badger1

Hee hee! To answer your question, 'no'.

mconlonx

I don't think that such movies cause people to consider either the goodness or badness inherent in walking/biking for transportation and LCF generally. But rather a distrust in authority and authoritarian rule.

That it is portrayed as a utopian vision of the future does resonate with a culture of resistance against LCF -- where LCF is now a minority culture, a movie where it is seen as onerously enforced will appeal to a majority of viewers. They could just as easily have emphasized a different angle -- enforced vegetarianism, for example.

While there are argments that LCF would be world-enhancing in a positive way, there are equally valid arguments where it would not, or enforcement of such would be a net evil compared to any benefits.

Most utopias are based on a minority view and any which might force participation rather than attract participation on its own merits is rightfully resisted. Which would include forced LCF.

It is interesting that in a place like China, with massive central planning, a generally supportive population, decent public transit infrastructure, and massive pollution issues, individuals see cars as a status symbol.

mconlonx

Look around. Pick three other people at random. Which of them -- including you -- deserve not to exist so that your utopia could be realized?

mconlonx

A few counterpoints:

Rush: Red Barchetta

While there may be some utopias which are based on LCF, there are also many more dystopias based on ICE usage. The Mad Max series, especially the latest installment, comes to mind. The Terminator movies, where the machines take over. Same thing with the Matrix. Interestingly, in Blade Runner, while there are flying cars (finally!), road-going cars, blimps, and space ships, there are also bicycles.

So let's turn your musing on utopia around -- in dystopias which portray a dreadful future existence, they are largely* ICE-based. Applying the same logic as in the OP, wouldn't this be very vivid and popular condemnation of ICE culture? Does it not in fact endorse LCF as a possible way to avoid such dystopias, by omission...? Look at a popular movie like The Road -- the protagonists are all on foot; it's the villains who are still driving.

cooker

The fact that you think somebody's ideas 'smack of "lunacy or idiocy"' is practically a five star endorsement.

cooker

Where do you get that? Car-free living could support a larger population - not that that is necessarily a good thing - because land and resources that now support high levels of personalized transportation could instead support food production.

Bikeforumuser0019

Have any of you read the book "The Giver"?

The whole point of the story is that what seemed utopian on the outside is actually a grotesquely evil society that robs people of their humanity and individuality.

In a (probably good-hearted) attempt to eradicate pain and suffering their society made everyone and everything as "same" as possible. The consequences of which were the destruction of humanity, the loss of emotions and beauty and love. They are essentially robots or puppets under extreme control with no desires or aspirations of their own.

The fact that they use bicycles is hardly relevant at all, and hardly a reflection of some positive achievement on their part.

Walter S

Is enforcement necessary in a utopia?

cooker

The point in the OP was that quite a few movies depict a seemingly ideal future society and urban form, which is car-free, bike and pedestrian friendly, then reveal it to be fraudulent and evil. tandempower was opining that as a result, audiences may be getting a subliminal conditioning that associates car-free living with authoritarianism and deception.

Walter S

That's probably around 0.002% of the reason car drivers choose not to be carfree. Other things like convenience, utility, status, ease of travel, culturally ingrained, never questioned the topic seriously, laziness, and lots of other things are far more relevant.

Cars are like a magic carpet ride. Not my cup of tea. But very popular.

mconlonx

This was a response to 1890-style transportation... which worked, kind of, with population a quarter of what it is today. It also assumes we stop at transportation. What about industrialized food production...? Production and transport of consumer goods?

mconlonx

One wouldn't think so, but doesn't that make the movies cited in the OP less films about utopias, and more films about authoritarian dystopias?

The question would then be, "Why is LCF part and parcel with such portrayals of nightmare societies?"

The Prisoner was set in what was basically an LCF community...

I-Like-To-Bike

Where have you gotten the idea that food production in North America is being negatively affected by land scarcity whether as a result of "personalized transportation" or any other reason; at the movie theater?

cooker

I don't have that idea, where did you get the idea that I did?

We haven't reached the crunch yet - it's more a future concern. Agriculture is currently very dependent on fossil fuels for both mechanization and fertilizer, and natural land productivity (eg. topsoil, etc.) is very much depleted. Diverting petrochemicals away from transportation, and diverting land away from the vast acreage continually swallowed up by road building and low-density property development, would provide something of a buffer against future shortages.

https://www.theoildrum.com/node/6575
https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ion-continues/

loky1179

I assumed you were one of our "Leaders". You must have more posts on this forum than anyone. And I know your BF reputation extends far beyond this little backwater forum.

Why, just last week, I commuted on my cruiser bike - coaster brake and all! I know of your fondness for coaster brakes, and you really inspired me to give it a try. Of course, after 24 miles, I was silently cursing you . . .

Just kidding. I was cursing my own out-of-shapeness, and my damn-Im-old-ness.

wolfchild

We do have a few "cod psychologists" on this forum, these quack doctors claim that any person who uses their car for basic transportation or who uses AC has a serious addiction to comforts and conveniences of modern world and they need to be remedied and cured ASAP. These self-made psychologists also advocate hardship, inconvenience and "simple life" as remedies to cure those very serious addictions to automotivism and addictions to modern technology.

loky1179

Well, that's because you live "down under". I'd expect that your idea of utopia is flipped 180° from MY idea of utopia.

I-Like-To-Bike

No, the title of would-be Führer of LCF belongs to others, though no doubt they would select another term to describe their efforts to control/limit the content on the numerous OT P&R "discussions" to only responses that support the group think on political/economic/social issues.

mconlonx

Biketopia
Guest Opinion: Ride with me through Biketopia | Richmond BizSense

350htrr

It's because of meat, those pesky cows are wrecking the world...

mconlonx

Would any of us be happy to live in an LCF utopia which did not include bicycles?

tandempower

The point of this thread is to discuss dystopian-utopia movies/books/etc. that make LCF appear negative by association with horrifying tactics of social-engineering or other negative aspects of a potential future that could otherwise be considered utopian.

In other words, these movies are presenting utopian visions of the future where the utopia is vilified in some way or other. Then, because LCF is part of the vilified utopian vision, we the audience are supposed to question the goodness of LCF because we're supposed to assume it is somehow a byproduct of the horrifying aspects of the utopian vision.

So when some of us promote carfree infrastructure as a way of reducing the problems of automotive sprawl and driving-dependency, some or many people may perceive us as promoting some kind of dystopian-utopian future, as depicted in these movies. Often we hear accusations of social-engineering or "forcing people out of their cars" that basically challenge us to either use strong (governmental) tactics to shift traffic away from driving or else give up and accept that the vast majority of people will always drive, period.

My impression is that there are relatively few dystopian movies about automotive sprawl and driving-dependency. Falling down may be an exception, but I don't know that it really comes across as an automotive-dystopia movie. The various social problems presented throughout the movie (driving congestion/sprawl, ethnic conflict, divorced families, etc.) can be viewed as separate problems of modern society that could be resolved without radical shifts away from driving, racism, and divorce. Viewers could think that congestion could be resolved by building more/wider roads, making cars more comfortable to sit in for long periods of time, keeping people in their cars so they don't come in contact with people of other ethnicities/classes, and counseling people to accept divorce and family separation instead of one or both parents feeling they are treated unfairly.

On the other hand, you could also say that driving and sprawl are a root cause for the other problems because as cities grow and fragment, families are put under more stress and have less time to spend together, ethnic and class differences become more poignant because of more pronounced lifestyle differences, etc. So I think the movie Falling Down could be viewed as an automotive-dystopia movie, but probably most people won't see it that way.

Are there any other movies that present problems of automotive-sprawl and driving-dependency as the central problems of a dystopia or dystopian-utopia? Or is all the negativity of Hollywood focussed on LCF?

mconlonx

You may be seeing only what you want to see. In most visions of a dystopian future, or a utopia which turns out to be less than utopian, it is usually an extension of current culture... which is not LCF-based, but more focused on the problems of ICE-based transport and sprawl.

Judge Dredd -- sprawl. Motorama -- car culture. Death-Proof Car -- car culture. Christine -- evil car; Maximum Overdrive -- evil truck. Halloween -- suburban nightmare.

I have to think hard about movies which present LCF as bad, where there are any number of ICE/sprawl/tech-based dystopian films I can list. A Boy and His Dog -- I don't remember, but was the underground society LCF? Certainly in the Truman Show there were cars... and I remember a specific sequence when the ludicrous nature of utilizing a car for a remarkably short trip was illustrated.

So where Hollywood is concerned, I'd say there is far more criticism by example leveled at car culture and suburban sprawl than LCF.

mconlonx

Ooo: Waterworld...

tandempower

You forgot Mad Max, but I see your point. I think these are more dystopian movies, though, rather than utopian movies that make utopianism dystopian by it's dark side(s). I guess what I'd really like to see is a dystopian-utopia movie where the entire world is encased in sprawl and highways (overpasses, bypasses, cloverleafs, etc.) and those who plead the case of reforestation are suppressed while the public is brainwashed with propaganda celebrating the removal of bio-ecology as a threat to GDP growth and jobs.

Probably such a movie would come across as 'preachy environmentalism' and fail for that reason, idk. Maybe it depends on how well it was written and produced.