Sorry for the dramatics.... I couldn't help myself.
Anyways, as I was surfing through youtube, amusing myself to death as Mr. Postman would say, I decided to type in "Brave New World" to check out the trailer. Instead I came across the actual movie (pssht! Hey youtube!! I thought you guys were cracking down on copyright violations. Well, guess what? You missed one.).
If I was a movie critic, I would have had walked out before the first five minutes were up. Now, I know that most films based on novels are nothing like the actual book but this one really hit the ball out of the park in the aspect of "worst attempt to follow the book". In my opinion it focused too much on the love affairs going on and didn't even hint at the sections that Mr. Huxley went on and on about, and they were the most important. In the book, John talked for more than half of chapter 8 about his and Linda's life in Malpais, yet the movie completely ignored it. At that point I thought it was kind of ironic to make a movie based on a eye-opening book if the producers weren't even going to try and send out the same message.
And that would be were Amusing Ourselves to Death pops in; Andrew Postman, Neil Postman's son, compares Huxley and and Orwell in the introduction. Postman explains that no matter which point of view you associate with, it will still be the same thing. In Huxley's eyes, this movie is just another method to appease the masses; like the Bread and Circus the Roman Emperors would have held in the coliseum just to maintain their subjects happy and clapping their hands like dazed three-year-olds. But on the other side of the spectrum, Orwell would have had a fit and declare that this movie is another way of brainwashing us into firmly placing those rose tinted glasses over our eyes; he would have seen this as an easy manipulator since most people in this day and age would rather watch television than read a book.
So are we all doomed?
Seems like it, if you're a pessimist. But an optimist would just be cheering for the soma.
But I want your opinion on this; due to our current society's love for all things electronic, do you think that it will all eventually turn us into mindless zombies, sans all the blood and gore? If so, is it to be feared like Orwell states or to be embraced and taken with a gram of soma?
P.S.
Heres the link to the first part of the movie on youtube since embedding it was disabled by the person:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuiaT0nX9ls&feature=channel
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That movie is absolutely ridiculous. So far, I've finished the first two parts, and I couldn't have been more shocked of how far from the book they were. In the novel, Lenina is "having too much" of Henry Foster, and in the movie she's "having too much of Bernard Marx". And Marx isn't short and bad looking in the movie, and he definitely doesn't seem strange or anything close to being an outsider. Hollywood may have used the sex in the book to attract people and ratings, but it really was a slap in the face to all the people who really read Brave New World, and I'm sure Huxley would be rolling over in his grave. Thanks Luzangela, for posting the video. I'll continue to watch the rest, but as of now, I'm just as disappointed as you.
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