Check out my new article here!

Fallout – the TV Series – On Amazon (And The Ironies Therein)

Cypress Butane May 6, 2024

The Apocalypse Is All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses To A.I.

There is a bold irony in the Fallout television adaptation being produced by Amazon, a mega-corporation with a lot in common with some of the corporations lambasted within the series for being maniacal controlling monsters. The show narrative calculates the arc-trajectory of such megacorps’ schemes as they strive to dominate the future, and where their efforts land to explosive effect for humanity. Fallout also points out that the Pip-Boy, the signature wrist-screen vault-dweller’s wear, is intrusive tech, which, much like some of Amazon’s flagship products, steals our privacy and links us willy-nilly to the whims of faceless authority. Thus, the main line of interest I’d like to pursue is the seeming confluences of where the writers of Fallout are speaking to the state of capitalism itself, the entertainment industry specifically, and the conflict of art versus product. How far into the shift from art to “content” are we that Amazon’s contextual hold over this narrative isn’t a larger issue for viewers? Or maybe… that’s exactly why Fallout is such a hit– such a “break-through” and breath of fresh air. I want to suggest the cheers of the online audience and the appreciations of respect paid to the material (while creating something new!) are like a thumbs up to the lone writer(s) in the distance somewhere hidden within the Amazon machine, just generally trying to see what the howling wind might tell us.

READ MORE AT NEON DYSTOPIA