Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury wrote of the great pieces of literature of our time titled Fahrenheit 451. The book is a dystopian novel and I was immediately drawn into it when I read the book in high school. I reread the book and I still felt compelled by each page, the beginning alone is captivating and it gets better as it progresses. Bradbury effectively warns of the pitfalls and dangers of banning books from a society, in the book there is a made up society where books are outlawed and burned. Anyone found with a book becomes guilty of a crime and is punished. I can't imagine such a society where the lack of individual liberties and punishments are abundant. A world without books would be a world without life. For example, books, as pointed out in the book, are essentially to learning and growing for human societies. Without books, people would become illiterate and miss out on information that is important to their livelihood. A world without books would revert back to the time in history where the majority of the population was illiterate (before the Gutenberg printing press). The main character in Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, serves as a visionary of sorts and a rebel against this restricting society. He runs off with a group of like minded people that believe that books are of great importance. The society in which the book is based is in the future, much like other books we have read thus far (Planet of the Apes, 1984, etc.) and it's a society in which critical thought is manipulated and extradited in an attempt to make the society "equal" in terms of knowledge. I believe that without books there would still be inequalities (as there were before Gutenberg) and that a lack of critical thought would be detrimental to progress because those with great ideas would not be heard. A society without books would seize to function because expression would be outlawed and that would leave the society vulnerable to greed and being taken advantage of. Bradbury's social commentary makes for a great read because it makes you think of how censorship can be harmful to a society and how it can reverse progressive thinking. I found it interesting that the professor mentioned that Fahrenheit 451 had been banned in certain places, it's ironic that a book that criticizes censorship ends up being censored. Not only is it ironic, but it proves Bradbury's point that a society without books devalues itself of expression and critical thought.

A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

Through the two readings assigned for this week I was able to analyze the film A Clockwork Orange in a way I had not thought of before. This first reading, Where Did The Future Go?, is the one that caught my attention the most because it talks about an uncertain future and how people embrace risk in order to attain that future that seems to amount to nothing more than empty promises. The reading talks about the way people have learned to embrace the risks and pitfalls that may benefit them even though they know there might be failure at the end of the road. This shift has also manipulated the way in which people invest in the market and how foreign policy is reached. People often invested in the market in hopes of substantial returns and were persuaded to take risks in order to gain profit and often times that has backfired, especially at the present time. I found this to be interesting in thinking about the film A Clockwork Orange. In the film, Alex DeLarge is cast as an outsider, a menace to society and an outright delinquent. He, along with his group of droogs, commits several crimes until one day Alex is arrested and taken to prison. He is then given the opportunity to leave prison if he becomes a sort of laboratory rat for psychological experimentation. DeLarge embraces risk as a means to escape the prison system that he loathes, but he is investing in an uncertain future. DeLarge, like those who invest in the market, or countries that invade other countries without knowing the true implications and consequences, takes a risk (in his case of being harmed by psychological drugs and testing in order to reach an uncertain goal, avoiding jail and becoming completely reformed). As the reading states, those who have the capacity to embrace risk are often those who have power and money and those that are not capable are those without power and money. DeLarge falls somewhere in between because he is not completely poor or without power but he chooses a lifestyle of perversion and crime for the thrill of it. DeLarge, then, is interesting because he is left with the decision of undergoing psychological alteration in order to avoid a place he fears, prison. DeLarge is given the capacity to take a risk in order to reach an ideal future because he continually mentions wanting to be reformed and refined.

The second reading, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, focuses on means of production and reproduction. The reading talks about the various ways that a company, industry or society is able to continue production by means of reproducing that very production. The article cites Marx’s theories and solutions and makes great use of
historical context to illustrate the way companies thrive on a sort of recycling of resources and the way workers are compensated for their contributions. DeLarge, in a sense, is used as a subject in a social experiment that uses him as a resource. Like the article states, companies invest their production resources as a resource for reproduction and, in the same fashion, DeLarge is used so that society can benefit from him being a reformed and refined individual. The articles says, “To put this more scientifically, I shall say that the reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also, at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order” and this ties in with DeLarge in that he learns new skills to be put back into society as a new person, but also, at the same time, must submit to higher powers. The submission to the established order completely goes against what DeLarge believed prior to being sent to prison, he was focused on destruction and crime, but when he was told he would be released sooner by going to the hospital facility he was told he would become a new person, one that follows the rules of the land and obeys the established order.

After reading the two articles I saw the film in a completely different light and actually enjoyed it even more than before because I saw it through the lens of societal production by way of reform and through the eyes of DeLarge who embraced risk in order to attain an uncertain future, much in the ways that the actual world functions even today.