Political decisions influenced by parallel, opposing or widely-held views have the power to impact upon an individual’s life and the broader society. Through their representation of the complexities of politics and its profound impact on the people, both Aldous Huxley and director George Clooney elucidate the prevalent political ideologies of their times. Huxley’s 1932 prose fiction Brave New World describes the fears and anxieties that were common in the 1920s – 1930s due to the Great Wars. Conversely, Clooney’s 2011 film Ides of March portrays the underhanded politics in the contemporary context and its impact on the societal perspectives. Both composers employ the features of their mediums in order to manipulate and shape meaning of the …show more content…
These ideas are conveyed through satire, language choices and the creation of a futuristic setting. Capitalism is seen as the supreme entity in the World State as it influences almost all decisions made, in order to increase consumerism and boost the corporate world. The repetition of “Our Ford” throughout the novel as a corrupt inversion of “Our Lord”, a religious allusion, describes the deteriorated “religious” values of the World State due to capitalism gaining supremacy in this dystopia. The satirical description of Henry Ford’s mass production line of cars in the animal imagery used by Huxley in his seemingly scientific and methodical jargon, “Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lamb” emphasises Huxley’s view on the hopelessness of capitalism. The corrupt biblical allusion in “what man has put together, nature is powerless to put asunder” through the juxtaposition and inversion connotes a sense of dualism portraying the corruptive influence of humanity in the pursuance of “capitalist glory”. Through the use of satirical language features and neologisms, Huxley represents the political ideology of capitalism and the extreme ideology of the World …show more content…
Protagonist Stephen, who ironically proclaims “I’ll say or do anything if I believe in it... I have to believe in the cause...” while using high modality later doesn’t hesitate before intending to reveal a scandalous secret about his intern Molly. The juxtaposing mise-en-scene in these two scenes, light and airy contrasting with dark and shadowed, emphasises the degradation in Stephen’s morals through the use of pathetic fallacy. The repetition of “too” while undermining the minor population of America as being “too young... too bad...” further accentuates how political acts result in the breakdown of morals and the use of underhandedness as a means to a goal. The use of derogatory words, such as “bastard” throughout the movie elucidates this loss of values. Thus, Clooney represents the impact of political decisions on a person’s morals and the societal impact of the degradation of ethics due to the underhandedness of politics in the contemporary
He uses rhetorical irony in one situation in particular. He makes light of conception and giving birth that is usually a gift that is presented to parents through human contact. He uses his language to provoke an emotional response to the insensitivity of the process of conceiving and giving birth to children in the new world. He uses satirical language to degrade parenting and the relationships formed between mother, father and child. The citizens at age four are presented the opportunity to be sexually active which creates a sex driven society. “The world was full of fathers – was therefore full of misery; full of mothers – therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts – full of madness and suicide.”(41), this brainwashed and engrained the ideas of family members being toxic to one another. Lastly, Huxley uses allusions to historical figures to portray characters and different technologies. Due to Henry Ford being the creator of the assembly line and the assembly line being the main tool for the production of the thousands of embryos, Ford becomes the new worshiped god. The phrases presented around God are altered around Ford in the new world. For example “Our Ford” (41) and even altering the years A.D. (Anno Domini) to A.F. (After Ford). All the characters names and technologies are linked to famous historical
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932, is a masterpiece of science fiction. His imagined, dystopian state creatively employs facts and theories of science, as well as his very own thinly-veiled commentary on the future of society. His family background and social status, in addition to molding Huxley himself and his perspective, no doubt made impact on his writing and contributed to the scientific accuracy of his presentation. However, Huxley certainly qualifies as a social commenter and his extensive works, while sometimes biased, were always perceptive comments on the future of mankind, predictions made based on current event in his world. In other words, current affairs had undeniable impact on Huxley’s novel, and his
In the novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Huxley includes allusion, ethos, and pathos to mock the wrongdoings of the people which causes physical and mental destruction in the society as a whole. The things that happened in the 1930’s plays a big contribution to the things that go on in the novel. The real world can never be looked at as a perfect place because that isn't possible. In this novel, Huxley informs us on how real life situations look in his eyes in a nonfictional world filled with immoral humans with infantile minds and a sexual based religion.
In Brave New World Aldous Huxley, creates a dystopian society which is scientifically advance in order to make life orderly, easy, and free of trouble. This society is controlled by a World State who is not question. In this world life is manufactured and everyone is created with a purpose, never having the choice of free will. Huxley use of irony and tone bewilders readers by creating a world with puritanical social norms, which lacks love, privacy and were a false sense of happiness is instituted, making life meaningless and controlled.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, like most satires, addresses several issues within society. Huxley accomplishes this by using satirical tools such as parody, irony, allusion. He does this in order to address issues such as human impulses, drugs, and religion. These issues contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole by pointing out the disadvantages of having too much control within society.
Huxley again uses irony in emotive language such as “corpse coloured rubber” to describe the hatchery. While providing a description of scientific surroundings which directly represent the fact that humanity feels it is more sophisticated than the natural world, Huxley also indicates that the natural rhythms of the world can not be avoided. This is achieved through his reference to death in the word “corpse” a natural and inevitable aspect of life. Aldous Huxley immediately establishes the ideal of his book that humans think they are more sophisticated than the natural world. The concept of conditioning the masses to “hate the country but love country sports” is a perfect example of this.
Throughout the novel of Brave New World the author Aldous Huxley utilises satire in order to address and criticise political systems such as communism, through human conditioning and the Bokanovsky process. The novel presents the idea of the totalitarian World State playing god and having complete
Different textual mediums have the effect of exploring various representations of political personalities and situations and their impact on individuals and society. This is apparent in Aldous Huxley’s satirical novel Brave New World (BNW) (1932) and Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi (1982) where both composers use their mediums to showcase different perceptions of politics and people for a range of audiences. Huxley’s BNW creates social critique on how the growing trend of consumerism, totalitarianism and science may impinge on the lives of citizens. Gandhi recreates the events of a historical figure to represent the impact of colonisation on society. Both texts present control as well as freedom through commenting on political personalities,
In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley confronts the way in which mass production and capitalism serve to disempower the individual by cementing a self-reinforcing system of consumption and production wherein the individual is reduced to his or her utilitarian function. Although the novel touches on a number of ways in which the individual is disempowered and commodified in contemporary society, from pacifying drugs to an overreliance on technology, Huxley's critique of capitalism remains the most prominent, if only because the novel includes explicit references to the father of modern capitalist production, Henry Ford. Huxley's critique of capitalism becomes most apparent in the third chapter of the novel, when the tour group is taken over by Mustapha Mond, "his fordship" and the Resident Controller for Western Europe. Examining Mond's discussion of the time before the institution of the World State, Huxley's creative demonstration of capitalist reduction, and the function of the individual within capitalist society reveals the ways in which the novel seeks to highlight the dangers of unrestrained capitalist and the consumer culture is perpetuates.
Moreover, the World State explicitly harvests this “religious emotion” through requiring the citizens to prescribe to their own self-made religion, Fordism. As practitioners of Fordism, the citizens of the World State revere real world Henry Ford as their savior. Huxley utilizes satirical comparisons between Christianity and Fordism to illuminate that today’s government utilizes Christianity in a similar way, to quell the masses. Huxley uses obvious parodies such as switching “Our Lord” for “Our Ford” and cutting the tops off all crosses so they resemble T’s, a reference to Ford’s Model T car, to bring the truth to light without explicitly stating the fact. The followers of Ford also attend regular “Solidarity Services.” These services are comprised of twelve individuals sitting around a table while they sing hymns and ingest soma until the climax of an
To begin, Huxley utilizes Aristotelian appeals in order to incite a response of discontentment towards dangerous technologies from his readers. In his novel, the author highlights the ways in which scientific advances could be converted by a totalitarian government into innovations that would ultimately alter how individuals behave and think. Towards the beginning of the novel, the author details the laws against natural
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the most powerful thing the world state uses to control its citizens is its influence over their free will. This mass producing and artificial birthing is powerful. Their lives have been predetermined before they were even born, or more accurately, designed in a lab. When the government is the sole reason of one’s entire existence, there is no way to have free will. They are no longer pure, natural beings on this earth.
There are thousands of years of history that have taken place. History is not like art(less subjective), but there is still plenty of room for speculation, criticism, and debate among historians, professors, as well as average citizens. However, not all these moments are documented, or done successfully specifically. Some of these moments end up becoming movies, books, or even historical fiction novels, but what about those fundamental moments that aren’t readily documented? In the book The Birth of Modern Politics Lynn Hudson Parsons claims that the 1828 election was momentous in the history of both political history, as well as our nation. Parsons not only discusses the behind the scenes of the first public election of 1828, but the
He is revered as a god-like figure, and throughout the novel is referenced to with religious allusions; Ford effectively replaced the concept of God within the society. Appealing to the ideals of Ford is important above all else; a spin on the classic phrase now reads “cleanliness is next to fordliness” (110). With Ford as their God, the people lose all concept of religious freedom or a chance to consider morality. Instead, they are forced to blindly follow the examples of homogeneity set for them. This ideal of sameness removes vital aspects of humanity: creativity, freedom, opinion, and reduces people to robot objects.
The society in which Americans live in today, is in certain aspects far more complex than it ever was for our ancestors. This new complexity is seen on both a micro and macro level and everything that falls in between. Perhaps American society is inherently more complex due to the fact that most if not every societal problem that is encountered, tends to gear towards a political nature in the method of solving. It seems that Americans no longer abide by the do it yourself mentality, and as times goes by we as a people look to the government leaders to solve our problems when they are beyond our capabilities, not realizing that in doing so we also bestow the power upon them to make decisions for society as a whole. When you have an issue