Crimes of the Future

I finally got a chance to see this Cronenberg film last night. It is disturbing and shocking. But that's the point. It's set in the not too distant future where pollution and climate change are causing changes in human anatomy and physiology. It focuses on one such person, Saul Tenser, who grows new organs that his lover Caprice surgically removes for an audience during performance art. The growths are billed as personal, artistic creations.

Meanwhile a group of other mutants have intentionally engineered their bodies to eat and digest plastic. And of course providing a solution to all the harmful plastics that humanity has wrought on the planet. They consider it as technologically aiding the emerging evolution of humanity that has naturally occurred from the above causes.  However they are considered criminals by a new police force that hunts them down. Ironically maybe they are the good guys? That is, if any such thing exists in this warped world.

There is much more to the plot, e.g. that this movement is widespread, where the 'new sex' is participating in shared bodily mutilation. But what can we expect from a future dystopia created by human-caused destruction of nature?

But an overarching relevant theme is the direction of humanity's next evolution. And how humanity can aid and participate in it via technology. The film though highlights that this so-called evolution is likely an unnatural nightmare gone wrong due to human causes in the first place. And to mistake that for natural evolution and try to engineer it only leads to even worse consequences. It's an urgent message for those of us with good intentions who think we know where human evolution is going and want to engineer it.