The Platform and The Society
The status quo of today’s world is based on the predominant factor of the Darwinian theory wherein the biological superiority of an organism dictates their prevalence in the society, although when it comes to the entirety of the status quo of the effectively capitalist society of this day and age, wherein the poor get poorer while the rich get richer, the societal Darwinian theory concerns itself mostly with the societal superiority of individuals.
‘The Platform’, directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, strives to make itself a visual commentary on social depravity, financial depravity and eventual discrimination amongst the ones ‘above’ and the ones ‘below’. The movie in itself seeks to separate its characters with a constant tug of tension being the prevalent source of fraternity in the same. Yet the sense of camaraderie, or the eventuality of it, is not the focus of this critique, the focus of this blog is on the bestiality of humankind and the inception of the same bestial tendencies, keeping ‘The Platform’ as a reference point.
The plot of the movie entails the inherent bestial nature of man when faced with the most dire of circumstances which heralds in itself destruction and inadvertently, death. Akin to the book, ‘Lord of the Flies’, which depicted the bestial ways of man and the savagery that basks within even at the nubile ages of adolescence, is further illustrated upon in The Platform with the constant threat of landing in a level wherein little to no food arrives and man is thrown into his continual strife to maintain his civility. In this mortal strife of man, he is thus thrown into the cusps of cannibalism, which may sound horrid at the moment but under dire circumstances, man is but a part of an ecosystem that thrives in savagery. The very same savagery can be seen in our society as well, a form of social savagery, so to speak, which thrives in the society controlled by the rich, who take more than they can chew.
“The ones above won’t talk to you”, a line in the movie that has stayed with me even after I watched it about three times since the past week because at the end of the day it is true. No matter how close you are to reaching the ones above, even if they are right above you, they will never accept you as their own. Much the same way our society works wherein the numerous conglomerates work hand in hand to get their masters and owners richer. Even if a person is the Regional Manager of a company, he will never get to meet the CEO, rather less have an opportunity to level with him. The movie in itself depicts the fact that everyone’s destiny is designed by one’s fate, and once the person reaches the top of the food chain or the absolute upper echelon of his society, he is bound to become greedy and tends to forget from whence he has come from. He tends to forget that he had suffered when he was a part of the lower echelons and begins hoarding. To put matters into perspective, let’s talk about the COVID 19 outbreak wherein all over the world supermarkets are being emptied out in a matter of seconds, with the privileged sections of the society hoarding on more items than they will actually require, which thus brings us to the same point of humans being selfish and who have within themselves ingrained the common veritable idea of survival, without considering the survival of the people belonging to the lower echelons of the society, for whom it may not be possible to hoard the very items that the people belonging to the upper echelons hoard so easily, thus affecting the eventual availability of a commodity.
The Platform, in the end, is not just a movie or a socio-political commentary on human life. It is a depiction of human life that is corrupted with every breath of air we take, no matter what we do, human beings stand corrupt the further it synthesizes into society.
