Thoughts on Upload

By Sergio C. Mu?oz at Intelatin

I loved a scene in the new series called Upload on Amazon Prime. *NSFW Warning* *Spoiler Alert*

The protagonist is a young privileged male. He gets killed and his privileged girlfriend asserts herself into the role of deciding whether he dies standard or if he gets uploaded to a corporate heaven for eternity. She sends him to corporate heaven and retains complete ownership of him and everything that will happen to him for eternity.

Everybody who gets sent to corporate heaven gets an "angel" whose job it is to make sure that they follow the corporate rules. For homeboy, he gets an "angel" named Nora. In this scene that I loved, the girlfriend visits homeboy via virtual reality and homeboy is so put off by everything that she is doing to him that he can't manage an erection. Nora gets called in for customer support and manages to get homeboy aroused. Nora does this not through some hardcore sexuality or anything similar, she does it by talking to him genuinely and directly to his eyes and touching him with one finger in his shoulder area.

What is not scripted in this scene is any backstory on Nora and her identity. She is obviously visually and beautifully nubian, has nubian lovers, nubian friends and a nubian father dying of vape lung. She is not exactly happy with her lot in life. She struggles with issues related to gender equity and corporate advancement but for some reason, she seems to be falling for homeboy who is high school jock type handsome but doesnt really have much depth at all.

I openly admit that I was entertained by Upload. I think I watched four episodes but I fell asleep for one so I think I watched the first two episodes and the fourth. Then, I stopped and I did so purposely. Regardless of the fact that I was entertained by what I saw in the episodes that I was awake for. The reason why I stopped was because it dawned on me that even though I have been accepting privileged storylines among the living for four decades, I need to draw the line at storylines that take that privilege into death.

When Pixar's COCO came out, there was a writer who wrote an incredible review about how offended she was by this animated film. I wish I could find it and link it but it was kinda underground. Not the type of review featured in the New York Times. I wish I could do it justice by quoting her but net net was that all of the bullshit that she rejects in life was aggrandized and corporatized in death. Her review hit me in the brain when I was watching Upload. I began asking myself, how many of the same privileged storylines do I need to consume about death as well as the ones that I have consumed in life?

I began to wonder if I would watch the Mexican edit of Upload. My wife recently downloaded Pantaya onto our Roku and has been watching Mexican films and its the same film over and over again. With the same actors. They all center on a privileged woman trying to marry a man through all sorts of "hilarious" obstacles. And for the most part, every man that I have seen has a Spanish accent when he speaks Spanish, meaning he is not from Mexico at all, and he has blue eyes. Or, he is Omar Chaparro. No joke. Omar Chaparro has been in like five of the six films my wife has watched. Always with the same woman. I'll show you a picture of them:

Now, I am as privileged as they come but what is inspiring about cinema, in my opinion, is to be able to see storylines that have absolutely nothing to do with your own reality. They have nothing to do with your own culture. They have nothing to do with your own life. You step outside of your little echo chamber bubble and you watch a story about something you know nothing about. This is what I love about filmed entertainment. I wont settle for less than something foreign and death being the ultimate mystery is about as foreign as it gets. I cant accept that death is just a polished digitized corporate version of life.

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