Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" Teaser Trailer: It will only speak to White People about what we lost and we must regain

Christopher Nolan might have done it.

On the day China landed a moon rover on the moon, signaling the dawn of the Chinese Century, a teaser trailer for Nolan's new movie, Interstellar, was released. 

An image from the teaser trailer for Interstellar...

We already know America gave up on space travel/exploration, and instead decided to challenge nature herself by making the black man live up to the white man's standards: the war on poverty was, in itself, a war on the civilization white people had established, bled and fought for in America. 

In the process, our cities reverted to the standards set by the black man.

Well, here's what Disingenuous White Liberals (DWL) believe Interstellar is about. [Watch: First Trailer For Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain & Many More, Indiewire, 12-14-13]:

So, is Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" gearing up to be the biggest blockbuster about agriculture ever? That's certainly the last word on it, as the always-secrecy-prone filmmaker hasn't let any details slip out about his new movie. Reports during the summer claimed that the future-set story "details the toll climate change has taken on agriculture, with corn the last crop to be cultivated. The scientists embark on a journey through a worm hole into other dimensions in search of somewhere other crops can be grown." This first trailer for the film certainly goes to the farm.

As per usual with Nolan, there's not much in the way of major reveals in this teaser (a good chunk of which is stock footage), but the shots of corn and farmland through history certainly suggest those early plot details aren't far off. Instead, the focus here is on the words delivered by Matthew McConaughey, which are as follows:

We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments, these moments when we dared to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. And perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers and we've barely begun. And that are greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, as our destiny lies above us.

Read that voice-over material again:

 We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments, these moments when we dared to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. And perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers and we've barely begun. And that are greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, as our destiny lies above us.

 Every image that accompanies this trailer is of white people: struggling to survive, to live; fighting to grow and sustain for the next generation; understanding the limitations of the imagination is a recipe for destitution and failure.

It looks like a trailer directly from the studios of the Third Reich, propaganda for a people resolute in their greatness and resolved to move forward.

Simply put, it's a glorification of white people.

Juxtaposed that with these words from Narratives and Spaces: Technology and the Construction of American Culture, Dave Nye's book. He describes black attitudes to the white man's lunar (loony?) mission:

The Apollo Program was most appreciated by those who were young, affluent, well-educated, Caucasian, and male.

The space program seemed justified by the knowledge gained and by the improve commodities “spun-off” as byproducts, such as food concentrates, Teflon, and computer miniaturization. The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner made a characteristic list in an editorial: “America’s moon program has benefited mankind. It has brought better color television, water purification at less cost, new paints and plastics, improved weather forecasting, medicine, respirators, walkers for the handicapped, laser surgery, world-wide communications, new transportation systems, earthquake predictions systems and solar power.”

People in poverty evidently did not believe that things such as solar power or new plastics would benefit them more than direct spending on social programs. The stronger opposition lay within the black community, where less than one in four people supported the expenditure of $4 billion a year for the Apollo Program. A minority added, “God never intended us to go into space.”.. most black newspapers carried editorials and cartoons attacking the space program, including the Chicago Daily Defender and Muhammad Speaks. The New York Amsterdam News cartoon depicted President Richard Nixon smiling up at the moon while sitting on a huge spherical bomb with a lighted fuse, labeled, “minority frustrations.”The accompanying editorial attacked the “outlandish costs of the space race,” and declared that, “Man can conquer space, yes. But man has still to conquer his homeland. And that’s where the real action is, brother.”

In July of 1969 on the eve of Apollo XI, the Poor People’s Campaign came to Cape Kennedy. To emphasize the slow pace of change, 150 people arrived in wagons pulled by mules. They both protested that the launch was taking place, and, perhaps incongruously, demanded 40 VIP passes to see it close-up. The Reverend Ralph Abernathy urged NASA administrator Dr. Thomas Paine to convert his technology to find new ways to feed the poor. Pained promised to see if food concentrates developed for space could be adapted to feed the undernourished on earth. Paine gave them VIP passes, and declared that the space program was compatible with the war on poverty: “I want you to hitch your wagon to our rocket and tell the people the NASA program is an example of what this country can do.” Paine was attempting to harness the old metaphor, “hitch your wagon to a star.” But try to visualize what could happen to a wooden wagon hitched to a Saturn V rocket at blast-off. Perhaps African-American views are best encapsulated by a contrast. Duke Ellington, whose music represented an older generation, performed for ABC’s national audience a new song, “Moon Maiden,” to mark the event. But when the successful moon landing was announced to 50,000 African-Americans at a soul concert in Harlem, many booed. (p. 151-152)

 Booed.

Sadly, no one dares boo! at the conditions of majority black cities, like 83 percent black Detroit. Instead, the GOP and people like Rand Paul believe we should practice outreach there, to a people who took the money that should have gone to space exploration and turned it into... Detroit (a powerful glimpse at what the War on Poverty bought us).

Oh, but it get's better. [Moondoggle: The Forgotten Opposition to the Apollo Program, The Atlantic, 9-12-12]:

Many black papers questioned the use of American funds for space research at a time when many African Americans were struggling at the margins of the working class. An editorial in the Los Angeles Sentinel, for example, argued against Apollo in no uncertain terms, saying, "It would appear that the fathers of our nation would allow a few thousand hungry people to die for the lack of a few thousand dollars while they would contaminate the moon and its sterility for the sake of 'progress' and spend billions of dollars in the process, while people are hungry, ill-clothed, poorly educated (if at all)."

This is, of course, a complicated story. When 200 black protesters marched on Cape Canaveral to protest the launch of Apollo 14, one Southern Christian Leadership Conference leader claimed, "America is sending lazy white boys to the moon because all they're doing is looking for moon rocks. If there was work to be done, they'd send a nigger."

 Odd choice of words from the member of Martin Luther King's SCLC, considering the unbelievable amount of work 'lazy white boys' put into engineering the Apollo craft that took whitey to the moon (while a "rat done bit my sister Nell").

Oh, but it get's even better than that. Courtesy of Gerard Degroot's book "Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest," we learn that Abernathy believed the gap between the different races of mankind was far greater than the gap between the earth and the Moon:

Space was a dominating issue of the 1960s; civil rights was another. The two were distinctly separate: space showcased the country’s achievement; civil rights underlined her shortcoming. The two issues did nevertheless intersect, most often when civil rights campaigners argued that the billions required to put a few men into orbit could be better utilized to help millions of blacks onto their feet. On the eve of the Apollo 11 launch, the activist Ralph Abernathy argued that:

“A society that can resolve to conquer space; to put man in a place where in ages past it was considered only God could reach; to appropriate vast billions; to systematically set about to discover the necessary scientific knowledge; that society deserves both acclaim for achievement and contempt for bizarre social values. For though it has the capacity to meet extraordinary challenges, it has failed to use its ability to rid itself of the scourges of racism, poverty and war, all of which were brutally scarring the nation even as it mobilized for the assault on the solar system.” Why is it less exciting to the human spirit to enlarge man by making him brother to his fellow man? There is more distance between the races of man than between the moon and the earth. To span the vastness of human space is ultimately more glorious than any other achievement."

Abernathy’s complaint reached a crescendo when he led a march of perhaps three hundred followers from the Poor People’s Campaign to the Apollo 11 launch site. A light rain was falling as his army approached. A number of mules, symbols of rural poverty, were in the van, proving a stark contrast to the massive, high-tech Saturn rocket. Abernathy stopped, then gave a short speech to a crowd of onlookers who had the Moon on their mind. He pointed out that one-fifth of the nation lacked adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care and that, given such deep poverty, space flight seemed inhumane. The crowd remained polite, but most of the spectators wanted this spoilsport to get out of the way so that show could start.

Abernathy was met by Tom Paine who had by his side, appropriately, Julian Scheer, NASA’s public information officer. Paine’s presence was carefully engineered to suggest that NASA took the plight of the poor seriously, even if it could do nothing to alleviate that suffering. He explained that he was himself a member of the NAACP and sensitive to the struggle of poor blacks. But he told Abernathy (and the assembled crowd) “if we could solve the problems of poverty by not pushing the button to launch men to the Moon tomorrow, then we would not push that button. (p. 234)

 In some different dimension, a much different button was pushed by white America; not just the one that sent the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, but (after the black riots in the 1960s left Detroit, Newark, Watts, and other major cities in ruins) put in motion a plan to repatriate black people back to Africa.

Abernathy was right when he said, "There is more distance between the races of man than between the moon and the earth. To span the vastness of human space is ultimately more glorious than any other achievement."


However, since America went down the path of funding every civil rights initiative and abandoning space, we have seen trillions upon trillions of dollars (and untold money in opportunity costs and equity lost) go toward eliminating the racial gap in... every measurable category where blacks fail and whites succeed. 

Looking at Detroit in 2013, spanning the vastness of human space (and bridging the racial gap in achievement) and finding a way to to navigate the distance between the white race and black race is a path we should have never, ever tried to go down.