Opening Comments

Who I am, what today's class is on. That I will be collecting their discussion questions as a way in which to take roll.

 

Initial Responses to the Film

 

Dystopia and Utopia Definded

The term Utopia was coined by Thomas More for his novel by the same name. It is a play on words and has a dual root. EU-Topia from the Greek meaning good place and OU-Topia from the Greek meaning no-place. A Utopia is then a good place which is no place.

Dystopia, comes from the root dys meaning bad or ill. A bad place.

Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange preferred the term Cacatopia, literally bad place from the Greek kakos, but with a resonance with the childish term for feces. A place where everything is shit.

Why Dreams and Nightmares?

What do our dreams or nightmares say about us as a society?

 

Brazil General Circumstances

Directed by Terry Gilliam and released in 1985

Gilliam also directed Twelve Monkeys and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Several titles were tossed around including 1984 and 1/2 and How I Learned to Live With the System  - So Far.

It was co-written with Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) and Charles McKeown.

The film received mediocre reviews and poor returns putting Gilliam's next project in jeopardy.

Nevertheless, the film was nominated for best screenplay and best art direction Oscars. It won neither.

Over the years, however, at has achieved quite a cult following, and is considered highly influential in science fiction cinema.

It also offers us a chance to explore how late twentieth century dystopias function.

 

Bureaucracy and the Banality of Evil

In 1963 Hannah Arendt served as a reporter for New Yorker magazine at the trial of Nazi War criminal Alfred Eichmann. Her resulting work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil forever altered the way in which we think about the evil that human beings do.

Arendt went to the trial expecting to find a monster in Eichmann, an ideologue with an unshakeable belief in the superiority of the Aryan race. Instead she found a petty bureaucrat, a button pusher who just did his job without question and without a flaming personal belief.

This is, in many ways, more terrifying than finding a monster. Monsters can be sought and slain. Monsters are few. People who will just do their jobs, who will go along with society are many.

The banality of evil springs from human resistance to change, and resistance to thought.

The banal evil man kills with a stroke of the pen and then goes home to play with his children seeing no disjunction between the two actions.

This kind of bureaucratic dystopia is realized in Brazil.

Jack, the head torturer in Information Retrieval, is this kind of banal evil man. A family man, a doting father, who tickles his daughter while planning his tortures. He is only made uncomfortable in his work when Sam, someone part of his friends and family world, is inserted into the world of his torture. Even then he is unable to empathize with his victim. All his concern is for himself. Look what you have done to me.

 

How to Lie With Words

Mr. Buttle is referred to as "dormanted," "inoperative," "completed," "deleted," and "excised" in order to disguise the fact that he has been murdered by the government.

The use of obfuscating language in order to disguise unpalatable truths is a common tool in dystopian fiction. George Orwell created a new language called "newspeak" for Nineteen Eighty-four which made expressing words in the negative impossible. For example, the word "bad" was excised from the language and the concept could only be expressed by the phrase "un-good." The goal of the new language was to prevent not only criticism of the government, but also critical thought about the government. Such thought would be inexpressible.

While a neat trick for dystopian writers, the manipulation of language was taken directly from current events. Orwell was thinking particularly of the propaganda policies of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Consider what phrases like "The Final Solution" and "Re-Education Camps" attempt to hide.

Though Orwell drew inspiration from the totalitarian governments of his time, these kinds of propaganda techniques are used by governments and groups across the board to frame debates in their favor, to cover up unpleasant truths, and to cast aspersion on their enemies.

Can you think of other such phrases? "Collateral Damage," "Ethnic Cleansing," "Friendly Fire," "Separate but Equal" "Family Values." Consider the ways in which the differing groups in the abortion debate characterize themselves and one another. "Anti-Choice" / "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Abortion" / "Pro-Choice." "Pro-Environment" / "Pro-Jobs."

Currently these kinds of euphemisms are common in the business world. Firing people became laying them off became down-sizing became right-sizing. My parents currently work at a company where employees are "selected to participate in work-force management" in other words they've lost their jobs.

Orwell wrote an essay called "Murder and the English Language" which calls for simple, direct, descriptive language. Buttle is not "dormanted" he is DEAD and "Information Retrieval" is torture.

Question: What is the Patriot Act? Why is it given that title?

The perversion of language and the bureaucratization of society are key ways in which individuals, both fictional and actual, are able to rationalize away the evil they do.

 

We're All In It Together

This phrase, first uttered by Archibald "Harry" Tuttle to Sam as he is participating in some guerilla heating repair is also somewhat of a slogan for the society. We later see a sign with the catchy phrase "Happiness: We're All In It Together." Tuttle repeats the phrase after switching the sewage and air filtration lines in Sam's apartment. The message here? "Shit: We're All In It Together."

There is no escape from the society. Any image of personal escape is an illusion.

 

Image and Substance

This society depends, in part, on a high level of self-delusion. On pretending to be happy when one is not. On pretending the world is beautiful when it is not.

Consider the highway lined with beautiful images of the natural - disguising the wasted lands behind them.

Consider the high-toned dinner Sam attends with his mother and her friends. The food is all the same horrible slop, made conceptually less horrible by placing the name steak in front of it, and image on top, and a hefty price tag over it all.

The food is formless, but the ad copy is gorgeous.

This is an active denial of the truth of the world. You can see the steak, you know what steak is, yet you insist that the horrible mass in front of you is steak.

This is something that Orwell termed "doublespeak" in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The ability to hold two contradictory truths in one's head at the same time. To really believe steak even as you see slop.

Something similar is going on with the fascination for cosmetic surgery in this world. Why would you want to live longer? Look younger? Where is the delight?

Here there is also a reference to the loss of the body we will discuss later.

 

Romance and Bureaucracy

Central to the film is a conflict between Sam's romanticism and the cultural bureaucracy.

At the beginning of the movie, Sam is content to dream and hide within the cracks of society, wanting, but not pursuing, more. His chance (or is it fated) encounter with Jill Layton, a woman who resembles the girl of his daydreams and fantasies, pushes him into a romantic role.

Sam wants to be the romantic hero. He wants to save the girl. Do the dramatic thing. He wants to live his dream.

Frankly, Sam sucks at this. Unlike Tuttle who makes his way through the cracks of the society, fixing things against the general rule, Sam wants to make grand gestures. Grand gestures are often suicidal. He smashes through barriers, literally, and calls attention to his desire for heroism.

Tuttle, however, lives a bit like the women in "The Women Men Don't See" which you read earlier this quarter. He is an opossum in the city. He emerges and vanishes.

While Sam represents humanities romantic desires and inclinations, Tuttle represents a will to survive. He is the rugged spirit of man, who, in Sam's final nightmarish fantasy is murdered by paperwork.

 

"What Have You Done With His Body?":  Dystopia and the Loss of the Body

When Mrs. Buttle receives her check refunding her for the cost of the governments torture and murder of her innocent husband, she demands to know what has been done with his body. Her question resounds in Sam's nightmares.

Another common thread in many dystopias is alienation from the body, often technological.

The body is the most basic thing that we have. It precedes thought and memory, its needs are the most insistent, distance from it the most unnatural.

In Brazil no one touches. Machines do the work of hands, and they do it badly. Our conveniences are inept, but kept because they are "conveniences." People become paperwork, numbers.

The body is cut, deformed, stylized. Its relationships are no longer important. Mrs. Lowry aspires to be young and beautiful. She does not wish to be a mother.

In this distance from the body, natural aspects of life are hidden and denied. The dog's ass is taped shut.

 

Happy Endings

The film was released in the United States with the ending you saw, but only after a long battle.

The film's producer fought to end the film with an image of Jill and Sam living out in the country together with no return to madness and control.

That version, mockingly called "Love Conquers All" by Gilliam was released for television.

What do the different endings say? How do you respond to them?

 Discussion Questions

 Things to Consider

What would an early twenty-first century dystopia look like?

What phrases do we currently use that distance us from the reality of experience?

How do you prevent a dystopian world?

What would have to occur to make utopian stories more common?