Showing posts with label George Orwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Orwell. Show all posts
Monday, September 27, 2010
You hate me? So what! I don't care.
What do you do when a big group of people hates you? Do you pretend that you don't care or do you try to deal with it using violence? Whether you are hated by one person or a group of people, the effect is still the same. The Bedford Reader that we have been reading in class has a lot of interesting topics from what I've seen, but one that we've been reading in class so far is Orwell's Shooting an Elephant. A European man is a sub-divisional police officer in a place he despises. He also seems confused as to whether he hates his own people or his oppressors. When you find out that someone doesn't like you, you not only have hate for that person but also hate for yourself. We are already self-conscious enough as it is, but our insecurities really show when we know that we are not liked. The man in Shooting and Elephant made me wonder, if you really hate your job or your life, do you just deal with it or do you try to find a way out of it?
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Brave New World..... the movie, dun dun DUUUNN!
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
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
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Is this a Goldilocks Situation?
I'm finding Neil Postman's book very interesting from the very beginning in the Foreward. He compares George Orwell's 1984 to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Both books are very similar and Huxley has even been accused of plagiarizing Orwell's work, but Postman points out the very important differences. Orwell talks of a world of control, totalitarianism, and government holding information from us. Huxley talks of a world where so much information is offered to us that we stop caring and would rather roam in a world of "passivity and egoism." But both end in similar outcomes as we let the Big Brother (or "externally imposed oppression" as Postman writes) take over either unwillingly or unknowingly. So are we in a Goldilocks situation? Is the best society a balance of freedom and control?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
