Bong Joon-ho’s film Snowpiercer based on Jacques Lob’s post-apocalyptic French novel, Le Transperceneige follows Curtis Everett, a lower-class man or a “tailee” leading a revolution against an unyielding ideological regime. The year is 2031, 19 years after a man-made chemical catastrophe plunged the earth into a seemingly everlasting ice age. Humanity’s last survivors now reside in Snowpiercer, a biblical arc-like locomotive. Circumnavigating the frozen earth, the train offers a microscopic view of our own society. Bong Joon-Ho strategically uses dark humor, action, and Marxist concepts of hegemony and interpellation to highlight the train’s neoliberalism. While the movie manages to condense these elements into 2 hours, the series (available on Netflix) released in May 2020 goes deep into these aspects through 3 ongoing seasons.
While the movie digs deep into ideological indoctrination and magnifies real-world tactics used to indoctrinate people, what sets the series apart is the human essence brought in by the protagonist Layton. It might seem that three ongoing seasons is stretching it, but the development of the characters throughout the episodes gets one hooked. It is not all about power, but also about responsibility, civic duty, and the existence of the last of mankind. Perhaps, the most heartwarming character development is that of Melanie Cavill, who keeps the train in order for the longest time till the uprising of the Tailees, the lower class of the train.
In the movie, other than the evident themes of social stratification and unequal distribution of resources, Snowpiercer’s social structure depends on a legally accepted ruling ideology. This ideological structure is strongly reinforced in the train’s second in command, Minister Mason’s “This is not a shoe” speech. As she talks about the significance of a capitalist order, Mason acts as a part of the political-ideological state apparatus. She ritualistically emphasizes Snowpiercer’s ruling class ideology: “We must, each of us, occupy our preordained particular position”. She elaborates how throwing off the shoe is more than an act but a signifier of disorder, chaos, and death, and consequently, a threat to their survival. The speech becomes more forceful as the screams of the shoe-thrower being amputated as punishment echo through Mason’s words.
Essentially, for humanity’s sake, order needed to be maintained through the subjugation of the Tailees.
Snowpiercer’s ideological indoctrination occurs through several institutions. In the film, the poor are subdued by the higher authority through violent acts and religious proclamations. “The Eternal Engine is sacred, Mr. Wilford is divine. So it is.” is repeated like a mantra to shape their worldview. The phrase “So it is,” strengthens the ideological stronghold and further preaches that this is how it was all destined to be. In the series, although the ideological indoctrination is not as evident, there is still a blind a belief in Wilford’s eternal and almost divine perpetuity. Although the passengers never see Wilford, they never once question his existence for a while.
It is not until the Tailees rebel that the ideological and power dichotomy is exposed.
Just as churches held the dominant political and social position in medieval Europe, Wilford and his engine bear the same weight. The dominant ideology as well as Mason’s speech in the movie apotheosized Wilford and his engine with phrases bearing religious connotations— “eternal order”, “sacred engine”. Mason’s diction gives her a religious impact as well, similar to that of a pastor. Her phrasing also shares similarities with the Book of Genesis. By evoking religious images, Mason preaches the divinity of the dominant ideology.
This dominant ideology is taught to children through child-friendly songs and religious parables in the train’s schooling system. In the movie, when the tailees reach the school-car, the children remain indifferent. A young girl proclaims, “I heard all tail-sectioners were lazy dogs who slept all day in their own shit”, indicating that the students are taught to internalize degrading stereotypes about the tailees. This teaching further distances the tailees from the first-class passengers making them appear more degenerate.
These two ideological institutions unite when the engine is referred to as “eternal” in the songs taught to children, instilling Wilford’s worldview and divinity in them at a young age.
The children internalize these messages of “the prophetic mister Wilson” and begin to view him as a prophet whose followers, the train’s passengers, are “the chosen”.
This image is similar to how the Israelites are referred to by God in Deuteronomy 14-2: “Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession”.
In both the movie and series, Snowpiercer’s bourgeoisie can luxuriously survive only due to the Tailee’s subjugation, which is natural to them. The superstructure, the first-class, rests on top of the base, the lower classes i.e the unity of productive forces and the relations of production. This superstructure would collapse if the base were to inflate or revolt, which it does in the series. At its core, the ideology is developed by the dominant class and, in this case, by Wilford and maintained by Melanie, to secure their self-serving ideology and to maintain order respectively. In light of the hegemony discourse, although the tailee rebellion indicates a lack of consent to be ruled, the movie’s leader of the Tailees, Gilliam, knowingly consents to Wilford and orchestrates the entire revolution. In Wilford’s perception, the rebellion ascribes to the hegemony of the “Sacred Engine” and that everyone has a “preordained particular position” including the tailees, to maintain the train’s order. The film’s motif of “Everyone has their place” is again reinforced by incorporating a rebellion into the ideological system and thus, rendering it obsolete and revealing Snowpiercer’s neoliberal ideology.
Snowpiercer’s internal mechanism is a mirror image of the ideological structure which sustains our society. The culture of violence and subjugation developed to serve the ruling class exhibits today’s standards of beauty, morality, higher education etc. existing to elevate the upper class while distancing the lower classes even more.
Despite the fictional and dystopian setting of the film, Snowpiercer is a cautionary tale of what our capitalist society actually entails.
