Where Are The Air Filters?
Where Are The Air Filters?
What the film Interstellar offers us
This article contains mild to medium spoilers for the film Interstellar. They likely won’t ruin the film for you, which I do recommend watching, but they’re marked so you can avoid them if you so choose.
But, first, poetry —
Quoted throughout the film is a poem by Dylan Thomas called Do not go gentle into that good night. Here are two stanzas:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
An ode against giving in to death, Thomas wrote this poem in 1947, allegedly for his father. As that poem echoed through the film, I was reminded of another poem, 1925 T.S. Eliot classic The Hollow Men. Here are two stanzas:
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
And now,
Herein lie the spoilers
The plot of Interstellar hinges on dust. Dust opens the film (as it falls into frame and onto a book shelf) and dust facilitates the inciting incident (allowing coordinates in code to lead the Matthew McConaughey character Cooper and his daughter Murphy to the hidden NASA facility). Dust also propels the film into the third act when Murphy decides to return to her childhood home (the one that she has been mostly avoiding for decades) because her nephew, Cooper’s grandson, is sick—sick from breathing in too much dust.
In this world where the wheat has died and dust is nearly all that remains in the place of once fruitful harvests, something struck me as odd: Where were the air filters?
In the first act, we are made to understand that farmers have replaced engineers and scientific pursuits have been abandoned (with some shady propagandist undertones hinted at), leaving little opportunity for innovation, but I couldn’t help but wonder, just how difficult is it to keep dust out of a home?
It’s not possible to keep all of the dust out, of course, but certainly some of the dust could have been kept from homes and lungs without access to high tech equipment, could it not? The first thing that comes to mind are those turnstiles that restaurants and storefronts in cold weather climates place in front of their doors during the winter time, creating a barrier between the elements outside and the comfort of those inside. All Cooper’s family farmhouse had was a dinky little door and single-paned windows, with not even screens attached. Why would a brilliant engineer and the best pilot still alive on Earth let his family breath in toxic air day in and out?
Even if they didn’t know the air was toxic at that point, the dust was clearly an incessant nuisance inside the home—as one of the elders explained in the opening video recordings, saying that they would set the table with the “plates upside down” because a thick layer of dust would filter in and coat the settings in minutes.
It’s a compelling mis-en-scène but, really, you’re telling me that no one came up with a solution—a barrier to keep at least some of the dust out? Were they so malnourished that they were no longer thinking straight? How is it in a world where dust storms happen regularly that they don’t have a protocol for closing their bedroom windows before leaving the house? Or that Cooper didn’t think to build some sort of protective barrier over his beloved daughter’s window? I’m not buying it.
Humanity can’t have given up that easily.
Here ends the spoilers
Covid-19 is alive, well, and continuing to wreak havoc. As it is an airborne virus, there is a simple solution that can be implemented to help mitigate its damage: filter the air.
Here in Canada, the BC Greens have spoken about this ad nauseam (and I use that phrase, not as an insult, but to convey the sheer exhaustion behind their pleas), asking, imploring, begging the ruling government to install air filters in schools, hospitals, and beyond to help keep us safe.
Cleaning the air was the BC Greens’ primary concern when they announced new deputy leader Dr. Sanjiv Gandhi in January — “I think clean air is the biggest thing that we can do and we haven’t done it,” he stated from the press conference — and this issue has been at the top of their priority list for months upon months upon years.
Despite their advocacy, the ruling government has made zero moves towards implementing air filters, even as the evidence around the long-term effects of Covid-19 increases in concerning measure. Not to mention that air filters wouldn’t just protect us against Covid, but also wildfires, pollution, and future viruses. Why hasn’t the government implemented this simple solution?
What is the difference between raging against the dying light and giving in to the dark, not with a bang but a whimper? What is the cost of a convenient narrative? What are the ripple effects of a fantasy narrative that is compelling or, at the very least, comforting versus a narrative that is true?
Is there a cost to the stories we tell on screen? Do they ripple out into the “real” world or remain contained, trapped inside the black box, serving solely our imaginations? I don’t know. But I sure wish our government would install air filters.
If you feel like you’re getting sick, please, isolate, rest, and do what you can to support your immune system. All of my research has shown that we can’t underestimate the positive effects of Vitamin D (taken with Vitamin K for proper absorption) as well as the benefits of sleep. I’ve also heard good things about Zinc but I can’t speak to that personally. It goes without saying, I am not doctor.
Fun Facts about Saturn
As a symbol, Saturn represents the boundaries of time and space. Why? Because until humans invented the telescope, Saturn was the furthest planet we could see, therefore marking a boundary in our imagination since prehistoric times. Sometimes Saturn, this symbol of the boundary of time and space, is represented as a black box.
In Greek mythology, Saturn was known as Kronos, the God of the harvest. He was often depicted with a scythe in his hand.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith signal was meant to be detected by Saturn (as originally written in the novel the film was based upon), but they couldn’t quite nail the digital graphics for Saturn’s rings so they switched it in the film to Jupiter.
Thanks to Stephen Reedy at the Philosophical Research Society for these Saturn tidbits. If you’re a film buff who’s interested in learning more symbolic insights, you might be stoked to check out his online course, The Esoteric Symbolism of the Movie 'Gravity': Suffering, Purpose and the Formula of Transformation (limited time discount code: prsfriend5)