HSC Post #1 - Consumerism in Brave New World and Blade Runner

As I'm heading into HSC waters I decided I may try something a tad different. It's unfortunate that I procrastinate so much, but if in any small way I can combine procrastination with study then it will not be a loss. One of the main things I need to do at this point is to explore ideas and concepts in Brave New World and Blade Runner (specifically the Director's Cut), so I shall try through my normal blog style discussions.

Feels slightly Alice in Wonderland... Through the looking glass?

Consumerism in Brave New World and Blade Runner
Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, lived through a time of turbulent changes, where society was rapidly being transformed by the advancing state of technology. In his novel he focused on how these advances affected the individual, as opposed to society itself, but it doesn't diminish the advances he foresaw themselves. First amongst them, and something nearly incomprehensible by today's standards, is the loss of craftsmanship.

One must consider that up until only a few decades before Huxley published his novel that when an object was made, it was made one at a time, individual, with great care. This is part of the reason why antiques are so valuable. Antique objects are considered intrinsically individual, not by artificial restrictions (such as Limited Edition promotional objects) but due to the fact that a single craftsman had to dedicate a great deal of time and care into it's creation.

For Huxley it must have been terrifying to see the world move towards Ford's assembly line - where the creators were no longer craftsman but instead automatons, putting no genuine care into their work. Huxley may have feared whether this copy culture would continue all the way up to the arts, removing the creativity and originality from them which in his opinion made them so valuable.

Huxley continued this trend on to human beings, the idea that those individualistic human traits are sacrificed for simplicity and efficiency. This is very much where Brave New World and Blade Runner collide, they both feature worlds in which technology has led to dehumanisation, where due to the forces of commerce and science working hand in hand it is no longer economically feasible to have an individual identity - society is willing to suffer a carbon copy culture for efficiency's sake.

The Carbon Copy Culture

To some degree however we're wandering from the topic of craftsmanship when we talk about individuals as human beings. Whilst yes it is true that the concept of the creation of life (and mass production of it) is being used in both the texts (either through the Bokanovsky Process or by the creation of Replicants in Blade Runner) the fear of individuality is spawned by a different foe - that of power and authority.

In both texts there is essentially a tyrant (Mustapha Mond in Brave New World or Tyrell in Blade Runner) who aim to perpetuate their authority and power by the removal of individuality. In Brave New World this is achieved through Pavlovian Conditioning and peer pressure (in that any slightly taboo topic, such as an appreciation of nature, is either drilled out of them behaviorally or failing that, drilled out of them by the community) and soma, a powerful hallucinogenic drug that is considered (the cure to) "morality in a bottle", whilst in Blade Runner the control is instigated through the life spans of the Replicants. These methods aim to prevent individuals from pushing forth change, quelling any possible uprisings or revolutions well before they could endanger the tyrannical dictators. Of course, that didn't quite work for Tyrell now did it? =]

Soma
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I may end it there... It's late and I'm starting to ramble, and I'm not entirely sure any of that moved toward con...

And on top of that Marcus just messaged me with "hey stephen, what do u think about christianity? like are u one or do u believe in god?" - I need my brain cells elsewhere =]

Wishing morality came in pill form,
Smerity