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Brave New World (1980)

 
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 21, 2021 1:07 pm    Post subject: Brave New World (1980) Reply with quote

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Brave New World was a TV miniseries first broadcast on NBC on March 7, 1980 and is based upon the famous novel of the same name by Aldous Huxley.

It is a futuristic dystopian social setting.

In the futuristic World State, citizens are bio-engineered through artificial wombs into an intelligence-based social hierarchy.

Childhood indoctrination programs predetermin classes based upon intelligence and labor.

Pregnancy is outlawed and citizens are required to engage in loveless sex with as many partners available to them.

Soma is the soothing drug which produces happiness. So, no one ever has to deal with any of the difficult emotional situations one experiences in life.

The Church of Ford (Henry) is the accepted state religion, where all worship production, efficiency, zero-mistakes, and materialism as the be-all and end-all existence that makes everyone satisfied with their regimented lives.

This is currently shown on Youtube.

I found this even more intriguing than the George Orwell novel film adaptation of 1984.

Both novels are often compared for their grim predictions of humankind's future, but their presentation of the future is quite different from one another.

Brave New World: There's no reason to ban books as no one wants to read them.

1984: Books are banned.

BNW: So much info is received that the population is reduced to passivity and egoism.

1984: Information is severely restricted from the populace.

BNW: The population becomes captive of the trivial.

1984: The population is a captive culture.

BNW: Control is maintained by providing pleasure and the expectation that one must always strive to be part of the norm.

1984: Control is maintained through fear, paranoia, mistrust, and the inflicting of pain.

In Brave New World Revisited Aldous Huxley wrote: "Civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny failed to take into account man's infinite appetite for distractions."

So, I can see a 1984 society existing in China and North Korea.

I see America as closer to a Brave New World.

Drugs and entertainment of all kinds serve to distract us.

We are deluged with so much information via TV, the internet, and cell phone calls to sell us something that we can throw our hands up in frustration.

Still, there are elements of 1984 that control our culture.

The news media is currently run by about six corporations.
They in turn feed us what THEY wish us to know and suppress the rest.

Example: Remember the nightly news coverage of the Vietnam War? It was on five nights a week by all three major TV networks.

We've been at war for twenty years in the Middle East. Sometimes with two countries simultaneously.

Now tell me about how often that makes the network news?

The cast in the BNW TV-miniseries is terrific.

The production values are excellent with its imaginative futuristic sets.

In the end though, I believe that Huxley's grim depiction of the future fits the US more than Orwell's 1984.

Although as I've written, elements of 1984 do pervade American culture, such as a nation perpetually at war with other countries for no reason, illegal wiretaps by the government, F.B.I. enemies lists and their quest to destroy people on such lists, C.I.A. covert operations in other countries in order to make sure the US gets the government we want as opposed to a just government for the population of that foreign country.

And the recent terrorist attack upon our Capitol.

Brave New World may not be as dramatic a look into the future from a film or television adaptation standpoint as 1984 can be.

But Brave New World is as frightening an image to just what a civilization can tragically morph into.

"We have met the enemy, and it is us." Walt Kelly
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 21, 2021 2:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

What a great post, Mike! Very Happy

I can't help but hope that your dire predictions aren't entirely accurate — but I guess that's because I'm outrageously optimistic, undeniably naive, and blissfully ignorant of life's darker side. Rolling Eyes

I tend to think "the glass is half full" (rather than half empty) — and even then. the rest of glass is filled with ice, so everything is hunky-dory. Very Happy

As for the YouTube copy of Brave New World, it's obviously made from a VHS tape which some made at home when it aired, but it's watchable (especially after a few Brave New Beers . . . ), so here's the BBC special that you reviewed so well. Cool

Pour yourself a full glass of the beverage shown below and perhaps life will seem a bit better . . . until the glass is completely empty.

Then pour another one! Laughing





_________________ Brave New World (1980)


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_________________
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Tue Jul 20, 2021 3:21 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Krel
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 21, 2021 2:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Parts of the sets were used on "Battlestar Galactic", most prominently as the wreckage of a crashed spaceship.

I missed this when it was broadcast, and I've always wanted to see it. I wasn't aware that there has been an official release of it on video. I always read that Universal would be very happy if people would just forget it ever existed.

There was another version made in 1998 starring Peter Gallagher. They didn't try to make it look futuristic, but it wasn't bad. I read the book as a kid, so I can't say how well it matched up to the novel.

David.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 11, 2024 5:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What George Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Aldous 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 information that we would be reduced to 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 bumbblepuppie.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, "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," Huxley 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. Neil Postman.--------------------------------------------------------------------Both Orwell & Huxley are correct in their dire predictions, as we seem to be able to observe aspects of our societies as possessing elements from 1984 and Brave New World.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 13, 2024 10:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When I first saw BNW in its first broadcast years ago, and on Youtube, it struck me that the cool looking sets would have smoothly fit in for the Earth Ship Ark on Harlan Ellison's The Starlost. And Keir Dullea was a co-star on that one too. However, since Starlost was in 1973 and BNW premiered in 1980, the recycling of the BNW sets for Starlost wasn't gonna ever happen.
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