"OUR STEAM LOCOMOTIVE, FLY AHEAD...": THE POST-APOCALYPTIC "MACHINERY" OF THE LINEAR SOCIAL HIERARCHY IN THE FILM " SNOWPIERCER"

Abstract

The article analyzes the artistic model of director Bong Joon-ho, presented in the film "Snowpiercer" (2013). The film in the spirit of a classic post-apocalypse tells the story of the fate of humanity, which barely survived as a result of ill-considered experiments of scientists with climate change. The surviving remnants of humanity find themselves eternal prisoners of a train, which is forced to continuously move along a forever frozen planet. Train-society represents the quintessence of experiments of scientists, politicians, businessmen and the military, in which the ideas of the most terrible totalitarian experiments of the past are embodied. The film visualizes a transformed social hierarchy within which the traditional vertical subordination is transformed into a system of horizontal wagons-concentration camps. This is how the diversity of socio-professional levels is fixed, which is purposefully localized and controlled with the help of cruel militaristic practices. The key role in maintaining the effective functioning of the train society is played by the "tail-head" communication system, which ensures the implementation of the principle of controlled and monitored chaos in the entire composition. This system gives the necessary dynamism to the entire train society, simultaneously regulates the optimal population size and ensures the permanent rotation of all social levels in order to find potential leaders. The density and isolation of social groups in the train society fundamentally change the traditional methods of bodily communication and become the basis for the formation of a new, catastrophic model of biopolitical management of post-apocalyptic societies.