THERE HAVE BEEN a number of films in the last two years--such as The Day After, Testament, The Road Warrior, and Threads--that confront the threat of nuclear war by providing visions of life after the weapons have been detonated. But it occurred to me while watching Repo Man (the title refers to the employee of a fraudulent company that "repossesses" cars) that we live in a post-nuclear world even though the bombs have not gone off. Nuclear weapons already are taking a moral, spiritual, psychological, and physical toll.
In the film the character of J. Frank Parnell, a middle-aged scientist, is first seen mysteriously driving a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu across the American southwestern countryside. In the car trunk are four dead extra-terrestrial aliens whose matter is capable of disintegrating--in a blast of heat and radiation--anyone who opens the lid. The driver weaves along the highway, sweating and drained, as the heat from the matter in the trunk penetrates the car.
In anguished tones Parnell tells Otto, the troubled young punkish hero of the film, that his mind is eroding. He reveals that he has worked on designing the neutron bomb, which drove him mad. Then his project was cancelled and he was lobotomized.
The neutron bomb, Parnell says, destroys people and leaves buildings standing. "Fits in a suitcase. No one knows it's there until blammo! Eyes melt, skin explodes. Everyone dead. It's so immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad." As Parnell mentally deteriorates further, the heat from the alines in the trunk exhausts his body until finally he dies, discarded on a bench.
The movie is set in the post-industrial ruins of downtown Los Angeles amid uncollected garbage, streets littered with trash and debris, deteriorating buildings, and discarded appliances and industrial equipment. Figures in white space suits, aseptically walled off from contamination, pick up the drunk and dead bodies that fall in the streets.
The moral code of the Helping Hands Acceptance Agency, the gang that "repossesses" cars, stealing them "from dildos who don't pay their bills," parallels the ethic of the neutron bomb. Cars ar not to be damaged but people die meaninglessly, or are murdered without a thought in order to obtain a profitable object.
No one seems to care much. "Not many people have a code any more," one of the repo men says. Kill or be killed is the dominant ethic. Middle-class punks with bizarre Mohawk haircuts or shaved heads commit crimes for the fun of it, and zombie-like cultists spout forth a variety of formulas for salvation in a world that is out of their control.
Repo Man depicts the physical and moral desecration that results from perpetually committing the planet's resources to nuclear annihilation instead of to the benefit of mankind. We even now seem to have post-nuclear war zones in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities, as whole neighborhoods, sections of the U.S. that the new prosperity has passed by, disintegrate for lack of basic resources. The poor must do without adequate medical care, and infant death rates rise as health centres close and billions more are devoted to instruments of destruction. The increasing number of homeless in our cities have become the refugees of a potential war for which we are mortgaging our humanity.
In New York recently four mid-town buildings, including two single-room-occupancy hotels that formerly housed poor people, were demolished without a city permit. The motive reportedly was to beat a legislative deadline that would have placed a moratorium on profitable luxury conversion of such properties. Since no attempt apparently was made to disconnect water and gas lines, much of the block--and the people in it--could have been blown away.
When governments take the lead in planning the systematic murder of millions of innocent people, all other destructive behavior may become permissible. The justification for this--the activity of another nuclear superpower--seems inadequate, especially as the proliferation of nuclear weapons does little to change what is deplored about the alien power's system or intentions.
The nuclear winter is already here, it is a cold winter of the soul. The bombs have not gone off, but are nevertheless affecting our moral and spiritual lives.
A film such as Repo Man, even if this is not its intention, reveals to us the degraded human landscape surrounding us.
It does not have to be this way. We can still become aware of the violence that we are inflicting on ourselves as we threaten to destroy our enemies and our planet. It is not too late to take responsibility with the Soviet Union and other countries for the world that we are creating.
The risk of going on as we are is that the loss of caring may permit the last destructive act.
(cartoon and text of February 21, 1985 Vancouver Sun article)