Image from http://leftfilmreview.net/2013/08/10/elysium-2013/ [accessed 10 October 2013]

by Robyn Atcheson

Whether it’s the upstairs/downstairs divide in Downton Abbey or the musical tales of poor orphans like Oliver and Annie, popular entertainment engages with the themes of wealth and poverty time and time again.  This summer’s sci-fi blockbuster Elysium took the theme of a rich/poor divide and set it in the not-too-distant future.

Starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, Elysium is set in the year 2154 when rich and poor do not even inhabit the same planet.  The poor have been left behind on over-populated and disease-ridden Earth; the rich inhabit Elysium, a space station tantalisingly visible from Earth. Based on the classic Elysian Fields, citizens on this extra-terrestrial utopian society enjoy the benefits of advanced technology, including cures for all illnesses.  The only way to reach Elysium is to buy your citizenship, thus ensuring that only the rich make it there.  While the film as an escapist action-packed thriller was clearly made for popcorn entertainment, it also raises some of the same questions and themes that this project seeks to uncover.   Without spoiling the plot for those who haven’t seen it, there are certain characteristics of this movie that resonate with the kind of urban poverty that existed in the nineteenth century.

The very nature of Elysium being a floating paradise in the sky creates a distinct geographical boundary between the rich and the poor, those who can afford the literal high life and those who can’t.  Geographically dividing the rich from the poor was a common feature through the nineteenth century, as towns expanded so too did the space between different economic groups.   Elysium is presented as paradise; every glimpse of life there is opulent, grand and luxurious, showing its citizens as privileged, passing their time at parties, or sunbathing in the perfectly controlled sunshine.  In contrast, Earth is dirty and dusty; its citizens queue and trudge their way to menial jobs or lie begging in the streets.  While rich and poor were less clearly divided in the nineteenth century, (masters and servants often lived in the same house as a result of the domestic service system), technological advances in this imagined future ensure that the rich don’t even have to breathe the same air as the poor. And when they become sick, individual medical pods located at home guarantee they don’t stay sick for long – a cure for cancer is merely a button-push away.

The hero of the story (Matt Damon’s character) works in very dangerous conditions in a factory, making products for the rich on Elysium.  The parallels with nineteenth-century mill and factory workers are all too striking here.  The workers fear unemployment as it will mean the end of the little economic security they have, while managers demand an unbearable level of productivity.  If a worker is injured, he is relieved of his job immediately; no longer an asset to the factory, he is quickly disposed of to make room for someone more efficient.  Without an income and clearly desperate for money, crime is rife among the poor and the streets are teeming with the injured, ill and unemployed begging and stealing for food and shelter.  While these statements refer to the landscape of the movie, they also apply neatly to the towns of nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland.

Perhaps the most striking feature of this movie in relation to the conditions of the poor in the nineteenth century is the aspect of health and disease.  Disease only exists among the poor on Earth, spreading rapidly due to chronic over-population and cramped, unhygienic living conditions.  Health care costs mean that only the most basic level of care is available.  Meanwhile, on Elysium medical technology heals broken bones, eradicates cancerous cells and cures infections.  Every citizen of Elysium has access which effectively means that there is no sickness.  There are obvious comparisons to be made with the provision of health care to the poor in the nineteenth century.

Neill Blomkamp, writer and director, has been quoted as saying that this movie wasn’t just about the future but was a statement on what was happening today. And it is worth noting that the slums of LA in the movie were filmed in contemporary Mexico[1]. Nevertheless, Elysium borrows heavily from the past as well, and echoes urban poverty and the rich/poor divide in the 19^th Century British Isles.