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.
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