I've been in the headspace of a much more critical discussion of World War Z. You're not wrong with it's unique mechanical-narrative framing being a boon for cinema if replicated. That doesn't take away it's politics which is to put it mildly is a time capsule fusion of 2000's liberalism and 'reformist' doctrine. This to my mind makes "H…
I've been in the headspace of a much more critical discussion of World War Z. You're not wrong with it's unique mechanical-narrative framing being a boon for cinema if replicated. That doesn't take away it's politics which is to put it mildly is a time capsule fusion of 2000's liberalism and 'reformist' doctrine. This to my mind makes "How are we going to adapt Yonkers and the Redeker plan?" a bigger question to ask any future adaptation rather than the ones you've already answered in this article.
To get back to the main topic: This considerations and discussion with more neutral space does lean me more towards the mini-series. The differences in research and locational negation should provide more peer review and updating on it's politics. My only nitpick is that the adaptation should have a mixture of hi-fi/lo-fi presentation distinct from the Burns style to both preserve the post-apocalyptic with new tech of the setting and the context of the interviewing breaking this work into it's own out of a neutral goverment report.
Those are interesting questions to ask, too — how would a world in the 2020s re-answer some of the questions that Brooks asked? Now that you bring that up, I am reminded of having to explain to my students who Colin Powell and Howard Dean were, as they were clearly the models for the US President and VP at the time, and are pretty unknown to your modern college student. "Mission Accomplished" means very little to them. Its American political references are all entirely Bush-era, and absolutely do not map onto the 2020 political landscape at all, and need "translation" for anyone who wasn't around then, much less for a modern retelling. I anticipate coming back to this theme when I write something up on Contagion, and the ways in which its political imagination was clearly limited by its times — where the conspiracy theorist grifters are all outsiders and not the ones running the government...
And, yeah, I agree that the exact style of Burns wouldn't work quite as well "in universe" — the aesthetic would be a tricky one to get right. But what fun that would be, to figure that out. I am imagining somewhat silly "re-enactments" being paired with "found footage" of a much greater realism.
Your division at first sounds a bit off. The book's satire seems based more on the performance of it's "present" subjects rather than their actions in the past. Upon reflection, I can see how that's not a hard gap to cross at least on a case by case basis. One wonders how Trump's(That chapter shows that it's not so much modeling than innuendo IMHO) reality shelter would fit both in this question and in general. The retelling would probably use that part to try to fuse the two(like dead set) while it looks for what rich person would have such apolitical clout currently.
That being said if you don't mind more pointed political criticisms: I sincerely hope we can find a better answer in the 2020's than "Maybe we can learn something from failed plans defending apartheid" .
I'm not sure I read the book as suggesting the latter in the way you seem to imply it is. I think having two key elements of the story coming out of the South African and Israeli settings were more about looking for examples of people who (for reasons perhaps right or very wrong) would have created the kind of environment for fostering deeply "unthinkable thoughts." But the book itself also indicates that such thoughts were, in fact, thinkable elsewhere, and also gives alternative successful pathways to thinking about how to fight the war (e.g., the Japanese arc). I also think that giving someone like Redeker the "credit" is intentionally meant as a Werner von Braun situation — which is to say, meant to raise the exact moral and ethical questions you are raising. It doesn't exactly imply that Redeker came out of the thing whole, either! :-)
I find it hard to bridge the interpretative gap between us that would turn the Yukio Mishima coded organization as a real alternative to Redeker. Even without explicitly invoking the japanese version of godwin's law " Having a Red Zone survive and get anime levels of good at killing zacks" ain't a true policy deviation nor quite a psychological one from America interpretation
I would have personally picked the China arc. The whole conflict of the rebellion and ethnics driving the defection is a straight out opposition to the broad strokes of Redeker. Which makes the author injection of the rebels implementation at the end bizarre and undermines a lot of trust in me in terms of my reading of it.
Edit: I get the attempt of a Von Braun situation but the execution still breaks credibility in my eyes. The caveat of Identity loss doesn't fully sell the moral snowflakeness(or if that's part of the unreliable narrator selling which part of it was unreliable) of the character and the chessey Mandela endorsement.
The second issue and that post-covid....the broad strokes of the plan just by itself isn't really that unthinkable to me. It's just uncomfortable triage....it's sucks to think about but not really "Sanity-breaking that could only be barely be come up by planners of racist atrocites" bad .
I've been in the headspace of a much more critical discussion of World War Z. You're not wrong with it's unique mechanical-narrative framing being a boon for cinema if replicated. That doesn't take away it's politics which is to put it mildly is a time capsule fusion of 2000's liberalism and 'reformist' doctrine. This to my mind makes "How are we going to adapt Yonkers and the Redeker plan?" a bigger question to ask any future adaptation rather than the ones you've already answered in this article.
To get back to the main topic: This considerations and discussion with more neutral space does lean me more towards the mini-series. The differences in research and locational negation should provide more peer review and updating on it's politics. My only nitpick is that the adaptation should have a mixture of hi-fi/lo-fi presentation distinct from the Burns style to both preserve the post-apocalyptic with new tech of the setting and the context of the interviewing breaking this work into it's own out of a neutral goverment report.
Those are interesting questions to ask, too — how would a world in the 2020s re-answer some of the questions that Brooks asked? Now that you bring that up, I am reminded of having to explain to my students who Colin Powell and Howard Dean were, as they were clearly the models for the US President and VP at the time, and are pretty unknown to your modern college student. "Mission Accomplished" means very little to them. Its American political references are all entirely Bush-era, and absolutely do not map onto the 2020 political landscape at all, and need "translation" for anyone who wasn't around then, much less for a modern retelling. I anticipate coming back to this theme when I write something up on Contagion, and the ways in which its political imagination was clearly limited by its times — where the conspiracy theorist grifters are all outsiders and not the ones running the government...
And, yeah, I agree that the exact style of Burns wouldn't work quite as well "in universe" — the aesthetic would be a tricky one to get right. But what fun that would be, to figure that out. I am imagining somewhat silly "re-enactments" being paired with "found footage" of a much greater realism.
Your division at first sounds a bit off. The book's satire seems based more on the performance of it's "present" subjects rather than their actions in the past. Upon reflection, I can see how that's not a hard gap to cross at least on a case by case basis. One wonders how Trump's(That chapter shows that it's not so much modeling than innuendo IMHO) reality shelter would fit both in this question and in general. The retelling would probably use that part to try to fuse the two(like dead set) while it looks for what rich person would have such apolitical clout currently.
That being said if you don't mind more pointed political criticisms: I sincerely hope we can find a better answer in the 2020's than "Maybe we can learn something from failed plans defending apartheid" .
I'm not sure I read the book as suggesting the latter in the way you seem to imply it is. I think having two key elements of the story coming out of the South African and Israeli settings were more about looking for examples of people who (for reasons perhaps right or very wrong) would have created the kind of environment for fostering deeply "unthinkable thoughts." But the book itself also indicates that such thoughts were, in fact, thinkable elsewhere, and also gives alternative successful pathways to thinking about how to fight the war (e.g., the Japanese arc). I also think that giving someone like Redeker the "credit" is intentionally meant as a Werner von Braun situation — which is to say, meant to raise the exact moral and ethical questions you are raising. It doesn't exactly imply that Redeker came out of the thing whole, either! :-)
I find it hard to bridge the interpretative gap between us that would turn the Yukio Mishima coded organization as a real alternative to Redeker. Even without explicitly invoking the japanese version of godwin's law " Having a Red Zone survive and get anime levels of good at killing zacks" ain't a true policy deviation nor quite a psychological one from America interpretation
I would have personally picked the China arc. The whole conflict of the rebellion and ethnics driving the defection is a straight out opposition to the broad strokes of Redeker. Which makes the author injection of the rebels implementation at the end bizarre and undermines a lot of trust in me in terms of my reading of it.
Edit: I get the attempt of a Von Braun situation but the execution still breaks credibility in my eyes. The caveat of Identity loss doesn't fully sell the moral snowflakeness(or if that's part of the unreliable narrator selling which part of it was unreliable) of the character and the chessey Mandela endorsement.
The second issue and that post-covid....the broad strokes of the plan just by itself isn't really that unthinkable to me. It's just uncomfortable triage....it's sucks to think about but not really "Sanity-breaking that could only be barely be come up by planners of racist atrocites" bad .