Man in Hightower Netflix

[Joseph Tracy]

> On Dec 7, 2015, at 7:18 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ten episodes in, and just tolerating it. Way too slowly paced and full of irrelevant personal drama interactions.  I haven't read the book, but I'm sure the plot is more important in the book than it is in this show.
> 
> David Morris
> 
I just finished the 10 episodes of the first season  a few weeks ago. I haven’t read the novel but I did read 2 synopses which indicate that there are quite a few plot changes from Dick’s story. The changes seem to favor dramatic life and death struggles which are too drawn out and wearisome, and the creation of a police state atmosphere where no one can be trusted( this part seems effective to me and worth thinking about).   My general feeling is that the dramatic adaptation is intensely relevant thematically to todays political realities and choices- that the story itself is so strong in it’s implications and questions that it overrides the Hollywood disrespect for the underlying themes in Philip K Dick’s work

I really wonder how Dick thought about what he was doing. One way in which this alternate history makes sense to me is the sense in which The US did have parallels to fascist goals and methods, slipping into the role of colonial superpower, exacting violent suppression on all opposition to our version of capitalism. Our domestic persecution of Communists and socialism under McCarthy, Truman, Eisenhower  and our treatment of blacks is far less vicious and openly murderous, but the current policies in the Gulf are pretty awful.  The loss of constitutional liberties has been easier to achieve than the post war generation would have thought.  How important really is the question of who won the war? Was some version of militarized corporatism simply bound to take the dominant role on the world stage?  The  actual cold war tension between Russia and the US was much the same as theTV series imagined tension between Japan and Germany.  

I don’t fully  get the role of the newsreels in the series( I believe it was a book in Dick’s own version), but they seem to function as alternate realities, the dreams in which we imagine ourselves free from authoritarianism, racism  , and violent conformity. They are a possible reality, but the overwhelming evidence is of a road not taken. They appear to change depending on who sees them. It seems a smart change. Newsreels or modern video carries a persuasive weight in out culture that books do not.

Betrayal is a major theme,  and paranoia  dominates every level of society.  Regardless of the fact that the Axis powers lost, there is still a lot of hatred, mistrust and fear running around and very large powerful and invasive structures to keep things in line.-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l