Ensorship and mass culture in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 Essay

Of the famous dystopian literatures of the 20th century Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit(postnominal) 451 offers perhaps one of the more than interesting suggestions to the historic causality of censorship. While subtle hints of ignorance is power for a tyrannical g everywherenment is mentioned by some characters ala 1984, most of the text instead suggests that in the dystopian military personnel of Fahrenheit 451 that censorship is not so much intentional as it is a side-effect of a postmodernist predilection toward, as Frederic Jameson notes, a cultural waning of affect and a world of signs without signifiers, a pastiche of histories without meaning (Jameson, 2001).The have gots organism censored then, in Fahrenheit 451s dystopian the States, then suck less(prenominal) of an impact on the c eitherer than the drama and entertainment created from their disc everyplacey and destruction and that more than the censorship in this this blissful ignorance is the dystopian element in Bradbur ys novel.Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopia for the intellectual. Within the story is presented an (assumed) unite States where people lie with reasonably happy lives. From everything we see in the novel they be well fed, live in wonderful fireproof houses, have jobs, families and plenty of entertainment. in so far, as main character Guy Montag dwells on, people kill themselves still and a constant threat of war seems to loom in the background of the novel. that there is never any discussion of why, and no matter how many picture borders or radios atomic number 18 turned on throughout the course of the book no more information is ever very recovered as to how or why the country finds them in this mess. further no one extraneous Montag and a handful of outsiders seem to think there is any problem with this.People in Montags world seem encouraged to live a life of leisure. Montags boss, Beatty, talks endlessly near sports and his coworkers play hand after hand of poker.Dance fast er than the sinlessness clown 2Montags wife, Mildred, is addicted to the picture wall, or television, and is constantly begging for a fourth and final wall to be installed. Violence as entertainment, even, seems to in some way be supported generally by society as Mildred seems to take pleasure at one point from hitting small animals with her automobile.Yet there also seems to be an urge and encouragement of humdrum, as echoes in many other whole kit and caboodle of dystopian speculative fiction. Montag notes of his colleagues, These men were all mirror images of himself Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities? (Bradbury, 1991) His friend early in the story, Clarisse, falls victim to this sameness as she seems pushed out of macrocosm check because she doesnt mix. (22) Mildred, although a seemingly perfect member of society also seems to suffer from the strain of sameness as Montag notices a body strained by dieting.When we think of censorship, e specially in the context of dystopian narratives, we often think of an oppression of knowledge by the government in order to control the proletariat. Yet in several sections of the novel Bradbury makes allusions that the government didnt censor the book initially, but rather the public abandoned the book and the government got rid of it as an after thought. In his history lesson on the fireman, Beatty explainsThe big your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that Authors, full of evil thoughts, luck up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice flux of vanilla tapioca. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. And the three dimensional sex magazines of course. It didnt come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with, no Technology, heap exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God (47)Dance faster than the white clown 3Beatty explains t hat a globalized consumer market and an increasing demand to be entertained with bigger and better products is what killed the book and the government do firemen custodians of our peace of mind (48) to prevent un mirth. Jean Baudrillard discusses homogeneity in consumer society as where everything is taken over and superseded in the ease and translucidity of an abstract happiness, defined solely by the resolution of tensions. (Baudrillard 2004)This seems to fit well with the bodily structure of media and hyperconsumerism in Montags world, as all things in his world seem to exist for the purpose of happiness and entertainment. Baudrillards description of the consumer experience could easily come from any number of facets of Montags lifeWork, leisure, nature and culture all these things which were once dispersed, which once generated anxiety and complexity in real life these activities which were more or less irreducible one to another, are now at last mixed and blended, climatiz ed and homogenize in the same sweeping vista of perpetual shopping. (30)The sadness and dystopia of Montags reality is not that the books are banned, but rather, as Montags ally Faber notes, the public itself stopped reading of its own accord. Montags society believes books are boring, difficult and bring only confusion and unhappiness and are so blindly haunt with the consumption of happiness that even if books were available they would probably be ignored.If we think of a dystopia as a world where people have no interest in educating themselves or learning about things that whitethorn potentially make them unhappy, a world where image and a pastiche of history are all that are important, then we may very well have to worry that our own society is decent a kind of dystopia. Of course books are still readily available, but studies show that Americans are winning less time to read and that reading comprehension skills are greatly suffering. (Brown, 2008) As Beatty describes we to o areDance faster than the white clown 4craving faster, more flashy and more spectacular entertainment. Internet phenomena like Twitter, where users are limited to messages of no more than 140 characters, and Youtube, where the average video is 5 minutes, are outstanding examples of our ever shortening attention spans. As a society we are face ever conspicuous consumers, as Frederic Jameson says, on an unending quest for bigger, faster, better. (Jameson 2001)Unfortunately in a post-Bush America theres a lot to be said that we have entered a dystopia. We are a country possessed by fear and worry, where children who, like Clarisse, dont mix are being pushed out as safety risks. Our activities and interests are being more carefully monitored by authorities than they have ever been.In the UK, fears of future terrorist activities have caused authorities to create advertisements encouraging neighbors and family to report suspicious activity, in very similar ways to that of Fahrenheit 451 . (Doctorow, 2009) If we think pessimistically on such events it is very well-off to think we are in a doomed and dire situation like in the book and, as Faber says, the whole skeleton needs reshaping.Bradbury obviously wrote Fahrenheit 451 out of a growing continue that the world he lived in was being overtaken by a world of people who chose pleasure over the burden knowledge can bring. He wrote it hoping that things could be turned around. I suppose he ability be horrified at many of the brand-new ways people are wasting their time, the new distractions that keep us from educational entertainment. However, the pursuit of knowledge continues on, albeit in sometimes altered ways.The book may be going out of style but knowledge continues on in forms on the internet, is discussed on the radio and (sometimes) television. While there are dystopian elements to our world there is still hope for intellectualism and literacy. Bradburys book stands as a warning to heed to prevent ignoran ce and cultural destruction.Dance faster than the white clown 5ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean (2004). The consumer society Myths and Structures.London, England Sage Publications.Bradbury, Ray (1991). Fahrenheit 451. New York, New York Ballantine Books.Brown, Joseph (2008).As the constitution says Distinguishing documents in RayBradburys Fahrenheit 451. Explicator. 67, 55-58.Doctorow, Cory (Mrch 24, 2009). Boing Boing. Retrieved April 15, 2009, from London copsreach new heights of anti-terror bank bill stupidity Web site http//www.boingboing.net/2009/03/24/london-cops-reach-ne.htmlJameson, Frederic (2001). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism.Durham, North Carolina Duke University Press.