I’ve noticed a trend – a real incarnation of the soothsaying visionaries of Hollywood’s yesteryear. Not Light Sabers (disappointingly yet) or particle transportation (when will we actually get this for goodness sake?)… Instead, cast yourselves (or your IMDB research if you’re < 30ish) back to 1981.
The central theme to this post is a classic, videotape movie – ‘Scanners’. In this B-list horror flick, 273 of the 4 billion humans on Earth were adorned with super telepathic-type powers – able to hear the thoughts of others around them. Sounds cool to a teenager; many mischievous ideas crossed my mind at the time, and I thought it might be an even cooler power than being invisible at one stage.
However, as the director (David Cronenberg, apparently) helped us look deeper – like most super-‘hero’ stories, this was not a great weapon that was without its baggage… In fact, the gifted ones were tragically cursed. They couldn’t get the ‘noise’ out of their heads!!
Some tried drilling into their own heads, which was a little bit stupid, let’s be honest. Gift? Curse? Better than being invisible? The real problem was the indiscriminant volume of data they were exposed to; they couldn’t filter or make use of it in any meaningful way. It completely consumed their consciousness and drove them to complete distraction, and eventually madness! So much noise, so little useful information.
Having taken inspiration from this film, lately I have turned Scanner. Not, like a really powerful one, just entry-level really.
