CLASS: "Blog Post #6 - The machines in the machine..."

The one thing that stuck out to me in “The Space Traders” was the idea that gold would be an appropriate thing to trade a race for. In retrospect, the validity of this is questionable, as it appears that the average price of gold was gradually falling when it was written – and was in fact lower in 2000 than in 1990-92. I can think of several reasons for this – the best appeal is to a person's greed/desire, and the Traders do both with gold for Blacks – but if it were me, I would write out a leap in technology instead of gold. Remember Terminator 2 (Miles Dyson ought to look familiar...)? Something along those lines. Frankly, Bell either takes seriously Moore's Law – stating that computing power doubles every 2 years – and doesn't think we need the help from aliens, or he is not giving it enough concern, assuming that computers were powerful enough as is (I remember someone once telling me of a computer salesperson assuring them, in the early 1990s, that a 486 processor – this is before RAM became more important than processor speed in the public eye – with a 40 Mb hard drive were all they would ever need). Oh, and the general story greatly resembles “V”. ...which very few people my age remember, unfortunately. Should never have been canceled... Also, my theory is that the Traders enjoy the taste of melanin-heavy human flesh.

So now that I've given my two cents about “The Space Traders”, I should probably get around to doing the assignment.

I like The Brother From Another Planet. If nothing else, it's an amusing(?) look at human culture circa 1984 – at once an auspicious and ominous date, and I shouldn't have to explain why (judging from the way England currently is, though, here it is). And the biggest difference between it and “The Space Traders” is the tone, hopeful to Bell's pessimism and disillusion. It takes place almost a generation before “Traders”, of course, and I assume this is part of the reason. (That Sayles is white might also have something to do with it, but in the absence of better evidence I don't believe so.) It is interesting to think of how The Brother, technically an illegal alien, would be treated by the Traders – as, being an alien, there shouldn't be many official documents noting him to be Black, much less part of the official US population. I like how they specifically ask for “American citizen(s)” but then the question of immigrants (green card or otherwise) is not even raised. I really can't think of an excuse for this, as the Immigration Act of 1990 was fairly recent, and would have been difficult to avoid, especially for someone in Derrick Bell's position. I don't think he should quit his day job to write sci-fi, basically. In contrast, “Brother” specifically brings it up: an irate Fly, in my favorite part of the movie (the third Bar scene) notes how his ancestors built the country – how long ago did the aliens' (appearing to all the world as White INS agents) ancestors arrive?

I think that's all. Yeah.