Research background part 1

‘The problem of evil’ is a commonly debated issue in Regions such as Christianity. Many argue that because of the existence of evil people in the world, there can’t be a God because what kind of creator would allow such pain and suffering that result from these people to happen.

 In my opinion, the flaw with this argument is that it ignores that a world where people are not able do wrong would be a world where freewill doesn’t exist. People would be upstanding members of society not because they chose to, but because they couldn’t choose to be otherwise. Such a society wouldn’t be truly consist of good people, because they wouldn’t really be people to begin with, just puppets without any will of their own, good or otherwise.

So for my project I decided to explore illustrate my argument by creating a scenario where society has freewill removed. But I wanted to do more than just this, to create more of a balance of the argument I decided to base the story around a character that has the opinion that society be will better without freewill except for him. We see him as he tries to improve society, forcing people treat each other more kindly, which would be ideal weren’t it for the fact they have no control over themselves.

Invasion of The Body Snatchers - 1978

Such inspirations for this project include 'Invasion of the body snatchers' that depicts society being replaced by emotionless drones. The Aliens of that film argued that no emotions would improve society. Though I never felt the concept was explored enough due to the fact it centres of humans trying to resist the whole time. We never see their conquest fully come to fruition, or really have an idea of how it would even function once it did. Which is why my twist of the main character being the invading force rather than people fighting back more compelling.

'The Ring' - 2002

When coming for an idea as to how my character is supposed to take over the minds of humanity I decided upon the idea of him creating a transmission that would warp the minds of anyone watching media devices such as television or the Internet. This allowed for the believability that most of humanity would be taken over in just mere hours, the most powerful aspect of it at least. It also provided an interesting metaphor to point out how most of humanity is influenced by the media. For what the transmission would actually consist of I looked at films such as 'The Ring' a film about a cursed video that kills people within seven days of watching it. The video in the film featured many disturbing images. I decided to create a similar tone to the transmission to represent the mind warping experience for those who watch it, as having your mind messed with shouldn’t be a pleasant experience.

Invasion of The Body Snatchers - 1978 directed by Philip Kaufman, Produced by Solofilm 


The Ring - 2002 directed by Gore Verbinski, Produced by DreamWorks SKG, MacDonald/Parkes Productions And  BenderSpink