Fight the Future 05 - City of Ember

[Paul]

The incandescent lightbulbs of the underground, post-apocalypse city of Ember are flickering. Can Lina and Doon find the way out in time without a giant mole and/or Bill Murray getting them? This week, Dan and Paul look at City of Ember!

[DaMage]

I too was thinking of Fallout 3 when you were talking about the City of Ember....mainly because you start in a vault that finally opens after 200 years, same as Ember was supposed to.

[Lysander]

It was kind of interesting how the city seemed to be designed to fail, to force the inhabitants to leave the city after the projected time. Though it was peculiar how the city planners didn't seem to put much emphasis on survival training for once they do leave the city. Or storing any technical knowledge for rebuilding society. I haven't read the sequels so I have no idea if these issues are addressed.

So was this a literal interpretation of Plato's allegory of the cave?

[demiteddybear]

What I really have to laugh at is the whole "pull your job from the hat" thing is that it is one of the jokes from an old family guy episode where they even get to a point where a trained surgeon has to take the job of something like village idiot because that's what he pulled out. I do wonder though, who makes up the jobs for everyone to do? Is that someone's job? Was that job in the hat? It seems like a chicken and egg thing. Though if I had to play a bit of devil's advocate, maybe the whole pull the job thing was supposed to be kind of stupid, it's designed to be a stop gap measure; you don't need to keep the civilization running, just make sure these things can be kept running until the city has lived out it's usefulness.

This story was different from the other dystopian stories; that the characters are more exploring this dystopic world rather than fighting or trying to change an evil authority who are keeping the world/environment in this dystopic state for their own benefit. I kind of like that, and I agree with the DaMage, that it sounds like fallout, and except (very much hopefully) for the fact that there was no information on how to survive in the outside world or that the outside world exists; that this could be a plausible plan for future apocalypses. Heck this was pretty much the plan when people would build these big shelters when they were worried about atom bombs being dropped on america.

[Daniel]

@Lysander I was thinking about that too! This Plato-inspired TMBG song could be the builder's theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqVWmgrWK08

@demiteddybear Maybe if a culture is actually doing fine, with no scarcity in a very well planned, mostly self-running capsule, the job hat could make sense, to give people something to do all day (and maybe slacking a lot). This is an episode where we gave into the snark side a bit - normally we strive to imagine that things are really there for a reason, and then think about why that might be. ...but, the job hat man...

[demiteddybear]

Well the job hat undermined the whole concept of Fight the Future. How would you fare in that world, who the hell knows, you could have the job of adventure merchant or the job of rat surveyor. How plausible is it, it's a job hat, even in the dark ages and we thought leeches were a good cure we didn't assign jobs by wheel of fortune.

[kaotik4266]

Regarding the comment at the start about 1984 not having a hopeful ending, there actually is a subtle element of hope: the epilogue is written in past tense. "Newspeak was the official language of Oceania...".

[Daniel]

Good point kaotik4266! A Handmaid's Tale offers the same chilly comfort. (I think that one is out of scope, but possibly not the Year of the Flood!)

You said it demiteddybear. That How Would We Do feature is a tricky one, and we're still finetuning it - it's pretty gross if we always imagine ourselves as the most privileged group in every unequal dystopia (which we basically are in real life, as straight white men with Canadian passports)

[TheGeek]

I haven't listened to the whole episode year but the big "it don't make sense" part for me was the 200 year old canned food. I don't care how good your canning method is. Even the best Nitrogen flushed canned dried beans only have a shelf life of 30 years. You can get some meats that are 25 year, but most fruits and vegetables are only good for around 15 year because of the acids. You can go longer if you freeze dry and then put it vacuum sealed bags in a sealed container.

With all the problems with setting I get the feeling that City of Ember is aimed at a younger audience more pre-teen dystopia then teen dystopia.