Strange Days: Living Through the Apocalypse

In 1986, the now-perhaps mystical writer Alan Moore proposed a comic book to DC that would never see any creative fruition beyond his twenty-five page proposal dubbed “Twilight of the Superheroes.” In attempting to create a scenario where superheroes from all forgotten corners of the comic store could beat each other a pulp, Moore expressed the desire to create a dystopia that stands in contrast to those popular at the time, explicitly saying he wanted to avoid the “sort of nuke-blighted future that has been a feature of Dark Knight, Watchmen, Ronin and a lot of other futures presented in comic books and other media, like the Road Warrior films and their ilk.”  He prophetically suggests a society that, “having lived through the terror of a nuclear armageddon that seemed inevitable at the time, has found it itself with the equally inconceivable and terrifying notion that there might not be an apocalypse.” Going on to cite popular futurologist Alvin Tolffer, he set his ambitions for the comic to show a twenty-first century “in a constant state of flux and chaos for those living through it;” an apocalypse with no definition or timeline, and no “convenient mushroom cloud,” as Moore put it, to put an end to everything, even our own responsibility to fix the social issues we have ignored for so long.

     As our post-industrial society continues to survive the mystical predictions of its end, such as Y2K or 2012, and very real catastrophes, such as the recent global pandemic, Moore’s brief description of a perpetual apocalypse seems more accurate every year. Yet, the sudden epic end of society, i.e the nuclear bomb or the zombie horde that sends us into the “post-apocalypse” has been one of the most popular modes of fiction in my lifetime. We have all been conscripted as cinema-goers to witness the waves of content that are primarily concerned with creating sandboxes of isolation and lawlessness catalyzed by catastrophe. No doubt attempts to bring characters back into the pre-industrial freedoms of the gunslinging west, these works avoid having plots that deal with solving the current issues that make our lives worse. These stories rather approach human concerns on a smaller scale and with a broader understanding, using metaphors to tell more vague stories of basic human survival, the forming of small communities, and the tribal fear of the outside. However, it seems a possibility that, for as much we not-so-secretly want it, the zombie, nuclear, or even total climate collapse of society won't happen. We might be here to stay, and to suffer. 

     Moore hopped on this train of thought in the mid-'80s, and I can only imagine the headache-inducing disappointment he had to have experienced in the '90s and 2000s, with films as literally titled as Micheal Bay’s Armageddon refusing to retire what he called “cliche” nearly fifteen years earlier. We can only hope that, on one of those odd nights where Moore decided to go to the movies, he ignored the middling reviews and reports of total box office devastation and bought a ticket for Kathryn Bigelow’s tech-noir flop Strange Days. While there are doubtless many aspects of Strange Days that Moore would not enjoy, I’m almost positive that he would appreciate the vision of the upcoming shift of millenia depicted within it, or at least notice the proximity it has to the sort of perpetual apocalypse he predicted in his proposal to DC. 

     Strange Days began as simply another module idea from the James Cameron himself, who was hot off Terminator and heading straight into Aliens with only a few pages of notes being jotted down in 1985 about a thriller involving a technology that would allow characters to relive their own or others memories. There was no reported work on the story again until early ‘91, when Cameron was filming pickup shots for Terminator 2 at a bar in the San Fernando Valley. Amateur cameraman George Holliday had been attempting to capture bootleg behind-the-scenes footage of Terminator 2 at this time, which led him one night to filming the LAPD senselessly beating a Black man named Rodney King. Turning in the footage to local news, the public outrage would result in the now infamous riots that haunt Los Angeles to this day. Inspired by this series of connections, Cameron pitched the Strange Days concept to his frequent collaborator and ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow. Perhaps their most collaborative work, they took the skeletal idea and turned it into a unique and modern Hickcock-ian fantasia, with less emphasis on Cameron’s typical hard sci-fi and more on the social issues that plagued the city: police brutality, rioting, rape, drug abuse, and even music industry corruption. 

     Set on New Years Eve 1999, the film follows Ralph Fiennes as Lenny Nero, who illegally peddles floppy disks, known as “clips,” stored with recorded memories that can be re-experienced through an apparatus known as “SQUID.” These memories are brought to life cinematically with POV sequences, apparently inspired by the video game DOOM, and they have a viscerality that feels like modern first person video games, or even pornography. From the cold open POV bank heist memory that Lenny is reviewing for future sale to the stripper threesome Lenny films and then sells back to the world with the SQUID technology, Strange Days immediately sets itself up as another James Cameron technical spectacle. But as Lenny is pulled from his “clip” dealing business into the deeper corruption of the city, it's Bigelow’s personal sensibilities that shine through and give the film its impact. With Cameron taking a step back to a producer’s role, Bigelow’s direction brings this ten year vision alive with her trademark action and docu-fiction intensity. In the first twenty minutes of the film, we are taken with Lenny on his dealing route through downtown LA, and we glide through images of prostitutes, riots, sidewalk fires, and police chasing down civilians, all seen through mounted shots from Lenny’s car. Shooting during the tension of the OJ Simpson murder case, Bigelow sets us in the LA of her present, the LA of her past, and the LA of the future all at once. Over Lenny’s radio we hear citizens debate what Y2K will emerge as, but it seems for many in LA, their world has already ended.   

     The core mystery sparks with Iris, prostitute and best friend of Lenny’s rockstar-ex Faith, being chased down by two white LAPD officers. Failing to contact Lenny, she leaves a clip in his car, which is then repossessed. The next day, another clip is left for one of Lenny’s liaisons, which is revealed to be the memory of an unknown suspect raping and murdering Iris. Lenny watches the tape, and with what must be one of the most disturbing uses of the first person perspective in cinema’s history, Bigelow sets him off to discover the killer with the help of his limo-driving best friend Mace, played by the lovely Angela Bassett, and the sleazy ex-cop/private detective Max, who is brought to screen by the most ‘90s male actor of that generation, Tom Sizemore. They track down Lenny’s car to find the clip Iris left, which shows her witnessing the murder of a rapper and activist Jericho-1 by the police officers chasing her. This all leads back to Lenny’s ex Faith, who is sleeping with the record executive who was using sex workers to spy on Jericho, and who’s now working with the police to prevent the clip from being released. Chandleresque in its web of connections, the plot uses its genre conventions to set a group of unlikely heroes against a tangle of machinations that fuel the reflective social conflict occurring both during the film’s release and today ; it that focus gives it both the feel of a typical '90s blockbuster attempt and something more aware than that.

     While one can certainly amass a large list of parallels between our own hellish reality and the one presented in Strange Days, maybe what makes it so valuable to us today is how it uses its structure, where the detective heroes exposes the evil conspiracies of the villains, to give us an ending suggesting a better world. The police and record label’s cover up is exposed, and in the film’s final moments, when Mace is attacked by SWAT officers defending Jerico-1’s killers, the crowd at a New Year’s Eve party unites together and attacks the cops, saving her in time for the chief to call for the police’s surrender. It’s almost too saccharine and sincere for our current world, but it calls for us to try to use the advanced technology at our disposal to reveal the greater truth of society against the wills of those in power. The SQUID technology is the tool that brings the police brutality and corporate greed present in the world to the forefront of the American consciousness, serving as the analogue to the consumer camcorder that Holliday used to capture Rodney King’s beating, and the cell phones that we use to film police beatings now. Of course, social media can certainly take the power out of these videos once they are spread for shock, but if these images are used effectively, shown to the right people, those with organizing power, they are reminder that we must come together. While Strange Days begins with its characters speculating on what kind of apocalypse the Y2K will begin, it pits its characters against ancient issues, the ones that have increased in absurdity as time progresses, settling us into a social suffering with no apparent end, until heroes triumph and usher society into a millennia of possible changes. The film stands as one of both Kathryn Bigelow’s and James Cameron’s finest achievements, sitting stylistically snug in both of the legendary directors’ catalogs.