Social Matter

On this, an occasion of no particular significance, let us pause and revisit one of the great achievements of modern drama.  In an age when technology is demonized and environmentalism exalted, there remains at least one last shining example of Man overcoming nature.  I speak, of course, of Predator (1987).

The plot is straightforward: sent into the Central American jungle to kill some generic rebels, Arnold and company succeed spectacularly only to find themselves stalked by a mysterious alien Predator.  In the end, only Arnold survives the creature’s attacks, and he defeats it by covering himself in mud and crushing it with a tree.

At first blush, this film might seem almost anti-technology: the most skilled of human warriors, armed with the most modern weapons, prove powerless before a powerful extraterrestrial with fancier gadgets.  The Predator is superior to humans in every way a hunter can be: it has longer and sharper claws in the form of its ray-gun; its camouflage makes it supremely stealthy; even its physicality is superb, allowing it to move through the trees with incredibly stealth and speed.  Arnold’s own technology avails him not at all, as he is reduced to employing arrows, spears, and booby-traps against his foe.

What in fact allows Arnold to triumph is a fundamental difference between him and his adversary.  The Predator is just that, a predator, a natural hunter who uses its own nature-given assets to achieve its aims and never thinks or acts beyond them.  Arnold’s companions are of the same mold; they have their weapons and their skills and nothing else.  Their relationship with their environment is animal: they accept what is given and simply pass through, leaving everything except their prey exactly as they found it.

Arnold is of a different sort; he manipulates his environment to his own advantage.  When attacking the guerillas, he sends one of their vehicles crashing through their camp.  When pursued by the Predator, he constructs a complex trap.  In preparation for the final showdown, he pulls out every trick he has, building weapons and traps of various sorts and creating his own form of camouflage out of mud.  Arnold, in short, possesses technology in a way that no other character in the film does, and that is what allows him, weak earthling that he is, to defeat a powerful alien.  He is no mere predator; he is human.

The Predator recognizes in Arnold something alien.  Its dying words—a recording of Arnold’s question, “What the hell are you?”—express its perplexity at what has just happened to him.  It cannot understand how such a weak creature managed to overcome it; it cannot grasp the meaning of technology.

The next time that you watch Predator, do so with new eyes.  You are witnessing an eloquent expression of what allows Man to rise above the beasts of the field.  It is Man’s technology, his ability to subdue nature and craft an environment more suited to his needs, which allows him to survive and thrive.  Invite your environmentalist friends to a private viewing and explain to them: this is why we have nice things.