Ensorship and mass culture in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 Essay

Of the famous dystopian literatures of the 20th century Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit(postnominal)(postnominal)(postnominal) 451 offers perhaps one of the more interesting suggestions to the historic causality of censorship. duration subtle hints of ignorance is power for a tyrannical govern custodyt is mentioned by most characters ala 1984, most of the text instead suggests that in the dystopian manhood of Fahrenheit 451 that censorship is not so much intentional as it is a side-effect of a postmodern predilection toward, as Frederic Jameson notes, a cultural fall of affect and a realism of signs with let on signifiers, a pastiche of histories without meaning (Jameson, 2001).The books macrocosm censored then, in Fahrenheit 451s dystopian America, then deliver less of an impact on the society than the drama and entertainment urinated from their denudation and destruction and that more than the censorship thitherin this blissful ignorance is the dystopian particle in Bradburys invention.Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopia for the intellectual. Within the story is presented an (assumed) united States where tidy sum live reasonably happy lives. From eerything we see in the novel they argon well fed, live in wonderful fireproof houses, withdraw jobs, families and plenty of entertainment. Yet, as main character Guy Montag dwells on, people dash off themselves lifelessness and a constant threat of war waits to loom in the background of the novel.Yet in that respect is never any discussion of why, and no matter how many picture walls or radios are turned on throughout the course of the book no more information is ever truly recovered as to how or why the country finds them in this mess. Yet no one outside Montag and a go throughful 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 about sports and his coworkers play hand later hand of poker.Dance faster than the white cl witness around 2Montags wife, Mildred, is given up to the picture wall, or television, and is constantly begging for a quartern and final wall to be installed. Violence as entertainment, point, seems to in some way be supported generally by society as Mildred seems to take pleasure at one point from hitting dainty animals with her automobile.Yet there also seems to be an urge and encouragement of sameness, as echoes in many other works 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 public school because she doesnt mix. (22) Mildred, although a seemingly entire 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, espe cially 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(prenominal) 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 bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, bring forward 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 collar 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, mass exploitation, and nonage pressure carried the trick, thank God (47)Dance faster than the white joke 3 Beatty explains that a globalized consumer market and an increasing demand to be diverted with bigger and better products is what killed the book and the government made firemen custodians of our peace of estimation (48) to prevent un rapture. 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 construction 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 numerate of facets of Montags lifeWork, leisure, nature and culture all these things which were formerly dispersed, which once generated anxiety and complexity in real life these activities which were more or less irreducible one to another, are now at know mixed and blended, climatized and homogenized in the same sweeping vista of aeonian 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 lugubriousness and are so blindly obsessed 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 may 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 becoming a kind of dystopia. Of course books are still readily available, but studies show that Americans are taking less cadence to read and that reading comprehension skills are greatly suffering. (Brown, 200 8) As Beatty describes we also areDance faster than the white clown 4 thirst faster, more flashy and more dramatic entertainment. Internet phenomena exchangeable 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 looking 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 ship canal to that of Fahrenheit 451. (Doctorow, 2009) If we think pessimistically on such events it is very diffused to think we are in a doomed and dire stain like in the book and, as Faber says, the whole skeleton need reshaping.Bradbury obviously wrote Fahrenheit 451 out of a growing concern 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 might be fright at many of the new ways people are expend 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 type to heed to prevent ignorance 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. revolutionary 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 poster stupidity electronic network site http//www.boingboing.net/2009/03/24/london-cops-reach-ne.htmlJameson, Frederic (2001). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism.Durham, trade union Carolina Duke University Press.