(no subject)
Aug. 4th, 2016 02:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoception seems to be mostly analogizing hackers and what it is that's made them into hackers - they're driven to be the demons of the internet by demons of their own. Abusive parents, generalized or specific revenge, an inability to make connections with others, feelings of powerlessness. So as with other antihero shows we're kept profoundly ambivalent. The Leftovers won't clearly separate for us the good and bad motives, good and bad effects of religion or antireligion, and Better Call Saul won't for under- and over-adherence to precepts in the pursuit of good. Clearly they're all wrong, but just how has to be removed to the margins or the show will end. Thus Mr. Robot's kind of playing with fire by putting the lead into a position of self-awareness about his demons - I assume they're just setting him up to make a separate sort of mistake? Thinking that accepting grants control, say? The show makes fun of DBT at a couple points, so maybe "bullriding" lifehacks are as far from the right answer as "excising" ones. Not sure what other path there would be if not, though. Probably getting the help of other people? Being honest with one's shrink, for starters.
The female lead's I guess representing the other route, the attempt to change the system from within, which leads to rapidly becoming changed by the system. Her journey was the lawsuit, which led to her conversation with Colby (the first Kafkan Doorkeeper) which led her to realize that, like some argue about Fat Man and Little Boy, the decision that killed her mother was never actually made as such - these consequences weren't weighed because none of the people in the room thought of himself as the decisionmaker. All bowed to the general sense of "of course," on the plausible assumption that sticking out against it would ruin everything they'd worked for. She's horrified by this but after taking the E Corp job soon realizes it can work on her too. The CEO seems to actually want her to learn this lesson - he gives her the power to bring down the others and she does, but is now unsure of herself. Maybe this is an exercise of power for its own sake, since she now knows the men were not in fact especially evil. Not yet clear where they'll go from there. They played with having her be powermad herself, briefly, but she seems to have backed away from that after getting what she wanted. The Bloomberg scene was very good, since it showed her correctly assessing what leverage she had and how many norms she could (and would have to) ignore using it effectively. And just how unhappy that realization made her. The CEO seems to think like a hacker, oddly, given his Franz Ferdinand obsession and some other hints. Does he, too, wish to change the world? Did he once? Not sure enough blanks have been filled in yet to say. Suppose Evil Corp is evil only in the sense Elliot is, by Robin-Hooding more than can be chewed? Or maybe the desire for power that blinded him to what's bite-sized had become abstracted away, for the CEO? Realizing one can do no good, what one can do becomes one's good? Maybe he's teaching the female lead that to prove to himself that it's true - if she can resist it it must be wrong, but since she can't he's right. Bothering to do that, though, suggests he fears he's wrong on some level.
But I guess we're to assume that her real value to him is her connection to Elliot? Meaning he knows about him, either through Tyrell or White Rose.
What was the white rose, again, historically? The House of York's one? Something small, some thorn in one person's vanity, that led to vast destruction - a bit like the Archduke's assassination. So another metaphor for what hacking's a metaphor for, though the villain-looking characters may of course want power or destruction for their own sake, which are presumably obtainable goals. For a time, anyway. Also crazy ones. Or are we to understand White Rose has achieved the self-knowledge Elliot's just now managing to? Using what he knows of himself (the need and inability to be seen as utterly female, or what?) in order to find similar cracks in others' systems? But why, though?
Maybe the answer can be reached by process of elimination? We already have the hacker of the corporation and the head of the corporation that's basically hacked that hacker, both isolated weirdos. The other lead represents the attempt to be good but still corporate, i.e. to win by NOT hacking, and I guess Tyrell represents the attempt to be evil for its own sake - thus win with or without hacking (first one failed, so then let's try the other?) - or something psychopathically close enough. Maybe what's left is a truly successful hacker, like Walt in Felina. By working for anyone, the Dark Army now has inside access to the worst corporation - pretending to be amoral may let you be successfully moral if you bide your time, which of course WR's obsessed with. I doubt the show can be entirely on his side, though. He, too, must be wrong, a la Ozymandias in the Watchmen. Saving everything up for one gigantic success that will prove pyrrhic, like Elliot's has. That part, too, was really neat: if you erase others' debt to a bank then you're really erasing the wealth of bank customers, i.e. everyone, to whom the banks are indebted. Our accounts are our loans to them, after all, and all they are is those accounts (and a sort of demon dwelling in their midst).
The female lead's I guess representing the other route, the attempt to change the system from within, which leads to rapidly becoming changed by the system. Her journey was the lawsuit, which led to her conversation with Colby (the first Kafkan Doorkeeper) which led her to realize that, like some argue about Fat Man and Little Boy, the decision that killed her mother was never actually made as such - these consequences weren't weighed because none of the people in the room thought of himself as the decisionmaker. All bowed to the general sense of "of course," on the plausible assumption that sticking out against it would ruin everything they'd worked for. She's horrified by this but after taking the E Corp job soon realizes it can work on her too. The CEO seems to actually want her to learn this lesson - he gives her the power to bring down the others and she does, but is now unsure of herself. Maybe this is an exercise of power for its own sake, since she now knows the men were not in fact especially evil. Not yet clear where they'll go from there. They played with having her be powermad herself, briefly, but she seems to have backed away from that after getting what she wanted. The Bloomberg scene was very good, since it showed her correctly assessing what leverage she had and how many norms she could (and would have to) ignore using it effectively. And just how unhappy that realization made her. The CEO seems to think like a hacker, oddly, given his Franz Ferdinand obsession and some other hints. Does he, too, wish to change the world? Did he once? Not sure enough blanks have been filled in yet to say. Suppose Evil Corp is evil only in the sense Elliot is, by Robin-Hooding more than can be chewed? Or maybe the desire for power that blinded him to what's bite-sized had become abstracted away, for the CEO? Realizing one can do no good, what one can do becomes one's good? Maybe he's teaching the female lead that to prove to himself that it's true - if she can resist it it must be wrong, but since she can't he's right. Bothering to do that, though, suggests he fears he's wrong on some level.
But I guess we're to assume that her real value to him is her connection to Elliot? Meaning he knows about him, either through Tyrell or White Rose.
What was the white rose, again, historically? The House of York's one? Something small, some thorn in one person's vanity, that led to vast destruction - a bit like the Archduke's assassination. So another metaphor for what hacking's a metaphor for, though the villain-looking characters may of course want power or destruction for their own sake, which are presumably obtainable goals. For a time, anyway. Also crazy ones. Or are we to understand White Rose has achieved the self-knowledge Elliot's just now managing to? Using what he knows of himself (the need and inability to be seen as utterly female, or what?) in order to find similar cracks in others' systems? But why, though?
Maybe the answer can be reached by process of elimination? We already have the hacker of the corporation and the head of the corporation that's basically hacked that hacker, both isolated weirdos. The other lead represents the attempt to be good but still corporate, i.e. to win by NOT hacking, and I guess Tyrell represents the attempt to be evil for its own sake - thus win with or without hacking (first one failed, so then let's try the other?) - or something psychopathically close enough. Maybe what's left is a truly successful hacker, like Walt in Felina. By working for anyone, the Dark Army now has inside access to the worst corporation - pretending to be amoral may let you be successfully moral if you bide your time, which of course WR's obsessed with. I doubt the show can be entirely on his side, though. He, too, must be wrong, a la Ozymandias in the Watchmen. Saving everything up for one gigantic success that will prove pyrrhic, like Elliot's has. That part, too, was really neat: if you erase others' debt to a bank then you're really erasing the wealth of bank customers, i.e. everyone, to whom the banks are indebted. Our accounts are our loans to them, after all, and all they are is those accounts (and a sort of demon dwelling in their midst).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-08-04 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-04 04:46 pm (UTC)