L’article original en anglais de ma propre plume :
This is a tribute to an episode of “Mr Robot” TV Show where a seemingly German officer of E-Corp is speaking to Eliott in a lift just right before a very long, uncut and super violent scene which is very shocking. This is the beginning of the working day and obviously this senior employee is telling to Eliott that “beginning is easy, to last is art”, a German proverb.
I spent four years watching this TV show and obviously its quality is very high, especially regarding the way it is conceived. Episode 5 of season 3 is incredibly realistic in its violence. I remember very well being shocked by the violent assault of E-Corp’s offices.
Violence is and has always been a part of life. To be exhaustive there is first of all – words and speech- then law, and at the end violence and strength. Words can cause sometimes cause more harm than being beaten. Of course if someone is beaten so much that he ended disabled or dead, this is different story. But want I want to say is that speeches can harm a lot and remain a memento and can cause trauma for years and decades whereas physical violence, while unpleasant, can be forgotten. You take pills for the pain, go to the GP, cry a lot (it is what happened when I am beaten). But words remains in memory. They can remain for a while if you don’t see a psychiatrist or a psychologist and even with medical help, words and speeches can remain in your mind. I’ll take an example from soccer in France. Zinedine Zidane, a famous, now retired soccer player, one of our best player decided to hit a player who had insulted him and his mother during a whole hour (it was verified by facial recognition with British IT technology). The player who insulted him got beaten, but is it so painful ? On the very moment it’s hurting, but after a few days… you can forget it. On the other side Zinedine Zidane whole family was insulted during the full match : do you think it is easy to forget that ? So my aim is to claim that the interaction between words, speeches, violence and law is complex.
Law is a tool to master violence within societies and human interactions. Law is not really a mean to protect the weak neither it is for the powerful ones, first of all it’s sometimes made by powerful and wealthy nations. On a second hand it’s always an element in front of strength. And violence can of course bypass law.
Think about the UN. The UN and more broadly international public law, humanitarian law are just jokes because no one is respecting it. The real thing that matters is money and its correlate : strength, military strength. Wars can be declared out of the blue when you’re the USA, it doesn’t matter if international law is against it. Israel has the right to exist legally for instance but widespread and illegal colonization is not ok. But Israel is a wealthy country, supported by the USA. I am not supporting neither the Palestinian state neither the Israelis : i am just saying the problem is complex and sometimes, people do not care at all about law, international law, money and strength is what really matters in international relations.
A lot of scenes from Mr robot are to my opinion pieces of arts. I am not surprised the TV show was conceived by an immigrant, a son of immigrants born in the US to be precise. An American with Egyptian descent. I tend to think that immigrants (when combined with good education basis) are more smart than natives most of the time. Many businesses are created by immigrants. And well, the most powerful state in the world is a country of immigrants.
Mr robot is dealing about the computer hacking of the largest consumer-debt industry company. It involves a lot of nice processes about diverse shell manipulations and recently provided me the incentive to study coding and the TCP-IP mechanics, along with unix-based shell. Shell is really exciting because we are fond of GUI (Graphic User Interface) like Windows but the real stuff is hidden behind that. I had the chance to get a computer in 1993, so early enough to cope with DOS. And I remember very well this ancient time where you needed to type everything to get anything done by your computer.
Mr robot is also dealing with the mystery of money which is now totally virtual : the operating system of our world. My website is also about finance and you’ll many many interesting articles about finance, economy, money here. And Elliot and a group of hacker known as “fuck society” is willing to take down this virtual reality. Such a great utopia can’t be treated without a great show.
Mr robot is an American TV-Show with sometimes a few words of French, Swedish. A few songs are really nice and well used to fit the dynamic of the show. I was surprised to find out that Eric Satie, A French piano composer has been used in the show as well as a great adaptation of “ne me quitte pas” from Jacques Brel. There is the adaptation of the English version song but there is also at the end of the show the original Jacques Brel song in French. Which is an amazing tribute to the French culture. It’s really an honor not to forget that the original song is French, although the English adaptation is very good too. They respect the original, the amazing French song from Jacques Brel : ne me quitte pas.
There are also sometimes a few words of French in the show. I need to stress the fact that Americans who are cultivated like the French culture, respect the French culture, and use from time to time a few French expression to sound super “classy” like they can speak queen English.
But Mr robot is for sure a post-modern TV show that aims to destroy any religion. I can’t help but think about this Norwegian woman I met in Paris who told me that the elite was satanist and was trying to destroy religions as a whole to promote a new religion of the ego. This is possibly partially true. And it worries me a little. That’s though true that Islam is also present in Mr robot in a great way to remind us of the existence of a possible god (it certainly has something to do with the Egyptian descent of the show creator). Yes, there are Muslims in the USA. Satanism or the cult of the ego is also correlated to scientism (Auguste Comte et positivisme in French) and positivism and I do think we should be careful about that. Religion is an act of modesty, we’re not god ourselves and need to rely on something superior to us.
I doesn’t need to be necessarily a religion, can be a philosophy god like a transcendent principle of order and superiority that is governing us and liking us. When you hear the French MD Laurent Alexandre talking about AI, immortality, and the need to create babies outside of mainstream sexual conception, it’s really scary. Widespread DNA mapping is also scary in an age of big data. I remind you that 5% of the USA population already had their DNA mapped. And they’re extensively trying to map the DNA of EU citizens through low-cost or even free schemes.
You can’t save someone who is really experiencing multiple problems through satanism and the ego cult.
