X-Message-Number: 6265
From: John de Rivaz <>
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: "Cold Lazarus" blow to neuropreservation
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 16:57:31 +0100
Message-ID: <>

The television plays "Karaoke" and "Cold Lazarus" by Dennis Potter concern 
the final months of a writer dying from cancer, and the use to which is 
neuropreserved head is put in the year 2368.

Karaoke finished last week, and Cold Lazarus starts on BBC television on 
Sunday. The Radio Times' introductory article included the following quote 
from the programme's producton designer Christopher Hobbs: "It's as if the 
frozen head is imagining the future of the world, so the design is coloured 
by his sensibilities." Director Renny Rye said: "The whole point of keeping 
Feeld's head alive is that it is an obscenity. Death is a part of life and 
when Dennis [Potter] came to face up to it, it turned out that death, like 
every other phase of life, was an inspiration."

Feeld's head is apparently kept alive on a machine so that his thoughts can 
be plundered by profit crazed entertainment executives. The world is based 
on growing nanotechnological structures - the flickering computer consoles 
are housed in living redwood trunks that support the roof while actors zoom 
around on "auto-cubes" - soupled up half vegetable half machine wheel 
chairs steered by thought waves. They look like house trained Triffids, 
according to The Radio Times. Buildings grow like coral, and everything has 
a lumpy swirly feel to it. Feeld's memories are projected onto a huge 3D 
screen which is computer simulated using digitised film footage.

The world is generally that of BladeRunner - heavily polluted and choked 
with a forbidding cityscape.

Cold Lazarus cost half a million pounds for its special effects, and the 
script is said to be riddled with nanotechnological jargon. Actor Cieran 
Hinds said "I was apalling at science at school. The vernacular of 
cryogenics and biochemistry can be one hell of a mouthful but Potter knew 
what he was talking about. You just have to say the lines as he wrote them 
and hope that you're serving his ideas."

I wonder how much he really found out about cryonics and the philosophy 
behind it. This work suggests that he gots his ideas from detractors who 
knew little. Does anyone know whether he approached any of the cryonics 
organisations?


-- 
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