Rollerball

Rollerball was on T.V. last night. Released in 1975, Rollerball is a vision of our future where society was run by corporations and professional sports franchises are nothing more than an updated version of the Roman gladiatorial games. Over the top drivel. I had to laugh.

I hate it when Hollywood takes fantasy too far. I mean, honestly, you can’t believe for one second that millions of people would blindly worship gladiatorial type games while Rome is burning. People aren’t that dumb. If criminals took over our government, looted our treasuries, started wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people and committed high treason, the citizens wouldn’t be huddled around the T.V. in grave concern over the Super Bowl. People wouldn’t be praying to God for their team to win. It just couldn’t happen. The American people are smarter than that.

Imagine corporations running society. How absurd. And what kind of world would we live in if corporations owned our home town sports teams? The very idea is crazy. Why would anyone root for a home town team if that team was full of players that weren’t from that home town? And even if a few of them grew up in the city the team is based in, why would you care about them if they were regularly traded between teams? Even better, why would anyone root for a team which could switch home towns? The very idea is absurd. Sports fans aren’t that dumb.

If teams were owned by corporations, the players would only be regarded as commodities. All that would matter would be the bottom line. You could never really have any sports heros. A players value would be directly related to their performance and drugs that enhance that performance would become paramount. Fans would be reduced to rooting for the player that took the best drugs. It’s the height of absurdity.

The very idea of a corporate society is ridiculous. What will Hollywood think of next? It could never work. Leaders that serve the interests of the corporations over their own citizens? Impossible. They could never get elected if they didn’t represent the people.

You just can’t fool the Americans into voting a criminal into office. To do something like that you’d have to find millions of people who already have a difficult time defining their own reality and people aren’t so gullible as to believe any moron in a suit that professes their same exact values.

A society built on corporate ethics? To actually think that corporations can teach people fall in love with the pursuit of money - it’s the height of absurdity. You’d have to brainwash the populace. Corporations would have to fill the media with propaganda of the virtue of pursuing wealth. They’d never be able to pull it off.

There would have to be television shows dedicated to the virtue of self indulgence. Who can have the biggest party? Who can spend the most money on their lavish lifestyle? They can’t sell shows like that. People aren’t dumb enough to watch that kind of drivel. Teenagers, maybe. But they’d have to disguise the shows as young and hip. Like who can have the biggest and best sweet 16 party. Or maybe they’d just dazzle the kids with shows about the excessive lifestyles of ultra rich movie and television actors. But come on, nothing like that could really happen.

I’m sure that in this freaky weird Rollerball future world there were entire television networks dedicated to innocuous social trends like fashion and celebrities; reporting it like it’s news. As if grown adults would care about the latest fashion trends while their country was being destroyed by criminals. It’s absurd. Once again I must laugh at the very thought. Ha. Ha. Ha. That could never happen.

Rollerball. An outrageous concept for our future. It’s too over-the-top. But if you’re looking for a truly prophetic look at the future, look no further than Planet of the Apes. That could really happen. I truly believe that some day apes will reclaim this planet and I look forward to serving our new overlords. Lucky for me I ran into this really cool politician. He said he shares my faith in the dream of an ape run world. I’m voting for him now. He gets me.