HAL/IBM
"IBM," if enunciated, sounds just like "I Beam"
"I Be Am"..."I Am what I Am"
In the 2001 remake of Metropolis, a female robot is designed to sit in a throne atop the new Tower of Babel as a "guardian deity"...though she is actually being used as a weapon of mass destruction.As the tower falls, our red-eyed cyborg golem (see "Postmodern Prometheus" for more on the Metropolis/Hal connection), she utters her last words:
"American people understand that not everybody's been following the rules," he said. "These days, a lot of folks doing the right thing are not rewarded. A lot of folks who are not doing the right thing are rewarded. That will express itself until 2012 and beyond until people feel they are getting back to old-fashioned American values."
-Obama talking about Occupy Wall Street.
In Metropolis (2001) the president claims to support a workers revolution as a way to strike out against his political enemies. The President intends to turn on the revolting workers, but is instead beat to the punch and killed himself. Then martial law is declared to suppress the revolution.
Tower Heist is scheduled for release on November 4, 2011.
The film follows a group of employees at a New York high rise who plot to steal $20 million from a wealthy Wall Street businessman after losing their pensions in his ponzi scheme.
Even though I still think this clip shouldn't be watched without the context of the movie, it is important:
In Metropolis, as the tower falls, music by Ray Charles adds a powerful element
Ray Charles = King Charles
King Charles aka the King of Hearts or Suicide King
(see also: another Charles in the most recent KingKill)
Of course, after the Temple falls (ego death) and the King's head is severed (same), the shadows under Metropolis are bathed in sunlight (the unconscious is illuminated).
...
Fall of the tower or the tearing down of the wall (street)
In the midst of the storming of the WALL/LAW ST., a man burns the Bible in Vatican City (Heart of the Empire). Christ redeems us from the Curse of the Law.
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| The Leader's romance with the computer is intercut with V's interaction with the statue of Justice. But V promises Grace, not the Curse of the Law. (Both are alchemical coniunctio oppositorums of mind and matter.) |
In V for Vendetta, the all-powerful computer professes its love for Britain's leader (Adam Susan as the impotent Demiourgos) shortly before V destroys everything. (This ties into our recent theme of the Robot Girl Who Learns to Love, as seen in 2001's Metropolis.)
He reserves the closest thing he can manage to human feeling for Fate, the super-computer which both surveys security and maintains the bureaucracy of his government, loving and worshipping the machine as a goddess; in one scene, it is strongly implied that he masturbates in its presence. . . . He also shows signs of solipsism, claiming that he and Fate are the only "real" beings in existence.
V is Crowley, of course--or, rather, Crowley (Crowling?) is the Mask of God. Actually, all of the female/male dynamics played out in in this comic are aspects of Beauty and the Beast, as Will Morgan recently pointed out. V knows that it's all a vicious cabaret.