Shifting Baselines

Boca Chica, Texas, is surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande. The sound of the waves defines the rhythm of rural life, but this wild land is undergoing irreversible change. The marshes have been drained, the beaches closed, and the houses bought up: the shadow looming over the beach belongs to a 50-story rocket preparing to be launched into space. It is astonishing how much access filmmaker Julien Elie, like the space geeks around him, had to SpaceX facilities. But we are no longer in the era of public space missions, the galaxy is a privatized marketing terrain of conquest, and the show of omnipotence is part of a strategy that politics has learned well from technology. A little further south, across the border that the same politics is trying to militarize, Mexicans flock to admire the launches. But far to the north, two astrophysicists monitor thousands of satellites sent into the orbit: the sky above us, which seemed infinite, is becoming the limit of the catastrophic cosmic pollution caused by the neoliberal occupation of space.

Shifting Baselines draws parallels between the extinction of local animal species and the possible disappearance of humanity, which serves as an alibi for Elon Musk’s crazy dream. However, Elie is not so much motivated by this dystopian vision as by the symbolic loss of our humanity, manifested in the banal but poignant disappearance of the starry night sky that we have taken for granted for so many centuries. The film calmly observes the destruction of who we are as human beings. The atmosphere in Boca Chica is very unique: amazed and happy people are under the impression that they are witnessing a great event in the history of humanity. But in reality, the object of their admiration is causing the disappearance of a magical place, a place of stunning beauty – and prepares the destruction of the sky. Boca Chica is a paradoxical place where the destruction of Earth and sky meet. It is also a lost place in the middle of nowhere, bordering the part of Mexico that is one of the most dangerous areas in the world and where drug traffickers rule freely, unfettered by state power. Perhaps it’s precisely the fact that it’s a remote location, far from view, that allows Elon Musk to do what he wants.