Master-Blaster Runs Bartertown

By Jerry A. Sierra

Sometimes I see Cuban history everywhere I look. Lately I’m also finding present-day gloom-and-doom not just in the news (does Washington DC resemble pre-Castro Havana?) but in the sci-fi films of the past.

In Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome (1985), the third installment in the Road Warrior Film Series and the least popular, a two-person-bad-guy known as Master-Blaster calls for an energy embargo on Bartertown. Blaster turns a lever and the electricity stops running, sending the town into instant darkness. That’s power.

You might assert that Bartertown resembles a MAGA America trying to move forward.

Bartertown’s immigration priorities were articulated early on by The Collector: “People come here to trade, make a little profit, do a little business. If you have nothing to trade, you’ve got no business in Bartertown.

That could have been Jeff Sessions around the time of the immigrant child abuses of 2018.

Master is the brain of Underworld, an underground energy plant that harnesses methane gas from pig shit and converts it into the town’s electricity. Blaster is the body; a muscle-bound monstrosity “driven around” by Master, a short, disfigured man of unusual intelligence and unlimited cruelty. Together they’re undeniably powerful and inhumane, somewhat like a ruthless President with puppet-like control over a wimpy Congress.

Master wants everyone in Bartertown to know that HE’S in charge, that HE’S smarter than everyone and, with Blaster at his command, stronger. Together they symbolize the high cost of rebuilding (or renewing) a civilization that’s constantly being destroyed by human conflict.

Who Runs Bartertown?

When Tina Turner’s Aunty' Entity is forced to admit over loudspeakers that “Master-Blaster runs Bartertown,” Master is pleased. Like a dictator receiving golden presents from billionaire tech bros, corrupt world leaders and subdued journalists. Master runs Bartertown.

What there is of civilization returns to the dusty dessert town only after Master chooses to lift the embargo. And that’s all it takes to soothe a madman and the monster he controls; acknowledge his grandness. Bow to his authority. Let him know he’s “the best.” If only for the moment.

Master’s reason for making Entity beg in public is to show Max that he must also follow orders, or Blaster will crush him with total impunity.

Being new in town, Max soon realizes that Master-Blaster runs Bartertown the same way Trump runs Congress, the DOJ and the State Department and the same way past U.S. Presidents used to run Cuba. They do what they want. They don’t recognize the meaning of “no.” And they don’t follow the U.S. Constitution, even from afar.

But Aunty Entity knows that without the big Blaster, the small Master would be easy to control. And it just so happens that Max could use a job.

The dice… are rolling!

For those of us that pay attention to the news, those that vote and those that refuse to, the dice ARE rolling right now. We can see it in the many distractions and political side-tracking… The pig-killer serving a life-sentence in Underworld (Bartertown’s energy-producing pig farm) recognizes this in Max; the dice are rolling.

After Max refuses to kill Blaster in Thunderdome, Aunty Entity and her Cabinet turn against him. Deep down they’re just as cruel as Master-Blaster but more thoughtful and resourceful, and they can’t allow Blaster to live another day.

Now Max must face their impartial wheel of justice.

Bust the Deal, Face the Wheel

Is James Comey facing the wheel? Letitia James? John Brennan? Rep. Lamonica McIver? John Bolton?

It’s almost as if forty years ago writers Terry Hayes and George Miller channeled a future President’s divisive slogans and simplistic legalisms… if it works in 2025 to control the masses, why wouldn’t it work in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by an ex-hooker? Has the U.S. Supreme Court started proposing a Bartertown-style wheel of justice for enemies of King Trump?

Does art imitate reality or does reality imitate a fart?

After the wheel condemns Max to “Gulag” he’s fortunate to find himself in Cuba… I mean he’s fortunate to be discovered dying in the desert by a community of idealistic children bound by hopeful dreams of peace and survival. (The Cuban Revolution?)

The young Cubans, however (I don’t know what else to call the children of the desert) share whatever vaccines and locally grown veggies they have on hand and nurse Max back to health. He doesn’t realize immediately that this is what he’s been looking for since he lost his family in the first movie; a reason to live… something to care about.

These young Cubans may not have a record-player on which to play their one record, but they have a caring and nurturing culture that Bartertown (or Washington) could learn a thing or two from. They think that Max is their Fidel Castro… or, as they call him, Captain Walker.

Max tries to explain that he’s not their Captain Walker. But maybe, in the end, it will turn out that he is.

If only we could find our Captain Walker (Governor Newsom? Stephen Colbert? Elizabeth Warren? Person to be named later?) before our country becomes the Bartertown it’s headed for… If only our Captain Walker could pop his head out of the fog and say to us; “don’t worry, young Americans, I’m here to save you.”