Hollywood's Satanic Agenda (20): Surrogates

On the surface, Surrogates is a cautionary tale on the wired society and the harmful, alienating effects of over-dependence and/or addiction to technology--relevant and responsible thematic material one would think. However, what we find lurking beneath the facade is yet another film about a christos figure saving/unplugging/awakening everyone to the false reality they are trapped in.

How do you save humanity when the only thing that's real is you?

That is the question posed at the top of the promo poster above. Two red flags pop up immediately here that alert us that we're on Gnostic territory: save humanity, and real.


The film starts with some backstory montage telling us that 98% of the population in 2017 uses a surrogate robot in all aspects of their lives. We hear that this development is "an event of evolutionary significance." Another scientist says, "We are the creators."

These terms are interesting as here man has taken the reins of his "evolution" and re-created man in his own image, perfecting it. The surrogates are all good looking and fit, not an imperfection among them.


Society too has been perfected. Because of the use of surrogates, society has improved much: we find that crime has dramatically increased, so have disease and discrimination. Surrogates have eliminated risk, fear, and consequences.

The downside is that people have become addicted to surrogates. They can no longer do anything without them because the original form is not good enough. Due to this dependency, they are effectively confined to the stim operator's chair, isolated and imprisoned in their homes. They are confined to the chairs much like people are confined to pods in The Matrix, only here the world is not false, the surrogates living in it are.


However, there are still some who are against the use of surrogates (you can probably already guess who they represent). They are called the Human Coalition and they live on "Dread Reservations". Dread meaning against or fear, these places are for those who are anti-surrogate; they are Luddites, backwards, against progress. Because the surrogates have been identified as an evolutionary step at the start of the film, we realize that the Human Coalition is against evolution itself, or the furthering of the species, thus providing the "religious nut" connotation.


Lo and behold the Human Coalition has a Prophet, who looks directly at the viewer and says, "Those machines walking around out there are a lie. You have been sold a lie." We know he's referring to the surrogates but he's also unconsciously alluding to the thematic material as well: the Gnostic notion of the body being a prison for the soul.


The two main characters are FBI Agents Tom Greer and Jennifer Peters. They arrive on the scene to investigate a double homicide.


Two surrogates are down and their optical units are burned out. They also find their identity chips are destroyed as well. The eyes, as we all know, are the windows to the soul.


The agents soon find that both of the operators are dead in their stim chairs as well. This is unheard of: the operators of the surrogates are supposed to be protected by a failsafe.

We also find that the attractive female surrogate was actually operated by an unattractive fat guy. With a surrogate, people can be whatever they want and are not always what they appear to be; this builds upon the false reality theme.

In the film the real human body represents the true self, or soul, while the surrogate represents the material self, the fake, illusory self. Taken together we have the symbol of the soul trapped in a material prison.


The male victim was the son of Dr. Lionel Canter, the inventor of surrogates. He is identified as "the father of surrogacy."

Obviously, every Gnostic-Luciferian film needs a demiurge god-figure, and Canter is it. He's the creator of the surrogate prisons. He did however create the surrogates with good intentions: being handicapped himself, Canter invented the robotic technology to help others with disabilities.

On the magazine covers above we see that Canter is split, i.e., there was a divide between the creator and the creation. His corporation, Virtual Self Incorporated (VSI), wanted to take the technology in a different direction than the founder. And after some disagreement, the corporation forced the creator out.

This split between the creator and his creation has a subtle "fall of man" hint to it--although here it's the chairman who fell; but this is a point where the creation went rogue.


When Agents Greer and Peters go to Canter's house we see the divided man motif repeated by the door.


VSI, we are told, is the largest corporation in the world. Inside we see an assembly line of surrogates.

The viewer must wonder not only how people afford these robots, but also where do the tremendous amounts of resources come from to built these billions of robots? And what are the environmental implications of this? But these are beside the point.


We'll interrupt our review here for a note on this scene: When Agent Peters visits some kind of FBI surveillance room she meets a human, a "meatbag," Bobby Saunders, who has located the suspect. He also tells her, "I can tap into anyone's feed. It's kind of like being in God's head."

Using the surrogates, the government can see everything by tapping into their feeds. It's hard to recall how many recent films have this same trope of the all-seeing government; we have also commented numerous times in other posts on how the surveillance society duplicates the aspects of God, that of being all-knowing and everywhere, and thus all-powerful--the savior is a G-man, don't forget.

He can also get an instant court order to shut down any surrogate about to commit a crime, which Peters thought illegal. But, Bobby tells her, it's okay because they're the good guys. Right. This scene we would consider part of the overt propaganda narrative, and separate from the underlying Gnostic text as the benevolent surveillance grid via surrogates contradicts the destructive aspects of the same preached against by the film.

It's a banal irony that these films condition people to accept the full-spectrum Panopticon while simultaneously and subliminally preaching "freedom."


Meanwhile, Greer and the cops chase the killer. He uses a special weapon to "kill" the police surrogates and their operators.


Greer then chases him onto one of the Dread Reservations, where only humans are allowed. Here we see these people presented as backwoods rednecks living is squalor as the rest of society is pristine. When they see the surrogate on their territory, they grab their pipes, sledge hammers, shotguns, and jump in the pick up truck.

One woman, before she shoots Greer with her shotgun, tells him, "You're an abomination."


Greer later returns to the reservation as himself to search for the killer. Notice the slogan UNPLUG YOURSELF; this is the same as unplugging from The Matrix. This reservation is also a desolate and run-down slum as is the real world in The Matrix (among other films also in the real world/fake world genre).


Greer's surrogate has been crucified on the reservation. He was killed, but has returned.


It's pretty clear now who the "savior of humanity" is going to be.


Greer finds the Prophet delivering a sermon of sorts. He tells his people, "My friends, soon the day will come when surrogacy must end. That day, I promise you, is close at hand. The day we get a second chance."

This prophet sounds a lot like Jesus, foretelling about and end time close at hand.


Soon there is a military raid on the reservation looking for the weapon. During a shootout, the Prophet is hit, and it is revealed that he too is a surrogate. An impostor. A false prophet.

Consider the message contained in the last few frames: the Prophet and his sect (Christianity, we assume) who are against the transhuman technology--supposedly in line with the cautionary narrative--are backwoods religious nuts with a leader who turns out to be a fraud.

On steps the christos man, an agent of change, who will eventually free mankind truly.


After the Prophet is exposed as a fraud, the viewer learns that Dr. Canter is the Prophet. In other words, the prophet and the father are one.

In John 10:30 Jesus said, "I and the Father are one."


Canter kills the real Jennifer Peters and hijacks her surrogate. He/she goes to the FBI surveillance room to upload a virus to kill everyone.


Agent Stone enters and fills out the plot for us: After creating the surrogates, and then seeing what has become of it all, Canter regrets what he has done. So he sets out to destroy them all. However, the VSI corp hires an assassin to kill Canter to stop him.

Stone tells Canter, "You should learn to live with your regrets."

Being that Canter is God, we know this is a reference to Genesis 6:6, "And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart."


The "end at hand" that the Prophet spoke of is the extermination of both the surrogate and human races. This will be done by a computer virus. This is certainly an ominous symbol, a virus wiping out humanity, that we are getting accustomed to seeing in films.

Not everyone will be killed off though: the redneck religious Luddites will not be affected as they don't use surrogates. The tribes being sealed for protection in Revelation comes to mind regarding the Human Coalition, but after the raid on the Dread Reservation, the Coalition serves no other purpose in the film.


Greer penetrates Canter's mansion; he tells Greer, "I changed the course of human history when I invented surrogates. Now I'm going to change it back."

This an obvious allusion to the Great Flood: God regretted his creating man after seeing what they had become, so he sent the flood to destroy their wickedness. But here the flood/end time disaster is updated to a virus.

Greer: "You want to kill everyone... and that's going to heal mankind?"

Canter says, "Surrogacy is a perversion. It's an addiction. You have to kill the addict to kill the addiction."


Canter then kills himself, but it's too late. His upload of the virus is complete; all the surrogates will be affected.


Greer then removes Canter from his stim chair and gets in it himself. Now he is operating the Agent Peters surrogate. However, symbolically, he is now in the place of God.


With Bobby's help, Greer is able to stop the mass murder of billions of people by "insulating" the operators from the virus. Here he saves humanity... almost.


Bobby then says that Greer must press the Y key to abort the transmission that will prevent the billions of surrogates from being "fried."

Greer hesitates, then confirms that the people will be okay. Bobby says yes. Greer does not press Y. He will allow the destruction of the surrogates for the greater good; he is merely destroying an illusion. He has saved their lives already, but now he is saving them from their prisons--that of surrogacy, the Gnostic material form.


All over the world surrogates drop like flies. A total system failure. The viewer knows that these are only the surrogates falling down, but we wonder as to the effects of the unconscious symbol being absorbed; remove the context and what we are seeing is people dropping dead en masse due to a viral outbreak.


All the "real people" emerge from their homes, dazed and confused in a scene reminiscent of the final scene in The Island. The demiurge and his Prophet are dead, his destruction has been averted, and the controls that he has emplaced upon humanity have been removed. The people have ostensibly been freed from their prisons of isolation and despair. It must be recognized here that this change in the world only comes about following massive destruction--ordo ab chao--and that the agent of this change is the government via the Big Brother full-spectrum surveillance apparatus.

Although it wasn't presented as one, Surrogates is essentially a disaster movie as the fate of humanity is at stake--which it actually is. But whether it is by disaster or natural causes we are all going to "meet out Maker" at some point and be held accountable for our decisions. A lot of YouTube commenters take issue with the "satanic" label attached to these films, but from where else could this consistent anti-God, anti-Christian Hollywood message originate?