La Ron S. Readus
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Sabo Brok's a Victim of Late-Stage Capitalism (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2023-03-01 21:00:01 +0000 UTCThis video is sponsored by SurfShark VPN
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Readers, I want to start this video by stating an absolute fact: My Dad the Bounty Hunter absolutely slaps
Yes, I know that I sorta rhymed there, but give me a break here; I absolutely mean it.
First and foremost, the blackness... WHOO, the blackness.
Just in the first two episodes alone, the blackness of this show is SO PROMINENT
/The mannerisms, the inside jokes, the skin tones -- oh my GOD the SKINTONES -- everything about My Dad the Bounty Hunter tells me that it was made by a team of black creatives that always wanted to see themselves featured in a fun science fiction adventure story that would typically be reserved for featuring white faces/
Because My Dad the Bounty Hunter IS a fun science fiction adventure that does a great job at telling a story of a father reconnecting with his kids in a way that doesn’t give conservatives or white liberals bad faith argument fuel regarding the topics of black parenting or the absentee father stereotype
I mean, it’s not gonna STOP them from doing so, but at least it’ll be incredibly difficult to do so.
However, upon my initial watch of My Dad the Bounty Hunter, I noticed something within the show that CAN factor into a lot of the messages it successfully conveys with the struggles of Sabo Brok -- real name Terry -- and how much influence it has
And for Today's Lesson, I kinda wanna shine a light on that one aspect, which is the show's overall antagonistic force; the EHC, otherwise known as The Conglomerate...
/And how its reach over the known universe of the show, the impact it has on other individuals -- especially Terry -- and the persistent capabilities they display over the course of the show reflect a lot of the real-life examples and dangerous capabilities of late-stage capitalism. Let’s begin./
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Hey, Readers. La’Ron here. Offering you analysis and perspective on your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media
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How Bad is the EHC?
I mean, from seeing what they’re capable of in season 1, it’s pretty safe to assume that they’re pretty bad
You see, it’s easy to associate this fictional conglomerate as a parody of two of the currently most well-known real life multinational corporations of our lifetime: Disney and Amazon.
Like Amazon, we can see over the course of the season that the EHC’s reach across the universe is incredibly vast.
/Even as far as reaching Earth, a planet that’s established as being one where the majority of its population is ignorant to the fact that life outside of its planet actually exists, making it incredibly easy for certain aliens on the lam to lay low thanks to its isolation./ (How’d you even find this place? It wasn’t easy)
Now the main association the show gives the EHC to Disney is in its beginnings in entertainment with the existence of the theme park Chillaworld, but I assure you that the influence matches the same levels of comparing EHC to Amazon as the show progresses. ESPECIALLY if you’re aware of how their influence has been steadily present in multiple markets of media and entertainment lately. The Disney variables are just as prominent and I’ll be covering them later on in this video.
Like I said before; it’s easy to associate the EHC to real-life conglomerates like Disney and Amazon for these specific reasons, and they wouldn’t be wrong associations either.
/But then the plot revelation regarding the Chillas happens; that they were the prominent and intelligent native species on Chillion-5 before EHC came, forced them into slavery to mine their own precious resources and occupied their land by building an amusement park on it./
So not only have we established in one episode that the EHC is big enough across the universe in order to thrive off of militarism -- because what we initially think are just security guards for Chillaworld we later find out are the EHC’s own private military...
Colonialism by claiming foreign land as their own, and imperialism by establishing their own rules and regulations onto said foreign land in the form of the amusement park...
But the capitalism that is funneled from it is twofold.
Because while the aforementioned three policies and beliefs predate capitalism, the end result of many nations over the course of history utilizing the three in order to create their oppression megazords usually find themselves gaining capital via multiple strings of resources as a result; natural resources supplied by the land they’re invading and free labor in the form of enslaving the indigenous people, for example.
As you can imagine, gaining free labor and forcing them to excavate their own natural resources for the conglomerate is one form of capital EHC acquires. Then they gain a new source of it with the actual creation of the theme park acting as a front.
/Charging admission, selling food, toys and souvenirs, all while fooling the rest of the universe who attend the park to believe that the Chillas are an endangered species and having them be part of the branding, merchandising and even entertainment in order to keep their ACTUAL living conditions hidden from those who would raise an eyebrow. It all supplies them with an additional source of income that branches off from the main reason they invaded in the first place./
Things start falling into place when this revelation happens and you take into consideration everything that EHC represents when played out in reality.
Especially in regards to Vax, Terry’s bounty, and the eventual reveal that...
/As a previous employer of the EHC, she could no longer sit idly by and watch the conglomerate become this omnipotent force of blatant superiority, and becomes an anarcho-socialist liberator while the EHC brands her as a terrorist in response.
/Even Lisa, Terry’s daughter, after two interactions with Vax and after being subjected to the conditions the EHC put the Chillas under just like Terry and her brother Sean, is able to see that Vax isn’t the villain that the EHC paints her to be with the bounty, and that it’s actually the EHC itself.
So Why Couldn’t Terry?
Well, as you can imagine, the short answer is pretty much “Because late-stage capitalism forces you to not prioritize morals and ethics in order to try and obtain financial security.”
But, because I need this video to be a certain length, here’s the long answer
Terry’s trade of choice is bounty hunting, which -- as the show informs us -- is a gig job.
A pretty dangerous gig job, but a gig job nonetheless.
/He’s been doing this since the mid-90’s, which I assume he was in his 20’s during that time period, when he found out that aliens exist, space bounty hunters exist, and that space bounties pay WAY more than terrestrial ones./
Over the course of that period of time, Terry met and fell in love with Tess, already making a hard decision not to turn her in for the bounty on her head...
/In order to move back to Earth to start a life together thanks to it being ignorant of alien life and thusly, as mentioned earlier, off the radar of any large enterprises he usually works for./
Then, with the decision to start a family, Terry began to make some pretty harsh choices.
He broke off his partnership with Glorlox -- the one who introduced him to bounty hunting in space in the first place.
/And while we see over the course of the show that Glorlox is still pretty hurt about Terry’s decision years later, it isn’t really hard to put together that the reason for Terry’s decision was that splitting bounties with Glorlox wasn’t gonna cut it anymore./
The same can also be said regarding why Terry treated pretty much every job with the highest priority after he and Tess settled down, whether they were assigned by EHC or not.
/And in doing so, he sacrificed his relationship with Tess, and forming a relationship with his kids for the sake of providing for them when all any of them wanted was for him to be there/
The unfortunate reality of My Dad the Bounty Hunter is that late-stage capitalism affects the universe of the show just as much as it affects real-world United States. The mentality of having to sacrifice life and cherishing it with your loved ones in order to PROVIDE for your loved ones in this endless circle of capitalistic perpetuation is how a lot of us justify sticking with the program, even if we’re doing something we actually enjoy doing.
/That’s why he reacted the way he reacted when he caught Lisa helping Vax liberate the Chillas, despite witnessing them being used for slave labor by the same company he accepted the bounty for. He’s not being a bounty hunter because he finds fulfillment in it anymore, he's being a bounty hunter because it provides for his family and keeps them from being homeless./ (Everything is thanks to this job)
Maybe if things that reflected basic human or humanoid rights were applied to he and his family’s life -- like healthcare, housing, education. Hell, even a universal basic income thrown in for good measure -- then Terry could afford to be more liberal with the jobs he takes on and allow his own morals and ethics to take the wheel
/But because of how late-stage capitalism is set up -- both in real life and in the world of My Dad the Bounty Hunter -- he doesn’t have that luxury. And because he doesn’t have that luxury, he has it ingrained in him to be more willing to cut people off and turn a blind eye to a lot of messed up stuff in order to take any and every job that comes his way. Even ones from shady space lizard people appropriately wearing the skin of a shady white business man representing the richest -- yet shadiest -- conglomerate business in the universe./
One where, as the show has gone on to display...
They Won’t Take “No” For An Answer.
Remember, Readers. Despite being a bounty hunter, Terry is an independent contractor.
His income solely comes from taking jobs from multiple individuals, organizations and companies across the universe that are willing to pay money for him to capture the likes of criminals, fugitives and wanted individuals.
This free market of being able to take jobs like this from a wide array of individuals -- not just one corporation that has multiple monopolies under its belt -- is what society tries to sell you as an ideal for capitalism regarding why it should be supported.
However, it doesn’t work the way they try to sell it to you when late-stage capitalism allows for all of this healthy competition to be bought up, redistributed and -- most of the time -- shut down by a competitor that wants as many fingers in the cookie jar as possible.
Because circling back to just how dangerous the EHC are in the world of My Dad the Bounty Hunter, that’s exactly what they are and represent. Even before we learned about their military might, or that they have experience in colonization, we knew them as one of Terry’s biggest paying clients to date.
/We knew that they were persistent (pause), ignored personal boundaries (pause), and were absolutely confident that they would successfully persuade him to hunt Vax for them with a ridiculous sum of money, using motivators that put him down this trajectory in the first place to solidify them getting their way./ (Y’all got some nerve doing me like this. So is that a yes?)
Because just like I stated in my video on Glass Onion, capitalism -- especially when dealing with a conglomerate as huge as the EHC as it's shown in My Dad the Bounty Hunter -- is about control. Not just in regards to the market, but in the decisions and machinations of others.
/How assertive they were in getting Terry to take the job thanks to watching how efficient he is with other clients of his in the past is one example./
/Another one is in relation to the bounty, and how quickly EHC was willing to renege on the offer they gave Terry when Glorlox turns in the bounty instead, merely offering him and his crew fifteen percent of what they were originally gonna pay Terry./ (...we could have negotiated better compensation)
Then we apply the fact that the EHC are, in fact, capitalists that have roots in militarism, imperialism and colonialism, and just how powerful they’ve proven to be across the show’s known universe because of it.
We take into consideration that not only have they more than likely bought out complete businesses and companies, but have forced entire species into slave labor on their own planet while they utilize it how they see fit via conquest.
Knowing how late-stage capitalism and the formation of monopolies work, throwing their money and status around to get Terry to cooperate is pretty normal.
/What’s ALSO normal is them buying up all the competition or finding ways to get said competition to retract their bounty offers so that Terry would have no choice BUT to use the EHC as now his only source for bounty hunting gigs, and threaten to blackball him out of his career if he decided to stick to his guns./ (we’ll keep in touch)
These are the things that are already within the realm of possibility with corporations and conglomerates in real life. So after seeing how the EHC was represented in My Dad the Bounty Hunter, these “what if’s” honestly aren’t out of the realm of possibility.
/Especially since, thanks to the season finale, the EHC has shown us that they clearly have the power to make the lives of Terry and his family a living hell in multiple ways than the one that would force them into subservience./ (you couldn’t just take the money)
Conclusion
Readers, if you have to sit down and wonder if the true problem with how we as a society have come to function -- regardless of ethnicity and class -- is because of late-stage capitalism, it’s more than likely late-stage capitalism.
Because while My Dad the Bounty Hunter has shown that it even has the potential to exist in space and how it can mirror and amplify a lot of how its affected us in real life here on Earth, it also shows how much its affected our lives, relationships, and perspectives on things just for the sake of survival
So it leaves us to make the important decision to either continue playing its game, or deviate from it in an attempt to right the wrongs it caused and hope to create something better. Something that allows you to properly spend time with your family instead of sacrificing your morals and ethics in an attempt to just SUPPORT your family. Y’know, more in the direction of the future of Star Trek than the future of Blade Runner.
/Just know that when you do, be prepared for late-stage capitalism to paint a huge target on your back/
But I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what you thought of My Dad the Bounty Hunter if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, a film or television show you’ve seen that you believe did a great job showing off the effects late-stage capitalism has on members of the working class
Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts
/A HUGE shoutout to my Patrons both big and small for helping make this channel possible.
Make sure you check out the card at the end of the video to join, or click the link to it or any of my affiliates in the description box below.
But until then, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed./
