The world is turning into a bad movie. Last night I was researching Frank Gehry's corrogated cardboard chairs (promise: that'll be for tomorrow), when I got sidetracked by the plot, set, and script of the terrible wonderful movie Demolition Man, made in 1993.

 

Cluttered with references to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and other, much better, future-as-nightmare movies (proving that referring to better works doesn't make your own work better), the sci-fi-romance-comedy-mashup features Stallone (Sylvester, still young enough back then to throw himself into the fight scenes) vs. Snipes (as in the brilliant Wesley, with hittery-jittery one-liners, intense martial arts moves, lunatic gun fumbles, hideous acid-washed overalls, and Dennis Rodman hair).

Here's how the story goes. Act 1: Back in '96, the noble macho cop was framed by the psycho-killer. Act 2: Both wind up sprung from their cryoprison cells to duke it out the old-fashioned way, smashing utopia into smithereens as they go.

Maybe I really didn't want to talk about Gehry's chairs. But this terrible movie, honestly, was as oddly prophetic as it was comically off. (Things have certainly changed since 1993: Now when you ask someone what 2032 will look like, they'll probably say, "I don't know, but it'll be hot.") Actually, the movie is more on than off.

Oddly prophetic: Circa 2032, Schwarzenegger is president (back then, he was just an action hero and Stallone's competition. Now, look: He's at the UN summit on climate change today, while Bush is skipping that part and just going to the dinner).

And: Programmable cop cars talk to you (hello, OnStar?). Yet those cars, as well as an impossibly mint Olds 442 muscle car lurking underground, were supplied by Oldsmobile in an unabashed product placement (which didn't help: Olds, once a sturdy, reliable, GM brand, ended production 11 years later, in 2004).

Oddly off, yet on: Taco Bell is the only restaurant in town (the hegemony of that chihuahua campaign was brought down by a rat scandal, and yet Taco Bell thrives. We want our food fast; we forget even faster).

More on than we want to think it is: The evil doctor who somehow managed to brainwash the entire populace (um, Iraq) holds video conferences in his boardroom (hello i-sight).

In fact the entire city looks like a corporate headquarters (although in 2007, the buzzphrase global economy has been replaced by global warming). Los Angeles, destroyed in "The Earthquake," has been replaced by a monstropolis combining L.A., Santa Barbara, and San Diego (wait: What is that new city they created between Seattle and Tacoma? SeaTac?). And no one uses money, they use credits (hello Metrocards, EZ-Pass, etc.).

Southern California's under a constant digital eye (don't even go there). And its citizens wear Chinese-looking robes and coolie hats — in other words, everyone looks like their clothes were made in China (which nation's growth is literally exploding?). They speak a joy-joy happytalk that combines 2001: A Space Odyssey's Hal-speak with cultish homilies (hello Dr. Phil, Tom Cruise, Fox News). Cursing, usually done while expressing an opinion of some sort, is illegal (did The New York Times just not run a MoveOn ad, or is that my imagination? Can we use the word "embedded?").

More trivial coincidences that took on creepier proportions last night: You can get your ego boosted at a streetcorner booth (hello, Oprah.com). (No, really, you're not a loser at all. You are a joy-joy person who brings joy-joy to everyone you know. You are valued.)

The world of Demolition Man is a world that requires institutionalized denial in order to function, and nowhere is that more apparent than underneath the surface. Lurking under the shimmering lawns and glass-facaded headquarters lives an entire other population: a ragtag band of homeless revolutionaries who refuse to get microchipped or give up their Bladerunner-esque streetwear.

Led by Dennis Leary, this underground culture is this numbed-out society's very feisty but nervous Third World. They raid Taco Bell supply trucks for food and otherwise eat burgers made out of rats (check the recent headlines and see what starving, post-flood populations on the other side of the globe did). The above-ground citizenry denies their very existence, but in the end, they are the ones who take over the world.

Jana Martin is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Fashion & Design.