basti: It's interesting. I am half-watching the SciFi channel version of ‘Dune.’ There are certan elements they stress that the Lynch version does not.
Like, for example, they stress how kind the Atreides are to the natives. This is meant to be understood directly. Like, that they are generous, benevolent rulers. But I think there is a lot of room for a different interpretation. The movie's attempts to construct this interpretation are faulty - it's just not that well done.
So it's possible to look at this the other way. That these foreigners come in with all of these high-minded ideals about social equality and wontonly disrupt the native culture without any real care for its long-term health.
They show up, dismantle all of these old customs overnight, but there is no real, lasting attempts at building a better society. Just these token gestures.
This, I think, is interesting, because the original Dune does not take this approach at all. Only the 2000 version does, which seems very telling of the intended audience and the preconceptions of the writers. There is this additional burden for the writers to portray the colonial masters as benevolent, but it always takes this very apologetic stance. And the stance seems very hollow. Whereas Lynch seems to have had no need to address this at all.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Diary of an EVE Industrialist, Part 6
Just how unequal is EVE's hyper-capitalistic universe? Apparently, not so unequal than our own.
I remember a while a go, someone calculated the average income of a surface dweller in EVE based the on the price of a dinner meal in one of the official EVE chronicles. The figure came out to be 4 million ISK (Interstellar Kredits) per year.
Well, here are some back of the napkin calculations. To put the 'average' income into perspective, the income of a capsuler, an EVE pilot, is a good 20 million ISK, per hour. Let's take the U.S. as a basis of comparison. The average U.S. income is $33,000 per year. That means, for the U.S. to reach that level of wealth disparity, there needs to be people who are earning $165,000 per hour, or, $1,446,225,000 a year.
According to Forbes, there are 793 identified billionaires in the world with an average net worth of $3 billion each. The yearly income of a capsuler in EVE is half the networth of the average richest people on a 2009 basis.
Consider that the "lifespan" (average subscription month) in EVE is 8 month, the networth of the richest people in EVE are in the same range as the richest people on Earth. Since the average number of EVE capsuler residents is 50K (I use this because EVE recently reached this peak number, with room for future growth) against a background of untold billions on the surface of planets. I have to assume that ratio is not so different from 793 out of 7 billion people. Looking at it that way, the stratification of the richest people in EVE are similar to the wealth divide of this era.
I remember a while a go, someone calculated the average income of a surface dweller in EVE based the on the price of a dinner meal in one of the official EVE chronicles. The figure came out to be 4 million ISK (Interstellar Kredits) per year.
Well, here are some back of the napkin calculations. To put the 'average' income into perspective, the income of a capsuler, an EVE pilot, is a good 20 million ISK, per hour. Let's take the U.S. as a basis of comparison. The average U.S. income is $33,000 per year. That means, for the U.S. to reach that level of wealth disparity, there needs to be people who are earning $165,000 per hour, or, $1,446,225,000 a year.
According to Forbes, there are 793 identified billionaires in the world with an average net worth of $3 billion each. The yearly income of a capsuler in EVE is half the networth of the average richest people on a 2009 basis.
Consider that the "lifespan" (average subscription month) in EVE is 8 month, the networth of the richest people in EVE are in the same range as the richest people on Earth. Since the average number of EVE capsuler residents is 50K (I use this because EVE recently reached this peak number, with room for future growth) against a background of untold billions on the surface of planets. I have to assume that ratio is not so different from 793 out of 7 billion people. Looking at it that way, the stratification of the richest people in EVE are similar to the wealth divide of this era.
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