
- Warner Bros. Pictures
- Sandra Bullock is an expensive earthling.
Gravity, a gorgeous space drama about two American astronauts who get royally fucked by Russian space junk, is reported to have cost $100,000,000 to make. On November 5, 2013, India launched a spacecraft to the Red Planet. It reached its target/orbit today, September 24, 2014. The cost for this very challenging mission was $74 million. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is proud of the achievement (state) and the low cost (capitalism), which he pointed out is below the budget of Gravity.
But the Hollywood movie made, globally, seven times ($700,000,000) what it cost. What will the Indian spacecraft, nicknamed MOM, make? In one sense, a lot of something, and the other, a lot of nothing. Both this something and nothing are not good at the end of the day. In the case of something, MOM is good marketing for what India is known for in the global capitalist market: cheap brain power. For example, the United States also sent a spacecraft to Mars last November, but it cost far more than the movie Gravity—in fact, its cost almost matched what the blockbuster made at the box office. China is the factory of the world; India is the office.
As for the nothing part, what MOM provides is lot of national feeling...
Bangalore: The success of India's Mars mission is "a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation" and we have gone beyond boundaries of human enterprise and imagination, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi here Wednesday.
And this is the problem with a project of this kind. It's fine that one does it for the benefit of the universal that is science, and it's fine if one loses money in the process. But it's so tired if the leading goal is to generate national pride, which is kind of like missionary-style sex (meaning, uninteresting) between the body of the state and the body of the nation—the nation, which is the community that is governed by the state, is not on top. At this moment, the state of India is fucking the nation of India—and it's so uninteresting. The same was true when the United States landed on the moon—it was bad/boring sex all around. National feeling or pride is not good for you, common person. You must fight it, reject it.



