Bradbury, Huxley, Ours

After reading Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman, I was able to draw parallels between our modern world and the dystopias of Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World.  Although many argue that American society will eventually transform into a Huxleyan society, I believe differently.  In my view, our world will become a fuse between a Huxleyan society and the society of Fahrenheit 451 due to dystopian elements already developing and is present in America today.

In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, citizens depended on television as an addiction, entertainment, and their daily dose of propaganda.  As illustrated by Postman, American television has similar roles in society.  We depend on television as a form of entertainment when we have nothing to do.  We’re such addicts to movies and shows that we are unable to turn the television off as we start to binge-watch, and ads describing appealing food or products intrigue our minds, despite us knowing the advertisements are mostly false.  One example is the Fushigi ball because everybody knows it is a regular acrylic ball with no magic gravity powers.  In addition, television has been our informant in most aspects of our culture: our news, politics, sports, and entertainment.  In Postman’s world, television is also the informant for the people, and although the information is false, its use as a form of entertainment is real.

Brave New World also contains similar elements in our modern society.  For instance, the unnecessity of thinking.  Huxley’s society contains people blindly following the government’s orders and performing the duties of castes and jobs.  Just as they do not need to think as much, television in our society has disposed of a need for thinking as well.  Typography required deep thinking and evaluation for both writing and reading, but television requires none of this. Symbolized by momentary advertisements and news stories, it is clear that our society is slowly having television perform the thinking for us.  Another parallel I drew between Huxley’s society and modern American society is the use of drugs to escape worries and problems in order to achieve temporary happiness.  This represents a dependence on artificial emotions and diminishing of true emotions as well.

The most striking, and in my opinion, most important, parallel is an ignorance of dystopian elements present in Huxley’s society, Bradbury’s world, and modern American society as represented by Postman.  In Huxley’s world, the citizens are ignorant of actual problems and live in happiness with the use of soma.  Rather than choose to see the government’s control of their lives and culture in every aspect, the people blindly accept their peaceful lives as it is.  In Postman’s society, the residents of the city are unable to knock their addiction to television. Because they choose to see it as the main form of entertainment rather than propaganda, the people embrace and integrate television deeply in their minds as a necessity and possibly a lifestyle.  The stubbornness and ignorance of the people to change their ways in the dystopian societies of Bradbury and Huxley can now be found in modern society.  As described by Postman, television has taken control of the way we view and interpret everything. Advertisements tell us what to buy, news fills us to the brim with useless information instead of informing us, and sports and shows distract us from problems that should be concerning.  Sadly, television has also become a form of education as well. Television replacing typography as a form of information and education is dangerous for society, but we will choose to ignore the danger.  Television is entertainment through and through and we will continue to view it as that until the moment we realize we are in a dystopian world.  The moment we realize our world is that Bradbury and Huxley predicted so long ago.

What other parallels can be drawn from our modern world with that of Huxley’s and Bradbury’s? With television already so dominant in our lives, will we be able to prevent it from transforming our society into that of a dystopia? And how will that transformation occur?

--- Hamilton Nguyen