Missing at Trackside

Not even a dedicated roller derby fan can see EVERY home game. Well, I guess one could, but that would be a little creepy. I prefer my creepiness to emerge independently from the inside. Anyway, last Saturday was a double-header in Morristown. I wasn’t there, but congrats to the Jersey Shore Roller Girls for a win over the home Jerzey Derby Brigade and to the home Corporal Punishers for a win over the Central Jersey Roller Vixens. I’ll be back at trackside another night.

Another Derby

The Gore Motivation

My first awareness of Gore Vidal (1925-2012) was in the summer of 1966. Though neither of my parents attended college, my mom was an eclectic reader. Jumbled in no discernible order on the bookshelves at home during my teen years was the oddest variety of books including Sigmund Freud, Harold Robbins, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacqueline Susann, Jules Verne, and Gore Vidal. I don’t know why one day at age 13 I picked out of this hodgepodge Dark Green Bright Red, one of Vidal’s youthful (1950) novels. Perhaps it was just because, unlike most of his later works, the book is short. It is possible I wanted to read something but didn’t want to get carried away with anything requiring a real commitment – a disposition that has been common enough for me in matters other than literature too. The novel about a Central American revolution intrigued me at once.

Over the next few years I sought out other novels by Vidal, all the while ignoring much of my assigned reading in school. Julian, his historical novel about the last pagan emperor of Rome, was the clincher. With Julian he became and has remained my favorite 20^th century author. Fortunately for me, he was a prolific writer not only of novels but of short fiction, plays, reviews, commentary, screenplays, and essays. I like them all. I would like them for the prose alone, but they also are thoughtful and drily funny. With regard to his commentary, I often found myself on the other side of the political fence (not on social issues), but he invariably knew where the fence was, which is valuable in itself.

I don’t read many biographies of writers. In my experience, very few good authors are remotely as interesting as their books, even – perhaps especially – when they deliberately make their lives theatrical, e.g. Hemingway and Mailer. Besides, Vidal wrote at length about himself. Nonetheless, a couple of weeks ago on a whim I picked up Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal by Michael Mewshaw. Mewshaw is a novelist and journalist two decades Vidal’s junior. He became friends with Gore and his long-time companion Howard Austen in Rome during the 1970s, and remained friends with them for the remainder of their lives. In Sympathy he tells us what that was like. 

I rather wish I hadn’t read it, because the depiction isn’t pretty. To be sure, the book has plenty of anecdotes about Gore of the sort a book like this should have and it is generally well written, but it chronicles a sad and not very graceful decline from middle age to old age. The last three decades of the 20^th century were enormously productive for Gore. He churned out essays, screenplays, and truly impressive novels (Burr, Creation, Lincoln, Smithsonian Institution, et al.) with as much talent and energy as ever while working the lecture and talk show circuit and taking the time to run for US Senate. He hobnobbed with the elite, including Nancy Reagan of all people, while preaching populism. Yet, depression, personal loss, and vast quantities of alcohol exacted ever more severe tolls with the passing years. Mewshaw quotes Gore as saying he preferred to “sink myself into whiskey where one’s sense of time is so altered that one feels in the moment immortality – a long luminous present which, not drinking, becomes a fast-moving express train named…Nothing.” By the 21^st century he frequently needed a wheelchair. In his public appearances, his former witty humor gave way to cantankerous scolding. He became deeply suspicious of people around him. But then, as he liked to say, “Anyone who isn’t paranoid isn’t in full possession of the facts.” Then he was gone.

After Mewshaw, something more cheerful was in order. I recalled that there was one novel Gore wrote during his peak years that I thus far had neglected to read, the relatively obscure Two Sisters. As of yesterday, the omission has been corrected. Written shortly before he met Mewshaw, Two Sisters is an idiosyncratic but marvelous book that gives us the full Vidal range in a compact package. It is a screenplay inside a memoir inside a novel masquerading as a memoir. Gore, appearing in the novel as himself, is asked by another author to read a memoir by a deceased mutual friend; the memoir includes a spec screenplay titled Two Sisters of Ephesus. The layered structure of Two Sisters allows Gore to digress into mordantly funny commentary on culture and movies while remaining on plot.

Two Sisters is a playful novel. Yet, at age 45 Gore plainly was experiencing middle-age angst, as so many of us do at that time of life. Contemplation of mortality is central to the book and to each of its subparts. In the screenplay the characters seek a sort of immortality through notoriety, in one case by burning the Temple of Diana which was a structure noted throughout the Mediterranean world. Gore cites the same desire in himself to beat death through his own work: “But then the artist’s desire to outwit death through perpetual fame is a common one, and no less powerful a drive for its naiveté.” That might not appear to be a cheery message, yet somehow it made me happier.

Though Gore already was a heavy drinker by 1970, the quantity and quality of his literary output appears not to have suffered. At one point in Two Sisters he says, “I have known or known about most of the American writers of my time and I can think of only three who are not – or were not once – alcoholics.” Hmmm, would my own fiction benefit were I to consume more whiskey? Maybe. But I’m not sure it’s worth it.

Whiskey Bar

55 and 678 Inch Screenings (or Size Matters)

Having returned to my pattern of following one movie with an older one which the first brought to mind, I’ve observed the following movies flicker on large and small screens in the past month. Tangentially, I’m curious to see how the different business strategies work out for the two movie theaters which, being the closest to my house, I most commonly frequent, including for two of the films below. Bow Tie Cinema in Succasunna offers low prices (by today’s standards) and standard seating, while AMC in Morristown offers spacious leather recliner seats but higher prices. The two theaters don’t always show the same films (only AMC offered Ex Machina), but when they do I personally pick price over seats. Not everyone does the same though.

The Age of Adaline (2015)

Agelessness is a fantasy as old as the first mirror. In this movie it is also a hook for hokey romance and sentiment – yet Adaline gets away with being hokey. I’ve mentioned before that modern cynicism doesn’t jibe very well with romance in the movies. Nowadays we prefer to take romance out of everyday life before we’re willing to credit it. Christopher Orr in an Atlantic article said much the same thing: “The premises grow more and more esoteric: She’s a hooker. He’s a stalker. She’s in a coma. He’s telepathic. She’s a mermaid. He’s a zombie. She’s pregnant. He’s the president.” In the case of Silver Linings Playbook, they’re crazy; this allows us to say, “Ah, that explains it.” Setting a movie far enough in the past works too, apparently on the assumption that people looked at things differently then. Effectively that is what The Age of Adaline does. Adaline retains 1930s/40s sensibilities even though much of the film is set in the present day.

Adaline has a freak accident in 1937 at the age of 29. As time goes by she eventually realizes she isn’t aging. Her permanent youth comes at a cost. Whenever her appearance mismatches her official age too obviously, she has to change her ID and start over, leaving friends and family behind. They, of course, age and die while she doesn’t. There are good performances by Blake Lively and Harrison Ford. The sentimentality works fairly well despite (or because of) the contrivance. Thumbs Up.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

There is no shortage of films about extended youth: In Time, Peter Pan, Tuck Everlasting, and for that matter almost every vampire movie.  I opted for the most obvious. This stylish adaptation of the Oscar Wilde novel contains enough of the author’s verbiage and wit to be entertaining, and we get to see a young Angela Lansbury as Sybil Vane. In late Victorian London, Dorian (Hurd Hatfield) is a handsome – “pretty” might be a better word – young man who is corrupted by the clever immoralist philosophy of Lord Henry. But whereas Lord Henry is an intellectual armchair immoralist, Dorian chooses to act on his impulses. The wages of sin do not show on Dorian’s own face, but on his portrait; the portrait ages while he does not. Today, a similar film likely would display graphically the lead character’s depraved acts. Here we merely get obscure hints as to the bulk of them, though we do see mistreatment of Sybil and a murder. Although the 1945 critic for The New York Times chuckled at the “mawkish pomposity of the film,” modern critics generally have been kinder. I rather like it, though be aware that it paces more leisurely than most contemporary flicks. Thumbs Up.

**** **** **** ****

Ex Machina (2015)

Nathan, an eccentric tech genius, invites Caleb, an employee, to visit him at his isolated home/research facility. Caleb learns he is there to run a Turing test on an AI robot named Ava. Nathan wants to know if Ava (Alicia Vikander) is conscious or if she only simulates consciousness. We soon suspect Ava of running a test of her own on Caleb. She wants out of the facility – not least because Nathan might deactivate her – and Caleb might be open to manipulation.

Ex Machina has a well written script that questions the nature of consciousness and ethics. Is the fact that Ava is manipulating Caleb for her own ends proof of consciousness? What are Nathan’s obligations to Ava, if any, if she is conscious, and what are hers to him and to Caleb, if any? The performances are good, with Oscar Isaac doing an exceptional job as Nathan. Anyone who ever has met an eccentric genius will recognize Nathan. The fx are good without overwhelming the script. Thumbs Up.

Bicentennial Man (1999)

Based on the novel The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, Bicentennial Man is another instance of swathing sentiment in the esoteric in order to make it acceptable, this time in circuitry.

Andrew (Robin Williams) is a household robot for the Martin family. Through some glitch, Andrew shows evidence of conscious behavior. Before long his consciousness is indisputable, and eventually he asks for his freedom. Over decades his upgrades, many of them of his own design, bridge the gap between the biological and mechanical – his artificial organs will work as replacement parts in humans, which blurs the distinction between humans and robots. The generations of Martins age and die, but Andrew loves and begins to romance one young Martin woman. (Tangential note: Apparently in anticipation of such a real eventuality, Calvin Klein has trademarked “Technosexual.”) Andrew’s final upgrade makes him mortal, which doesn’t seem like a good bargain to me, but he is cool with it. The film is family friendly with all the good and ill that entails. Thumbs Up, but only slightly.

**** **** **** ****

April Fools Day (1986)

You know the drill. Eight college friends spend spring break in an isolated island mansion. Of course they can’t get off the island during their stay. Pranks are expected on April Fools Day, but one by one the students meet with foul play. I don’t really need to explain further. The movie repeats all the clichés without irony. The ending, however, does succeed at being just a little different than the usual. If you like this genre, there is no reason not to like this; if you don’t, this film won’t change your mind. Thumbs Sideways.

Teenage Zombies (1960)

The isolated-teens-in-trouble plot has a long pedigree. In this one, the water skiing vacation of teens Reg, Julie, Skip, and Pam turns bad when they come ashore on an island where diabolical scientist Dr. Myra (Katherine Victor) has a research facility. She wants to be able to turn people into zombies because…well, it would just be cool, that’s all. Especially if you’re power-mad. She captures the teens for her experiments. Oh yes, she has a gorilla, and why wouldn’t she? The sheriff is on the case of the missing kids but he is corrupt. This movie is so incredibly awful that it is enormous fun for those of us with a taste for campy bad movies. For the general viewing public though, I can’t in conscience give it anything but a Thumbs Down.

**** **** **** ****

Into the Woods (2014)

Into the Woods intertwines the Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tales into a musical with star performances by the likes of Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp. Lapine's and Sondheim’s Into the Woods was a long-running hit on Broadway. To my mind, musicals work better on stage as live performances than on screen, and this one is no exception. Nonetheless, the Disney production is about as good as one reasonably might hope. The movie takes an odd turn in the third act that might take viewers unfamiliar with the play by surprise. The characters have to face loss, betrayal, second thoughts, and their own moral ambiguity. Jack, for example, is not really such a hero; he is a thief who killed the husband of the giantess who has come to earth seeking revenge. Be aware that this is a musical with some dark elements, not primarily kids’ fare, but Thumbs Up.

The Glass Slipper (1955)

This musical adaptation of Cinderella is the best of the bunch to date in my book. Leslie Caron gives an atypical but utterly appealing interpretation of the role. While her stepmother and stepsisters are evil enough, Ella (taunted with the name Cinderella) herself is a flawed character. She is feisty, suspicious, and hot-tempered. The Prince disguises his identity on their first accidental meeting during which she gets angry and pushes him into a pond. He later invites her to the Ball, but Ella believes he is the son of the palace cook. Ella’s benefactor Mrs. Toquet apparently does have unusual abilities, but she doesn’t display them openly. The movie requires a little patience from the viewer during the extended voice-over set-up at the beginning, but all-in-all it’s a charming film. Thumbs Up.

**** **** **** ****

The Voices (2014)

Ryan Reynolds is Jerry. Jerry by state-mandate must visit his psychiatrist weekly. She insists that he stay on his meds, but he is much happier when he is off them. Without them, the world is bright and colorful. When he is on them, depressive realism sets in: he sees the world as it grimly is. Unsurprisingly, he throws away the medications. Also, when he is med-free his animals talk to him; the cat urges him to indulge his vices and the dog urges him to be good. Jerry’s life seems OK, but then he accidentally kills his date. Fearing his mental status and personal history will cause people to conclude the worst, he dismembers the body in order to hide it, and he puts the head in the fridge. The head talks to him too. The second killing is half-way accidental – she hits her head when she falls during a struggle – but after that only the cat is on his side. Kidnapping the psychiatrist doesn’t help. I enjoyed this dark comedy but a sizeable proportion of viewers surely won’t. Thumbs slightly up.

Dementia 13 (1963)

Even in this very early low-budget film, Francis Ford Coppola is in good directorial form. The Halorans have money, secrets, an unexplained death, a contestable will, motives for murder, and a killer with an axe. Finding/figuring out who did what to whom is much of the fun in this twisted tale, so I’ll leave it at that. Thumbs Up.

Even on the small screen we prefer to delegate romantic sentiments to otherworldly creatures. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spike the vampire, spurned by his toothy inamorata, discourses on love in a way uncommon in human characters during the last two decades.

On Going Home Again

My earliest memories date to, I think, 1955, and those are scattershot. This is in keeping with research showing that that adults remember little from before age 3 and nothing (or virtually nothing) from before age 2.  If you think you remember something earlier than that, you are probably wrong. Far more likely it is a manufactured memory, something common enough even when adults try to recall recent events, which is one reason why eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.  People regularly “remember” things that didn’t happen or that happened differently than they believe. That’s not to say it is altogether impossible to have an earlier memory. My sister always insisted she could remember her first birthday. Perhaps she did. But one would not be unreasonable to suspect it might have been the second, maybe the third. The reasons for so-called “childhood amnesia” are fundamentally biological, not psychological; the growth and development of the brain in first few years physically alters the way long-term memories are stored and retrieved, and this causes early ones to be lost.

Young children (4-7) commonly do retain some very early memories, but they lose them as they age; by age 10, like adults, they have lost pretty much everything before age 3 or even 4. After 10 the loss stops – or, at least, the rate of  loss after 10 is no greater than for more recent memories. Dr. Carole Peterson and her associates at Memorial University of Newfoundland asked 4 to 10-year-olds about their earliest memories; she re-interviewed the same kids after two years. (She also double-checked with parents to be sure the memories from the first interviews were real.) The kids continuously lost preschool memories up to age 10. Peterson told WebMD, “Even when we repeated what they had told us two years before, many of the younger children would tell us that it didn’t happen to them.” Again, the basic reasons are biological, but, as ever in matters involving the mind, environmental influences cannot be discounted entirely; variations in personal experiences can affect how far back one remembers, but not by very much.

Many of my own memories from 1955 and from the next four years were formed at my parents’ house of the time on Woodcrest Road in Whippany NJ. They had built it for themselves in 1949, two years after they married. It was on an oversized partly wooded lot at the end of what in those days still was called a “dead end street” instead of the currently favored “cul-de-sac” or “no exit.” (“No exit” frankly strikes me as scarier – I’ve read the Sartre play.) The 1950s were the height of the Baby Boom, so the street abounded with children ranging from few years older to a few years younger than myself. We all roamed to and around each other’s homes and yards with an absence of parental supervision that today probably would lead to intervention by social services – possibly to arrests. It is possible, though, that the absence was more apparent than real. Example: Starting in kindergarten, my sister instructed my mom not to accompany her (or, later, us) to the intersection with Troy Hills Road to wait for the school bus in the morning with the other kids who also walked there sans parents. “You don’t come!” were Sharon’s exact words. So, she didn’t. However, my mother told me years later that all along the street the adults monitored our progress to the bus stop from their windows and kept the phone handy.

My family moved into another house in another town in 1959. So, since 1959 there hasn’t been a lot of reason to revisit Woodcrest Road, and I haven’t much. According to maps.google.com, Woodcrest Road is only 19 miles and 32 minutes from my current home. Frequently, for any number of reasons, I am a mere 4 or 5 minutes away on Route 10. Yet, decades passed between the last time I visited Woodcrest and last Saturday. Last Saturday I was in Morristown, which is about midway, when the notion to go see the old place seemed suddenly like a good idea. About fifteen minutes later I turned into Woodcrest. It still felt very familiar despite the intervening years; I could remember walking along it to and from the bus stop. I knew where the topsoil pile had been where the Woodcrest kids played King of the Hill. I knew where the climbing tree had been. The climbing tree was an oak with branches perfectly spaced for clambering kids. (As an example of reconfigured memory, my recollection of a very real fall out of that tree is not from the perspective of my own eyes but from some disembodied perspective higher up in the tree.) I remembered playing in the basement recreation room of our home and putting toy cars on the record player turntable so they would go around when I turned it on.

The climbing tree is gone and the street is no longer a dead end, or even a cul-de-sac; the street has been extended to connect with another road. The house is sort-of there; it has been subsumed into a much larger two-story home. I stopped for a moment, smiled, turned the car around and drove home – my current home. I’m glad I made the visit, though I’m at a loss to explain exactly why. There was no intense emotion attached to it, just a mild nostalgia and sense of reconnection. Yet, it was somehow satisfying. It also was enough. I don’t think I need to go back again. At least it was only 19 miles away. I have a photo of one of my grandparents standing in 1963 at a childhood home outside Bratislava for what I presume was the same reason. That revisit took more than 32 minutes.

1949: My parents working on their home on Woodcrest

The house as I remember it

Sharon and I sitting on the porch at Halloween. I don't remember this.

Beach Boys – Back Home

Autograph Hound

The future arrived in the 1970s: not yet in handheld computing/communications but socially. The cultural revolution that that finally succeeded (philosophically at least) in the US and elsewhere in the 60s was running freely in the 70s – it actually backtracked somewhat in the 80s. The shift in standards left many people dazed and confused (to borrow a phrase from the movie and the Led Zeppelin song). The off-beat soap “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman” chronicling one woman’s course to a nervous breakdown (on the air on The David Susskind Show) is about as good a portrait of the era as any. Yet it isn’t stuck in the 70s; the issues Mary faces with regard to sex, work, marriage, drugs, and so on are the very ones with which we still grapple today. The list of what is and isn’t politically correct is unchanged since then, as are the objections to that list. Despite the big hair and funny clothes, the show feels contemporary.

Louise Lasser was perfectly cast in the title role. Also, I’ve always liked the quirkiness she brings to all her TV and movie roles. She is nearby my home this weekend at the Chiller Theater convention (I suppose the movie Frankenhooker would be the “chiller” connection), so naturally I stopped by to say hello. I mentioned that my favorite break-up scene in comedy is the one with her and Woody Allen in Bananas. She told me that it was mostly unscripted – the script called for a break-up fight – but the impromptu dialogue worked. Good to know. Most of us can relate to that scene. “I can’t receive either,” I said.

Ann-Margret is at the convention, too, but therein lies another tale.

Bananas (1971) – Break-up

Binge Twinge

Binge-watching has been getting some press lately, and no wonder. It is the new way of viewing TV series and movie series. Binge-watching is defined as watching more than two episodes of the same show or more than two movies of the same series at one sitting. In part we do it simply because it is possible. In the old days the opportunity was limited to special events such as Twilight Zone broadcast marathons on New Year’s Day. Even after the advent of tapes and DVDs, collections were pricey while rentals were inconvenient, so few of us bothered with more than the occasional binge – typically something like the first three Star Wars movies. All that changed with inexpensive video-on-demand, a plethora of storage methods, and an abundance of series that are good, addicting, or both. Netflix deliberately releases entire seasons (e.g. House of Cards) at once, both feeding and exploiting our tendency to binge.

Binging has changed the nature of TV scripts. Traditionally there was tension between producers and writers. Producers preferred each episode to be completely self-contained so that a new viewer wouldn’t be confused (and dissuaded) by finding himself in the middle of a storyline about which he knows nothing. Writers, by contrast, preferred ongoing storylines because they are easier to write and because they offer a better opportunity to develop complex characters, plots, and themes. Some shows, especially sitcoms, still are largely self-contained, but increasingly the writers are having their way. Story arcs continue through several episodes, or even through an entire series. It is easy enough for a new viewer to start at the beginning of a series at any time, so complex ongoing plots are now an asset. They make a viewer wonder what comes next.

Why do we binge-watch? Probably for the same reason we binge on anything else. It is a temporary distraction from the harshness of the real world. As distractions go, this one is relatively benign. It less harmful than binging on vodka, donuts, or OxyContin. True, it is not without drawbacks. Binge-watches cost time, but so long as we schedule them so that we don’t forgo the important things in life in favor of the fantasy on screen, we’re probably good.

According to a TiVo survey, the five most binge-watched series are Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and Downton Abbey. One needs to take this with a grain of salt. People notoriously posture on surveys, pretending to drink less (liquor taxes collect more than double what they ought if people were telling the truth) and to favor higher culture than they do. One fairly might suspect that they are more likely to admit to a binge of Downton Abbey than to Arrested Development, Family Guy, or one of the shows with vampires. Nonetheless, those five do have dedicated followings.

What were my own binges in the past year? While there were occasions when I saw more than two movies at one sitting (usually on a sleepless night) the selections weren’t thematic for more than two, so on a technicality they missed the definition of a binge. TV shows were another matter. I met the definition with them. My choices weren’t especially highbrow, except possibly I, Claudius, if that counts. In the past year they have included Battlestar Galactica, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Star Trek (original series), Roswell, Xena, The Addams Family (TV series), Mary Hartman Mary Hartman (yes really), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Strangely enough, popular as this series was, Buffy was new to me. I was aware of the show, of course, when it first aired 1997-2003 and had liked (modestly) the 1992 movie that inspired it, but those particular six years were tumultuous for me; new TV shows were the least of what was on my radar. Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, tracking as it does the title character’s course to a nervous breakdown (on the air on a talk show), was the most addictive of the bunch, yet, at the same time, the least appealing on an episode by episode basis since not a lot happens in any one.

Most of us  probably feel a twinge of guilt about all those hours spent this way, but we all need a few guilty pleasures. Once again, it depends on the alternative; if the alternative is Jim Beam, Buffy is a better bet.

What It's Like To Binge

Marilyn Manson- Third Day of a Seven Day Binge

That Has Such People in't

It’s been almost 90 years since Maria the robot fired the lust of Metropolitans with her exotic dance in Metropolis (1927). Sexy robots in the movies have been at it ever since. Not all of them are female, e.g. Ulysses in Making Mr. Right (1987) and Gigolo Joe in AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001), but most of them are, which is not surprising given the preponderance of young men among scifi screenwriters. Ex Machina, currently in theaters, is an especially stylish example. I’ll leave a fuller review for another time, but today will note one aspect of the film. The protagonist in the movie is hired to run a Turing test for consciousness on the AI robot Ava. The builder considers the test a success because Ava, in his view, is faking her affection just like a real person. This cynical take on romance is very much in line with the times. Even Disney has lost heart, as Sleeping Beauty in Maleficent snores on despite Prince Phillip’s kiss.

Romantic cynicism has become mainstream in recent years, but adumbrations were evident long ago. There always have been cynics, of course. La Rochefoucauld: “True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about but few have seen.” Or, for that matter, Diogenes who, when asked whether or not it was wise to marry, said, “Whatever you do you will regret it.” But 20^th century intellectuals took it to another level, and laid the foundations for making it fashionable. Freud thought love and, for that matter, civilization were sublimations of the libido. His wayward disciple Wilhelm Reich thought repressive societies could be freed by sexual liberation. Aldous Huxley turned both ideas on their heads. In his 1932 novel Brave New World he postulated that shallow sensual pleasures including drugs and casual sex were ideal tools of totalitarian control.  (Nearly everyone in the English-speaking world is assigned this book in high school, but it is worth a re-read.)

Huxley’s future citizens of the world are hedonists. They are deliberately conditioned to be so, and consequently are much too superficially happy to cause any trouble to the folks in charge. To form a serious romantic attachment is to engage in aberrant anti-social behavior; it will get the perpetrator exiled to an island where he or she can’t disturb decent people. Reproduction, completely divorced from sex, is solely in vitro in state laboratories while child-rearing is the responsibility of state conditioning centers, thereby eliminating another type of intense emotional entanglement (parent-child). All intense emotions and passions are impediments to well-adjusted hedonism. The World Controllers exercise their world control by making people blandly happy with drugs (soma), hook-ups, and consumerism.

There is a passage in the book where the Savage, who was raised without proper conditioning on a New Mexico reservation, recites Shakespeare in order to show his civilized friends a deeper way of thinking and living. The results were not as he anticipated:

"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,

That sees into the bottom of my grief?

 

O sweet my mother, cast me not away:

Delay this marriage for a month, a week;

Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed

In that dim monument where Tybalt lies... "

when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing.

The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughter to have some one she didn't want! And the idiotic girl not saying that she was having some one else whom (for the moment, at any rate) she preferred! In its smutty absurdity the situation was irresistibly comical...

He shook his head. "You can't expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And who's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her?" (The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staring pensively at the floor, saw nothing.) "No." he concluded, with a sigh, "it won't do."

Huxley has had some success as prophet. There are more than few signs that we are trending his way, and fashionable romantic cynicism is one of them. We haven’t arrived at his utopia/dystopia yet. We haven’t surrendered the making of children to the state for one thing, though we do give it a greater role in raising them than in 1932; more of us than ever forgo having kids at all. Nor are there formal world controllers. There is, however, in much of the world, a power elite in government and the economy with a strongly (not exclusively, but strongly) hereditary element; there remains a degree of mobility into and out of its ranks, but this is the case even in Brave New World, in which heredity is, in any case, a matter of bioengineering. Arguably this elite could evolve into the sort of authority that some conspiracy theorists long have insisted already exists.

In his 1958 commentary Brave New World Revisited Huxley wrote about the evolution of this new order:

“…the quaint old forms — elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest — will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial — but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”

In truth, there are parts of the world that would benefit from a little more bland hedonism, but so far the oligarchy isn’t doing a very good job of establishing the proper conditions for it in the West, never mind elsewhere. Well, give it time. After all, Brave New World is set in the seventh century After Ford, and we are merely in the second.

All this may be a lot of baggage to load onto one cinematic robot who cynically flirts to get what she wants. Also, Ava is something unanticipated by Huxley. Clones abound in his novel (they are the bulk of the population), but artificial intelligences do not. If any such machines ever do attain consciousness, perhaps they will be more reluctant to surrender their freedom for the good life than we biologicals.

Donovan – Brave New World