Technology and Humanity in Cosmopolis

by Patty Keyuranggul
May 16, 2012

"It gave me balls," is what Robert Pattinson, the star of the new David Cronenberg film Cosmopolis said about his experience on set.  Based on a book by Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis was published in 2003 while the novel takes place in 2000. 

 

I love books and I love reading – but I tend to be drawn to works that use the least amount of words possible. Clocking in at  just over 200 pages, Cosmopolis qualifies as such.  DeLillo creates a distinct character and manages to make us think more deeply about technology, humanity, business, ethics, greed, complacency and our individual roles in the modern world. 

Cosmopolis premieres at Cannes next week.  It hits theaters in Canada and the UK in June and should be in the US by August. Here are a few excerpts from the book.

“All this optimism,  all this booming and soaring. Things happen like bang.  This and that simultaneous.  I put out my hand and what do I feel? I know there’s a thousand things you analyze every ten minutes.  Patterns, ratios, indexes, whole maps of information. I love information.  This is our sweetness and light. It’s a fuckall wonder.  And we have meaning in the world. People eat and sleep in the shadow of what we do. But at the same time, what?”

“Hasidim in frock coats and tall felt hats stood in the doorways talking, men with rimless spectacles and coarse white beards, exempt from the tremor of the street. Hundreds of millions of dollars a day moved back and forth behind the walls, a form of money so obsolete Eric didn’t know how to think about it. It was hard, shiny, faceted. It was everything he’d left behind or never encountered, cut and polished, intensely three-dimensional. People wore it and flashed it. They took it off to go to bed or have sex and they put it on to have sex or die in.  They wore it dead and buried.”

“Eye contact was a delicate matter. A quarter second of a shared glance was a violation of agreements that made the city operational.”

“Let it express itself.” (Eric, while watching a protest.)

“Property is no longer about power, personality and command. It’s not about vulgar display or  tasteful display. Because it no longer has weight or shape. The only thing that matters is the price you pay. Yourself, Eric, think.  What did you buy for your one hundred and four million dollars? Not doezens of rooms, incomparable views, private elevators.  Not the rotating bedroom and computerized bed.  No thte swimming pool or the shark. Was it air rights? The regulating sensors and software? Not the mirrors that tell you how you feel when you look at yourself in the morning.  You paid the money for the number itself. One hundred and four million.  This is what you bought. And it’s worth it. The number justifies itself.”

“You apply mathematics and other disciplines yes.  But in the end you’re dealing with a system that’s out of control.  Hysteria at high speeds, day to day, minute to minute. People in free societies don’t have to fear the pathology of the state.  We create our own frenzy, our own mass convulsions, driven by thinking machines that we have no final authority over.  The frenzy is barely noticeable most of the time. It’s simply how we live.”

“The street was an offense to the truth of the future.”

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