COSMOPOLIS


The future is what?

c. 2000 AD

Eric Packer is a billionaire. And he needs a haircut. White limousines lined up outside like prom night. Eric’s is unique—outfitted with numerous touch-screen displays, information streams constantly. His bodyguard receives information and shares imminent threats, traffic updates. Eric is visited by his chiefs of finance, of theory, suddenly summoned to the limousine where information flows freely.

Sex is what? Sex is pleasure now. Elise Shifrin, international banking heiress and Eric’s wife of two or three weeks, doesn’t want it. She doesn’t visit the limousine. He finds her in a bookstore, outside of a theater. They go for lunch, to eat and talk. Sex finds Eric because it needs to. He smells like the sex he wants to have with Elise but finds instead in an old flame, a bodyguard, and something like it with his chief of finance.

Money is what? A rat becomes the unit of currency. The anarchist protests outside? “This is the free market itself. These people are a fantasy generated by the market. They don’t exist outside the market.” In an alarming anticipation of the financial crisis and Occupy movement, Eric Packer’s limousine crawls through a massive public protest. Unfortunately, we get no sense of drama in the soundproof interior. The vehicle rocks a bit and its exterior gets a makeover, but the tension between public sentiment and the exclusive, insular world of Eric Packer is unresolved.

This is a book, by Don DeLillo. Published in 2003. Cosmopolis is a place where terminology and technology fight for legitimacy. Cosmopolis is the pursuit of predictable patterns. It is the fear of unintelligibility. Eric Packer is a man who is too young to understand his billions and too indifferent to care. He is not a particularly realistic character, although at times he bears resemblance to the unsympathetic banking CEO’s of our financial crisis. One particularly humanizing act of spite, in which he squanders his wife’s fortune because he doesn’t want it to burden her, is regrettably left out of the film. This is a movie, by David Cronenberg. Released in 2012. Eric Packer doesn’t really want a haircut. His expressionless gaze is not cool and knowing, but bored. Eric Packer is robotic and impassive, even when his life is threatened. His existence is based on amassing wealth and art objects (he is looking into buying the Rothko Chapel). If Eric Packer is the future, be afraid.

Cosmopolis is out now.

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