Running Man

I was sitting at a WNBA game recently and suddenly it hit me. It’s the ‘Running Man’ right here and now. I’m living it, or at least coming close anyway. I felt like I was in a bad movie. Everything was loud and insane. The sign says scream so we scream. The video feed scans the audience and stops on people and tells them what to do. Most of them comply. We have plastic blow up sticks that we use to make sound instead of clapping. Loud piercing sound at that. Lights flash and music blares it’s a wild ride. I guess I spend too much time at home. Being out and about was an experience in sensory overload. It made me realize that the future I used to see in movies as a kid has finally arrived and scarily it’s not too far off from some of the things I wrote off as exaggerated sci-fi. I don’t know how many people remember the Running Man movie. It was one of Schwartznegger’s earlier ones. It was set in the future where reality TV was the thing of the day ( something back in 1987 when the film was made we really didn’t have). Men accused of crimes had to run from crazy people trying to kill them. Hence they were ‘running men’. I was so struck by how much I felt we were there in the movie’s version of the future that I went and looked up the movie on IMDB when I got home to refresh my memory of the film. This is what I found, very interesting if you ask me. I didn’t realized how close it actually was to what I felt I was experiencing. Here’s some of the synopsis.
‘In the year 2017, the world economy has collapsed. The great freedoms of the United States are no longer… and it has become a militarized police state, censoring all film, art, literature, and communications.’
(Hmmm not too far from the truth. Granted our economy hasn’t collapsed but somehow it seems that might not be that far off. President Bush has managed to help us along on this path with all the crazy spending on the war. Do you realize we are spending 12 billion dollars a month in Iraq?! Ouch. Well that’s a topic for another day. And though it may not be a militarized state many of our rights have certainly been usurped. People are taken into custody for less than valid reasons. Our phones are tapped at will and our internet and other activities are watched and listened into as a matter of ‘national security’. We’re working on that police state. Slowly but surely.)
‘The United States has sealed off it's borders…’
(Yet another familiar idea. Certainly something of an issue that is on the table now. Who do we let in? Do we let anyone in? Are our borders safe? What about that fence Bush is talking about along the Southern border? Hopefully we won’t ever get to the state of completely sealing ourselves off but it’s interesting that this is happening.)
‘In the police state America has become, criminals have a choice. They can serve their sentences in prison or they can take part in "The Running Man" a government owned violent game-show where contestants running for freedom are pursued by "Stalkers" wrestler-like bounty hunters. "The Running Man" is the top rating show on network TV.’
Ok, so at the moment we don’t have criminals in our reality TV shows but are we that far off from it? Right now we’re willing to subject ourselves without being criminals. We do it for money or for our fifteen minutes of fame. Is Fear Factor that far off from the Running Man? Or look at other shows like Survivor or the new Pirate show (which I don’t know much about but it doesn’t sound good). We put ourselves through torture on TV and the worst part is other people watch it! Craziness. I wouldn’t be surprised if by 2017, the year the movie is set in, we have shows where we watch the criminal or the accused fight for their lives on TV. If we don’t wake up and start taking a look at ourselves now, we could get there.

Growing up in the seventies and eighties I don’t think I could have imagined the world of today. Some of it perhaps, like technology and such, but the rest I don’t think so. I would have thought by now that people would have matured some and become more aware of themselves and each other. But a look at what’s on TV now shows me otherwise. We still have not come that far from the days of the Gladiators. We still need that spectator sport where we judge each other and watch each other suffer. Very strange.