ESSAYS

Logan's Run and Zardoz: Inverse Dystopias

Author: Patrick M. Tilton.

Within a year or so of each other, two interesting cinematic views of the future were presented on the big screen: ZARDOZ (in 1974, if I'm not mistaken), and LOGAN'S RUN (in 1975). After pondering the plots and themes of each movie, recently, it dawned on me that each one was almost a mirror-image of the other. In ZARDOZ, we have a society of Immortals who have closed themselves off from the rest of the world in places called a "Vortex" (there being more than one of these "Vortexes" [Vortices?] on Earth). Each "Vortex" is protected from the savage outlying areas by a forcefield called a "Periphery Shield".

The people who inhabit the Vortex seen in the movie are immortal; that is, at the end of the 20th Century (presumably) they had been a group of "intelligentsia" who had discovered a "cure" for death, and had "taken" that cure, so that their bodies ceased to age, keeping them "ever-young". Of course, there are those in this society who have transgressed the "rules" and have been punished by being "aged" months or years... yet never to the point of death itself. Such persons are eventually doomed to be "Renegades", living purposeless lives of senility. Every time a person in this society commits suicide, the "Tabernacle" which runs things (a sort of intelligent computer--with a soothing male voice) genetically cooks-up a cloned body of the suicide, transplants all of his/her memories back into the newly-made body (which has been quick-aged back to the "age" level it had been prior to the suicide), and the "immortal" who had tried to kill himself/herself is thus doomed to continue living on and on and on and on... with no escape from life possible -- since each member had allowed the Tabernacle to prevent them from "remembering" how to reverse the immortalization process. In order for this society to be "stable", it must not allow itself to breed, since an ever-growing population would be unsustainable. By making themselves Immortal, they've also somehow removed the ability to sleep (sleep and death being "linked" somehow, not only physically but "mythically"/poetically), and to have sex. The males in the society of Eternals are effeminate, infertile, and incapable of spontaneous erection. The population level of the Vortex has changed not one bit in several centuries (by the time the movie commences), although many of the "inmates" of this prison-like society have been hyper-aged to senility as "Renegades"... including the man who FOUNDED the society, having discovered the "cure" for death and then allowed the Tabernacle to remove his knowledge of how to reverse the procedure.

The "hero" of the film is a genetically-engineered (i.e. selectively-bred) "mutant" from the Brutal outside-world. In a bizarre "show-down" with the "intelligent computer" Tabernacle (which sees itself as the "god" of the Immortals, since It is the sum-total of all their knowledge), Zed -- the Hero -- acquires the ability to bring death to these "immortal" people. The name, Zed, is the British equivalent of the last letter of the English alphabet (what Americans call "zee"); as such, it is also the equivalent of the Greek letter "Omega", an epithet of Christ as the Last Judgment's "judge"--Christ is called, in REVELATION, the "Alpha and the Omega", the beginning and the end. Zed, as an inverse-messiah, is able to penetrate the "periphery shield" of the Vortex, conquer the "god"-computer ("Tabernacle") which controls the immortalization process that has doomed the Eternals (who have long since longed for death, after having lived enough to have done whatever their spirits have desired to do), and bring death to people who (up until that point) were doomed to immortality.

This movie dares to put forward a theory that the basic assumption of religion is FALSE: that is, that man is afraid of death, yet subject to it (being a mortal creature), and can ONLY escape the inevitability of death by the intervention of a Christ-Messiah whose resurrection from death affords those for whom he died the ability to be resurrected in turn to immortal life. The assumption of religion (that is, of Christian religion), is that the human spirit will be able to endure unending life, IF that condition can be brought about... but WHAT IF that assumption is false?

The film ZARDOZ dares to suggest that the human spirit can only endure so much life... and that an indefinitely prolonged existence would become unbearable. The "immortals" of the film, after only 3 centuries (or so) of "eternity", have been made latently psychotic by their unrealizable need for death. The hero is Zed (the "last"), an Exterminator from the outside world of "Brutals"... a selectively-bred killer who enjoys a relatively higher status out in the savage lands, killing and raping in the name of a false god imposed on the Brutals by one of the Eternals (the one "in charge of" the Outside), a "Merlin-like" magician/sleight-of-hand artist named Arthur Frayn. The false god is a giant stone head with a horrific grimace, which flies around from Vortex to Vortex, commanding the Exterminators to use the guns it provides to kill "the Brutals who multiply and are legion". The gun (which is "good" because it shoots death) is compared to the penis (which is "evil" because it shoots seed to create new life) by the booming voice of the "god" Zardoz.

Both this film, ZARDOZ, and the other dystopian cinematic vision of the future -- LOGAN'S RUN -- deal with society as a messed-up "utopia" designed (in part) to deal with the problem of overpopulation. A previous film, SOYLENT GREEN, also dealt with this, suggesting that society ultimately will cannibalize itself if it allows the population to exceed a theoretical "sustainable" limit.

In LOGAN'S RUN, the society of the City of Domes is cut off from the Outside World (the soothing female-voiced computer refers to the "city seals" which Logan must breach to go on his mission). Rather than a society of undying Immortals (as in ZARDOZ) who cannot avoid death, the city is populated by generation-after-generation of "Breeder" - bred people who aren't allowed to live beyond a limiting age (30 years; in the book, of course, the mandatory death-age is 21, a symbol of adulthood and maturity -- as in the number of chapters of Anthony Burgess' novel "A Clockwork Orange"). The citizens, once they reach their "Lastday", participate in a public pseudo-religious ceremony called "Carrousel", where an anti-gravity field draws up a batch of 30-year-olds towards their "Renewal"... which is actually no more than a giant "bug zapper", killing them off so that the population remains stable. Yet the belief has been instilled amongst the population that each "flame out" in Carrousel results in a form of reincarnation: the "Renewal" as a reborn infant in the nursery. This perceived cycle of Life-Death-Renewal is physically portrayed (in metaphor) by the rotating circular platform in the Carrousel chamber: as it goes round & round, each Lastday citizen soars upwards to the crystal and gets "flamed" out of existence... and each newborn child (in nursery) has a similar crystal implanted in one of its palms, starting out "crystal clear" before going through the cycles of Blue... Yellow... Green... and Red... ultimately ending with the blinking Red-Black-Red-Black of Lastday.

Similarly, in ZARDOZ, a crystal plays an important part in the plot: each immortal citizen has had a tiny crystal implanted in their forehead, which "links" them to the Tabernacle (which, ultimately, is just one large crystal, which Zed holds in the palm of his hand) by refracting lightrays produced by their very thoughts and directing them towards the Tabernacle crystal (which uses those thought-produced photons to re-constitute the memories of those who try to escape life by committing suicide, "shining" those memory-rays back into the implanted crystals re-refracted into their newly-cloned body's brain).

Interestingly, these two uses of crystals (in ZARDOZ, in the forehead, and in LOGAN'S RUN in the palm of the hand) seems to echo two passages in the book of REVELATION:

"Also it [a "Beast" which rose out of the earth] causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the Beast or the number of its name" (13:16-17)

"Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the Beast or its Image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands" (20:4)

Each society (in ZARDOZ and LOGAN'S RUN) is, perhaps, meant to be thought of as equivalent to the allegorical "Beast" of REVELATION, which has "marked" each citizen either in the FOREHEAD (Zardoz) or inthe HAND (Logan's Run). Granted, the crystal in Logan's palm is in his LEFT hand, and not the RIGHT one (as in REV. 13:16), but in the original book, the crystal palmflower is in his RIGHT hand. The "Beast", then, is a symbol for a CORRUPT SOCIETY, which has institutionalized either DEATH (Logan's Run) or a non-divine ETERNAL LIFE (Zardoz) from which the people cannot escape... until a hero defeats the computer which controls it. In ZARDOZ, Zed defeats the Tabernacle (destroying the Periphery Shield and bringing the false god Zardoz [the stone Head] crashing down), and in LOGAN'S RUN, Logan defeats the computer (and brings the city to a fiery end)... bringing back the concepts of "Mother" and "Father" bearing/begetting "Children"… the way things are "supposed" to be.

LOGAN'S RUN fans should check out ZARDOZ, which was every bit as much of a "trip" for movie-goers in the early-to-mid 1970's as "LR" was. I highly recommend it!

Zardoz: Revolution in the 24^th Century

Author: Barb/Chessripley.

Come on people! You want bizarre? Go see "Eraserhead," or "Crash." This flick's ("Zardoz") deep and I'm looking for reassurance that I joined the right group here.

Anyone over 30 here? Anyone ever read a book? "The Matrix" owes more than just a few ideas to "Zardoz."  So do Dan Simmons' first two "Hyperion" books, which owe more than just a few.

It seemed to me that "Zardoz" was a powerful and sobering statement about the importance of death and the horror/hell that (one form of) immortality can be. The older I get and the more technology we get exposed to in our society, the more I find that I can understand this movie. This movie was so far ahead of its time it's almost eerie.

I guess what makes it bizarre or silly to you folks is the naked titties and the lack of fancy computer generated special effects. Or perhaps the pointless intro by Arthur, attempting to explain to people who can't think and don't read, what the movie was about.

These idiot cult people (the 'Vortex' folks) in the past (I get the sense it would have only been a couple decades beyond our current time.) decided to adopt immortality through very unconventional means. 

As the world went to sh*t around them, they adopted a utopian lifestyle by allowing themselves to become enslaved by a computer, the 'Tabernacle." They agreed to wall themselves from the rest of mankind, accepted the crystal implants and went about their lives. They voluntarily removed the memory of the essential details of the computer from themselves, lest they become bored with immortality and destroy their utopia. When their bodies wore out or were killed, the computer (which had all of their downloaded memories and personalities from the crystal implants) would clone new bodies and they would thus become immortal. All of this is explained in the beginning/middle, but you do not see the crystal implant scene or the re-born Arthur until near the end.

Except immortality IS boring and surely life isn't all that worth living if we don't have to fear death. Look at the Apathetics. Either they have lived too long OR, they have been re-born into clone bodies too many times (VERY similar to the "Bikura illness" in Simmons' "Hyperion" novel) and are becoming a bit mentally retarded from all the duplications. Everyone else is already sexuality-less.

Also, what the f_ _k has that Tabernacle computer done to these poor cult people after multiple rebirths?!? After all it is 2293, so they've all had a few re-clonings over the years. I mean the men are all wimpy, underdeveloped, effeminate and unable to achieve an erection. The women are all flat-chested and not interested in sex or masculine men. Also they find watching Zed's downloaded memories of violence to be almost sexually stimulating. Not quite tho. Truly pathetic.

Arthur, the magician, is a genius as has never been seen on Earth before. He has been planning for decades, if not centuries, working towards his plan. He has been BREEDING the primitive outsiders in order to achieve Zed. He wants to die and knows that the only way to defeat the Master of them all (the computer) is to bring in a mentally and physically superior outsider in order to find and destroy the Tabernacle.

I thought Zed's destruction of the computer was a little weird. He found the flaw at the center of the crystal and that collapsed the Tabernacle (the Vortex walls fell and the primitive outsiders headed in "to kill for Zardoz"). I almost got the sense that it was a Captain Kirk ala Star Trek computer destruction.

The Tabernacle panicked when Zed figured out that it had decided to store itself in the big diamond (extended pause followed by, "You hold me in the palm of your hand."). Zed projected his consciousness inside the diamond. They (Zed and Tabernacle) appeared to have a battle of wills where Zed won by (among other things) having the knowledge that all the women he inseminated gave to him. I found this part a bit difficult to interpret.

Zed is so new, so physically and mentally superior that he can stimulate the Apathetics into wakefulness (sharing of the tears scene). He IS the giant question mark on the evolutionary chart featured in the beginning when he is exploring May's area. Zed has brought to the Vortex what almost all of them have been craving on one level or another, DEATH. A death that does not involve reawakening in a new cloned body, still enslaved to the f_ _ _ ing computer! Halleluah, Zed is arrived!

Also, some of the women who don't want to die but who want to be free still seem to have their courses (that's menstrual periods to those who are not literate - as to why they have periods who knows since they cannot reproduce and aren't even interested in sex) so they can take Zed's seed, escape the hellish Vortex, and start anew without the Tabernacle.

My husband and I just nodded and smiled together with a tear in our eyes (okay more than one for me) at the end scene. Zed and Consuella (is it Consuella?) have escaped and started the new generation. The Earth's natural order is back in balance. They both age normally! I thought she would not, but the fact that she does just proves that their "immortality" was perverted by the cult and the Tabernacle (multiple downloaded-memory cloned-body rebirths).

Not only do they age normally but she is what stimulated ERECTION in Zed. Yes! Getting back to normalcy.  She gets pregnant, they have a son and he matures. As is normal, he leaves the family nest (she tries to hold him back but cannot - at least her returning hand is met by Zed's and she is comforted). They AGE. They DIE. They ROT. They DISSOLVE into bones. The bones turn to DUST. And what remains? Only the most primitive, the very first artwork; first made endless tens of thousands of years ago and found among the Aborigines of Australia. The handprint made in what is now the 24th century. 

Nature, Earth, and humanity (including our psyches) are brought back into the natural balance.

Phew.

That's my (believe me brief) take on the movie "Zardoz", and why it is NOT weird, but in fact deep and profound.

 

 

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