Skin deep society

 

Skin deep society

Nikhil Marathe

11th November 2010

Science fiction dystopias or comments about social order and personal behaviour is often a slightly exaggerated version of current society rather than mind-blowing new ideas. It serves as a watchdog for society’s intellectuals, highlighting possible future trends and how humans could destroy themselves.

A Clockwork Orange and Fight Club are introspective commentaries while Brazil and Fahrenheit 451 are more about society. The overarching theme is the meaning and limits of freedom.

Fight club is about a society obsessed with appearance. We see Edward deliberating over his apartment and furniture. Yet there is something missing in his life which leads to his insomnia. Palahniuk’s point about modern society is the sense of loneliness that is rampant. He asserts that capitalist society creates a world where possessions are given great value (Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.) while relationships are abhorred, workplace relationships are masked, meetings are highly formal and political correctness is above everything else. You are a cog in the giant capitalist machine. This lack of personal interaction breeds dissatisfaction and loneliness. Capitalism builds on this defect to create products and technology to fix that gap - no wonder that social sites like Facebook are so popular. In addition society looks down upon introverts, the constant message today is that parties and meetings and socialising is more important. Edward’s adventures and split personality are a result of his innate need to return to more visceral and basic needs. Tyler Durden says “What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women.” an assertion that society is trying to wipe out physical fights, raised voices and wars to become more civilized. But in that men are behaving against all evolutionary characteristics. Society is a cultural production machine which reifies and homogenises art of all forms, subsumes opposition, reflects the ideology of the incumbents, and perpetually maps out new physical and conceptual territories for conquest so that we can have an illusion of creativity and new interesting things while wallowing in unfreedom.

Where Fight Club is about physical and emotional lock down, Fahrenheit 451 takes an intellectual track. Censorship is after all a form of restricting personal freedom. Book bans happen because a certain section of society feels that it is morally wrong for people to read a book but enforces it on everyone, curbing the freedom of others. This detriment of personal knowledge and interpretations to follow social norms is taken to an extreme by banning all books in Fahrenheit. But it only expands on the current fear of criticism by society. Children who constantly read are referred to as nerds, outcasts, loners, and even weird. With such hostility aimed at those who do read, others simply do not wish to be the victim of such negativity. Children today are much happier being accepted by their peers than they are expanding their own literary prowess. Consequently, we have a declining literary vocation in our own society. The pinnacle of this declination is starkly presented in Bradbury’s novel. Television provides a medium to spread society and government approved content. In today’s society the media pushes various products on consumers as to increase their feelings of acceptance and equality. In Fahrenheit 451 one of the catalysts to the complete censorship of ideas is the demand of consumers to remove offensive products and ideas. The censorship is not just to protect people from insults but to censor thoughts and discussions. Meaningful discussions are frowned upon because anything meaningful is a threat to soceity where mediocrity is the norm. This aim for mediocrity is all around our society, where jobs are driven by money and not passion, where petty matters are more important than global threats because we are ensconced in protective illusions by our money and technology. So we classify people with limitless energy and creativity as people with ADHD and discourage bing too good at something. For example, a youth football league in Canada recently made a rule that any team which beats the other with more than 5 goals effecively loses the game! (for being too good).

A Clockwork Orange is the most outspoken film in its portrayal of violence and sexual abuse. But I believe that part of the reason for the great outcry it created, was that the leaders of social institutions were not comfortable with their truth being told to them so plainly, if in a exaggerated manner. Throughout the 1940s to 1960s social barriers were decreasing as religion loosened its hold and various laws like the ones banning abortion and homosexuality were repealed in Britain. A Clockwork Orange pushed the boundaries of permissible and proved that the old morality was going strong. There is nothing wrong with morality since it imposes certain social conventions which keep most people safe. What Burgess aimed for is to question if sciety should choose or should man have the free will to choose morality. To quote him

“Man is defined by his capacity to choose courses of moral action. If he chooses good, he must have the possibility of choosing evil instead. I was also saying that it is more acceptable for us to perform evil acts than to be conditioned into an ability only to perform what is socially acceptable.”

The film itself is the “books” of Fahrenheit since it was condemned by society for influencing people amorally. It showed a society where Pavlovian experimentation was used to impose morality. Rather than encouraging a sense of moral behaviour and choices from the very beginning, society was creating Clockwork Oranges. Such psychological conditioning is more appropriate for a totalitarian society since it comes as a cost to individual rights and dignities. Conditioning also cannot contend for all situations. Redemption is a complicated thing and change must be motivated from within rather than imposed from without if moral values are to be upheld.

Gilliam’s Brazil is a regimented society with ministries and departments. The ducts represent total dependence on the central government. Gilliam has mentioned that he has a distaste for authority and bureaucracy and all the additives that they breed. Even the architecture of the film evokes a highly complex system which is not manageable for one person. The air conditioning, the papers tubes and shared desks represent the aim for efficiency and control in capitalist society. This forces a reliance on others and a lack of freedom. It prevents someone from living outside of a system, however flawed it may be. Sam is in a constant battle with his environment, although most people seem to think it is good because they are not aware that they are trapped by modern conveniences. Sam’s effort to find freedom is visible in his dreams of flying, and of saving the lady – having control over his life.

In this manner all 4 works have attempted to make us see that going down the path of “for the greater good” by abolishing freedoms is not the right thing. This is what makes them influential rather than just creative landmarks.