I don’t actually watch that much network television, but I have to admit that I probably watch more Foxfare than anything else.
Tonight, there premiered a new show, called “New Amsterdam.”
It’s an interesting premise. A man who was born in the early seventeenth century (or even a century before) is given eternal (or almost eternal–hang on) life in perpetual youth. He lives that long life in what was at that time New Amsterdam, but what become shortly thereafter (once the British took it from the Dutch) New York.
He sees the village evolve into a town, then into a city, then into the greatest city in the western world (if not the world itself), which is why it was attacked six and a half years ago by those to whom the western world is an anathema to their seventh-century beliefs. But I digress.
He becomes a homicide detective in that great city, and his knowledge of the past is a great aid in solving gotham crimes.
As I said, an interesting premise. I mean, given that CSI, Wherever, is one of the biggest hits on network television, how could any producer turn it down?
But there’s a (supposedly) dark undercurrent to the story.
His eternal life is not viewed, by the story writers or himself, as a blessing. It is apparently a curse. He cannot end his life volitionally. The only way to put an end to this (apparent, and obvious, at least to the script writers) misery of endless youth and health is to find his true love.
Then he can die.
Just how perverse is that?
Let’s parse it.
OK, so you’ve “suffered” through four centuries of youthful life, in perpetual health, in a world in which your chances of dying are nil, and you apparently don’t even suffer any pain, though this is a world in which even dentistry is barbaric for at least the first three hundred years. And now, after having seen a little village purchased with beads on a little island at the mouth of a river, you’ve watched it become the most powerful city on the planet, you want to check out?
You’re in the early twenty-first century, about to enter a world in which many may join you in your longevity, though without the “burden” if having to find their true love to end it.
Well, both boo, and hoo.
Here’s the thing that makes this science fiction (or rather, speculative fiction).
In the real world, people who are offered the gift of living forever will also have the capability of ending that endless life, barring some sadistic fascist government that (like some perceptions of God) thinks that the individuals are the property of the state, and not of themselves. If they really get tired of life, they will check out, either legally and easily, or illegally and in a more difficult manner. But the will to die, if it is strong enough, will win out.
So to me, the real suspension of disbelief in this new series is not that a man could live for four hundred years, but rather, that he would have to live that long in misery.
Thus, it is more of a morality tale, based on unrealistic premises, than one based on anything resembling the true future.
I hope that no one decides that long life is a bad thing, and more importantly, that no one thinks that it is something that no one should have, based on this foolish, deathist premise.
sounds to me like a ripoff of the Flying Dutchman and Lulu, both operas with the same premise. Nothing new at all.
sounds to me like a ripoff of the Flying Dutchman and Lulu, both operas with the same premise. Nothing new at all.
How many TV shows or movies can you come up with where very long life or immortality are shown as a blessing? This is not a new thing either. Things like Zardoz come to mind…
Hollywood just likes death.
Dale Amon asked “how many TV shows…”
In the 60s or early 70s, when I was a kid, there was “The Immortal,” with Christopher George. The premise was that this guy was a mutant or biovariant who was immortal, and he was running from evil corporate and scientific types who wanted his blood for evil reasons.
Kind of amazing how even then Hollyweird types would bask in a life made comfortable by many corporations and endless armies of scientists and engineers, while depicting business and science types as unfailingly evil. The revenge of the English-major nerds?
Dale Amon asked “how many TV shows…”
In the 60s or early 70s, when I was a kid, there was “The Immortal,” with Christopher George. The premise was that this guy was a mutant or biovariant who was immortal, and he was running from evil corporate and scientific types who wanted his blood for evil reasons.
Kind of amazing how even then Hollyweird types would bask in a life made comfortable by many corporations and endless armies of scientists and engineers, while depicting business and science types as unfailingly evil. The revenge of the English-major nerds?
Dale Amon asked “how many TV shows…”
In the 60s or early 70s, when I was a kid, there was “The Immortal,” with Christopher George. The premise was that this guy was a mutant or biovariant who was immortal, and he was running from evil corporate and scientific types who wanted his blood for evil reasons.
Kind of amazing how even then Hollyweird types would bask in a life made comfortable by many corporations and endless armies of scientists and engineers, while depicting business and science types as unfailingly evil. The revenge of the English-major nerds?
After a while, your imagination will falter
Why? I’ve suffered depression for decades but this has not diminished my imagination. The longer I live, the more my imagination has to work with. Plus it is fed off the imagination of others. I simply don’t buy the premise.
It is so common to hear people say that living forever would be boring. All I can think is ‘what’s wrong with these people?’
If *everyone* had the ability to live forever you’d have to work forever.
Totally illogical. Who said everyone has to make the exact same choices? Economic inequities and the time value of money would play the same roles they’ve always played. The main change of a longer life is the potential of making wiser choices. Some people would choose to let assets work for them, some would take other paths and even change directions from time to time.
My second thought is, so what if we all had work to do forever. Is work a bad thing? Does working prevent new changes and new choices?
“Note to screenwriters: stop ruining man-shows with sappy bullshit romance. You’ve lost male viewers time and again with this approach. Not everyone is a gay writer living in NY or LA.”
And at least one female viewer. (Me. I admit I may be a weirdo.)
The reason the other shows like Torchwood, Forever Knight, and Highlander that another commenter mentioned work (well, to a degree, none of those shows is/were perfect) is because while love-conflicts aren’t entirely ignored they aren’t the central premise of the show — instead, the central conflict is the fight between what may be called good and evil, which most people instinctively recognize as being more important than who we (or a story’s characters) end up going to bed with. The idea of finding the ultimate sex partner (which is what the “true love” ideal boils down to) is outmoded, but it overtook Hollywood back sometime around the Seventies, when society was at it’s most cynical and the whole idea of “good” and “evil” had supposedly been shown to be a sham.
That being said, I have no idea why romance movies like “Pretty Woman” do so well. Would it do as well if it were made these days? I don’t know of any romance movie that has had a hot box office lately, and as for tv everyone seems to be into those “reality” shows, scifi good-&-evil serials like Battlestar Galactica, and the CSI shows; soaps seem to have fallen off the radar. Maybe there’s hope for us yet.
Ken wrote: Why? I’ve suffered depression for decades but this has not diminished my imagination.
Yes, but decades versus centuries? You have no basis for your theory, but then again, neither do we. Do you ever get tired, or fatigued of knowing you’re depressed? Imagine that amplified by a few hundred years of living with it.
It is a losing premise. The directing and production was great–Lasse Halstrom of My Life as a Dog–but who wants to watch a nihilist for an entire season walk through a pretty standard police procedural?
Also, the settlers did not purchase the land, according to the leftist Bible Halstrom mines, but the fat bastards came from across the sea and killed women (“did not leave their customs behind”) and basically stole it.
“My Life as an Anti-American Vampire.”
Feh.
Imagine that amplified
Why is it only the bad that is amplified? Do you see the presumption?
Suppose you and I tire of taking opposite sides of an issue. What prevents either of us from finding new people and new issues. My decades of depression feels like hundreds of years 😉 and being a pessimist has it’s advantages, but optimism does too.
Some, even without immortality, find life too much to bear. I just don’t see that as the ultimate eventuality of us all.
It would seem that death holds the winning argument simply because there is no turning back once it happens (disregarding various rebirth philosophies.) But I guess at my core I am still an optimist.
I do agree with those above that think the love angle is not well conceived. The writing of most shows these days leaves a lot to be desired.
Mac, the simplest counterargument is that now, most people die in a particularly unpleasant way, by growing older and having their bodies gradually fail in painful and humiliating ways. In comparison, with immortality, you basically live as long as you want. Even if you won’t directly kill yourself, you can deliberately engage in high risk activity, like sky diving or firefighting (or both as a smoke jumper). Sure it’s not as prompt as jumping out of a ten story window, but your number will come up sooner or later.
As I see it, the “you wouldn’t really like it” argument is silly. Even if we did get terminally bored in a few centuries, that’s still a lot more living than we currently do and we still have death.
Hey, what’s with the teepees in 17th century Manhattan? Teepees? I’m referring to that cool time-lapse sequence that encapsulates the history of the Big Apple. With all the money they threw into special effects and historical research, couldn’t they get the dwellings of the Manhattan Indians right?
“My biggest problem with the show is how he kept walking aorund being all ‘yeah, i’m 400 years old, Yeah, I was in WWII, Yeah, I don’t age, what of it?” he would SO be institutionalized by now”
This reminds me of Poul Anderson’s ‘The Boat of a Million Years,” where one of the main immortal* characters notes that whenever he revealed his true age to someone, and convinces them, there’s a great tendency for them to ask if he met Jesus…
But at that time, he was a Roman soldier, stationed far from the Holy Land, and couldn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know/believe.
* ‘Immortal’ in the sense of being indefinitely middle-aged and physically rather tougher and faster-healing than normal, but it was entirely possible for them to die by conventional means.
I remember an interview/discussion about George Burns as he was approaching his 100th birthday. He had outlived all his friends. Sure he could meet some new ones but the sense of having been passed by and left alone was palpable. Imagine that happening time after time as a new loved one grows old and dies while your left behind to start all over again.
I agree though that the story so far is not too gripping. I don’t believe he is limited to New York since he mentioned losing his hearing at the Battle of the Soame(sp?)
‘Running a plate for a date’ would be bad enough, but pulling over an ambulance?! Did I somehow misunderstand that (second ep) scene? Did he seriously stop an ambulance that was on an emergency run just so he could question the driver? Could he not have simply followed it to the hospital and had his little chat there?
Ye freakin’ gods, who writes this cr*p?
I remember an interview/discussion about George Burns as he was approaching his 100th birthday. He had outlived all his friends. Sure he could meet some new ones but the sense of having been passed by and left alone was palpable. Imagine that happening time after time as a new loved one grows old and dies while your left behind to start all over again.
How much of that was a result of simply being old, and feeling it, and it not being worth the investment, in time and emotion, in new relationships? I suspect that if he still looked and felt twenty, he’d have had a different attitude.
Amsterdam vs Corporal Cuckoo – Yes Hud remembers the same story I though of when I first saw New Amsterdam. The story about Corporal Cuckoo is that he was a soldier wounded in I think 1453 at the battle of Suze Pass(?) He was struck by a halberd. Fist time I heard that word. A halberd is a battle axe with a long handle. Sounds nasty. He was cured by a gypsy(?) who uses a mix of herbs, etc. she called “Digestive”. He became immortal.
The narrator of the story meets corporal Cuckoo on a steamer and gets the story, but the corporal disappears by the end of the journey.
It must be 40 years since I read terrific little story, but I immediately remembered it on viewing New Amsterdam, such is quality; it endures.
Can’t say the same for New Amsterdam. last night’s episode was about “why men are so afraid of women they respond by raping them”. Makes me want to barf. New Amsterdam us clearly written by young high school girls, or their faculty advisors in Gender studies.
Too Bad, it could have been a cool show.