WAKE N BAKE

In which Erin informs you the best movies to blaze to

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I get some of my best social justice thinking done with a little help from some trimmed hedge.  And if that thinking is accompanied by something visually stimulating, well, all the better for me–although, I can’t name very many instances when the two overlap.  That’s where the movie Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage) comes in.  And this is not some common stoner flick.  It won the Special Award at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, so it’s legit culture, okay?  It’s a cutout stop motion film based on Stefan Wul’s novel Oms en série, which invites you to envision yourself among a world of giant blue aliens the way mice or hamsters are viewed among humans–pesky impediments to some of our efforts, but also cute enough to be kept as pets.

Such is the environment on the plant Ygam, where the story takes place, ages after human civilization on Earth has ended.  Ygam’s current dominant species are the Draags, enormous blue humanoids that bear a constant expression of pleasant surprise.  The Draags’ civilization is quite an advanced one.  Their children are looked-after and well-educated (via an audio headband that transmits knowledge directly into the brain).  Pursuits of the intellectual and the spiritual are not separated in this universe.  They dedicate a LOT of time to meditation, both solitary (in which they astrally project over the landscape, talismans of their persons encased in a bubble) and communal (represented in the animation by freaky morphing of their bodies’ colors and shapes).  This activity appears to hold the same popularity and cultural significance as watching the television did for 20^th century humans–they’re very serious about it.  But they don’t get mad if you interrupt!  The Draags are what we aspire to be when we smoke–calm, in touch with themselves and their surroundings, slow to anger.

But they’re not perfect.  While they make their best efforts to care compassionately for their domestic “Oms”–their name for the tiny human species that also inhabits their planet–they also offer rationalizations for routine exterminations of wild populatiaons, mostly related to interruption of work on their “space machines.”  (Space machines!  Well I’ll be!)  It should be clear by now that having made great advances as a civilization does not excuse the populace from examining their uncriticized belief that their might makes right, but I guess their meditations don’t address that problem.

The main Om’s story begins–oh wait, I should let you know right now.  DON’T light up until AFTER the first scene–it’s really sad.  Okay.  The main Om’s story begins during his infancy, when his mother is accidentally killed by some Draag children who were trying to play with her.  The stupid little shits run off when they see Tiwa, a young Draag girl, and her father (the prime minister!) strolling past.  They hear the Om baby crying and remark sadly on his mother’s corpse.  Tiwa asks her father if she can keep the baby as a pet, and he agrees.  They take him home, fit him with a remote-controlled collar, and then dress him up in a LOT of stupid outfits.  He’s got a jester hat and some shoes that resemble a cat’s hind feet at one point.  And this is one of the ensembles he wears after he’s reached adulthood.

Despite the costumes that would suggest the contrary, Tiwa loves her Om, who she names Terr–loves him so much, in fact, that she likes to hold him as she listens to her lessons.  There, in the palm of her hand, Terr also receives the benefit of Tiwa’s education, learning history, science, technology, and Draag writing.  Tiwa’s parents seem to instinctively know the sort of trouble that an educated Om might brew, so they subsequently forbid Tiwa to study with Terr.  Terr’s got other plans, though.  He escapes, the large education headband in tow.  He is accepted by a tribe of undomesticated Oms living in the corner of a public park (after they have a hearty laugh at what he’s wearing, of course), and he shares the headband with them.  The Oms eagerly take to the lessons, which will be useful, seeing as the park wall has been scrawled with the Draag lettering for “De-Om”–meaning Om extermination.  But the Oms aren’t going to take that shit lying down.  And when some asshole Draag decides to stomp half a colony of Oms to death outside the park since there’s “too many” of them–and the Oms retaliate by killing one Draag (decried by the general population as an outrageous “murder”)–the revolution is on.

The film can quite generally be described as “intense”–the fight for survival and equality, the trippy mediation sequences, and definitely the fictional planet’s landscape.  The latter is probably the most enjoyable aspect of the movie, especially for the flyin’ high among us. The outdoors of planet Ygam are not particularly lush.  In fact, the landscape is mostly occupied by modern art pieces spaced well apart from one another, many of which seem to be intent on destroying the Oms.  But the sparseness of it allows the creatively designed flora to capture the viewer’s attention.  Their little life processes are mesmerizing to watch–squat fungi dropping sticky substances, steely panels on hinges that clap together like clams, flexible switches that whip at the air with purpose.  In an uncharacteristically sweet scene, Tiwa and Terr walk outside while crystalline structures spontaneously form on plants like winter frost, turning the outdoors into the Fortress of Solitude.  A clump of these crystals begin to replicate around Terr, immobilizing and frightening him.  Tiwa kneels down and whistles a single tone, sonically shattering the crystal.  She smiles.  The pair then take a walk, both whistling, making music together and watching more of the glittering formations crumble.

Herb enthusiasts no doubt love a happy ending, so you might be glad to know that a sort-of peace between the Draags and the Oms does prevail after all.  There’s a lot to be gleaned from the depictions of marginalization and privilege in the film, most prominently that it’s important to never stop the process of self-examination and empathy, no matter how enlightened you may think you’ve become.  These positive lessons, however, do not negate the flipside of the film’s politics, which handily demonstrates that calls for equality cannot be successfully appealed to with reason.  Our own human history shows pretty clearly that the nature of power makes it so that basic rights often have to be obtained by disobedience, even force–just like in the film.  It makes me think of all the jerks we’re constantly up against–douchebag racist frat-boy misogynists who think they can’t possibly be prejudiced because they’re “liberal,” companies “being forced” to cut employees’ hours as a sob-story ploy to avoid providing healthcare, religious troglodytes who worm their way into office with the life goal of making sure nobody anywhere can get an abortion ever, for any reason.  And on top of all that, there’s fucking Wall Street.

It just harshes my buzz, man.

You know, what?  Forget everything I just said.  Don’t watch “Fantastic Planet” stoned.