ACTIVITIES:
BEFORE WATCHING THE FILM
In Time is set in a future dystopia where living zones separate the rich from the poor.
A dystopia (from Ancient Greek) anti-utopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state which seems to be ideal. Dystopian societies feature different kinds of repressive social control systems. Ideas and works about dystopian societies often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and humans individually and collectively coping, or not being able to properly cope with technology that has progressed far more rapidly than humanity's spiritual evolution. Dystopian societies are often imagined as police states, with unlimited power over the citizens.
Debate (with the whole class or in teams):
1. What could happen if we were born genetically-engineered to stop aging at 25 and could live forever? Would we want to? Why?
2. How would the resulting overpopulation problem be solved?
3. Would you consider such a world morally acceptable? Why?
AFTER WATCHING THE FILM
SYMBOLISM:
Symbolism is the author’s use of an object or reference to add deeper meaning to a story. It is often used to support a theme in a subtler manner. However, in some cases, such as in this film, symbolism may seem too obvious.
Students can do these activities in pairs or teams.
a) What do the following elements of the film symbolize?
1. TIME:
2. GENETIC CLOCK (that stops at the age of 25):
3. NEW GREENWICH:
4. TIME ZONE 12:
5. DISTANCE BETWEEN ZONES:
6. PRICE RISE:
7. WILL SALAS:
8. SYLVIA:
9. PHILIPPE WEIS:
10. TIME-KEEPER, LEON:
11. FORTIS (from the Minutemen):
12. MINUTE MEN:
13. THE PRIEST, LEVI:
14. DARWIN’S BIRTH DATE (the key to unlock the safe) :
The quotes below have been extracted from the film and grouped according to the idea that is being conveyed by them.
b) What ideas is the author trying to promote through the following script lines? Can you explore these ideas deeper?
1. Rachel (Will’s mother): I thought I’d have a grandchild.
Will: Who has time for that?
Will: Why are you investigating a suicide? There’s mass murdered in the ghetto every day.
Philippe Weis: For some to live forever, many have to die.
2. Leon: He can’t hide 100 years in a ghetto. There you can sense when someone has one more month than he should.
Leon: Too much time in the wrong hands could crash the market.
3. Leon: I am the Timekeeper, I don’t concern myself with justice but with what I can measure.
Leon: I’ve given 50 years of my life to this job.
Fortis (from the Minutemen): Don’t you understand why timekeepers let me live? I have boundaries; I steal from my own people.
4. Philippe Weis: Hasn’t evolution always been unfair? It's always been the survival of the fittest. This is merely Darwinian capitalism. Natural selection.
Leon: Doesn’t he understand he’s hurting the very people he’s trying to help?
Philippe Weis: Nothing will change because everybody wants to live forever. For a few to live forever many have to die. Everyone will think they are special.
5. Sylvia: The poor die and the rich don’t live. The watch is no good for anybody.
Will: It’s nobody’s fault what you are born with.
Will: Nobody should die before their time.
6. Will: He was not only giving people time but hope.
Will: We can do a lot in one day.
UNIVERSAL CONCERNS
The science fiction film has been described as being like ‘a shared dream...a mythic representation of universal concerns and fears’, suggesting that the narrative of many science fiction films follow patterns that audiences are familiar with based on myths and legends found in cultures and societies all over the world.
c. What might be the universal concerns in In Time?
LETTING YOUR IMAGINATION RUN
d. Write a story following this outline:
Time - the near future. The world is under the control of a right-wing minority. People’s lives are strictly controlled by use of computers, television... However, there are still certain individuals who struggle against this system. The individuals slowly come together to form a group who will confront the world controllers.
How do you want the story to develop? It could be purely science fiction or it could involve other generic elements. Your task is to develop the story and finish the synopsis; establish the genre; describe the opening sequences in detail so that the narrative clues and generic elements are established.
TEACHER’S NOTES
SYMBOLISM:
TIME: It stands for money and it is a status symbol, an object of currency, and a system of societal control.
GENETIC CLOCK (that stops at the age of 25): The clock symbolizes both our modern culture’s obsession of staying young and beautiful forever and the social class you belong to. The poor are slaves to time: many die young and have no time to create anything. The rich have no incentive. Why invent a new car when you could do it a hundred years from now?
Similarly, in our world, while the poor are enslaved by deprivation and exploitation, the wealthy are enslaved by their greed, their fears, conventions and spiritual poverty. However, we have to make a big difference between one another; the wealthy have had options. Will says he has no choice and has to continue leading his life and Sylvia answers she has no choice either. Her answer may refer to the fact she loves him but also that she has become aware of reality and cannot turn her back on it.
NEW GREENWICH: It stands for our enriched world. You can’t even shoot there, it’s prohibited by law. People there live in a fantasy world, very far from poor areas. They do not want to have any contact with the poor’s suffering. When asked about how it is possible to live seeing so many people die, Philippe answers that you close your eyes.
Likewise, we do not want to see and accept that much of our welfare is based on keeping other people in poverty.
TIME ZONE 12: It’s a ghetto; the slums. People there live from day to day, working just enough to earn one more day of living.
This world does not differ much from our reality; in our world 100,000 people starve to death every day. They are murdered by a system where for some to be rich, others have to die.
DISTANCE BETWEEN ZONES: This clearly represents the distance between the rich and the poor, not only economically but also geographically speaking.
In our enriched society, we benefit from a globalised economy that exploits the impoverished south but we want to keep immigrants far away from our borders. In this futuristic world there are also other zones exactly the same as in our world, it would be hypocritical to believe that all those who form part of the “99%” suffer economic inequalities in the same way as more than 80% of this 99% live in poverty.
PRICE RISE: An ever-increasing cost of living and stagnant wages make it difficult for people to make ends meet. In this world, running out of time amounts to death. Inflation is used to control overpopulation; the system that runs this world murders people.
Economic crisis and inflation are similarly used to keep the poor in their place, exactly the same as in the film (Leon says that too much time in the wrong hands could crash the market.) There is no difference between this world and ours, where thousands of people are pushed to starvation by the policies of the WB, the IMF and WTO, by banks that make scandalous profits by speculating on food and shameless governments that serve them instead of taking measures to stop them.
WILL SALAS: Will is basically an anti-hero, an ordinary guy who is forced to become a hero and take on these incredible challenges. He gives people freedom from their fate and hope.
He stands for the ordinary man, for all of us, who becoming aware of how the world is run, can make the decision of facing up to the system to fight against injustice and also give hope to others.
SYLVIA: She thinks there must be more to life than the favored existence she knows. She is intrigued by Will's wild ideas about changing the system which favors the rich over the poor and allows many to die so a few can be immortal. She represents hope also for the enriched who decide to take side with the poor and oppressed.
PHILIPPE WEIS: He is an immensely wealthy and powerful banker who has been exploiting the poor by making high interest time loans.
In our world, he represents the powerful, the enriched, the unscrupulous: big shareholders of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Barclays, Wells Fargo…
TIME-KEEPER, LEON: Leon is a relentless law enforcement official. He is unconcerned with justice but just wants to do his job, as it gives meaning and purpose to his life. He does not belong to a middle-class; Leon grew up in the ghetto, but he has no feelings for those now trapped there. He has managed to get out of poverty at the cost of betraying the poor and losing his own humanity. He is the symbol of the economic order.
In our world, this ruthless capitalist system would not exist without those who help keep the economic order running in exchange for a few crumbs, namely, politicians, international organizations…
FORTIS (from the Minutemen): He is the cold blooded leader of a gang called the Minutemen. He leaves to steal time but he does not dare to go beyond the limits of his zone, which is the reason why he is left to operate. His violence does not threaten the system; much on the contrary, he helps maintain the demographic balance.
In our world, the poorest slums have the highest rates of violence (likewise, shooting is prohibited by law in New Greenwich) Violence is the byproduct of a cruel and irrational social order. Fortis is a symbol of the monstrous inhumanity perpetrated against the poorest youth by governments who do not do anything to improve the standard of living, welfare and education of the people they should rule for. On the other hand, violence in poor areas is fostered by flooding them with weapons. In doing so, getting the poor to kill each other becomes a means of reducing poverty.
City of God (Cidade de Deus) is a film that clearly portrays the violence of a shantytown where the people live below the poverty level.
THE PRIEST, LEVI: He is a kind-hearted and empathetic priest who runs a mission house where he gives time away to those who need it. He can stand for caring people that do charity.
DARWIN’S BIRTH DATE (the key to unlock the safe): A key aspect of this ruthless capitalism is Darwin’s theory with its extreme individualism, which indicates that other people count for little, and that it is both natural and proper to exploit "the weaker." The survival of the fittest theory in biology has been interpreted as an ethical precept. In the movie, Philippe also quotes Darwin.
In our world, Darwin's ideas played a critically important role in the development and growth, not only of Nazism and communism, but also of the ruthless form of capitalism. John D. Rockefeller reportedly once said that the "growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest . . . the working out of a law of nature . . ." (Ghent, 1902, p. 29).
On the other hand, Kropotkin, had a different theory of evolution based on cooperation among the species. He found little evidence of competitive struggle and more evidence of organisms cooperating and mutual aid to find resources to survive. His theory emphasizes the ideas of sharing, creating, capturing and transferring knowledge. It tends towards a cooperative model rather than a competitive one.
QUOTES:
1. -Rachel (Will’s mother): I thought I’d have a grandchild.
-Will: Who has time for that?
Will: Why are you investigating a suicide? There’s mass murdered in the ghetto every day.
Philippe Weis: For some to live forever, many have to die.
Parallelism with our world, long working hours and meager salaries leave people with no time to raise children.
There is enough food for more than twice the world population but 100,000 die of starvation and hunger-related causes a day. Meanwhile, very few families are scandalously wealthy.
2. Leon: He can’t hide 100 years in a ghetto. There you can sense when someone has one more month than he should.
Leon: Too much time in the wrong hands could crash the market.
The poor must remain poor so that others can be rich.
3. Leon: I am the Timekeeper, I don’t concern myself with justice but with what I can measure.
Leon: I’ve given 50 years of my life to this job.
Fortis (from the Minutemen): Don’t you understand why timekeepers let me live? I have boundaries; I steal from my own people.
Our capitalist system creates people who help keep the economic order running in exchange for a few crumbs. Every effort is made by the media, education or the planned absence of it, institutions, etc. to kill solidarity and foster individualism and selfishness.
4. Philippe Weis: Hasn’t evolution always been unfair? It's always been the survival of the fittest. This is merely Darwinian capitalism. Natural selection.
Leon: Doesn’t he understand he’s hurting the very people he’s trying to help?
Philippe Weis: Nothing will change because everybody wants to live forever. For a few to live forever many have to die. Everyone will think they are special.
Philippe represents the enriched, who find a justification for their exploitation in Darwin’s theory. Capitalism is Darwinian economics, the strong survive and the weak perish, and it's the strong that define the system. There are other theories, however, that either stating that God created the world or not explain evolution thanks to cooperation.
5. Sylvia: The poor die and the rich don’t live. The watch is no good for anybody.
Will: It’s nobody’s fault what you are born with.
Will: Nobody should die before their time.
These quotes refer to the different chains that enslave people. The poor are enslaved by exploitation and injustice. They can even die of starvation. The rich, on the other hand, are enslaved by consumerism, greed, selfishness… However, the poor’s suffering can never be compared with the rich’s because the poor are the victims of the injustice perpetrated against them.
6. Will: He was not only giving people time but hope.
Will: We can do a lot in one day.
Will is an ordinary man, just like any of us. At first, he is driven to get justice by resentment and hatred. However, later fighting for justice becomes the driving force behind his actions. He believes he can make a change and give people hope.
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