BELLE and the fantasy of a non-corporate internet
Just a little thing I kinda want to end out this week speaking about democratized media on. Because there is this little thing in Mamoru Hosoda's newest movie BELLE... I am honest: I am not entirely sure whether it is something Hosoda and his team thought about when making this movie. But... this movie has this wonderful little anarchist moment.
BELLE is all in all not really an anarchist movie. Nor is it Solarpunk. But it picks up this theme, that goes through several movies Hosoda has done. His "internet triology" how I like to call it:
Digimon Adventure: Bokura no Wargame
Three movies that are not only connected in aethetic, but also in theme. All three of them having a plot that takes place online for good chunks.
And that theme is of the internet connecting people all around the world. Of allowing people all around the world to connect.
The Digimon Adventure movie focuses on the idea of the young millennials in that movie having access and understanding of this new virtual world, that the older generation lacks. In the Japanese version of the movie there is a prolonged gag sequence of Yamato and Takeru trying to get access to the internet with a lot of confused adults thinking about whether or not they have this access.
This shifts in Summer Wars, where the internet suddenly is a place that everyone uses over a lot of different access points. In the finale we see people use the internet via phones, laptops, high end computers and video game consoles. Though it also gives a warning of us not relying on it too much.
And then we have BELLE, which focuses on the internet as a place where people can truly be themselves and connecting with each other, while being unable to connect in the real world (partly because of distance), as well as the internet of a place to rediscover yourself and as a medium to help each other.
But all three movies kinda have one scene in common. There is a scene towards the finale where all seems lost and the character outmatched by the antagonist. (I am gonna say something about the antagonists in a moment.) And then... everyone gets together. And by everyone I mean everyone. In Bokura no Wargame it is the emails of encouragement and the spirits of all those kids and teens watching the battle that allow War Greymon and Metal Garurumon to fuse into Omegamon. In Summer Wars it is the fact that everyone risks their accounts by handing them over to Natsuki that allows them to beat the AI in hanafuda. And in the finale of BELLE it is everyone banding together to sing and no longer supporting the self-appointed moderators that allows Suzu to make Kei hear her voice. It is the connection of people via the internet that allows people to succeed in these movies.
But there is one thing in which BELLE differs from the other two movies - or rather all three movies differ from each other.
Bokura no Wargame still very much is set in Web 1.0, before social media and the bottlenecking of the internet. Again, the movie makes this big thing out of the internet being a thing for the youth.
Meanwhile Summer Wars is set within a very corporate "everything platform". And while this movie does have some message about "yeah, maybe having all that data within one system is a bad thing, actually", there is not really a comment about the company running OZ and whether maybe one company should not own the one platform that in this world basically IS THE INTERNET.
BELLE is different in that regard. Because BELLE makes a point out of the fact that U is an open source platform that was created to... basically run anarchical. There was not supposed to be an central control. That the users were supposed to have control over their experience on the platform. But because the creators also did not want to have "control" over it, big companies just took over and devided U up between themselves, creating that moderation team that is seen as the antagonists within the movie. And here is the thing: That big scene of everyone coming together and singing? Yeah, that is the scene in which the users take the control over the platform back from the companies. And since U is basically the the internet in this world... Part of the finale is basically the users taking back their control over the internet.
And... I don't know. I have not seen people talk about this so far. But to me it is the nice and utopic part in this movie.
The internet is such a great thing to connect people. And that is something that Mamoru Hosoda has definitely understood better than many other film makers. And we just... should not let big coorporations take this from us.
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