Demolition Man: How Will the Future Remember Us?

Demolition Man is a “bad” movie. You know the type. By all artistic merits and in terms of adding anything “new” to the formula, it’s nothing groundbreaking and honestly just plays the normal song and dance.

But it’s just so damn fun, isn’t it?

Demolition Man is everything you want in a 90s action film. It has violence, it has stars (Stallone was in his prime, Sandra Bullock was a relative unknown, and Wesley Snipes was Wesley Snipes), and it has goofy humor. In fact, a lot of the humor is based around one thing, the idea of a man who is quintessentially his era (1996) being transported to the same exact place in the future (2032), but nothing feels the same.

To give a general plot synopsis (though it won’t really matter much in the grand scheme of this discussion), Sergeant John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) is a member of the LAPD who is nicknamed the “Demolition Man” because he always tends to create a path of destruction on his way to work. Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) is a psychopathic maniac (and also completely hilarious) who has a bunch of hostages in an abandoned building. Spartan goes in to be the hero and rescue them, but doesn’t realize that Phoenix has rigged the building to explode. Spartan catches Phoenix, but unknowingly triggers the explosives, thus killing all of the hostages he had intended to save in the first place. Phoenix claims that Spartan attacked knowing that the explosives would trigger anyway, and Spartan is arrested for manslaughter and sentenced to time in the “California Cryo-Penitentiary.” This is where prisoners are cryogenically frozen and their time on ice is spent having mental adjustments done to them so that they may hopefully be rehabilitated when they thaw out. However, in the year 2032, Phoenix has escaped and has seemingly learned only how to be more sadistic. This future was not prepared for him.

Pictured here: The best character in the movie.

The whole point is that the future has become so sterilized and “safe” that all matters of crimes and violence have mostly been done away with. Guns are now only in museums and the police don’t even know how to approach criminals (they refer to them as “maniacs” in their handbooks). San Angeles, as it is now called after an earthquake in 2010 united the Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco areas, and it’s police department (SAPD) realize the only way to catch someone like Phoenix is his longtime foe… John Spartan. He’s about to learn this clean new future isn’t everything it is cracked up to be.

So What About This Future?

The future is so sterilized that it’s comical. Swearing in all of its forms has been eliminated, and when one does come out they are given a citation by robotic microphones located everywhere. The 1990s would have called all of these people dweebs and dorks. The style of music that is most popular is known as “mini tunes,” which are commercials. No I don’t mean “essentially” commercials. These are literally the little jingles that would be on radio ads and television commercials advertising certain products.

This one is a banger.

Another humorous point in the movie is when the founder of this new “utopia,” Doctor Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne) tells Spartan that, as thanks for saving his life, he will take him out to a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant. Everything seems well and good until they arrive at the restaurant and realize that this schmooze fest is going to be at… Taco Bell. Taco Bell is the only restaurant to have survived the so called “franchise wars,” and thus all restaurants are now Taco Bell.

I’m sure that some of my readers currently live as if all restaurants were Taco Bell.

There are plenty of other funny moments as well such as the infamous “three seashells”…

You wipe your ass with these. Seriously.

and the idea that sex is now performed without any physical contact, as that is unsanitary. I guess they’re right but… Seriously?

Did They Get Anything Right?

No, I did not start writing this post to splurge about how much I love Demolition Man and all of its genius masked by stupidity. Ok, maybe a little bit, but I wanted to discuss two main points from this theme of the future that made me think. For one, I want to see how much this movie actually got “right” about the future and if they had any foresight in 1993 about what we as people would actually like. Obviously we aren’t living in a “utopia” with self-driving cars and a society where swearing is banned, but there may be some parts that were played off as humorous that actually might make a point. I know we’re 14 years off from the future of Demolition Man, but it’s nice to be prepared. The other point, which will be discussed in the next section, is going in the opposite direction of the film. Instead of which parts of society will change, what parts of our modern day will be remembered in the future?

Did Demolition Man get anything right? Probably not exactly, but there are little moments here and there that surprisingly make good points.

COMMERCIALS

As a society, we absolutely adore complaining. One thing that we enjoy complaining about is commercials. We HATE commercials. We hate commercials so much that people will either pay extra on streaming services to not have them, or will willingly DVR and watch shows after the fact just for the sole purpose of being able to fast-forward past all the commercials. Look at those silly directors, mocking us in the future that we’d be so enamored with material culture that we’d love advertisements. That would never happen… Right?

Look, we might not have an oldies station based around those commercial jingles, but people do enjoy watching them. Ever heard of a little thing called the Super Bowl? It’s the biggest sporting and television event that occurs annually in the United States (and it does pretty well overseas too). Even casual sports haters will tune into the Super Bowl to see those crazy commercials. According to a poll in 2016 done jointly by YouGov and Huffington Post, the millennial group (ages 18-30) actually preferred watching the commercials to the actual game by a slight margin.¹

The only true fans are the septuagenarians. I guess old people ARE good for something…

Now I know this doesn’t mean the downfall of football and the Super Bowl into a massive commercial fest is upon us, but people really seem to care about these commercials. There’s even sports websites that are posting articles with “leaked” commercials that will be featured on the Super Bowl. I’m dead serious.²Ok, maybe we love visual commercials, but we’re not stupid enough to like those jingles… Right? If you’re legitimately asking that, you’ve got to be kidding me. We made Eric Violette and his band stars. Name not familiar?

This is now in your head for the rest of ever. You’re welcome.

Or what about those adorable things that kids say like “I’m stuck on Band-Aid because Band-Aid’s stuck on me”? That’s from an advertisement jingle. Sure we may not be singing along to them in the car anytime soon, but that certainly doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy them. We wouldn’t even remember these jingles if they didn’t have a bit of an effect on us. Honestly, the idea that so many people get nostalgia from just listening to these songs proves that Demolition Man just might have had a point.

FRANCHISE RESTAURANTS

Remember that millennials killed Applebee’s? Remember how millennials killed everything good in this world? I hate millennials.

On a serious note, it is true that my generation does seem to have a certain aversion to casual dining. Business Insider wrote a pretty interesting piece on this about how millennials are moving away from the casual dining place. They make mention on how we are either preferring to eat at home, or use more convenient answers like delivery or fast-food. We live in a world of convenience. Delivery and fast-food are just that much easier and cheaper right now. In fact, the only thing keeping certain casual dining restaurants open is the fact that they are expanding their delivery options.³Will there be a franchise war? Probably not. Unless Taco Bell suddenly gets ultra aggressive and takes over the world. They already are doing the Illuminati references in their commercials, so I expect the world take over to be sometime in 2023.

All hail your Gordita Crunch leaders. Wait, is that Prince on the left???

Obviously not all restaurants will be Taco Bell. Obviously all chains are going to make it, or at least most of them, so Demolition Man did just do a bit of over the top parody. However, for fun, let’s see how Taco Bell is performing compared to other restaurants when the movie came out (1993) versus now (2018). Adage wrote a nice piece based on the current sales, but the gist of it is that Taco Bell is now ranked 4th on the list of highest sellers in a domestic restaurant brand. The sales in 2017 were roughly about $9.8 billion.⁴
In 1993, Taco Bell tried to enter the home market by releasing a line of taco shells, refried beans, and salsa into supermarkets. The CEO at the time, John E. Martin, wanted to increase the profits of the company, but unfortunately this came at the ire of his franchisees who were worried that the company owned stores and new grocery lines would cut into their own profits. Though the numbers are dodgy, I seem to have found that Taco Bell did about $3.3 billion in sales in 1992 (approximately $5.9 billion in today’s dollars).⁵ Unfortunately, I cannot find any comparison numbers for a list for 1992.

GUNS

Oh boy, we’re about to get political up in this bitch.

Hold on a second.. Got a call from my agent…

…

Alright, he told me I shouldn’t get political on here, and I also shouldn’t refer to my blog as “this bitch.” He also said to get help because he’s not my agent, just some dude I found at a Taco Bell last Thursday. He’s so funny sometimes.

In the world of Demolition Man, there are no longer any firearms. There’s no violence either. All of the firearms in the San Angeles area are kept in a museum. For some reason, as we can see during a fight scene, these weapons still work.

There’s not much I really can or want to say here. We are moving towards a world where the questions of gun control are constantly brought up. There are many people who think there shouldn’t be guns in general, there should be guns available for personal protection, and every single facet in-between. I will say that, in the terms of the film, most of the weapons shown that are firearms seem to be of the assault rifle or shotgun variety. Related back to this day, those are the types of firearms that are being discussed in depth because of the unfortunate recent trend of school shootings.

Demolition Man obviously was once again going for parody and environment with this reference, but maybe this is a world that some people would prefer. There already are some countries like Australia that have massively cut down on the amount of firearms available to the general public. But there’s also the question of the 2nd Amendment in America. It’s an extremely messy question, and not one that I believe I may see a definitive solution to in my lifetime. Especially not one like in Demolition Man. This is one to think about for yourselves. Answer honestly.

How Will the Future Remember Us?

2018 has been quite the interesting year. There’s a lot of things that will be remembered in the future moving forward. Since, in the last section, I got about as deep into the political talks as I want to, I want to focus this section entirely on culture. What do you think will be remembered in the future? How will the next generation view ours? What is the thing that’s going to stick out?

MEMES

I’ve noticed any interesting trends in some memes recently. A lot of them are based around some random image that for some reason, everyone finds funny. The caption then goes around to saying something along the lines of “how will I explain this to my kid” or whatever.

Return the slab……..

A lot of people like to joke about how memes will be left for future generations to figure out what we found funny and they’ll judge us for our stupid humor. The truth of the matter is, we probably won’t even find that meme funny anymore or think it’s stupid long before any of our next of kin would find out about it. I feel like people have already forgotten about some memes that everyone was involved in about 5-10 years ago, but have now suddenly disappeared. Let me remind you of…

Example A

Example B

Memes are representative of our culture at the moment, but for some reason they don’t represent the culture of the past. What do I mean by that? It seems that memes have a strong “inside joke” feeling. You either get it or you don’t. The issue is that some of them are so broad and take on lives of their own that you wouldn’t get it even if you were TOLD what it meant. It’s very much a “you had to be there” sort of thing. If you weren’t directly involved with the culture of the meme itself, it’s hard to find enjoyment out of it.

Think of it like this. There are old jokes that are no longer funny anymore. It’s not because humor has really changed that much, but it’s because we can’t relate to them. Here’s an example (and an article from NPR that has more jokes) of a joke from 1870.⁶

1870: While passing a house on the road, two Virginia salesmen spotted a “very peculiar chimney, unfinished, and it attracting their attention, they asked a flaxen-haired urchin standing near the house if it ‘drawed well’ whereupon the aforementioned urchin gave them the stinging retort: ‘Yes, it draws all the attention of all the d***** fools that pass this road.’ ” Daily Milwaukee News, May 21, 1870

What the f*** does this even mean?

My caption is meant in jest, but it does have a point. Sometimes, things don’t age well. Memes have an especially short shelf-life. Memes of the past will probably be around in the future just from pure nostalgia, but the truth is it’s so hard to define a moment. Most of these memes won’t be what the future remembers of the past because the future (most likely) won’t know how to quantify its value.

MUSIC

It’s kind of interesting that we’re in a generation that hates its own new music so much. Everyone spends so much time talking about the less than good artists that come out, that it feels like we’re missing the forest for the trees. Some kids like to talk about how they were “born in the wrong era” and that music was so much better back then. As if crappy music didn’t exist back in 1964.

Mud or poop? This was Woodstock so, honestly, it could be either.

But let’s get back on topic. Which music from the modern day will be what is remembered in the future? It’s a tough question to really think of what genre will define this era. It’s actually really interesting to go back and think of which genres defined the decades. 60s had the flower power movement, 70s had disco, 80s had synths literally take over the world, and the 90s had alternative rock and what we now think of as gangsta rap. Honestly, it’s hard to even think about what style defines the 2000s since it is still so close by. Maybe by the 2020s we can figure out what genre defines the 2000s.

I’m getting off track again. The point is that it’s really hard to quantify styles of music that define eras, especially when we are now living in a time where every style of music is so easy to access. It has never been easier to listen to a song from 1955 and a song that came out last week as it is at this very moment. It almost blurs the line as to what is the most popular. I could come up with an arbitrary decision as to what genre is currently winning in this day and age… So let’s do that for 2017!

According to the Billboard Hot 100, the Top 100 songs from 2017 can generally be broken down into these genres:⁷

This sucked as hard to make as you think it did.

So what can we extrapolate from this? Well, pop and rap really dominated the charts. Which seems to remain true to form considering what we think of when we say “mainstream music.” There are a few surprises, like how there are such few songs in the rock section and how country made a surprise 6 appearances. As a side note, the top song was a pop song (“Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran”) and the Top 10 consisted of 2 Pop, 1 Latin, 1 R&B, 3 Rap, 2 Electronic, and 1 Rock song. A side note to the side note, the only artist to appear twice in the Top 10 was The Chainsmokers with “Something Just Like This” and “Closer.”

So what genre will define 2017 to the future? I don’t know. It’s hard to make a decision with pop and rap being so close, but it’s also hard to decide because we don’t know how much longevity some of these songs will have. Though they may have been the tops of 2017, who knows how long in the future we will still be listening to them. There are plenty of #1 hits that no one remembers anymore. Music is objective, so make your own decision.

MOVIES

This is the last section I’m going to do because this post is already getting ridiculously long and I also don’t feel like I can cover every bit of culture ever in one piece.

Movies give perfect snapshots of interpretations of the past. Notice how I didn’t say they were perfect snapshots of the actual past. Movies, like most pieces of art, are based around the vision of the directors, writers, and other such people involved. There’s so many different tastes and styles of movies that its nearly impossible to define what kind of movies define what era. It’s not nearly as easy as it is with music, and it’s not even remotely easy there too. The future generations will look at these films and will see flashes of our past culture, but they’ll only see them through the eyes of others.

Films are beautiful and wonderful, but they aren’t to be trusted. Even “based on a true story” films tend to bend the truth and change the endings to make sure it is more pleasing to audiences. That’s fine, and I’m not going to judge them for that at all. My entertainment comes directly from decisions like that. However, it does paint an interesting picture about how people perceived the era in which they are currently living.

To not get too in-depth (especially considering some of these films may make appearances in future posts), a viewer can find little clues about the era by looking at the themes of films. For example, Get Out was an excellent look inside how some people view racism and racial separations in the modern day. It uses themes and ideas of the past that seem completely anachronistic to try to describe how some disillusioned people in the modern day view themselves as being treated. It can be funny and it can be scary, but in the end it’s trying to paint a picture about how modern life may not seem so modern to many others.

This scene’s attire could be anywhere from modern day to 1920.

I can’t really say too much because, once again, a lot of art is objective. However, I think films are ultimately one of the real pieces of culture that describe periods in time the best. I said they were imperfect snapshots and I meant it, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any value. In fact, I believe that causes them to have even more. Films are so inherently human. They take the basic urges of humans to tell stories and put them on a grand scale. They not only tell how we perceive life, but how life perceives us. Reviewers and writers like me add value to these by talking about why they matter so much. Fans add value by spreading popularity. Films are truly magical things, and if the future has films to remember us by, then I’m perfectly alright with that.

In Conclusion…

We’ve had some fun today, didn’t we? For a write-up based on the movie Demolition Man, I sure didn’t talk about it much. That’s kind of the thing that I’ll be doing with future posts like these. Sometimes, I’ll talk about themes and what stands out to me in regards to the actual piece of media itself. Sometimes, I’ll just take a theme that gave me an idea and run with it. I think we covered a lot today in this post. Though the movie wasn’t mentioned much, I give it a lot of credit for even thinking to try and change the future to something that wasn’t the standard “computers rule over the meatbags” trope that had become so common at the time. It certainly made me wonder about what it would be like to be someone in the past looking into the future and seeing if my way of life had been totally forgotten.

As a final aside, I love Demolition Man. As I’ve said before, we didn’t talk about it much, but I highly recommend it. It’s a really fun movie and one of the better ones from the 90s action genre. It’s almost exactly what you think it is, but Demolition Man does it in a way that feels just different enough that it feels fresh. It has a lot more humor than you’d expect and sometimes it can feel like straight parody of the cyberpunk films that Arnold Schwarzenegger had/would be starring in. If you have any interest in dumb, fun action movies, I’d highly recommend it.

“I wonder if I can play the accordion too!”

Thanks again for reading everyone! I’d really appreciate it if you took the time to post a comment or tell your friends about this blog. I’ve been enjoying the start of this, so I really want to share my work with others. A follow of any sort would be appreciated, either through e-mail or WordPress itself! Not required at all, but just letting you know my appreciation. As always, feel free to use the Contact link to ask any questions, voice concerns, or send any recommendations my way.

You’ve probably noticed little superscripts throughout the post. Those are for the Sources below. I know it’s not necessary for blogs, but the academic side of me feels it is needed. Plus, it can be nice to read if you want to look further into some points I touched upon.

~Jer

Sources

1. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yougov-super-bowl-commercials-game_us_56b105d3e4b0a1b96203f436
2. https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/super-bowl-2018-commercials-heres-how-you-can-watch-these-leaked-tv-ads/
3. http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-endanger-casual-dining-restaurants-2017-5
4. http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/taco-bell-unseats-burger-king-4-u-s-restaurant-chain/312485/
5. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/04/21/Taco-Bell-pledges-to-start-full-service-restaurants/7678735364800/
6. https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/11/10/455415340/6-jokes-from-19th-century-america
7. https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2017/hot-100-songs