Logan's Run First Watch

[Steven P Bastien]

First off, wow, that is just incredibly not how ethnicity works. Nonwhite people aren't just white people with more pigment -- good grief. were still no Asian people in Logan's Run.

OK, good comment. For the record, I do know that is not how ethnicity works. Basically, I'm just throwing an idea out there that I know is hard to defend. The time frame is not correct (maybe 300 years is not enough time, I actually don't know how much time is needed) and there are other issues, as mentioned

I'm not trying to say that the people that live in this future would look ethnically like white people of today. I would assume that 300 years in the future would have people looking like a mixed race group. I remember seeing a cover story in a popular magazine in the 1990s where they showed a woman with a mixed race look (medium skin tone, and Asian Aftrican Caucasion features) and the article mentions (I think) a 300 year time span for this to be what the human race will look like. We could imagine a people looking like that but then having lighter skin with better survival value in the dome environment.

But, if you make a movie in the 1970s, it might be hard to find enough people with this look, and the acting skills and the notoriety needed, which means using makeup or other effects. But, clearly this was not in the minds of the movie makers.

A completely different line of thought could be that people were in fact selected for the dome based on genetics. This could have had a racist motivation combined with the practical factor of needing people with the right traits for that environment. The movie seems to imply that eugenics are being employed by the computer controller.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Perhaps there are other domed cities, each of which has its own racial demographic?

 

[Christopher]

A completely different line of thought could be that people were in fact selected for the dome based on genetics. This could have had a racist motivation combined with the practical factor of needing people with the right traits for that environment. The movie seems to imply the eugenics are being employed by the computer controller.

That's just what I'm saying, aside from the nonsensical "right traits for that environment" excuse for the racism. No human ethnic group is any better adapted to an artificial domed environment than any other, because no human population evolved in an artificial domed environment. And anyone who knows the first thing about genetics knows that a population needs diversity in order to thrive. "Eugenics" has always been just an attempt to use bad pseudoscience to justify the myth of white supremacy.

Anyway, I don't see any reason to resist the idea that the founders of the domed city were simply racists. We're not supposed to like the system in the domed city. It's supposed to be an evil dystopia that murders its own citizens for no reason. It's supposed to be a society that's failing and collapsing because of its intrinsically rotten foundations -- note the references to the food supply dwindling, the old systems breaking down, etc. The happy, hedonistic surface is supposed to mask a very ugly truth underneath. So adding a racist origin to the dystopia doesn't alter the message of the film in any way, it just intensifies it.

 

[Greg Cox]

But if and when we get the remake, I expect the City (and the cast) will be more diverse.

Which will be an improvement.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

And then they designed their robot slave to look and sound like a black man. Wow, suddenly I'm on Box's side in all this.

If you're referring to Box from the film, he is not a slave, nor is he black, so where you're pulling that from is anyone's guess, since that it not in the script, nor the design or intent of the character. Not even a hint. He is not recognizable as anything other than an approximation of some bizarre hybrid leaning more to the mechanical side than human. So, I find your comment to be racist in nature, since the only reason one would bring race into a description of Box is due to the fact black actor Roscoe Lee Browne was cast in the role--which is not apparent to audiences.

Moreover, the late actor's well-known Shakespearian manner of speech is just that, but not anything indicating any race, since the idea of exclusively linking a speech pattern to one group is inherently racist. Sigh.

Only in this identity-politics-obsessed day and age could someone look back on a 40 year old film and filter it through this lens. I also never interpreted Box as "black" nor did it occur to me to even think of the robot or its voice in racial terms.

Exactly. But leave it certain people playing Liberal White Knight Overseer to make complaints for people they cannot represent.

They just automatically defaulted to the idea that science fiction movies are only about white people at a point in movie (and social) history when they really should have known better. And that's a fault of the movie.

Incorrect.

I don't know about the Box thing, but the absence of black people in LOGAN'S RUN didn't go unnoticed back in the day

Unnoticed by anyone who actually watched the film? I saw the film in 1976, and in the past week, and what was apparent then remains the case: there were black extras easy to see among the city dwellers during the initial gathering for Carousel, and in the film's climax as the citizens meet the Old Man.

​

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

The WHY is pretty obvious to me. Reducing human lifespan and instituting brave-new-world style test-tube reproduction is necessary in order to create a stead-state society that doesn't outgrow the fixed carrying capacity of the domes. The hedonism is an unnecessary byproduct of this.

Good observation. The entire idea of life clocks, Carousel and the Computer refusing to answer Logan's question about anyone ever renewing (which is a big an answer as you would ever need) lay it all out for audiences.

That depends on which side of the argument you're on. I'm not sure the world has been made a better place by mainstreaming hedonism. I mean, the teleportation "dating" booth as a meme comparing it to Tinder is bang on.

The "anything goes"/materialism of the City of Domes predicted the moral decay of the decades to come better than most dystopian sci-fi films to follow...films thinking they were making some bod commentary, but that's a discussion for another thread and another time.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I saw the film in 1976, and in the past week, and what was apparent then remains the case: there were black extras easy to see among the city dwellers during the initial gathering for Carousel, and in the film's climax as the citizens meet the Old Man.

I thought I remembered that, but I haven't had a chance to find my DVD.

 

[mos6507]

What's different about this day and age

What's different is nobody is able to enjoy anything anymore without putting it through an identity politics quota. Lighten up. It's (old) entertainment.

(So tired of the everpresent sense of grievance that people carry through their day and their interactions with other people.)

And still a problem in Hollywood now.

Go upvote the Batwoman trailer and pat yourself on the back for it, then.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I thought I remembered that, but I haven't had a chance to find my DVD.

Yes, the city crowds had black extras, so for anyone--in 1976 or 2019--to swear/argue the film only had white people in it is either not paying attention, or had agenda-tinted glasses on, preventing them from seeing what is there.

 

[Christopher]

What's different is nobody is able to enjoy anything anymore without putting it through an identity politics quota.

We enjoy plenty of things, because there are plenty of things that are inclusive and depict the population as it actually looks, rather than the way aging racists and homophobes want to pretend it looks. People enjoy stories that don't make them feel excluded or demeaned, and these days it's a lot easier for people who aren't white, male, and heterosexual to find such stories, so there's actually a good deal more enjoyment today. And it's weird you're making this a conversation about today's entertainment when we're talking about a movie made over 40 years ago.

It's also really, really weird that you cast this in terms of "enjoyment" when we're talking about a filmic portrayal of a post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare. What I'm saying is that it makes greater sense of the film's arbitrary all-white casting if you posit that the dystopia was founded on racist grounds as well as genocidal ageism, computer-run dictatorship, the eradication of love and family, and all the other aspects of the society that we're supposed to see as evil and wrong. It doesn't excuse the all-white casting in real life, but it makes the ethnic uniformity of the city's population more plausible in-story, and is perfectly consistent with all the other evils the society is founded on. So if anything it makes it easier to enjoy the film, because it adds one more layer of awfulness to the dystopia whose destruction we're supposed to root for.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

This perplexes me. They have that technology and still they use those little pod cars...

Why do we see shuttles and other ship flying in the skies of various Star Trek productions, despite the existence of the transporter technology? They're not all leaving the planet, so why use that when you can just beam to any location in a world?

 

[Greg Cox]

Yes, the city crowds had black extras, so for anyone--in 1976 or 2019--to swear/argue the film only had white people in it is either not paying attention, or had agenda-tinted glasses on, preventing them from seeing what is there.

I stand corrected. But I do remember articles and letters in fan magazines complaining about how white LOGAN'S RUN was (compared to STAR TREK and the like) way back in the seventies, so this was an issue back then.

 

[Christopher]

A few black extras is very slightly better than nothing, but it hardly makes the population of the domed city statistically representative of the demographics of the United States population. I suppose it's possible that the wars and such that devastated the world might've wiped out the more ethnically diverse cities and left the more white-dominated rural areas more intact, but Washington, DC was within a few days' walking distance of the domed city and didn't appear to have been nuked, so I don't think that explanation would cut it.

 

[Steven P Bastien]

Yes, the city crowds had black extras, so for anyone--in 1976 or 2019--to swear/argue the film only had white people in it is either not paying attention, or had agenda-tinted glasses on, preventing them from seeing what is there.

I have to disagree here. I've watched this movie on old TVs at least 10 times in the previous century and then on DVD and then on blueray in modern times. I have a ripped copy on my computer that I ripped from the DVD. The ripped copy on computer and TV viewing on the old TVs makes it impossible to see anyone is black in the crowd. I then watched it on Netflix deliberately trying to see any black people in the crowd. I saw one guy at the end and I think I saw one guy in the beginning, and possibly one girl at one point. It is much clearer on the DVD and blueray if you use a good monitor or good modern TV. But, you have to be more than paying attention to notice it. So, maybe some people are looking out for it or some people are naturally more observant than others, but it is not necessarily an issue of not paying attention, unless you mean not paying attention to the race of the unimportant background people, which not everyone cares about.

For the record, I never wear agenda-tinted glasses that would prevent me from seeing something like this, but on the other hand trying to notice or not notice this kind of thing is something I never even think of doing, although maybe after reading this thread I will be more observant going forward.

Another factor is how good someone's eyesight is. Not everyone has perfect vision. You really need good vision (whether by correction or by nature) to see this.

Anyway, it was very interesting to learn that there are black extras in there. But, frankly I don't think throwing in 3 non-white extras into a mix of many hundreds is particularly important to make any points one way or the other. It's background noise.

 

[urbandefault]

So a film made 45 years ago, set in a dystopian future, doesn't conform to someone's 2019 idea of what the racial makeup of that future's population should be?

Okeyfine. Y'all have fun. I'm out.

 

[JD]

I thought I remembered that, but I haven't had a chance to find my DVD.

If you have Netflix it's on there.

 

[Greg Cox]

(So tired of the everpresent sense of grievance that people carry through their day and their interactions with other people.)

For what it's worth, it goes both ways and has been going on for probably as long as there has been fandom. I got my first angry letter from an "aggrieved" right-wing reader decades ago. So if I sometimes sound impatient, understand that I've been on the receiving end of such grievances for my entire career and it can get wearying.

"How dare you cram your liberal commie politics into STAR TREK!"
"The Kingpin is not black!"
"Batwoman is not gay!"
"Does the Evil Liberal Media force you to include vulgarities in your books?"
"I threw your ALIAS novel in the trash because of that one gay bar in Chapter Three. Why do you hate God?"

Not making any of that up. Trust me, people have been airing grievances about pop culture since Day One. It's not something modern progressives invented.

(See also The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hadju, which covers decades of anti-comic-book crusades and grievances.)

 

[RJDiogenes]

If you have Netflix it's on there.

Thanks, I do actually have it. I'm just not very organized.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

So, maybe some people are looking out for it or some people are naturally more observant than others, but it is not necessarily an issue of not paying attention, unless you mean not paying attention to the race of the unimportant background people, which not everyone cares about.

It means black extras were clearly seen when I watched this in theatres in 1976 and when revisiting the film recently. It says something for anyone to instantly go full speed with an accusation of the film having "no black people" among its cast when the extras were there. That suggests when one is going into the film with a certain mindset (and/or the agenda-colored glasses), they will see--or not see anything if it does not fit within said mindset. Further,, it can lead to charging the film with ideas that were never implied, presented or intended (e.g., Box being black, appearing black or a being a "slave"), and that's certainly never hinted or confirmed in the large number of 1976-77-era magazines I have which dedicated articles to the film, and I'm not talking about the light pieces one would see in early issues of Starlog..

So what's happening here?

Its gets to a point where agenda-colored glasses (not referring to you) are glued to the users' faces because that is the desired view / preconceived conclusions about the world. I--I'm guessing more than most in this thread--know how entertainment has used subtle and overt racism over the past century; if its there, it takes no effort or sociopolitical pre-conditioning to see it, and know the exact message being created and sent out to the masses. ...but that was not the point of the Goodman script, Anderson's direction, Saul David's vision as a very involved producer or anyone else involved in the finished film, which was--to be certain--not difficult to understand.

 

[Steven P Bastien]

It means black extras were clearly seen when I watched this in theatres in 1976 and when revisiting the film recently. It says something for anyone to instantly go full speed with an accusation of the film having "no black people" among its cast when the extras were there. out the world.

I question whether they were clearly seen. Did someone with so-so eyesight in the last row see it clearly? I don't know because I didn't see it in the theater. All I know is after 20 or 30 viewings I never noticed it. So I say it is not clear at all. I don't think I'm the only one who missed it and until I read this thread, I never thought about race when watching this movie. But if anyone asked me if black people were in this movie, I would have said, "no, not one". Yes, I would have been wrong.

If I were inclined to say that black people were deliberately excluded from this movie (which I am not inclined to do, by the way) I could easily say that they deliberately hid a couple of black people in there so they could then jump all over anyone who accused them of leaving them out. I'm curious if any of them are even in the credits. Heck, "timid girl" could just as well have been a black girl instead of a ultra white blond.

Anyway, I'm not trying to knock anyone's ideas here because i enjoy reading all opinions, but I just want to say this is easy to miss and if someone misses this and forms an opinion based on what they perceive (or miss-perceive) I don't blame them and I don't think their opinion is necessarily invalided by a couple of blurry extras whose race is easily obscured by poor vision, distant viewing, old TV sets or simply looking away for 3 seconds.