Explore the world in which Qin Shi Huang’s desire for immortality is realized in the film In Time, and analyze how this society exposes the problems of materialism and dehumanizing systems.
Emperor Qin Shi Huang was the first to unify China, and while he was an absolute ruler who wielded powerful kingship during his reign, he was also afraid of his own mortality. Even his vast empire and unlimited power were powerless in the face of death. Therefore, Qin Shi Huang wanted to avoid death somehow, and this desire led to the mythical concept of immortality. In order to make the legendary world of the gods a reality, he issued the following command to Xu Shi
I will give you three thousand young boys and girls and many treasures, and you will go to the island in the East Sea where the gods live and bring back the herbs and pills of the immortal who will never die.
Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who had everything in the world, longed for immortality. The world of the movie In Time is a world where the technology of immortality has been realized. In this world, one’s lifespan, or time, is used as currency. Genetic manipulation has made it possible to stop growing old at 25, and people can live as long as they have, but if they use up all their time, they die of a heart attack. So the rich live forever, never growing old and having fun, while the poor live a day-to-day life, working a day to earn a day’s worth of time. The rich live in a separate area called the Time Zone, where they can only enter if they pay, and the poor can’t even afford to enter. It’s an absurd world where many people live in time and die of heart attacks on the streets so that the few rich people in the time zone can live forever.
In the movie, the protagonist rebels against this world and destroys this inhumane system by stealing time from the rich and giving it to the poor. The plot of stealing from the haves and giving to the have-nots, like Robin Hood, is clichéd and unrelatable, but this unique worldview intrigued me. The society that has developed the seemingly impossible technology of immortality seems to be a much more advanced world, but in reality, there are many dehumanizing elements and the social system has degenerated. The wealthy live for generations without growing old, spending their time in luxury, but using their long lives to buy time again. This wealth is inherited and their children are also guaranteed a long life. Because of their long life, they forget the importance of life and just live without doing anything.
The poor, on the other hand, spend their days just trying to survive, and if something goes wrong, they die of a heart attack in the street. The poor live without hope, just to live, and are unilaterally sacrificed for the eternal life of the rich. Their lack of time causes them to steal and rob each other’s time. How can the world have changed so much when money has simply been replaced by time? This question reminds me of the changes in the world after the Industrial Revolution. The world has changed dramatically since the Industrial Revolution. Wealth, food, scientific knowledge, longevity, and much more have increased, and we live lives that people of the past could never have imagined. Even the middle class in our society is better served and lives more luxuriously than the nobility of the Middle Ages.
But not everything has been progressive. As the saying goes, materialism is now deeply embedded in our lives. We often see situations where money and material goods are valued above human rights and human dignity. Crimes committed for money have become commonplace in the news. However, time is the ultimate value that everyone craves, just as the ruler of the world, Emperor Qin Shi Huang, gave everything for immortality. In a world where ‘time’ has become a currency, could materialism become even more intense?
After the French Revolution in 1789, class society gradually disappeared and was replaced by civil society. Since then, it has continued to evolve and become a meritocratic society that seeks to give equal opportunities to everyone, and if you have the ability, you can get a high position. People were no longer judged by who their fathers were and what they wore, but by what problems they could solve and what values they held. However, the society in In Time seems to have gone backwards in time. In this society, people’s lives are largely determined by who they are born to. If you’re born into poverty, you’re not even given the opportunity to rise to a higher status because you can barely survive on a day’s wages. It’s like the aristocracy of the Middle Ages, with a firmly established class divide.
The time zone in the movie also feels like a class line that separates the nobility from the slaves. In such a society, the main character, Neil Capri, came from the lowest class, the poor, and rebelled against and destroyed the system in the movie. Just as it took several revolutions and a lot of blood to become the capitalist society we are today, Neil Capri’s revolution in the movie was a step in the evolution. The inhuman system in “In Time” is expected to change into something more wonderful in the future.
Even when we get the great science and technology we want, it may not always be used for good. However, I believe that humans have the power to make it right. Just as the system in the movie was destroyed, in real life we have the ability to improve irrational and inhumane systems. The question of how to reconcile technological advancement with human morality will continue to be an important challenge in the future.
I’m a blog writer. I want to write articles that touch people’s hearts. I love Coca-Cola, coffee, reading and traveling. I hope you find happiness through my writing.