Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC)

By Chester Cabalza

If you happened to watch and see the blockbuster movie 2012 which accumulated a whooping gross of over $769 million worldwide, then you might had also noticed the strong presence of the BRIC (an acronym used by Goldman Sachs short for Brazil, Russia, India, and China, perhaps seeking a political club and alliance) however, with vivid smashed images and dying characters portrayed by multi-cultural actors in this Hollywood science fiction disaster film.

The BRIC according to an account, coined by Goldman Sachs in 2001, argued that since these emerging markets are developing rapidly, by 2050 their combined economies could eclipse the combined economies of the current richest countries (Group of 8 or G8) in the world. The giant fantastic four countries when put together currently secure for more than a quarter of the world's land area and more than 40 percent of the world’s population.

However, if indeed the premise of the film will come true that an earth-shattering occurrence would end the world from revolving in 2012 (the same forecast made famous by Nostradamus and the prophecy based from Mesoamericans long count calendar) should we still consider the BRIC as an important alliance in our current multipolar world economy?

Of course yes! Perhaps they will play greater roles in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of our earth. As the movie delivered in its end-of-the-world fatal scenes, even if nature takes over to wipe us out, humanity shall prevail. Amazingly, as what we have seen today, the geoeconomic and geopolitical clouts of these four emerging great powers are expanding so fast, shaking the four corners of the world with a boon! That’s why this movie 2012 impliedly gauged the BRIC’s entry in our future world affairs.

Back in the film, Brazil’s iconic and famous Christ the Redeemer statue, named as one of the New Seven Wonders of the world and considered the largest art deco sculpture in this planet, which stood atop Mt. Corcovado, overlooking the breathtaking panoramic view of Rio de Janeiro, used as one of the motion picture’s theatrical posters to give hype on this multi-million dollar popcorn show, only to be destroyed by a disaster. Beyond the boisterous advertisement and publicity brought by the movie 2012, it generally captured the ire of the Catholic Church of Brazil denouncing such usage and inciting copyright laws on the infringement made by the producers of the film primarily because the people there abhorred the scheme of seeing their prestigious statue shattered. Despite of the acclaimed economic vibes achieved by Brazil over the last decade and until now, being the largest Latin American market and the second largest aircraft producer in the world, Brazilian models scattered throughout the world and its formidable football superstars alike hesitated their country turn into a bubble of destruction.

Russians effectively portrayed comical egotism and antagonism in this film led by a Russian billionaire Yuri Karpov. In order to secure his dysfunctional family’s lives and the family of the raucous American protagonists (as usual!), the group secured an Anatov 500 aircraft, known as the largest aircraft in the world and pride of the erstwhile Soviet’s space program, to depart for China from the already ruined and disaster-stricken United States. In the film, the Russian billionaire pompously boasted his collection of luxurious automobiles only to be destroyed in a crash. It can be portrayed as so, with renewed confidence and assertiveness embraced by Russia today as it strived for its re-emergence in the international scene, capitalizing primarily on its geostrategic blackmail as an “energy superpower”! Thusly, Russia’s path to reclaiming its great power status by containing the West should be taken seriously thereby aiming to receive warm treatment as co-equal partner from the surging Western countries today.

Hence, viewers saw in the movie an Indian scientist who alerted his American counterpart of the prophesied worldwide catastrophe by discovering that the neutrinos from the sun were heating up the earth core and ultimately destabilizing and causing chaos in our planet! However, Indians through blogs strongly were dissatisfied with their depiction in this film since the Indian scientist turned helpless and poor and could not even save his family from mammoth apocalyptic zealot. Thus, no Indians survived, despite the tremendous economic growth of India today, being the 12th largest economy in the world by nominal value and the 4th largest in terms of purchasing power parity. How sad that no Indian was able to buy the one billion euros golden ticket to ride the uber postmodern “Noah’s Arks” in order to save their race, despite of India’s having plenty of billionaires in the world based on annual surveys by Forbes.

China turned out to be the star in the movie 2012! When the world began to tumble due to hapless cataclysmic disorder, all roads led to China! The movie reflected China’s global role as a superpower with an impressive highlight on the massive and powerful People’s Liberation Army. As shown in the film, all of the ultramodern “Noah’s Arks” were Made in China! In effect, tens of thousands of people, including billionaires and tycoons, powerful politicians, queens and kings and their spoiled pets, who possessed the very expensive tickets rushed to China just to survive the global tragedy of megatsunami.

The United States will play a special role in the survival of the BRIC. Even in the 2012 movie, it showed how this fading superpower’s brainchild of saving the humanity, continuously exercised its police power over the world amid chaos and hopelessness, and the need for other states to bandwagon with them to survive a global catastrophe.