with – disease for example. Remember SARS? That was due to kill everyone a few years ago, then Bird Flu came along. These things were actually deadly, but the possibility of them becoming the new black (as in ‘Black Death’ in this case – thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be here all week) was slight. The fact is that we accept casualty figures in different ways for different things. A disease is only to be considered seriously when it’s killed a few million in a few weeks. MRSA is actually a far more serious problem than either of them, AIDS kills huge swathes of people each year, but if you want to consider real threats to humanity, you should really consider the classics. Small Pox, Malaria and Cholera, for example, may be under control in the west, but this is not universally true. Further, they are subject to constant mutation, making them possibly more threatening than any of things we actually hear about. Large populations in concentrated areas and the high international mobility of people makes for perfect proliferation of an infection. So, it has all the potential – it’s possible, it’s has dire consequences, the possibility for heroism, and though it isn’t as spectacular as a whopping great explosion, it can be hugely bloody to make up for it. And it it just remote enough from us (here in the west at least), to fulfil the forth criteria – it’s something that requires our examination. Consequently disease has remained a common theme. ‘Outbreak’, for example, link further back to ‘The Andromeda Strain’, even certain Zombie movies (although Zombie movies tend to concentrate their efforts more on metaphor than anything else, Zombies are often characterised as victims of a plague). These movies and stories tend to be quite good fun for all their grimness, not so much cautionary tales as romps with the lurgee.

            Likewise ecological disaster movies have become a new genre. In the fifties there were stories and films about heating (‘Drowned world’, ‘the day the earth caught fire’) and right up th the seventies and eighties seventies there were a few stories about a coming ice age. Now it’s flooding and global warming, or even back to ice ages again with things like ‘The Day after Tomorrow’). These are great disaster stories – there’s enough established evidence for it to be believable (well, maybe not ‘Godzilla’ – which is, believe it or not, an example of the genre – but generally), it’s spectacular, has serious consequences (just ask the residents of The Maldives, who are looking to buy a new homeland in the next few years, if anyone has a huge chunk of land for sale – Denmark, I’m look at you), and the chance for heroism, and it really does require examination. What these have in common is an examination of man against nature, and the desire we have to bring the causes and consequences of enormous systems down to a pint that we can understand.. I’d imagine stories like this are actually the foundation of religion…. Anyway, on with the show.     

            Some things seem promisingly to fit into this category, but don’t. Alien invasion has always held some possibility– they are disaster movies of a sort, but they don’t generally have much to say regarding the understanding of an established threat. Mostly the aliens can bee seen as other peoples with other cultures (unsurprising, then, that the genre has it’s origins in 19^th century Britain and 1950’s America), which help a little to understand these things, and the main thrust of the stories are actually an examination of the self and the self-as-nation. Very good in its own way, but not really the same as a film that helps you come to terms with the possibility of a big rock landing on your house. I’m sorry, but there really isn’t anything realistic about ‘Independence Day’. Better are films like ‘The Terminator’, where the larger plot focuses on the disasters created by homebrew technology. Still it doesn’t really reflect an already existent threat, so doesn’t really qualify, and as before, we’re really examining what it means to be a human being in most of these narratives, and they always have that annoying ‘cautionary tale’ aspect.

            But then we have ‘case C’, a few things that can’t really be used very well for generating disaster movies. Terrorism is quite high in the public consciousness, and consequently, ‘Big Bang’ disaster stories have tended to move down a little to ‘Quite Big Bang’ themes. The ridiculous ‘24’ is a good example here. Realistically, if terrorists were anything like as organised as everyone pretends they are, you’d be sitting alone right now in a wrecked house looking at a blank screen. The media portrayal of ‘Al-Qaeda’, for example, is hopeless over the top. Yes, there probably is an international terrorist network, yes it is trying to recruit people, and yes, we  all know why, but they’re not actually so much like the villains from James Bond movies as they are like nutters in sheds. I’m not stupid enough to think that they should be discounted as a direct threat (erm… 9/11 anyone?), but the hysteria that results in Brazillian men being shot seven times in the head (SEVEN TIMES!) in tube stations for no reason at all, or people falsely accused of making Ricin being punished for years and years with no evidence, is equally ridiculous and somewhat reminiscent of MacCarthyist commie paranoia. Fiction around this tends to be set around the detection of terrorism more than anything else. As such it does as much to encourage it as diffuse the tensions. It’s unspectacular, immediate and obsessed with realism. Essentaily most examples are quite sour – the subject matter just doesn’t lend itself well to fun, people take it too seriously, its too close. Quite right too, I suppose, given the nature of it. If it is considered less seriously, it is oftern ridiculed. In terms of possibility, though, there is some potential here. It could be made spectacular (see ‘24’), although this can come off as crass (see ‘24’ again). It’s possible, only too much, perhaps. The forth criteria, however, is where this falls flat. We know it all too well, and the motivations behind it. Political agendas, regardless of who’s side your on, aren’t too difficult to understand, particularly when they are formed from the right-wing culturally conservative and very bloody simple side of things. Likewise we can dismiss the rise of violent crime as a useful theme. Of itself, it doesn’t really require explanation and exploration – the interests lie in the very human considerations of cause and motivation. 

            So, what about a Global financial collapse? A, B, or C? Well – let’s check the criteria: Firstly, you can buy the possibility It’s happened, it’s happening. The second one’s not so easy. Grimy streets and poor people going hungry might play your heartstrings like an expert harpist, but it’s never going to be able to compete with a lovely big mushroom cloud now, is it? We can get some decent riots out of it for sure, though, city streets on fire, that kind of thing. The problem is always going to be the grinding factor of poverty. It’s bloody miserable being poor, that’s the truth, you feel defeated, pointless and worthless. On the other hand, being sick’s not much fun either, so in essence, we should do what epidemic-type disaster fiction does – make it happen suddenly, catastrophically and globally with lots of violence and blood and guts. That should help. Thirdly, there are fundamental changes to human life, long-term stuff that we’ll have to deal with – I’d suggest technological collapse here coupled with a limited energy crisis (limited because we don’t want this to become Mad Max; it has to be actually about financial crisis). Take away the streetlights and watch the cities go feral after dark. Opportunities for heroism are a little thinner on the ground, though. Urban and social decay can lead to vigilantism, but we’re not trying to make Batman here, we need a disaster theme. I think saving the world be re-floating all the global stock markets is going to make for a crap plot, and stockbrokers are essentially all arseholes anyway, the vast majority of whom, everyone knows, deserve all they get, even if what they get is a sandwich made from their own face. I shall return to this in a moment (possibilities for heroism, not face sandwiches). Fourthly, though it very much is something that we don’t understand. Nobody on earth understands it. That’s what causes the problems.

Essentially the current global crisis was started when dodgy mortgage trading in America made everyone re-examine the sorts of investments that were being made and whether-or-not there was any real money in any of it. Of course, there’s no real money in any of it. There never is. Money, my friends, is just a silly invention we made up to help our lives go along a little easier. Remember that – because essentially money has no value other than what we give it in a way that isn’t true of hardly anything else we take seriously. Money is treated as if it has primary value – like it’s a measurable property of an object. ‘This CD is ten centimetres across, three millimetres thick, weighs seventeen grams and is worth ten pounds.’ Rubbish. It’s worth only what you can pursued people to pay for it. It has no inherent monetary value. Nothing does. We Invented money – we merely quantified extension and mass. The chances are though that you are rarely allowed to realise this. We are so familiar with attaching monetary values to things that we feel that it seems natural. It isn’t, it’s just old.   

            The same is true of all monetary values. Deals, speculations, stocks and shares and everything else is all just a silly game when it comes right down to it. Money is nothing, an ethereal thing based on confidence, and hence the latest collapse. Those who’s opinions matter to the markets simply stopped believing that certain investments and products were worth what people had valued them at and immediately – because monetary value just is a matter of belief – they weren’t any more. Simple as that – it’s confidence. Passing round a big bag of Coke might have been more effective than pumping billions of quid into the markets. Getting that point across to people is really hard, though, even though there isn’t really anyone in the industry who would deny it. It’s because we’re so invested in the system at the grass-roots level. We NEED this to be more than just a game, because our next meal is dependant on it. Disaster fiction, though, would be a great way of explaining this to people. May be then they wouldn’t think that banking was such a great career, who knows, it could have many positive effects, but this is an aside.  Essentially it should be possible to make a decent piece of disaster fiction around a financial crisis, if we can only think of something heroic to do.

            So here’s the problem. You can stop nukes from going off. You can cope with their after effects (sort of). You can hit Zombies in the head, you can race to find a cure before it’s too late. You can trek over a glacier or rescue your attractive sidekick from some awful flood. You can escape the tidal wave, you can outrun the swarm of bees and you can strangle an alien with your bare hands when it comes down to it, but what the hell can you do that’s heroic in a financial crisis? You can knuckle down, look after your friends and stand by your family. That’s heroic, but it’s boring too; it won’t require the services of a square jaw and it’ll never get your attractive sidekick into a feverish state of lust.        

            So what am I to do if I want my lovely financial crisis disaster story? Heroism in its most direct and Bruce-Willisy form is a vital component. I’ll have to have a think about this. If, in the meantime, you can think of anything, answer below.