by Patrick Appel
Alyssa Rosenberg flags the above "dreamy short movie that subs out the Afro-Caribbean poor in the 1981 Brixton riots for robots." She asks whether non-human protagonists symbolizing real-world communities can help us "work out our class issues":
[T]he robots of Brixton obviously aren’t human, but in a way, by removing factors like race from the equation, I wonder if it might be easier for audiences to feel bad about the idea of doing things to robots that we’re perfectly comfortable with businesses and governments doing to actual humans. Of course, the problem then is transferring that sympathy to actual people, and that outrage to actual policies. But if we can find alternative ways into conversations that won’t make people shut down, it’s a start.
The Dish 