The Machine Must Not Stop: E.M Forster’s “The Machine Stops’’ (1909) and  ‘My�Universe’(2021) by Coldplay and BTS��

By

Angela Ramsoondur

Oct/Nov 2021

University of Mauritius

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• What does an early twentieth-century British story have in common with a September 2021 newly- released single of British rock band Coldplay’s collaboration with Korean pop singer group BTS?

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• E. M Forster’s 1909 short story ‘The Machine Stops’ describes a world of machines (and technology) in a dystopian tone.

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• However, more than a century later, 2020 and 2021 lockdown and self-isolation provoked a revisited idea of the machine as the enemy thanks to technology, human relations have been in fact kept alive in the era of pandemic.

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• Technological tools have become an integral part for the survival of human connection and the maintenance of cultures. Music, mentioned at the start of Forster’s story, is a motif that also connects British Coldplay and Korean BTS.

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• During the Global Citizen Live concert song of ‘My Universe’ featuring Coldplay (single released on 24 September 2021 from their Music of the Spheres album) and BTS, while being in New York’s Central Park on 25 September, the former’s vocalist Chris Martin looks up at the screen in mid-way and sings with the BTS localised in Seoul performing in pre-recorded holographs, in both English and Korean.

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• In the live performance, Coldplay and BTS reminds me of Forster’s characters Vashti and Kuno, apart physically but through technology they are together. There is no better example of demonstrating how the cult of the machine has become a tool of breaking down this image of dystopia in that live performance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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• The impact of the machine in this early twentieth century British story and the dystopian tone is briefly discussed in this this work-in-progress while investigating in parallel the lyrics of ‘My Universe.’
• The music video released on 30 September 2021 produces an anti-dystopian message demonstrating that fluid societies endowed with technological knowledge and experience will survive in a post-apocalyptic universe. 

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Dystopia

• An imagined world of suffering
• Injustice
• Control by technology
• Post-apocalyptic world
• Different forms of oppression in the future
• Dystopian fiction:
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
•  Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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Utopia

• Thomas More – utopia – Greek work for nowhere – indirectly meaning too good to exist…
• Utopian fiction:

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1. The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish
2. Island by Alduous Huxley

3. The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin 

2. Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach

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• E.M Forster – Forward thinker born in 1879 and passed away in 1970
• EM Forster’s ‘The Machine Stops’ is the story of Vashti and her son Kuno living in a world controlled by a Machine.
• Nature does not have its place and the technology is here to merely separate people instead of joining them. 

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• However, today, after practically two years of pandemic, we have witnessed the contrary.
• Technology and music have brought people together. This dystopian story which is must for any sci-fic reader in fact announces a utopian beginning

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• The BTS collab with Coldplay is proof of it for the song ‘My Universe’ demonstrates the anti-thesis of what EM Forster depicst as a world controlled by machine/technology.
• Performing in New York for a live performance, the only way the BTS could join the British rock band was virtually.

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• In The Machine Stops, meeting virtually is normal.
• People getting out of their underground cell to travel is uncommon
• Nature is looked upon with disgust by those people living under the totalitarian regime of the Machine
• Music and technology are enjoyed alone, in one’s cell.
• But the hum of the machine is also the music for people like Vashti
• She venerates the Machine like a god

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• So the striking point of the story when it starts is the sense of Isolation   a happy Isolation I would say, of Vashti. She is comfortable in her cell underground, in the farthest depth of the Earth in the South Pole. The writer does not tell us which year the story is set. 
• In fact, in The Machine Stops, the description of the landscape is like a wasteland, to a post-apocalyptic world. In the music video of My Universe, the post-apocalyptic world is in fact a creative world. 

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• The end of world dictated by the Machine is described in the apocalyptic terms as it is the end of an existence provided by the Machine
• But an apocalypse can also mean a new beginning for people like Kuno
• the word apocalypse
• Transformation - Regeneration

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• What could have been done to prevent the situation ‘The Machine Stops’?
• No ultimate reliance on fully-fledged technology
• Is rebuilding possible? How? Back to nature, back to humanity physically meeting
• What does the story teach us about humanity?
• Humans depending on technology exclusively become blind to their own downfall

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• My universe (song by Coldplay and BTS) released this 24 September 2021
• 112 years after publication of ‘The Machine Stops’
• The live performance and music video demonstrate technology coming to the help of humanity
• BTS appearing a holographs singing with Chris Martin the vocalist of Colplay
• Both English and Korean being used in the song

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Part of the lyrics

• The darkness was more comfortable to me
• in the shadow that’s gotten longer (eyes)
• And they said that we can’t be together
• Because we come from different sides

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Technology makes a live performance possible due to travel issues in a time of pandemic

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• The music video starts with the those words:

“Once upon a time, many years from now…

Music is forbidden across the spheres.

On three different spheres, three different bands defy the ban.

DJ Lafrique, on her alien radio ship, unites them via Holoband.

All the while they are hunted by the Silencers.”

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• The setting of the music video = post-apocalyptic
• Music – (the arts ) form of regeneration
• DJ Lafrique – female DJ – bridging the different spheres through the alien radio ship
• World of nature is included – which alien creatures
• Human and non-human
• Beings from planet Earth and different planets – different spheres
• Technology is here not demonized like in ‘The Machine Stops’

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• My universe – the lyrics and the music video demonstrate the positive facets of technology/the Machine
• Two years of pandemic have taught the world that global citizenship is the more pressing and technology has become the ally in this endeavour
• By as the music video of ‘My Universe’ shows, there will be always the Silencers, those who will not allow the possibilities of global citizenship, those who will make bad use of technology

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• In ‘The Machine Stops’, the elements of the apocalypse have been the humans themselves that have deified the Machine and hence brought destruction
• In ‘My Universe’ mv – humans and technology can reverse the post-apocalyptical world

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• Utopia can be achieve through music ( creativity)
• Creativity embodied by DJ Lafrique who is portrayed as a mixture of alien and also human
• The pandemic due to Covid-19 has shown that we can use technology to connect with people and it is the connection with people that matters
• Connection made with creativity and technology

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Berger, Harris M, and Giovanna Del Negro. Identity and Everyday Life : Essays in the Study of Folklore, Music, and Popular Culture. Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 2004.
• “Coldplay and BTS Share New Song ‘My Universe’ | Global Citizen Live.” Www.youtube.com, www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnwoRxbU9Jc. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

• “Coldplay X BTS - My Universe (Live on the Graham Norton Show).” Www.youtube.com, www.youtube.com/watch?v=O32dCVY15oo. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.
• “Coldplay X BTS - My Universe (Official Video).” Www.youtube.com, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YqPKLZF_WU.
• Forster, E M, and Oliver Stallybrass. Aspects of the Novel. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2012.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Forster, EM. The Machine Stops. 1909. https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf.
• Gelder, Ken. Subcultures : Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. London ; New York, Routledge, 2007.
• Han, John J, et al. Worlds Gone Awry : Essays on Dystopian Fiction. Jefferson, North Carolina, Mcfarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2018.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Judith Scherer Herz. The Short Narratives of E. M. Forster. Basingstoke Etc., Macmillan Press, 1988.
• Lepore, Jill. “A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction.” The New Yorker, 2019, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/05/a-golden-age-for-dystopian-fiction.
• Madhusudana, P.N. “Utopian and Dystopian Literature: A Comparative Study.” International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts (IJCRT) Www.ijcrt.org, vol. 6, 2018, pp. 2320–2882, ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT1133199.pdf. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Marshall, Elizabeth, and Özlem Sensoy. Rethinking Popular Culture and Media. Milwaukee, Wi, Rethinking Schools, 2011.
• Stein, Karen F, and Louisa Mackay Demerjian. Future Humans in Fiction and Film. Newcastle Upon Tyne, Uk, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018.
• The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Utopia | Definition, Examples, & Facts.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 18 Mar. 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/utopia.
• “Thomas More’s Utopia.” The British Library, www.bl.uk/collection-items/thomas-mores-utopia.

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