Pirate Cinema

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

Trent McCauley is obsessed with making movies. But when his illegal download habit causes his family's Internet to be cut off, he's forced to run away from Bradford to London. Squatting in an East End pub, Trent falls in with a band of activists who introduce him to dumpster diving, graveyard raves and the anarchist girl of his dreams.

When a new bill threatens to criminalise Internet creativity, the future looks bleak, but the film industry fat cats--and the MPs they hold in their pocket--haven't reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change the people's minds...

When I came across Pirate Cinema, the synopsis really reminded me of some past protests and other activities. Squatters and Occupy movements and fighting online piracy. It has been a heavy debate since a few years and I was therefore quite interested into how Cory Doctorow would address his story Pirate Cinema around this subject.

In Pirate Cinema you follow Trent McCauley a teenage kid who is obsessed with making movies and lives in the UK. Though the world where Pirate Cinema takes place is roughly the same as our own there are much stricter laws regarding copyrights. And the laws on copyright make life pretty hard for Trent. Trent produces his movies by taking internet clips for youtube and other media and mixes them up to create his own movies. He has taken care in the past while doing it but unfortunately he lets his guard down just once and disaster strikes him and his family. They are being cut off from the internet. His family is mad at Trent for having caused their internet to be terminated and Trent decides to run away from home and travel to London. But in London his adventures only just begin…

Like I said Pirate Cinema discusses as an integral part of the story copyright and pirating. With Trent having run away from home and now trying to start in London has to face a lot of challenges. Where he thought he could go somewhere with his savings it turns out that he was wrong. Trent meets up with squatters and other more underground types that are making a movement against the big companies. By Trent’s interactions with other people and the world in general Cory Doctorow creates in interesting point-of-view on the laws. Whether you can say if Trent’s character really changes in his behavior and grows is a bit hard. It does seem that he is learning more and becomes more of an adult. When he first arrived in London, he starts as a “smart” beggar but as the story continues he turns more into the activist as he is faced with more unfairness and other people fighting for the same cause, turning into a political activist.

Trent doesn’t face the challenges in London alone. After a night in the homeless shelter he meets up with Jem a squatter who teaches Trent the finer things in life. Jem's part as a secondary character really gave, early on in the book, a nice grip on the current world. Where to get the good food from the dumpsters and where to find the best new and free technology. Together they decide to squat a house and have a new basis of operations. It was a nice element to read about this squatting part, though I don’t know a lot about it myself, it sounded pretty convincing with all the things that were mentioned by squatting rights and how they went about getting their place habitable. It allowed an alternative view on how to navigate through the world, because I can imagine that more than a few people live this way.

There were many great scenes in this book that highlighted the overall development of Trent but one really stood out. At about 25% of the book when Trent gets appraisal for his self made movies from the larger audience you could just feel the energy and the passion of how Trent must have felt to gain that much acknowledgement. It was good to read this part as you could clearly see the motivation of Trent and how he just wants to do the things that he likes. By these events you get the picture that the big companies are really putting their mark on the current society in the book with their laws.  

I had some issues in the beginning when I read that Trent was running away from home and that was a possible feeling of remorse. Now it didn’t set in directly but along the way Cory Doctorow allows some self-reflection of Trent on his parents and his sister and how he has a tough time on missing them but doesn’t really know how to make contact again and whether that is even for the best. Really half way this does turn around as his sister makes an appearance. I was pleased that another character 26, Trent’s girlfriend made an emphasis and that I can never be too late to just drop a simple message to tell how you are. This created an extra message in the book for me, that even how far in trouble you are, there is always a warm and comfy place somewhere for you.

Pirate Cinema is hard to classify in which to shelf this book. It reads as a young-adult book but featuring some more heavy themes of the current society might make it a difficult read for the younger audience. But at least you should give this book a try, I think you will be quite amazed with how Cory Doctorow worked out several subjects. All in all Pirate Cinema broaches some heavy, current themes that play an important role in our current society: from copyright laws, the government ruling with an iron thumb to the powers of the oppressive monopolistic organization of the film and record labels. Added to this are the adventures of Trent and how he goes about this all, meeting up with strangers, squatting, running from and protesting against governments and finding the girl of his dreams. I really like it when authors write about other idea’s besides the mainstream ones. And even more when they try to bring over a message to the readers and I think that Cory Doctorow neatly manages to put his own thoughts to paper as to where and how this world is going and how it is changing. Whether it is an eye-opener for you, you’ll just have to find out for yourself!