Conflict between copies. Ultra sign. Moon, Duncan Jones, 2009.

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Semiotics on extremes.

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Photogram of the film Moon, directed by Duncan Jones 2009.

Conflict between copies : “Moon”, Duncan Jones (2009).

Sam Well. The unique inhabitant of the moon. A miner. Actually a slave. Loneliness. Work. Sacrifice. Nostalgia of the Earth, of the beloved woman, of the little daughter. Suddenly someone completely unexpected enters into scene, it happens the amazing and mysterious meeting with another individual, a similar one, in a literal sense.

They are not the same, neither identical, but extremely similar. One is the aged and exhausted version of the other one. Or, at the reciprocal, one is the young version of the other one. And, as we will discover later, both of them are the umpteenth version of an original human being.

Definitively, clones discovering their condition of clones. Such is the plot of "Moon", Duncan Jones's recent full-lenght film.

"Moon" treats of the life of the copies in the absence of the original one. A veteran copy and another newcomer one. A copy on the verge of dying and other one with major life expectation, but also marked with expiry date.

We have initially the fierce competition, for moments tending to homicide, that explodes between both specimens. The fight for power between the veteran copy that defends his degree and the upstart copy that reasonably considers himself equal or better than the other one. The old man and the young man, the sick look-alike and the other one that overflows health. Dorian Grey scrutinizing to his decrepit "I" on an alive portrait and his decrepit "I" scrutinizing him. As to a portrait of other happier time.

Meanwhile and in another part, the genuine Dorian, continues his life, he is a widower who ages in the Earth, maybe absolutely ignoramus of the lunatic existence of a constant reproduction of himself.

It is understood that nothing of this is strange for us. Because the human being is only the conscience of itself surviving to the auto cloning of its body, its physical support. Because, from certain point of view, a person is the constant copy of itself, a process in which something is always getting lost or corrupted. Only the conscience of oneself remains the same and intact.

One discovering that oneself is not the one that one believed being. One discovering that "the one" that one thougt he was is only the last one or the penultimate in a long chain, it is a devastating revelation that nevertheless can be fitted at last with certain doses of human solidarity.

The monster is not the copy, the monster is the Company, the slave holder and multicopier entity.

But we already knew it.

Rubén Díaz de Corcuera.
Ultra sign.
March 15, 2010