How Brave New World Updated Huxley's “FLAWED” and “DATED” sci-fi classic - You'd get a better adaption by looking outside your window

[Red Hood]

This is "Objectivist sympathizer Zack Snyder makes film about famous altruist Superman" levels of wrong.

 

[Ponchik]

NBC is giving Brave New World its overdue prestige treatment

i'd be really fucking hard pressed to name a journo buzzword that rustles my jimmies more than "prestige tv". theyve been using it more and more over the last few years even though there were plenty of dead and festering outlets like cracked questioning why the term "prestige tv" is so pervasive. whatever, who cares, if somebody broke down while watching the latest game of thrones finale theyll write a 5000 word article explaining how its "prestige tv" and why this is a good thing, doesnt matter if its a vapid empty term to begin with

teevee as a medium has been a compromised corporate piece of dogshit since motherfucking day one - the us government was more than happy to let abc, cbs and nbc singlehandedly beam propaganda and shitty sitcoms into american homes for over 30 years with little to no competition whatsoever. considering that disney, nbcuniversal and the redstones still have a fucking stranglehold on legacy media its impossible to pretend that things have gotten any better. the fact that fucking drones like these have to justify the unimaginably minuscule amount of worthwhile shows that have aired on primetime tv over the last century by calling it "prestige tv" shows how hollow of a medium it really is

ive never actually read huxley (except for "brave new world revisited", weirdly enough) but the rest of this piece speaks for itself tbh

 

[Meriasek]

You make some very good points. I just want to add that John himself couldn't evolve either due to his upbringing even though he wasn't conditioned from birth. That's why he feels such regret after the lighthouse orgy and when whipping himself didn't work he killed himself.

In a way, John was also conditioned from birth, just not in the explicit way the rest of New London was.
Holy shit this show is gonna be hilarious to watch. We talked about Brave New World in English class back then, and I'm pretty sure all of us who read this in a second language course had a better understanding of it than the showrunner here.

 

[Stress Sigh]

Next 1984 will be made into a TV show about how a soceity ran amok due to everyone being able to think too freely so we can preserve George Orwell 's legacy but give it an "updated" viewpoint. They'll make newspeak into something more akin to destruction of language through meaninglessness than a tool of strict rigidity for the purpose of control.

 

[Meriasek]

Next 1984 will be made into a TV show about how a soceity ran amok due to everyone being able to think too freely so we can preserve George Orwell 's legacy but give it an "updated" viewpoint. They'll make newspeak into something more akin to destruction of language through meaninglessness than a tool of strict rigidity for the purpose of control.

Nineteen Eighty-Four combined with Brave New World would fit perfectly right now as a rather spicy take on the development our society has taken, but those in power sure as fuck wouldn't want to show that.

 

[Woke Blue Muttlema]

When I read "A Brave, New World" I only ever though that the dated parts where the references to Our Ford and Detroit being sort of a capital everything else is completely within boundaries and soul crushingly on point, could easily work today.
Really, whats the deal with "modernizing" the concept"? are we back in the 90s?, theres a reason the book still resonates this much with people. If I would modernize it I would include apps like Instagram or TikTok where people reach ChrisChan levels of powerleveling and often prove how uncreative they are. Hell, the only possible "improvement" I could make to the concept would be to make media giants the ones responsible with tech replacing Soma or even just increasing its effects but that if anything doesnt add anything of value.

 

[Stress Sigh]

When I read "A Brave, New World" I only ever though that the dated parts where the references to Our Ford and Detroit being sort of a capital everything else is completely within boundaries and soul crushingly on point, could easily work today.
Really, whats the deal with "modernizing" the concept"? are we back in the 90s?, theres a reason the book still resonates this much with people. If I would modernize it I would include apps like Instagram or TikTok where people reach ChrisChan levels of powerleveling and often prove how uncreative they are. Hell, the only possible "improvement" I could make to the concept would be to make media giants the ones responsible with tech replacing Soma or even just increasing its effects but that if anything doesnt add anything of value.

It's like a generational narcissism where modern people or interpretations are always better or correct. The meaning or honoring the original is second maybe even fifth to "making our mark".

 

[Getting tard comed]

How long before they edit the book to reflect this "new, updated, prestigious" and since it's all on Amazon you cant get get the original?

 

[Idiotron]

This will blow dick and be cancelled after 1 season but at least it will briefly renew interest in the source material.

 

[Strange Wilderness]

This will blow dick and be cancelled after 1 season but at least it will briefly renew interest in the source material.

You think the people reading the book because of the show will get the books message and take to heart how society today resembles the dystopian novel? Or will they just ignore the book, embrace the narrative that the TV show is a better because its more modern. Afterwards they consume their Soma to prevent any thoughts from making them uncomfortable.

 

[Lemmingwise]

Really, whats the deal with "modernizing" the concept"?

This is simple.

1. Instant audience
2. Instant relevance
3. Depth of story and themes that film and tv writers can rarely manage
4. All the other creatives from set design to wardrobe to actors have a starting point to get inspired by rather than generic directions

But mostly it's just 1 and 2.

All of Kubrick films were adaptations. Shakespeare adaptation and reinterpretation is a good tradition for centuries.

Most of the early succesful movies ftom 1910-1930 have been remade, often with remakes surpassing the original.

It's not remakes that are bad. It's that we get to see bad filmmakers do remakes that is bad. We wouldn't have seen their work if they created something new and wholly original.

The advantage of remakes also is that the makers more clearly communicate their interpretation and view, because it contrasts to the original.

 

[Idiotron]

You think the people reading the book because of the show will get the books message and take to heart how society today resembles the dystopian novel? Or will they just ignore the book, embrace the narrative that the TV show is a better because its more modern. Afterwards they consume their Soma to prevent any thoughts from making them uncomfortable.

I don't think the modernity of the TV show will do that much, retro is cool nowadays.
I think the book will make them feel very uncomfortable but that's a good thing.
Hopefully, some of the people under 30 will see themselves in the characters and reflect on their lives.

 

[Jack Awful]

They don't understand because the novel has come true.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Sounds like someone put some Fahrenheit 451 in my Brave New World.

>tfw we become so degenerate that people unironically think Brave New World is Utopian

You're a little late for that, people have been posting about how great fully-automated luxury gay space communism will be for a while now.

 

[TaimuRadiu]

Brave New World was a hideous, scathing satire of the British class system and how modern advertising was screwing up people. An erudite man raised on what a 1920s educated Britainer would have been raised on shows up, and is meant to be the character from whom you understand thinks everything is some kind of . . . clown world?

"Lenina doesn't evolve in the book," he says. "She is the same at the beginning of the book as the end. That was an opportunity. For our story Lenina is very much at the center.”

Yes, that's because it's explicitly stated that the World State keeps most people (except for the World Controllers) at the maturity level of children in order to better control them.

The Savage Lands’ makeover into a Westworld-style vacation park is in contrast to its role in the book, where it was a reservation New Londoners visit to gawk at primitives. Wiener felt Huxley's "savages," described in the book with Puebloan imagery, was problematic.

Huxley was hugely interested in the Amerindian peoples, specifically the ones of Mexico and the American Southwest. The point is to contrast how their "old ways" are with the glamping tourists.

"In the book John is kind of Mike Pence-like," Wiener says. "He's got a strict sense of propriety based on Elizabethan ideas."

Oh, fuck you.

Wiener believes Huxley's John would have made for boring television, but still wanted him to have "his private oasis" that defined him. They found it in music.

No, it's Shakespeare. There was an explicit thematic reason for him being obsessed with Shakespeare. All the old books had been burned, except for those kept in vaults, forbidden to everyone except the World Controllers.

"It was important to be true to the philosophical questions he set up," Wiener says. "If you look at the book, it's flawed, dated. We have the benefit of being able to pass the book through the filter of our own time. Everything in the book really lends itself to that."

Fuck you, presentist scum.

 

[A Grey Cat]

Huxley was pretty based for his time, more so than Orwell. Cause remember Orwell was probably the original believer in "real socialism hasn't been tried yet. " because while you definitely see jabs at far right ideas like nationalism in 1984 you still see jabs at far left ideals too like collectivism.

So yeah this is hbos watchmen levels of missing the point. Huxley went after every ideal the far left was hoping to implement in his time and even today, instead of "1984 was supposed to be an instruction manual. " it should be "brave new world wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual. "

 

[frozenrunner]

Really, whats the deal with "modernizing" the concept"

These writers have to alter the "adaptation" with their own brand so people remember it's their work, not Huxley's.

And they're progressive leftists, so they have to "use their platforms" to fight wrongthink while virtue signaling. That's really all it is.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Huxley was pretty based for his time, more so than Orwell. Cause remember Orwell was probably the original believer in "real socialism hasn't been tried yet. " because while you definitely see jabs at far right ideas like nationalism in 1984 you still see jabs at far left ideals too like collectivism.

So yeah this is hbos watchmen levels of missing the point. Huxley went after every ideal the far left was hoping to implement in his time and even today, instead of "1984 was supposed to be an instruction manual. " it should be "brave new world wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual. "

I wondered about that, while 1984 can be seen as also the end product of the far right, the book Animal Farm is very much THE reason why Socialism is doomed to fail - The basic assumption that all humans are the same is not true (there are different "animals") and it is only a matter of time until one group will seize power and make sure it keeps it.

Also both works are an instruction manual depending on where you are on the political compass. The right and dissidents faces the might of 1984 while the proles are in the BNW soma induces immaturity.

 

[Getting tard comed]

I wondered about that, while 1984 can be seen as also the end product of the far right, the book Animal Farm is very much THE reason why Socialism is doomed to fail - The basic assumption that all humans are the same is not true (there are different "animals") and it is only a matter of time until one group will seize power and make sure it keeps it.

1984 is not the end product of the far right. Orwell did not write about the far right. He wrote it in response to the champagne socialists and their bullshit he saw. 1984 is the product of the far left ideology Orwell saw at the time.

 

[FAQnews Correspondent]

tl;dr our media overlords find a way to turn one of the best and most relevant dystopian novels into the very thing it was warning against, and here's why that's a good thing.

I know such a grotesque display of absurd irony should shock, outrage or amuse me, but I can only feel depressed. This shit is just saddening, tbh.

Like when the publisher of Fahrenheit 451 started publishing a censored version of the book. It's almost like they purposely turn these works into exactly what they were warning against.