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A Marxist Allegory In Duncan Jones's Film Moon

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Duncan Jones’ movie, Moon, follows the story of a man named Sam Bell who is sent to space to collect “moon gas” and is nearing the end of a three year shift. Throughout the final weeks of his mission, Sam begins to experience severe health issues which eventually lead him to a near death experience. When Sam wakes up from his incident, he discovers that he is not the only one on the moon. Sam notices that there is another him, more younger and healthier, but nonetheless him. Sam’s clone convinces him that he is merely a clone as well and just a pawn of something bigger. Sam and his clone then have to solve the mystery before a rescue team comes. The film Moon can be seen as a Marxist allegory in that it encompasses the concepts found within Marx’s ideology. Marx explains his ideology through Historical Materialism, a progress/change in the distribution of economic power, which meant that history could best be understood through class struggles. Marx believed that the base of a society lied in the economics and that the owners, who were making profit, were over the workers/laborers. This was wrong because the profit owners would create a “superstructure” that was made up by the state military, police, education, religion and ideology. Marx interpreted the “superstructure” as being, “…not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (Ball eat …show more content…

The film took the viewer through the different stages needed to reach a revolution, though it is not clear what happens to the clone. Viewers are left to believe he sparked a controversy back on earth and outed the exploitation/alienation the company was creating. Through Marx’s Historical Materialism, it was easy to apply these stages as the film evolved. Sadly, the final stage in Marx’s ideology has yet to be achieved, but it has definitely been

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