PLOT
In a future society based on pleasure without moral
worries, love is prohibited but casual sex, now called “engaging”, is
strongly encouraged. Everyone is kept happy with a legal drug, soma.
People are hatched and cloned on conveyor belts to meet the requirements
of five different social classes, from ruling Alphas to robot-like
Epsilons.
Bernard Marx is a different Alpha male with an
inclination to thinking. He and a girl called Lenina Disney go visit a
reservation of “savages” where they meet a handsome young man named John and
bring him back to “civilization”. John turns out to be the son of the
director of the cloning authority, which causes a scandal and makes John a
celebrity freak. John falls in love with Lenina but his desire is ruined
by his antiquated sexual morals derived from reading Shakespeare. John
hates the over-social but anti-emotional civilization, asks to be sent to
live in isolation, and gets a job as a lighthouse guard. But even there he
can't forget Lenina or escape his celebrity status.
WE SAY
It is obvious what the appeal of this 1932 novel by
Aldous Huxley would be to Andrew Niccol, the New Zealand-born screenwriter
/ director who is writing the screenplay for a big screen adaptation.
Niccol has previously tapped into similar territory in his 1997 movie
Gattaca, an underrated affair about a
dystopian future in which genetic engineering determines one’s place in
society.
After all, in retrospect Huxley’s novel seems to be
to have been more prescient than George Orwell’s vision of the future with
1984.
That is if you’re living in the affluent West and not, let’s say, a
dictatorship like North Korea at least.
See if you can spot any of these elements from
Huxley’s novel in modern consumerist society today (courtesy of Wikipedia):
The novel begins in […] AD 2540. In this world, the
vast majority of the population is unified as The World State, an
eternally peaceful, stable, plentiful society where everyone believes
everyone is happy. In this society, natural reproduction has been done
away with and children are born and raised in Hatcheries and
Conditioning Centres. Society is rigidly divided into five castes, which
are carefully engineered by these centres. The castes are: the Alphas,
Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons (with each caste further split into
Plus and Minus members). Alphas and Betas are the top level of society:
they make decisions, teach, and dictate policy. Each Alpha or Beta is
the product of one egg being fertilized and developing into one fetus in
artificial wombs located on an assembly line in Hatchery and
Conditioning Centres.
Far-fetched yes. About does any of this ring a bell?
All members of society are conditioned with the
values that the World State idealizes. Children are trained to identify
by their caste, co-operate, copulate, to enjoy anything that is good for
Society, and hate anything that is bad for Society. Constant consumption
is the bedrock of stability for the World State; one thing everyone is
encouraged to consume is the ubiquitous drug, soma. Soma is a mild
hallucinogen that makes it possible for everyone to be blissfully
oblivious. It has no short-term side effects and induces no hangover;
however, long-term abuse leads to death by respiratory failure.
Heterosexual sex is also widely consumed. In The
World State, sex is a social activity rather than a means of
reproduction and is encouraged from early childhood. Regular
reproduction can occur, but is viewed by society as unnatural and
repugnant; the few women who could reproduce are conditioned to take
birth control. As a result, sexual competition and emotional, romantic
relationships are obsolete. Marriage is not only unnecessary; it is
considered an antisocial dirty joke because, as the conditioning voice
repeats at night, “everyone belongs to everyone else”. In World State
society, natural birth or pregnancy is smut of the most vulgar kind. To
call someone a mother is the lowest possible insult; calling someone a
father is not as bad (it will even produce laughs), but it's little
better.
In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil
Postman points out the relevancy of Huxley’s book as opposed to Orwell’s
vision of the future in 1984. He writes:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.
What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for
there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who
would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us
so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared
that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would
be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a
captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture,
preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the
centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World
Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the
alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man's almost
infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are
controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled
by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will
ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
Now understand the relevancy of the novel to modern
times and its appeal several decades later?
Anyway, rights issues have been sorted out and
Brave New World is in preproduction. Leonardo DiCaprio has expressed
interest in playing John, the so-called “savage” and Ridley (Blade
Runner, Alien) Scott has expressed a
desire to direct it. (Apparently DiCaprio used to play hide-and-seek in
the gardens of a Hollywood Hills mansion owned by the family of Huxley by
the way.)
“The technology was not there to make it look
convincing,” said George DiCaprio (Leo’s dad). “It is a vast futuristic
world to put on screen, packed with many ideas which made it tough for
some studios to deal with.”
“There is now nothing stopping this film,” Huxley’s
granddaughter Tessa said, referring to the legal rights to a movie
version.
Update (13/10/2008): Despite director Ridley
Scott declaring that an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s novel will
“definitely be what I do next after Nottingham, the Robin Hood film
(with Russell Crowe),” it would seem that he is putting off Brave New
World in favor of another sci-fi book, namely Joe Haldeman’s
celebrated 1974 novel The Forever War
