Viktoria Modesta – Latvian Aeon Flux
The newest viral music meme features a disabled Latvian pop-star, Viktoria Modesta. I find this video fascinating for reasons that have nothing to do with music.
While overtly the marketing machine behind Modesta (Moskalova) is angling to display her as a role-model for the disabled (and not a moment too soon), the neo-fascist distopia portrayed in the video has flavors of V for Vendetta and Aeon Flux, another cybernetically upgraded cyborg heroine. While the world created in the video doesn’t explicitly say what makes Modesta a symbol for freedom, one can infer that she’s held up as a paragon of non-conformism and (physiological) individuality.
This is all just the tip of the iceberg, of course. The genetics revolution is going to allow for human customizations that make Ms. Modesta look like a Stepford Wife. There will be adults who choose to live in child bodies, perpetually, de-aged by alterations in telomeres. There will be people with lizard heads. There will be cat-women. Not catwomen, actual catwomen. There will be chimeras and hybrids of every possible sort. The diversity of sentient, quasi-human creatures will be endless. Old-timey racists and conservatives will pine for a time when there were only a few race-types and genders available to ostracize people for.