Today we’re diving into the futuristic world of “In Time” (2011), a movie that challenges our perceptions of wealth, power, and societal structure. Imagine a reality where time becomes the universal currency. In this film, people are genetically engineered to stop aging at 25 years old, activating their clock to one year of remaining time (for free), and now they must find a way to get more time everyday in order to survive.
Now, imagine a world where the rich thrive on centuries of time, essentially being immortal, while the poor struggle to make it to the next day. The poor are living minute to minute, paycheck to paycheck. It’s a concept we’re all familiar with in our present reality.
“In Time” takes place in 2169 and reimagines our world, where time is quite literally money. It shines the light on the economic inequality that exists in our own society and how those inequalities might manifest 145 years in the future. Other themes you’ll notice in the film are redlining and digital surveillance. “In Time” allows us to reflect on how systemic injustices could shape our future if nothing is done to bring balance and equality to our world.
Redlining is a discriminatory method used to deny access to opportunities, housing, etc., based on race or ethnicity. In the film, people are split into “time zones”, which is what they call the borders between each economic class, separating people based on how much time they earn. Each zone is not allowed to leave into another zone. This illustrates the redlining in our society and how certain marginalized communities are confined to impoverished areas.
In this dystopian future, cameras are everywhere and every individual is being constantly monitored and tracked. This is something very relevant to our present society, as we learned from Shoshana Zuboff, but back in 2011 I don’t think a lot of us could have imagined us reaching this level of digital surveillance by 2024. So I wouldn’t say our technology is far from how it’s portrayed in this dystopian; unfortunately I think we’re already there. We don’t know what the future holds, which is why it’s critical that we have laws on data transparency and data privacy to protect people from abuse of power.
I won’t spoil the ending for anyone, but the protagonist is from the poorest time zone and blackmails the wealthy antagonist to distribute one million years to the the poorest time zones in an attempt to take down the system. I believe this plot represents the common feeling most of us have about today’s billionaires, such as Elon Musk who is worth over $200 billon today. I think we can universally agree that billionaires should use their money to help those who are struggling to survive, helping aid society’s economic inequality.
The film shows us what an imagined alternative like time as currency could look like and how that would shape society’s structure. I think most of us have heard the saying “time is money”, and this film created a world where that was meant literally. It would require advancements in technology and science to create a genetic mutation like a life clock, but the film still has elements that reflect our current conditions like economic inequality, redlining, and digital surveillance.
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