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A Frozen Allegory - 1001 Cars Long.

Rooted in socio economic division, modern classes are no longer able to see past their own polarized calcified ideologies as we stand seemingly worlds apart while around us unprecedented changes in our environment threaten our once thriving existence. Within a frozen microcosm Graeme Mansion’s multi-seasonal series Snowpiercer seeks to comment the greater consequences of weaponized inequality, privilege-induced ignorance, congestive dissonance and collective trauma. This chilling allegory illustrates the complexity of revolution and challenges the viewer through visceral storytelling to strive for empathy. Stories like this one are vital to remind us that we are not alone, that change is possible and that we stand stronger together against the titans we face. 

The Stage:

Plunged into an ice age by their efforts to cool the planet’s temperature, the earth can no longer sustain life. Billionaire entrepreneur Joseph Wilford seizes this opportunity by creating Noah’s Ark. Snowpiercer - an engineering miracle, 1001 cars long. Wilford’s perpetual engine will circle the globe providing a perfect ecosystem for food, recreation and life … giving him dominion as God. Seeing the tyrannical future ahead, his lead engineer Melanie abandons him track-side and seizes control of the engine unbeknownst to those on board. While in the pandemonium 400 un-ticketed souls fought their way into the cargo hold to escape certain death. 

Like many leaders, while Melanie aims to create a better future for those aboard, but the complexity of her role combined with the temptation to assert control through more authoritarian means leads her to warp many of her principles. As her systems break down, Melanie is forced to examine what comfort had wrought and ask herself if the system can be saved without tearing it down. (Starter, 2023)

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“The First Lesson of Civilization is that of Obedience”

When Melanie seizes the train, her intentions are altruistic. Like many leaders she walks a tightrope of utilitarian and pragmatic ideals as she balances resource management and order. In this way, Melanie embodies Max Webber’s definition of an ideal bureaucrat by way of remaining loyal to the goals of the “neutral pursuit organization’s objectives” (Simmons, 1999) deriving her status be her satisfactory performance within her role. However Melanie becomes corrupted through her own deception, that Wilford is still in command. To maintain order, she acts as the voice of the train as their benefactor has not been seen since departure. She convinces everyone that he resides in the engine room too busy running the train itself, thus working through her to enact his will. Through this deception, Melanie suburbs to authoritarian tendencies fostering human rights violations that she views as necessary to maintain balance. Early in the series there is a rebellion from the Tailies. Marginalized and oppressed, they live shoulder to shoulder in the last few cars, used as manual labor having survived episodes of cannibalism in response to food scarcity. When Melanie learns of their efforts to escape, she tasks her fellow hospitality member Ruth, with “taking a significant arm”. To this point Ruth selects a child who participated in the conflict, and sentences her to their form of capital punishment. There is an outcry from the child’s mother, who offers up herself as tribute. Her arm is placed out a port-hole exposing the limb to  the -117 degree temperature. The frozen arm is then shattered to show the power of authority. To Melanie sees this as necessary evil, but to the Tailies (and the viewer) this is a crime against humanity. While over-exemplified for impact, these plot points serve to show how positions of power are subject to corruption even in the most altruistic individuals and that we are often blind to those hurt by them. Melanie has never been a Tailie, she has never fought to survive and as such she cannot understand the motivations of those marginalized. As such she views them with condensation. Today, CEO’s and political department heads have never toiled against the great machine they build and maintain. As such, their removal from the reality they impose creates dissonance. That dissonance often manifests itself in cruel consequence for those beneath them and their own condensation of these individuals perpetuates the cycle. 

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One Rule for Me and …….

When there is a murder on the train the only detective on the train, a tailie named Layton, is appointed by Melanie to investigate. She believes his existence apart from the corruption on the classes above will give him the best chance of exposing the truth. Through this a partnership is born by which she is forced to confront her own biases. It is determined that a first-class girl named Lyla has committed the murder for pleasure and furthermore has used her status and influence to frame a third-class woman who has subsequently been punished by equally as brutal measure for the crime. Melanie convenes a trial to show that no-one should be above the law, setting a new precedent for equality on Snowpiercer. In a particularly emotional scene, Ms. Audrey (the mistress of the 2nd class night car) is called to the stand where she draws a raw comparison of how the first class see the woman paying for Lyla’s crime and why they need to care.

“Her name was Nicolette Genêt... Nikki. She sang off-key, and she was kind as a rule, but few of you care up here. To you, she's just some dead girl from downtrain. Well, you need to care about the lives of Third, because seven days a week, three shifts a day, we keep the bearings greased and the cold at bay. We draw straws to have children, and we die from preventible accidents and diseases you get treatment for. I haven't come to this place easily. When we left Chicago, we needed Mr. Wilford's iron order to survive, but almost 19 revolutions later... seven years, I know all of you, and I know we need to save our souls. Find your compassion. Send a message to this entire train that justice is not reserved for the rich. There can be justice for all, for Nikki.”

Audrey illustrates that having rules for some is the very definition of inequality and by allowing Lyla to escape responsibility based on her status, we cannot claim that we live in anything but a monarchy. Lyla is found guilty, renewing hope for systems where justice is blind to socioeconomic class. In this arc, Mason simultaneously comments on affluenza as a defense and challenges the viewer to consider how our point of view affects how we consider others.

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One man’s Paradise, Is another man’s Wasteland

Snowpiercer also shows us that “growth leads to the increased consumption of natural resources, pollution, and loss of biodiversity and simultaneously widens the income gap between the wealthy and the poor.” (Polluck, 2020) leading to the repeat of the very circumstances that led to the fictional environmental predicament that led to its creation. While the rich passengers enjoy the fruits of the train’s many marvels, resource management disproportionately deprives access of these same amenities to the rest of the train’s population.  (St James, 2014. Norrie, 2023) The third-class maintenance workers not unlike today’s servant economies of the industrialized world life shoulder to shoulder and suffer the sinister consequences of resource management. All too often, living in our western industrialized paradise … getting our Starbucks Lattes and buying the latest trends … we don’t consider the environmental consequences of our rate of consumption or the lives of those affording us these luxuries. Like the third-class characters, factory workers in India live stacked in hovel neighborhoods and wash their clothes in the run-off of the factories they work in. But we do not often consider their lives or the implications of progress when we praise our own “perpetual engine”.

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Can Angry Optimism also be Hope?

Dystopian stories are equal measure fantasy and cynical satire. They often give us glamorous worlds, complex stories and mind-bending CG. But like the adult targeted humor in Disney movies, they aim to wrap more serious questions in their bright colored wrapping and let us think about them on Christmas morning.

While Snowpiercer asks us difficult questions about morality and equality it also fosters hope. It reminds us that even if we are the once proud leader given to the temptation of authoritarianism, or those stripped of agency at the mercy of what seems to be an insurmountable power … we can all chose a different path if we are open to self-reflection and collaboration. “It’s a charge to tell incisive stories of politics and the threats of our day, but at the same time to never lose track of the fact that it’s an action-adventure story that holds out hope for a better future for humanity.” (Hammer, 2020).

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Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. “On Violence” Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/hannah-arendt-on-violence-harcourt-brace-jovanovich-1969.pdf. Accessed 1970.        

Hamner, Everett. “The Tevlevison is the Night Car, and Interview with Graeme Manson About Snowpiercer” Los Angeles Review of Books https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/television-night-car-interview-graeme-manson-snowpiercer/. Accessed 25 July 2020.

Polluck, Lauren, Leichenko, Robin, and Julie A. Silva. “Climate Change and Poverty: Vulnerability, Impacts, and Alleviation Strategies: Climate Change and Poverty.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, vol. 5, no. 4, July 2014, pp. 539–56. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.1002/wcc.287. https://pitjournal.unc.edu/2022/12/24/how-capitalism-is-a-driving-force-of-climate-change/.

  

St-James, Emily. “Sci-fi Movie Snowpiercer is one of the most political films of the year”  Vox, https://www.vox.com/2014/7/7/5875835/sci-fi-movie-snowpiercer-is-one-of-the-most-political-films-of-the. Accessed 7 July 2014.

James, Adam and Nina Starner. “The ending of Snowpiercer Explained”  Looper, 

https://www.looper.com/108629/ending-snowpiercer-explained/. Accessed 6 March 2023.

Norrie, Doug. “The Dystopian Sci-fi on Netflix takes Climate Change to a Terrifying Extreme”  Giant Freakin Robot, https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/snowpiercer-netflix.html/. Accessed 9 October 2023.