Death is not the end! From the new robot Walt Disney to Mountainhead, movies are fuelled by immortality

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Transhumanism has long propelled films from Metropolis to The Matrix. But Jesse Armstrong’s billionaire satire isn’t sci-fi fantasy. Nor is the ‘robotic Grampa’ Disney’s granddaughter so despises For years, the world’s most perfect urban myth was this: Walt Disney’s body was cryogenically frozen at the moment of death, waiting for technology to advance enough to bring him back to life. Started by a National Spotlite reporter who claimed to have sneaked into a hospital in 1967, only to be confronted by the sight of Disney suspended in a cryogenic cylinder, the myth prevailed because it was such a good fit. Disney – and therefore Walt Disney himself – was the smiling face of rigidly controlled joy, radiating a message of mandatory fun that is magical when you are a child and increasingly sinister as you age. This policy (essentially “enjoy yourself or else”) suits the idea of cryogenic preservation. After all, if you have the ego to successfully enforce a blanket emotion as a company m...
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‘We just have to keep fighting’: a shocking new film on the danger of US abortion laws

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In the Hilary Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence-produced documentary Zurawski v Texas, women whose lives have been brutally upended have their say

In August 2022, Amanda and Josh Zurawski were 18 weeks into a much-wanted pregnancy with their first child when her water broke early. The complication ended her chances of delivering a healthy baby and imperiled her health – but doctors in Austin, where the couple live, said they could not end her pregnancy under Texas law, because they could still detect fetal cardiac activity.

In the wake of the supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022, which reversed half a century of precedent and overturned Roe v Wade, the Texas legislature, like those in 13 other states, passed a near-total abortion ban. Though the ban allowed for medical exceptions, doctors have said that the law – written by politicians, not medical professionals – is so vaguely worded, and the criminal penalties so severe (up to 99 years in prison for violating state abortion law), that it was unworkable in practice, blocking doctors from helping patients.

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