Sleep Dealer Response

The movie, Sleep Dealer, is a foreign film, but the language spoken in the movie is Spanish. This makes me believe that the specific audience for this movie is the Latino population. However, it was released in multiple countries including the U.S., France, Japan, and other countries. The main audience was definitely for all nationalities, but the country of origin of this film is the United States. Since the film takes place in the United States/Mexican border, it makes sense that the film targeted the Latino population in both countries especially since it brought up the issue of immigration in the United States. Since Sleep Dealer is a Sci-Fi movie, it was also geared toward those with an interest in Sci-Fi. A futuristic dystopian Mexico is depicted in the movie where there is new technological developments such as the nodes. Typically, Sci-Fi is an audience-specific genre that targets a unique audience.

The main idea that the director, Alex Rivera, wanted to get across is identity and connections or rather disconnections due to technology. Memo the main character is having an identity crisis in his home town. He doesn’t know who he is there on the Santa Ana farm and wants to get away from Santa Ana. After his father is killed, he struggles with the realization that his satellite was the reason his father was killed. He doesn’t know what to do and how to face his family, so he tries to reinvent himself in Tijuana where his dreams are supposed to come true from everything he has heard from his satellite. Again he has another crisis in his identity when the nodes/job doesn’t give him the satisfaction that he though, instead it drains his energy. The only happiness is the women in his life, Luz Martinez. Even that falls apart when Memo figures out that Luz had an ulterior motive to befriending him. Another main idea that Rivera tries to get across is the barriers due to the advancements of technology. We see how the technology causes a disconnection between people and the company and migrant workers. The first instance was the gate/fence that Memo and his father have to pay to get access to water. They talk to a robot that has a train machine gun and camera pointed at them. When they increased the price of the water, Memo’s father could not reason and present his disagreements. Another example is the wall between the border of Mexico and the United States. In this future Mexico, there is a wall put up that doesn’t allow anybody from Mexico to cross over without a good reason. The only way for people in Mexico to “get jobs in America” is to work in node factories, where they control robots doing their actual jobs in America. Again, technology has resulted in a disconnect between two countries and people. However, the truNode memory/story allowed for the Rudy Ramirez to find Memo in Tijuana. It allowed two strangers to connect which was a small benefit in the capitalism of technology in the future. Also, Rudy uses the technology against the water capitalist who built the dam in Santa Ana. He blows a hole in the dam, so everybody has free and equal access to water. At the end, Memo says that he can never return to who he was, maybe because of the nodes and barriers of technology, but he can create a future for himself. The technology may open opportunities for connectivity, but promotes a barrier and border for communication.

The goal for this movie is create a Sci-Fi movie that depicted a futuristic world that is connected by technology, but also divided by borders. Alex Rivera was inspired by the dream of a ‘Global Village’ that is on the Internet. Technology is very useful for connections, but a side effect is decreased communication. This world is like “perfect” world that people are striving for now, but it has gone horribly wrong. Rivera wanted to add real day imminent problems like the drone strikes, outsourcing of jobs, global water crisis and immigrations issues into the movie. Rivera said on his website, “In any science fiction film, you always have at least two ‘stars’—the main character of the film, and the futuristic world itself”. Rivera wanted the main character to actually be an outsider because many sci-fi films do not have main characters that are truly “outsiders”. Since this was Alex Rivera’s first film, I don’t think he had an exact goal in mind other to bring a sci-fi movie into place that addressed many issues of the barriers of technology and real life issues.

At first, I was very confused with the concept of the movie. I didn’t know what I was going into, so I had no idea what to expect. The flashes of the man connected into his nodes with the blue contacts were what mainly confused me. To be honest, I didn’t enjoy the plot or storyline because I thought too many paths were trying to connect together, but just made it confusing. One thing I enjoyed was the use of present day issues that were incorporated into a sci-fi world. However, I like how it shows how if we don’t address these present day issues now, the movie shows what could be our future. Although, I don’t have many experiences that I can relate, but I understand the desire to escape your present day expectation. As a child of parents with high expectations for their child, I understand the desire to have your own passions.

A question: How did the machines behind the fence, border wall work? Was there any physical person working behind the machines, because if the rules were violated then the violator could be gunned down? If this occurred, who decided whether they were a threat and needed to be killed?