Respect Authority

Whatever brew of potions I fed my body last night combined with an earlier half-baked viewing of Watchmen including the new not-for-bedtime Terminator Salvation trailer made for an interesting REM cycle, to say the least. And while the grim reality of the reincarnated Terminator franchise is that Christian “I may, in all likelihood, actually kill a person someday” Bale will probably be the scariest part about it, I was nonetheless quite terrified while I dreamt, for what seemed like eons, of sugar plums and robotic apocalypse.

Given the dark visions of our own future conjured up daily by various analysts and other assorted modern day oracles, the thought of machines rising up and enslaving the entire human race is almost comforting — at least that way we wouldn’t be fighting each other anymore.

Perhaps the uncertainty of our times and the overall sense of dread looming on the horizon is what makes these photographs of World War II bunkers by Paul Virilio particularly haunting. The terrifying realities of their past staring into the terrifying potential of our future makes these silent, crumbling sentinels a sight as chilling as any army of machine gun toting T-800s. In fact, James Cameron’s description of his horrific children as “Death rendered in steel” has a certain resonance in these photos as well.

They look almost other-worldly, like ancient remnants of some lost alien civilization, when the sad truth is that these sinking monoliths are from a time not nearly that far removed. Created solely for war, they were all but forgotten afterwards, heirlooms left behind in a burning apartment. Yet still they linger as monuments to some of humanity’s most epic achievements, and its most nightmarish mistakes.

Somewhere beneath the bunkers’ cold exteriors, a twisted sense of humor also resides, reminding us how closely related the two often are.

About 1,500 bunkers were built along the French shore in World War II — dubbed “The Atlantic Wall,” this scattered collection of concrete behemoths was intended to stave off an Allied invasion. Fortunately, thanks to Tom Hanks’ bottomless courage and resolve in the face of incredible adversity, the Allied forces successfully invaded Normandy and the elaborate bunker defense system was abandoned. They now lie dormant, these desolate ruins left to rot like so many other casualties of war.