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Fahrenheit 451 and "Harrison Bergeron" 18100 Views


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Description:

We may be into the whole online education thing, but we love our books more than anything. So the thought of someone burning them? Or of a life without them? Now that’s our definition of a dystopia.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

Fahrenheit 451 and Harrison Bergeron, a la Shmoop.

00:09

One of life's simple pleasures is to read a book by a roaring fire. Afterward, you might

00:13

enjoy a nice mug of hot cocoa.

00:15

Chances are, you probably won't follow it up by tossing your book into the fire.

00:19

Not unless you're a Nazi, a character in Fahrenheit 451... or really unhappy with The Casual Vacancy.

00:27

Book burning was popular in real-life dystopias

00:30

like Nazi Germany, where they burned books written by...well, anyone they disagreed with.

00:35

Which included... a lot of people. It may have inspired Ray Bradbury to create

00:40

Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, a world where firemen don't fight fires...

00:45

...they start them. In Bradbury's vision of the future, all

00:49

books are banned, and whenever one is found the firemen are sent in like pyromaniac-exterminators

00:53

to deal with the problem.

00:59

When one fireman named Guy Montag starts questioning whether it's really such a good idea to incinerate every book out there, he's

01:05

in for a world of trouble...

01:07

A world of trouble that includes vicious, mechanical dogs.

01:11

Though many assume that Fahrenheit 451 is about censorship...

01:15

There's actually some debate on the subject.

01:18

On one side is its author, Ray Bradbury, who says the book is actually about the evils

01:21

of television sapping our attention spans.

01:28

On the other side is...just about everyone else.

01:31

Um...what were we talking about again?

01:35

Oh, yeah...TV. And books. That's right.

01:39

Maybe Bradbury's right, and TV has corrupted our attention span.

01:46

Another story about the dystopia that television has wrought is Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron."

01:51

In case you didn't guess it from the title of the story, the main character is named Harrison Bergeron.

01:57

... a kid who was born with the terrible curse of being tall, athletic, and handsome.

02:02

In most places these traits would be awesome, but in Harrison's world, being exceptional

02:07

is forbidden by law.

02:10

Everyone has to be equal, so anyone who is smart, strong, attractive, or... in any way

02:16

awesome... is weighed down so that they become as common as everyone else.

02:20

When Harrison tries to rebel and let his awesomeness shine, he faces a fate worse than mechanical dogs.

02:28

What's a person to do when exceptional people

02:29

like Harrison aren't allowed to shine?

02:32

Sit around and watch TV, of course.

02:34

Unfortunately the TV is pretty boring, too. The comedy isn't funny.

02:39

The soap operas don't have any hot people.

02:45

And people sing worse than the last batch of rejects on Bulgerian Idol.

02:54

Imagine it: nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to do.

03:00

Eternal boredom.

03:02

Maybe you can get a job as an accountant to... liven up your life.

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