Movies - TV
Demolition Man's Sexless Corporate Dystopia is Our Sexless Corporate Dystopia
By DANIELLE RYAN
1993’s “Demolition Man” imagines the year 2032 without violence, disease, fear, or worry, yet it can only exist if people give up almost everything that makes life worth living. Screenwriter Daniel Waters, who rewrote the original screenplay by Robert Reneau and Peter M. Lenkov, never intended for “Demolition Man” to be prophetic, but sadly, it speaks to our world in 2023.
In “Demolition Man,” no one touches or has sex, and while we’re not that extreme, it does echo our sexless entertainment that has censored LGBTQ+ relationships and made sex scenes in big-budget movies rare. In the film, all restaurants are bizarrely Taco Bell, but it's an incisive commentary on conglomerates, comparable to our own media landscape where parent companies control untold subsidiaries.
Among the things that "Demolition Man" accurately predicted are self-driving cars, a global pandemic leading to some seriously weird social changes, and a nationwide ban on abortion. It also accurately predicts that not everyone will go along with totalitarian rule, and some people won't be allowed into a "perfect" society, as represented by Denis Leary’s character Edgar Friendly.
“Demolition Man” is a silly action movie, but it was inspired by Aldous Huxley's “Brave New World” and it has some surprisingly smart ideas despite its goofy jokes. At one point we might have gotten a “Demolition Man” sequel starring Meryl Streep, and while it's a shame we didn't, we might actually end up living our own version of the movie come 2032.