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Greta Strand
Automating Power:
Examining ​Brazil ​and ​Snowpiercer ​for Dystopian Visions

An alarm goes off, a shower squeaks on, and completely independent of human

involvement the kitchen itself begins to make breakfast. Perhaps one of the most entertaining

tropes for depicting efficient automated living, the idea of a Rube-Goldberg-esque breakfast

machine crops up in a wide range of films since the late 20th century. Often created by a

predictably zany scientist, the automated process of waking up, frying eggs, and making coffee

speaks to an outward desire for efficiency; with the idea that the more mundane task of

sustaining oneself can be done quicker and more efficiently if left to a machine. What happens

however when this machine goes wrong? In many cases it speaks to the lacking of the individual.

With films like ​Back to the Future​, consciously mocking their character's penchant for

overdesign and lack of focus through the failure of a breakfast machine. But sometimes, the

breakfast machine is ​not​ designed by an individual, sometimes the breakfast machine has been

made for the individual by someone else -- someone in a place of power. And what happens

when ​that​ breakfast machine breaks down?

In Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film ​Brazil t​ he breakdown of a breakfast machine is on some

level aligned with the same sort of inefficiency of overdesign as seen in ​Back to the Future​, but

instead of placing fault with an ambitious inventor, the film locates the breakfast machine as a

buyable product of an authoritarian capitalist state, as untouchable and off limits to consumer

intervention as the failing air conditioning units and spotty electricity of its copy-pasted

apartment buildings. In a film filled with similar automated machinery, the failure of ​this
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breakfast machine can be seen as part of a larger disfunction, one inherently linked to the

systems of power that automate its world. As the film follows the plight of government drone

Sam Lowry’s attempt to fix a disastrous clerical mistake, Gilliam compliments the absurdity of

this whimsically failing authoritarian state with surrealistic dream sequences in which dreams of

heroism and love win out. It is a comedic riff on the traditionally Orwellian narrative that links

the inefficiency of automated machinery with the inefficiency of the idea of total government

control and satirizes meaningless attempts at change.

Ultimately I hope to compare the social critique of Brazil with another, more recent

attempt found in the equally absurd, equally automated, Korean film ​Snowpiercer​ made by Bong

Joon-Ho in 2013. Following the story of a class revolt led by Curtis Everett on the

globe-crossing Snowpiercer train that holds the last surviving humans on the otherwise frozen

Earth, the film employs a twisted version of automation to order its world as well. As its own

disgusting breakfast machine turns piles of insects into “protein bars” fed to the people in the

back of the train, a system of control is revealed. And as the “tail section” looks forward in an

attempt to capture the engine room at the front of the train, the automated processes of the train

and its revered engine speak to a built-in system of power meant to keep everyone in their place.

Mirroring sentiments found in ​Brazil,​ the film consciously engages in surrealistic cinematic

imagery to sensationalize a revolt that in the end, changes nothing. By both dealing with the

issue of automation and authority, these two films provide an interesting angle by which to

examine how technology orders space, and how ordered space responds to human involvement,

whether it be passive or rebellious. By examining how both of these films construct space as

cacophonous, destructive, and irrational in the face of a clearly ordered system of control, we can
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realize the possibility that not only has the dream of an easily automated future failed, but that

our constant attempts to achieve that automation have, in a way, made our lives even harder to

take back control of than before.

In depicting these failing automated futures, the worlds of ​Snowpiercer ​and ​Brazil​ clearly

borrow from established tropes of science fiction, however; the key feature of their dystopic

vision and how they correlate technology and power structures, relates to how they formally

construct space within their films to literally embody the governmental ordering of society - a

idea most strongly reinforced through both film’s use of sound effects. Take ​Snowpiercer​ for

example, a world whose class system is already visually defined through distinct “sections” of

the train with a linear progression from higher class to lower as one moves from the front to the

back. These visual distinctions are only made clear in the latter half of the movie, with all of the

beginning taking place in the back half of the train. While ​visually​ distinct from the front, the

strongest feature that defines this space is the constant noise of movement. From the first

moment we see the train on screen, a rising repetitive clunk of metal on metal permeates the

film. Throughout action and silence, rebellion and punishment - the overwhelming “ch-chunk” is

consistently present anytime the characters are located within the tail section. This space

ultimately serves as a space of internalization, with the noise so constant, so unending that it

becomes a part of who the “tail sectioners” are. Franco Berardi has written extensively on this

topic of internalization, and he specifically links it to an internalization of “political domination”.

1
As political power integrates itself with the machine, it informs and structures the way in which

we use machines as “an internalized process of linguistic modeling, logic, and cognitive

1
Franco “Bifo” Berardi, ​After the Future,​ ed. Gary Genosko and Nicholas Thoburn (Oakland: AK Press, 2011), 23.
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automatisms,” literally defining the logic and habits of individuals through their involvement

with the logic of the machine.2

This internalization of logic is, in fact, ​Snowpiercer’s​ strongest example of how the now

politicized machine orders space and the individuals in that space. As the people from the tail

section are restricted to a encapsulating automated machine, the film exposes how the

“management” of the train, through Tilda Swinton’s Minister Mason, use space to “justify” the

waste of humans for the continuing function of the train. Overpowered by sound they have no

choice to be overpowered by those in charge as well. As the tail sectioners feel themselves

consumed by the constant noise of mechanization, they are subject to the management’s literal

consumption of them. Near the end of the film, it is revealed that Wilford, the train’s esteemed

creator, has been using children from the tail section as spare parts to replace the ever dwindling

supply of mechanical parts. Coming after a silent, reflective moment of true privacy for Curtis as

he contemplates the journey he has endured, the reveal of these children’s fate is distinctly

marked by the return of the noise of the machine. Animating the scene with a temporal fervor of

juxtaposing metallic grinding, pumping, and hissing, the film definitely expresses the logic of

Wilford and Mason as they uphold a machine and system of governance that sees people as parts

of an automated machine, with no thought to their individual needs. Even as Curtis sacrifices an

arm to free a child and stop the engine, another child slips out from the wall of the engine room

to enter the machine itself - the automation of the machine transcending onto the automation of

the human, forcing them to give over their life for the sake of a functioning system. It is the

2
Franco “Bifo” Berardi, ​After the Future​ (Oakland: AK Press, 2011), 23.
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ultimate realization of Wilford’s political system, with the people themselves willingly

submitting to a process of automation due to their spatial conditioning.

Brazil​ uses a similar sense of invasive and overwhelming noise to order it’s society;

through the film’s loud, seemingly non-diegetic sound effects, the film calls attention to the

obtrusive elements of its government to both exhibit its violence and to satirize its ridiculous

inefficiency. For ​Brazil​ also correlates this type of governance with waste, specifically the waste

of bureaucracy when the seemingly ordered isn’t actually all that ordered. This can be seen in

one of the first few scenes of the film in which, due to a clerical mistake the character of

Archibald Buttle is mistaken for the rogue engineer and terrorist Archibald Tuttle. As the

military police descend on the Buttle’s ramshackle apartment, Christmas bells begin to play in

fast screaming bursts; although completely non-diegetic to the scene, they pick up on the time of

year, with the Buttle’s christmas tree knocked over in the assault, and “vectorizes” and

“dramatizes” the scene to create “a feeling of immanence”.3 The christmas bells, while almost

comical, pick up on the obtrusive elements of the setting, the endless air conditioning ducts and

bizarre technology, and reinforce the authority of its world -- a world in which the government is

always watching and always present, but also always wrong, with violence waiting around every

corner.

Both the setting and sound effects engage in an idea of retro-futurism to represent a sort

of “past’s future”, implying a sense of obsolescence and inefficiency. As the scene progresses,

the shriek of bells finally stops, giving way to the various sound effects of the military police’s

3
Michel Chion, ​Audio Vision: Sound on Screen​, ed. and trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University
Press), 13.
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weapons, almost all of which are animated by a sort of retro “zapping” foley effect more akin to

some sort of alien “ray gun” than a machine gun. Author Amy J. Elias argues that

“‘Retrofuturism’ is … a twenty-first-century historical perspective on the near past, a looking

back upon these futuristic productions of the past that sees them as quaint utopian hopes of a

future than never arrived,” with a “palpable nostalgia” for a “future that is now obsolete”.4

However, when linked to the totalitarian rule of Brazil, the nostalgia reads a lot more like

contempt and the quaint utopian hope reads as a realization of authoritarian pasts, which when

combined with the rising globalized capitalism of the 1980’s creates an outdated, obsolete

nightmare of authoritarian rule. The space around these characters is at once both watched,

catalogued, and advertised to its inhabitants, forcing them to engage in an idea of freedom

through the possible purchase of goods, but in actuality, are fed a pre-prepared and ordered

product.

Everything in ​Brazil,​ from the mistake of Buttle’s arrest to the malfunction of consumer

products, are a result of this sense of obsolete technology. The clerical error that dooms Buttle is

literally caused by a fly in the machine - in this case an automated row of typewriters

continuously printing. By adopting automated retrofuturist technology, the film raises the issue

of enforcing automation on human beings, a process like that of ​Snowpiercer​, which in​ Brazil​ is

formally constructed as obsolete and inefficient. And, as the character’s of ​Brazil ​internalize the

bizarre and inefficient ordering of their society they reflect its absurdity in interesting ways.

Some, like the character of Sam’s mother, attempt to physically change their bodies to be more

mechanical by use of plastic surgery and prosthetics, but all engage in what Berardi defines as

Amy J. Elias, “Past/Future” in ​Time Book: A Vocabulary of the Present, ​ed. Joel Burges and Amy J. Elias (New
4

York: NYU Press, 2016), 39.

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“lacking [a] competence in sensibility, the ability to empathically understand the other and

encode signs that are codified in a binary system”.5 For almost all of the character’s display some

sort of struggle when asked to empathize with another human, most of the time actively

challenging the idea that they ought to. And in a way, Sam’s questioning of the systems of power

around him is only prompted by a unexpected burgeoning desire to love and understand someone

else.

This idea of empathy is perhaps one of the major difference between these films

however, with both emphasizing empathic connection differently through surrealistic techniques.

As Sam Lowery finally meets Jill, “the woman of his dreams”, he begins to engage more in the

fantastic daydreams of flying, combat, and heroism to challenge the reality of his oppression.

These dreams however, seem to stem from the same internalization of the machine that we see in

Snowpiercer. ​As Sam is an almost fully indoctrinated member of the bureaucracy, much of the

logic of his dreams feature a sort of retrofuturist fantasy - reinterpreting the obsolete historically

referential technology of his real world into obsolete surrealistic fantasy of ornate suits of armor,

sword fighting, and outdated fantasy technologies. Sam, who is forced to grapple with “a future

[now] understood to be antithetical to reason, out of control, or operating outside of human

agency” can only combat his frustrations with an equally ridiculous imagination. These escapist

moments, at the beginning of the film are often marked by the leitmotif of the movie’s main

theme ​Aquarela do Brasil, ​but as the distinction between his daydreams and reality blend

together, the theme slowly bleeds out into other settings. This culminates at the end of the film

when, as Sam and Jill finally kiss after an argument in almost near silence, the theme explodes

5
Franco “Bifo” Berardi, ​After the Future ​(Oakland: AK Press, 2011), 24.
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into a fully realized orchestral track unlike any other iterations of the song. And as Sam engages

in this crossover of daydream and reality, he is finally inspired to take concrete action to save

Jill’s life. However, as his daydreams are merely internalized reflections of the bureaucratic

logic, he undertakes an equally bureaucratic answer, simply deleting Jill’s name from a main

government record, mirroring the bureaucratic “mistake” at the beginning of the film. Locating

his rebellion within a pre-existing system of control, he doesn’t challenge the system so much as

manipulate it to his advantage, something that ultimately fails. As the film links his “rebellious”

action to the surreality of his dreams, it references the idea that this concrete action is, in its own

way, merely escapism, with Sam prioritizing his individuality and desires over a true challenge

to the system. It is a process that, ultimately, allows the government to retain control over Sam as

its social programming negated the threat before Sam could actually do anything revolutionary.

Curtis on the other hand, engages within an empathetically inspired action outside of the

system of power, leading to an actual change of order - the complete destruction of the system.

Contrary to Sam, Curtis’ empathy emerges independently of the logic of those in control,

fostered around the idea of community that the tail sectioners developed. As he realizes the

horror of the logic of the train and the inability for change if continuously stuck in this system,

he helps blow up an outside door resulting in the train’s complete destruction. And while the

expression of Curtis’ empathy is also represented through a sense of surrealism, it is always

shown in contrast to the logic of his world. The film does this specifically by emphasizing the

physicality of Curtis’ struggle in rebellion against the entirely inhuman mechanical space around

him. Seen during one of the film’s main fight sequences, there comes a moment in which Curtis

is leading a group of tail sectioners in a battle against some soldiers from the front of the train.
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As they advance the film slows down and all noise fades away, as the camera focuses on Curtis

we hear the sound of his breath and how much he exerts while fighting. By emphasizing the

sound of human beings in conflict with the normally overwhelming sound effects of the train,

Bong centers Curtis’ drive around the idea of human beings. He is not fighting for control of the

train but for a better life for the ​people​ who live in the back. Which is why once he realizes that

goal is impossible he is able to destroy the system.

The key difference between Sam and Curtis’ actions seems to revolve around this idea of

individualism. Eager to preserve what he alone thinks he has won, Sam in ​Brazil​ is unable to see

the limits of the system around him and unwilling to sacrifice the good to upset the bad. Curtis

on the other hand, sees the finite possibilities of his future and decides to sacrifice everything to

change it. As the governments of both films seek to control their society through the

advancement of technological means and automation, both Sam and Curtis respond in

surprisingly human ways. But as both either embrace or reject the logic of their worlds dictated

by the technology that surrounds them, these films mediate the idea of reclamation of purpose

and resistance to an automated state. Of course, neither answer is predominately good, with

destruction and death a key factor of both films, but each speaks to a struggle against completely

giving up human agency to an ordered machine. While not exactly hopeful, they both provide a

critique of a system that could develop, and might already be developing, forcing us to question

what we give up in the name of automation, and whether or not it is necessary.

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Works Cited

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. ​After the Future​. Edited by Gary Genosko and Nicholas Thoburn, 15-28.

Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2011.

Chion, Michel. ​Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen.​ Edited and translated by Claudia Gorbman. New

York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Elias, Amy J. “Past/Future.” In ​Time Book: A Vocabulary of the Present. ​Edited by Joel Burges

and Amy J. Elias, 35-50. New York: NYU Press, 2016.