'Snowpiercer' Episode 6: Engineer Melanie doesn’t factor in human cost and social justice in survival equation
You must have heard of the 'trolley dilemma', the famous thought experiment. It asks you to think through this scenario. You are on a trolley and your hand on a lever that lets you switch tracks. You see five workers on the track in front of you. If you pull the lever, you can switch tracks and save five lives. But on the other track, there is one worker. Will you pull the lever and kill that one person to save five?
There are other variations of this same thought experiment -- would you kill one healthy person to use his organs in five different life-saving organ transplants? The theoretical problem is a sort of barometer for morality in humans. It allows us to think through the consequences of an action and consider whether its moral value is determined solely by its outcome.
On the Snowpiercer, this thought experiment becomes frighteningly real. Brakeman Oz's monologue outlines a simple argument -- someone loses for others to gain and that's just the way the world works. Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly) uses a version of the same argument -- the survival of many vs. the oppression and even death of a few is for the "greater good". To her the moral value of Wilfred's order on the train is determined by its final outcome -- the continued survival of humanity as the train lurches from one mechanical failure to the next.
This is the desperate argument she makes to Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs) as he tries to kill her in his disoriented state. Melanie is first and foremost an engineer. She designed the train and she makes calculations every day to better the chances of humanity's ultimate survival. She sees everything in terms of data -- input and output. Humans also end up as data in these calculations.
She tells Layton that an ideal mix of humanity has been selected, factoring in age, sex, race, health, and expertise to be Drawered in case of an extinction event. The train comes very close to one in this episode that sees Melanie rush to fix a mechanical failure that threatens to derail the train. As the third class erupts in joy, their plans to strike postponed, Melanie is gleeful. She tells Audrey (Lena Hall) to "read the room" to know that people are too happy to think of striking. By the end of the episode, she has succeeded in delaying the revolution, if not crushing it.
As a logistician and scientist, Melanie has no use for notions of social justice. They don't factor into her calculations. This is exactly how economists or scientists look at the world. It is a very narrow rigid way of seeing the world and its inhabitants. Morality is frighteningly flexible in the face of modeled outcomes. Melanie's ideas around following Wilfred's order to ensure survival however is the same "scarcity argument" capitalism makes.
But are survival and social justice really that incompatible? What does the survival have to do with the first-class being pampered, while the others "classes" and the Tail, goes without in some shape and form? What does survival have to do with not having a more equitable sharing of resources among the last survivors of humanity? Why is the luxury of one person in first-class more important than depriving the Tailies of food rations and causing some of them to die?
Melanie does trot out an explanation -- non-paying third class had to pay with labor since they didn't pay for the tickets. If they did not oblige, they would be sent to the Tail. But why is it important to her to maintain Wilfred's order it in its exact, unjust form?
She is OK with breaking some rules like "no fraternizing" among members of the engine room when it suits her. Or colluding with Audrey to set up the Night Car and its grief processing, after she steps into Wilfred's shoes. Then, why is she is not OK with tweaking the class order on the train?
Scientists have for most of humanity's existence on earth tried to find mechanical solutions to problems with often catastrophic failure because they fail to factor in the human actors in any scenario. With psychopathic LJ (Annalise Basso) pulling his strings, Erik was on the loose, hunting people. When the guards capture him, they fire guns. One bullet hole causes the spill that causes the short circuit that precipitates the crisis of this episode. There is no logic or predicting software you can run for such human anomalies that cause a system to break down.
This means that any order or system that Melanie is trying to uphold is an illusion. It does not and cannot exist in the long term, no matter how accurate her calculations are. Therefore, her 'moral argument' for keeping things the way they are on the train is a whole lot of BS. But the train definitely needs her to keep it humming and running, which is why Layton makes the outcome-based decision to spare her life even if it means jeopardizing his own life in the future.
And that is the ultimate solution to the trolley dilemma. You derail the trolley, killing yourself rather than kill anyone else.
'Snowpiercer' airs Sundays at 9 pm on TNT.
