Capitalism and Personal Gain

      Technology and the new media have influenced our generation in terms of being able to gain more knowledge on what can be deemed useful and what cannot. The movie Babel is a film that interlocks four stories from different parts of the world and depicts how globalization is more evident than ever before, due to new forms of transportation and technology. The movie expresses this idea of globalization through the object of a gun. The gun is an object that ties all four families together. Throughout time humans have express their wants for a utopian-like society. This is hard to define because a utopia is something defined by the individual. Is this idea of globalization a good thing or a bad thing in regards to progress towards a utopian-like society? In many cases we find that literature depicts a utopia to be a close-knitted society that works for the good of humanity in effort to promote equality.
      By promoting equality we can generally state that even with globalization, a utopian-society can be created. In Fredrick Jameson’s “The Politics of Utopia”, he discusses how people view politics today has a large effect on how people stray away from encouraging a utopian-like society. This is most evident when he mentions communism by stating, “Thus ‘utopian’ has come to be a code word on the left for socialism or communism” (35). In todays day in age, we find that people have changed their focus from humanity to commodities. Due to human nature, people have become addicted to the idea of always wanting more which strays away from the goal of promoting equality.
    The movie Babel proves how far away we are to achieving utopia in that the movie depicts pain and emphasizes a division of class through cultures. For example, when the American wife gets shot her husband immediately asks for assistance from his government. The husbands main goal is to get his wife medical help and for her to be transported from the small village where they are temporarily residing. When the helicopter comes to pick up the husband and wife we come to sympathize with the villagers and not the wife's condition because we come to realize that equality is not present. If a moroccan villager had been the one to get shot the treatment of the situation would have been very different. The separation of race and class plays a huge part in segregating ourselves which strays away from a utopia.
     Another example of inequality in Babel is the story line of the Mexican nanny. The Mexican nanny takes the children she is watching across the boarder to her sons wedding. At first we sympathize with the nanny in her decision because she was being told to miss her sons wedding. The nanny who is far away from her family and who is also in a country that is not her own gives her a sense of vulnerability. It’s not until the drive home that we shift our sympathy from the nanny to the children in regard to their vulnerability in an unknown territory. This is another example of inequality among race and that how we view things are in terms of ones vulnerability. This example can be articulated through the article, “Where did the Future Go”, when he states, “ The history of capitalism is one in which enormous human diversity has blossomed and been socially articulated along lines of class, race, nation, gender, sexuality, religiosity, as well as urbanism, technology, literacy, institutions of social welfare, specialized expertise–all of which can be captured by the term difference” (5). The early Greeks started this notion that to be different was something to be feared. The Greeks didn’t necessarily believe in equality but they most definitely didn’t believe that one person should deem themselves wiser than another.
     In terms of the movie the gun was the key object that connected the four stories. In general globalization has connected many unlikely people from across the world.  The concept of globalization has become a great advantage in terms of commerce, but, in terms of wanting to create a utopian-like society is it more practical for us to attain a more communist viewpoint and de-connect ourselves from the rest of the world as North Korea has? This concept brings fear to people in the sense that we are intentionally leaving ourselves vulnerable. Drastic political ideas bring fear to people which distracts them from their want to attain a utopian-like society.
      The film Babel exemplifies these main ideas of globalization and how we have become a very personalized society. Before people take into consideration the needs of humanity they focus on the needs of themselves. If anything the movie depicts man kind as being emotional and vulnerable which emphasizes the dangers of globalization in the sense of terrorism and destruction. For example, one thing that seems to be a requirement in attaining utopia is philanthropy which the movie fails to demonstrate. Each family in the movie expressed their stories in effort to benefit themselves. Charitable giving or a depiction of mercy is limited in Babel which forces the viewers to consider their actions in their own lives and question whether they want to continue moving forward towards a globalized world that focuses on personal gain.