I love Gattaca!

Every year of high school at some point I was forced to watch this movie in some kind of science class and it is my favorite movie of this type of genre. For some reason I had a hard time articulating why I love this movie in class so I will try to explain it here. I think for me, the love that I have for this movie is mostly about the execution of it. Not necessarily the issues that it tackles. I mean I love the story line, the idea that the underdog who is living in this society in which there are genetically perfect people and he isn’t and that in the end, he is the one that ends up on top. I love the thrill of this movie. It’s got a kind of that “who dunnit” aspect to it and that suspense factor as well because one wonders if Vincent is going to get caught or if he will be able to reach his dream when all of the odds seem to be against him. I think that is what I love about this movie. In reaction to the reason why we were asked to watch it for this class, I agree with most people that this is a horrible future because we will have found a different kind of way to discriminate against people and I agree that that is not right. However in listening to what people had to say about this movie in class I also agree that a parent might choose to do this for their child because they want the best for it. Nobody wants their child to suffer or be hurt and I guess the parents of the genetically engineered people in Gattaca were originally thinking along those lines and in that case I would say that it’s ok. I also liked that having people who are genetically engineered is a choice, the Utopian ideal isn’t forced on the whole of society by someone who is in charge (if that makes sense) and I know that in Brave new world the utopian ideal wasn’t forced on that society either, I just wanted to point that out that it wasn’t forced in this society either. I really love Gattaca and it has that message in there that basically says that you can do anything you set your mind to. Just because someone tells you that you can’t don’t always mean that you can’t. If it’s something that you really want, and you’re willing to fight for it, don’t let anyone stop you, go for it!

Down With 1984! Down with 1984! Down with 1984!

To be honest, I ended up finishing 1984 but I got through enough of it that I felt like I dint need to read to the end and let me tell you why. It was so monotonous! After reading page after page of how Winston secretly hates the party and how Julia hates the party and what they do to undermine the party I was on the verge of exploding because at that point I was just like then do something already!!!! It’s no use undermining the party where no one can see them because that really isn’t changing anything. If they really want to make a change they should publicly do something to go against the party. Yeah they would probably be vaporized but at least you were brave enough to do something about it and who knows maybe other people would be brave enough to follow their example in the future and if you got enough people to do something that went against the party publicly then maybe change can actually be made.  I have to say that I was rooting for Julia and Winston when they finally found out that the brotherhood existed but I instantly began to think of the brotherhood as doing the same thing, an underground operation that was almost too afraid to do anything. Now as I have said I didn’t get a change to finish the book so I don’t know if Winston or Julia actually were able to do something with the brotherhood in order to bring about change to this war driven nation but from what I was getting from reading other people’s posts the ending didn’t seem as if there was a big change or a different outcome in this society. This book just screamed rebellion and if Winston, Julia and the brotherhood were not able to make a change in Oceania then there would eventually be a change because how long could a society remain like this especially when people like Winston seem to be fully aware of how they are being controlled.

Closing Remarks on Brave New World

Well, now that I have read the rest of Brave New World, I really don’t know how to feel about it except for appalled. Overall, this book angered me because this is essentially what Aldous Huxley thought that we were headed towards as a society and that is a scary thought. It shows that he doesn’t really have in hope in humanity. People are being manufactured in factories and bottles, they are being conditioned with ridiculous phrases on a daily basis, and being drugged so that they can overlook anything bad that they have experienced, so that they are kept in the state of mind of an infant. Although there was a lot of things that greatly troubled me when I was reading this novel, there was one idea that I liked in Brave New World that I would love to see enacted in our world and that is death conditioning. I think that the way that they condition the little kids to not be afraid of death in Brave New World is great. In the world we live in today, death is one of the top three fears if not the number one fear and I still don’t understand why people fear it. Maybe because it has such a negative connotation, but if bribing people with ice-cream bars while they are surrounded by the dying keeps them from fearing death, why not? With that being said, I think that Brave New World functions well as a dystopia because it is a huge warning about what can happen to society in the future.

So now I have started reading Nineteen eighty four and I haven’t gotten very far but this is a strange novel. My first understanding of it is that this world (Oceania?) is a place in which it is centralized on war. This place is a war generating machine filled with spies, and propaganda. I don’t know much about Winston yet, but I already find his character to be very frustrating only because in the novel, it says that he is somewhere in his thirties but I feel as if this story should be coming from a teenager or at least a pre-teen and it bugs me! But I have high hopes for this novel because I want to compare it to the other novels that we’ve read.

Wow! This World Is Brave!

First of all let me just start out by saying Wow! Brave New World is the right title for this book because the ideas presented in here are really brave. Right away I was turned off. This is a world in which human beings are being manufactured! Given the fact that this book is set to deal with the future the idea of that is really terrifying! While I have not read the entire book there was a lot of things that I was confused by. I wasn’t sure if as the reader we are being told the story from Bernard’s point of view or if we were just a face in the crowd when the director is giving peoples a tour of the facility. I also dint understand the pavlovian conditioning that they do with the babies. Why do they want them to be conditioned to be afraid of flowers? The idea of being exposed to sexual promiscuity early on was a little jarring at first but I guess I can understand the reasoning behind that (not advocating for this at all). I also don’t understand what the people in this novel look like when the author talks about the different colors, is he referring to their skin tones or just the color of the outfits that they are wearing? When I first started reading this, I thought that there was nothing that I could like about living in a world like this but I was able to lighten up a little bit when someone made a comment during our discussion that unlike the other Utopia’s that we have read so far, this world allows room for people to be different and to have other thoughts and to question this way of life. It allows room for error and I completely agree and I have to say that I like that. But I do hope that we do not end up in a world like this where we are consumed by consumerism and that everything that we say is a conditioned phrase and where human beings are being mass produced  because that is really terrifying. With that being said, this is definitely a dystopian novel because it is a definite warning about the future, given where we are as a society right now.

Herland is not for Me

I was absolutely annoyed by Herland. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for female empowerment ,but this book was really frustrating. I feel as if the details that would have made the writing of this book better were very vague, such as the description of the women of herland. All that was said about them was that they did not look like girls but they did not look like women either nor did they look like men. What does that even mean! What do these women look like then?! I thought that this book was more boring than the other Utopias that we have read so far because I felt like it was just way to easy to refute everything in this book.

With the other Utopian novels, the author would present a solution for a societal problem and I could argue both sides with them and see whether or not their proposals would fit in our society and the ideas that they would present are reasonable and are a possibility and some of the other ideas  might make one skeptical but with this novel, I felt as if none of the ideas in here were even plausible.  All of these ideas were so farfetched that it was immediately obvious that none of this would work.  A land where there are all women and girls, (but no way for them to reproduce sexually) NO? A land in which they could breed out the unwanted qualities in cats? NO. Throughout the entire time that I was reading this novel the only word that I kept repeating in my head was NO. 

Based off of our class discussion, I think that the women of Herland are completely selfish.  Their whole world centers on motherhood and being a mother and babies. There has to be more to life. My goodness it was so boring! What really got under my skin was the women’s response to everything that the men would ask them. It was always “because we are mothers,” each woman doesn’t need her own baby because we are all mothers” Nobody has to worry about anything in our land because we take care of each other because we are mothers” I hated that because it seemed to be that that was their answer for EVERYTHING!!!  (See clip below).And most of the time, I just thought to myself “okay that doesn’t even answer the question! ” and I know that most people agreed Terry was the jerk in this novel, he was actually my favorite character because when he got frustrated with some of the responses and practices of the women he confronted them about it and he seemed to be annoyed with their repetitive type responses as well, so for me, I liked Terry because it was as if he was a stand in for my voice while I was reading this, he asked all of the questions that I asked, he had some of the same responses that I had, he was just as  frustrated as I was.

I understand that this novel was written in opposition to the restrictions of women during history so this book was written as a way to sort of say “Yaayyy women” and empower them, But I think this was a really bad way to do that because while it satirizes the thought that the only thing that a woman could do was be a mother and raise her children it kind of dwelled on that a little too much. In conclusion, I was not a fan of Herland but I do agree with the idea that the one thing that I could take away from this novel was that when it all comes down to it, it shouldn’t matter if we are men or women and at the end of the day, we are all just people.

 

clip from the movie Coming to America with Eddie Murphy. For those who have never seen the movie, basically he is african prince who has just had an aranged marriage and takes a few minutes to get to know his bride before making the marriage official. Her responses to his questions reminded me alot of the women of Herland's responses whenever the men would ask them questions. You'll see why I f you read the earlier part of this post.

Thomas More's Utopia

I got really excited about reading Thomas More’s Utopia, because I had read this book before, it became one of the reasons why I wanted to take this class. I love More’s Utopia because I feel like the ideas that he proposes in his Utopia work. I’m not saying that everything in Utopia is great there are some things that are a little on the crazy side( such as advising the sick to end their lives and killing off another group of people and having them fight their battles for them because they believe these other people are inhumane and barbaric). But I think that the solutions that he proposes work because it solves the problems in his society during his time and although many of his solutions might not feel very probable for our time I think that the solutions that he comes up with solve the issues of his time. One of the things that I love about More’s Utopia is that nobody wants for anything because everything is taken care of. Yes, one would have to give up their individuality and possessions  but wouldn’t that be worth it to not have to worry about where your next meal would come from or worrying about how you were going to pay the bills this month? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a place where no one is jealous of what anyone else has because everyone would have the same thing?  I know slavery isn’t a great idea but I’ll be a brave soul and say that I wouldn’t mind being a slave in More’s Utopia. Not only do you get a chance to return to society but all you do is hard labor which a lot of people in Utopia do anyway and the slaves are taken care of just like all other Utopians(fed, clothed, sheltered) and aren’t treated horribly. I mean, it’s better than death, which would have been a penalty in More’s time. More’s Utopia is a place where other religions are tolerated (except atheism) and everyone helps each other and cares about each other. I think that is great regardless of whether they are doing it for recognition or not. That’s just human nature. As human beings we mostly operate on reward and punishment.  I’m not saying that More’s Utopia is the best or perfect I just think that it works. It functions well as a Utopia. Given that I feel like More's utopia can be best describe through this video. (the words are more important than the claymation).

Monateries: Possible Utopia?

The Rule of St. Benedict was an interesting read, but I know why it was kind of related to our class. It was a small scale example of a possible utopian society. All I know is that there are a lot of rules when it comes to living the life of a monk or a nun and I don’t think I would be able to do it. I was surprised to find that most of the rules, punishment wise, were not too severe.  To sit and eat alone in isolation isn’t exactly the worst punishment that one could have. To me, that is like telling a rich kid to go to his room. One thing that I did like about one of the rules was the way that they handled their guests and children. Guest are really taken care of and treated with utmost respect. With children, I was happy that they did take into account that children are young and aren’t old enough to understand some of the harsh rules. I also liked how if one were to get expelled from the monastery, they could come back a certain number of times to try again before they had to be expelled for good. The Christian value of forgiveness was definitely evident in this rule and I liked that.

I didn’t like the idea that one could not receive letters from home unless the superior approved it. I felt a little agitated by the idea that there was to be no personal items in the area where everyone sleeps and that it had to be searched by the superior. That was almost spirit breaking, but I understand why that rule is put in place. I didn’t like the idea of one person being in charge of everyone else because I feel like there is always going to be that one person who gets out of control with power—yes, I believe that this can still happen with people that are in charge of monasteries. I don’t know what they would do to rectify this or make it better, but I just didn’t really like the thought of that. Overall, this was a good reading and I believe that a monastery considered a utopia because it is a community that is working in a way that works for the commonwealth (their community). In my opinion, this is a utopia for people that choose to live this lifestyle.

St. Augustine and Utopia

After reading St. Augustine’s City of God, the idea behind a Utopia is even more confusing to me than ever! There were a lot of things that I did not like about this reading starting with the fact that it was really difficult and that his idea had a lot of support, but it was so “wordy” that by the time that he had made his point, I may have missed them altogether. This reading as a whole was confusing because it was as if Augustine was calling for a heavenly utopia, but at the same time he was not implying a heavenly Utopia. I’m confused by this because to me, it seems as if he is trying to get everyone here on earth to work towards a heavenly Utopia without calling heaven a Utopia.

This is really odd and frustrating for me because he justifies why things in the human world are the way that they are using religious support as a Christian, but doesn’t  want his readers to think that he is classifying heaven as a utopia but yet I feel as if that is what he believes heaven is. For me he seems to be talking in circles a little bit, or tip towing around how he really feels so to speak. His beliefs are clearly reflected in this piece but at the same time it’s like he doesn’t want his readers to know that and I think that is what makes this frustrating. In terms of what the reading means as a whole, referring to the idea that mankind needs to work towards a life that is better than the one we live in, I think that Augustine is right to want this but my thoughts on this reading as it pertains to the idea of a utopia is that because his ideas are so religion heavy, St. Augustine’s idea of a utopia will not work because not everyone believes in the reasons that he gives for why this world is not as great as it could be.

Plato's republic

Plato’s Republic was actually a decent read once I got past all of the “Socrates is god and I agree with everything he says” dialogue. I liked the fact that he started out really simple when he was building his city because it definitely caught my interest and made me focus more. Right away, I was a little turned off with how much he wanted to control the people in his city. It seemed like right from the start; the only freedom they had was in their choice of clothing. I didn’t like the idea that the epics are basically going to be destroyed because Plato thinks that it would be in the best interest of the people living in his city if all of the violent scenes are taken out of the stories so that his people do not learn about anything bad. Next I hated the idea that people had no choice in their occupations and could not do anything about it if they wanted to change it. Human beings are natural learners and if they only learn one thing then they will never be able to grow. People can be taught right from wrong but what path they choose should be up to them which is why I didn’t agree with this idea. I found that when I was reading this my first instinct was to look for contradictions and flaws in how Plato planned to run his city. He had a lot of support for most of his plans, so I was a little upset that I didn’t get to debate him on much. But someone made the argument in the last class to the idea that Plato is essentially raising these people like infants, but if he plans to have the people fight to defend their land, they have never been exposed to anything bad, so how are they going to be able to defend themselves?  Finally I don’t agree with the idea that wealth and poverty make a man worse at his craft. If anything I would say that wealth could motivate a worker to work more because he is being rewarded with money, not become lazy.

My Opinion on an Opinionated Piece

My opinion on Sargent’s article, “The three faces of Utopianism” was that it was not a very good one. For one thing, it was really good that he included definitions for the different kinds of Utopian concepts, but when he continued to talk about them non- stop it kind of became over whelming. Next, while I was reading this article, I felt like Sargent was afraid to tell his audience how he really felt because there were a couple of instances where he would put in what seemed to be his own opinions and then refute them by telling the reader about the flaws in his ideas (almost in a “don’t quote me on this”) kind of way. Next the whole concept about whether or not one should refer to a Utopian society as perfect really bothered me. As someone stated in class, one of his major defenses against using this word to describe a Utopia was that it would make anti- Utopians back off, and I feel like this is not a valid reason. My other issue with the whole perfect controversy was what’s so wrong with calling a Utopian society perfect. It is a world in which all or most of the problems in the current existing society are resolved. So in comparison, wouldn’t the Utopian society be considered perfect? Another issue that I had when I was reading this was I looked at the last sentence of this article and my reaction to the closing of it was “huh?” My group and I were puzzled by this last sentence because we were unsure as to why he would end this article that way. He says: “Utopians do not believe frustration, poverty and privation to be necessary for creativity”. We all agreed that this statement came out of left field. But for me it was the equivalent of that motor-mouthed voice who rambles off the side effects at the end of a medicine commercial.

If You Can't Do the Time...

My initial idea for how to make the world a better place was to try to lower the crime rate. My plan for how to do that was to use the system of reward and punishment, and reward people who report crimes that are being committed, and to punish the people who are committing crimes. I want to say that the reward for reporting crimes would be something like extra money on tax returns at the end of the year. As for what the punishment would be for people who are going around committing crimes, I have to be honest and say that I’m on the fence about it. It could be jail, but jail might not be effective as all it would do is overfill the jails and then that would be a different problem. It could be a severe punishment like loss of limb or death which would deter some people but that seems a little bit too over the top. As you can see I’m a little stuck on the “How” part of my plan but I think that this would be a good idea in terms of making the world a better place because the ultimate goal would be that the crime rates would decrease. It would also do wonders in terms of decreasing the issue of the bystander effect, which is an instance where people see crimes or someone in need but don’t do anything to help or put a stop to the situation for various reasons. In other words, I feel that in rewarding the people who report crimes, it will motivate people to care about one another and help each other out if the need arises. While the “How” of my plan is a little rough, I’m open to suggestions on how to punish criminals without making the punishment as extreme.