A book is a loaded gun in the house next door
February 27, 2018 12:53 PM   Subscribe

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history: Michael B. Jordan Brings Ray Bradbury's Haunting Dystopia to Life in the First Trailer for Fahrenheit 451. [Trailer]
posted by not_the_water (82 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Cautiously optimistic.
posted by Fizz at 12:58 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Fuck 'em up, Erik!
posted by Artw at 1:03 PM on February 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


There was an exhibition at the NYPL a few years back of some of the oddities from their collections. One of the coolest things was an edition of Fahrenheit 451...printed on asbestos.
posted by sexyrobot at 1:09 PM on February 27, 2018 [41 favorites]


Release the mechanical Hound!
posted by steef at 1:09 PM on February 27, 2018


an edition of Fahrenheit 451...printed on asbestos

Printed on, or bound in asbestos? There were around 215 copies "in the rare asbestos binding" (ended auction listing).
posted by filthy light thief at 1:12 PM on February 27, 2018 [8 favorites]




No disrespect, but -- how are they going to top Truffaut?
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:25 PM on February 27, 2018 [7 favorites]


Release the mechanical Hound!

From Boston Dynamics, no doubt D:
Also, meh on the VR club...I think the wall-sized TVs are still super likely...at 80"+ these days, we're almost there...
posted by sexyrobot at 1:31 PM on February 27, 2018


No disrespect but wasn't one of the biggest themes of the book

"Y'all watch too much god damned television."

I... simply don't understand the impetus to transfer it to the very medium which it was so heavily critiquing.

"HE SAYS THE CULPRIT in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends."

I know it's technically a movie, but hey it's made by HBO, so I think the point stands.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:38 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


The Emoji Movie did a much more thorough job of destroying literacy.
posted by benzenedream at 1:40 PM on February 27, 2018 [21 favorites]


The Emoji Movie did a much more thorough job of destroying literacy.

I mean, it is arguable that Bradbury would agree with this sentiment.
posted by deadaluspark at 1:48 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


There’s multiple essays that could be written on Bradbury’s take on the themes of Fahrenheit 451 and how they map onto the actual work, and whether an author gets a priveleged position in determining what those themes are, but I have to say this: Bradbury’s take on it has always seemed off.
posted by Artw at 1:50 PM on February 27, 2018 [8 favorites]


So, Human Torch is going to star in Fahrenheit 451?
posted by FJT at 1:56 PM on February 27, 2018 [16 favorites]


Capt. Renault: "No disrespect, but -- how are they going to top Truffaut?"

I love the book and am generally a fan of Truffaut but the movie never really worked for me. The fire trucks were cool though.
posted by octothorpe at 1:56 PM on February 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


Also, I seem to recall his take on it back in the 50s and 60s and his take in late in life interviews is considerably different. And given how unpleasant some of his later interviews are, I'm not sure I'm going to take old cranky racist Bradbury over younger Bradbury.
posted by tavella at 1:56 PM on February 27, 2018 [10 favorites]


a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.

To be fair, if I were recapping a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy I'm pretty sure I'd be using everyone's first/only name there, too. Humans have been relating in this way to the literary and dramatic arts for as long as they've existed.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:58 PM on February 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


Interior, young Bradbury’s study. A time machine appears with a supersonic crack of displaced air, neatly erasing half the desk, and as condensing vapor clears it opens to reveal Old Bradbury, covered in Jurrasic slime and crushed butterflies.

OLD BRADBURY: Don’t put book burning in that book about television being bad! People will think it’s about censorship!
posted by Artw at 2:10 PM on February 27, 2018 [20 favorites]


I have zero interest in Bradbury as a proto Neil Postman, railing about American pacifying itself because it indulges in an entertainment they despise rather than the entertainment they enjoy. If the book is not about government censorship, it is not interesting.

Fortunately, the book is, to no small amount, about government censorship, which Bradbury was explicit about early on and then contradicted himself later. The book does have a lot of mindless television consumption, but its main character isn't a television addict, but instead a representative of state censorship, who is radicalized against it specifically by either his own experiences participating in it or witnessing it.

One of the radicalizing incidents, as an example, is watching his wife overdose on sleeping pills. He is not so much affected by her addiction to mass media as by her callous treatment by her rescuers. A chunk of the book is given over to the sorts of dialogue we hear in the trailer, in which Captain Beatty rails against the content of books.

For Bradbury to dismiss all this stuff makes him either a bad writer or a bad reader.
posted by maxsparber at 2:10 PM on February 27, 2018 [17 favorites]


Bradbury bursts through door: THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS IS ABOUT THE DOG.
posted by maxsparber at 2:13 PM on February 27, 2018 [24 favorites]


I love the book and am generally a fan of Truffaut but the movie never really worked for me. The fire trucks were cool though.

There's a lot to like in the Truffaut film. The music by Bernard Herrmann is amazing. The book burning scenes are particularly beautiful and affecting. And there's a great performance by Cyril Cusack. The weak link is, in my mind, Oskar Werner, who's pretty out of it for most of the movie. I wish Terence Stamp had been available for the role. In any case, I saw it when I was ten or eleven and it really made an impression.

I saw the trailer for the new one. It left me a bit underwhelmed. The world seems cloned out of several recent YA-distopia-film adaptations. The whole things seems gray, obvious and loud.
posted by Omon Ra at 2:14 PM on February 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


I wonder if The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling is more the sort of story about literacy that Bradbury thought he had written. Probably not. Then again, Chiang is a better writer than he was [/heresy].
posted by Artw at 2:21 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


I find the original movie unwatchable, if only for the bizarre choice of changing the Clarisse McClellan character into a goofy, "light in the head" adult.
posted by not_the_water at 2:22 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Sad that creating a palimpsest of lies to replace knowledge means burning it is hardly relevant anymore.
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:26 PM on February 27, 2018 [14 favorites]


I expect - right after it comes out - to see Hannity and friends discussing the concept and thinking, "well....there are some good things that could come out of these book burnings, right?"
posted by Thistledown at 2:28 PM on February 27, 2018


We're already 451-ing ourselves by moving information into the cloud where it can be erased or modified at will. Hold on to your books, people!
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:29 PM on February 27, 2018 [13 favorites]


There are a million ways to depict television as a malignant opiate, but he decided to write about firemen who burn books. This is why authorial intent can be almost meaningless once the words are unleashed upon the reading public.
posted by xyzzy at 2:30 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


Forgot to add:

Exit, pursued by a T-Rex.
posted by Artw at 2:46 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


If the book is not about government censorship, it is not interesting.

It's not, or rather, it's not just about government censorship, as is plainly explained in the novel, not once, not twice, but by three different characters, none of whom ever meet within the world to collaborate details on their unauthorized history of how the world turned to shit and created the Firemen by a populist mandate. Misinterpreting the text as just about government censorship just reduces the central argument to a mere tautology.

Montag is radicalized by a number of incidents, not all of which involve bookburning: Beatty's gleeful anti-intellectualism, the shock of his wife and her peers when he recites poetry, her continued retreat away from relationship into the world of her virtual "family," the constant murmur of advertising in his ear, and the probable murder of his neighbor for taking walks in the moonlight. That's about half the text, and some of the better parts.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 2:49 PM on February 27, 2018 [15 favorites]


Cautiously optimistic.

Probably not the author's intention.
posted by rokusan at 2:52 PM on February 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


So, Human Torch is going to star in Fahrenheit 451?

Typecast already.
posted by rokusan at 2:53 PM on February 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


No disrespect, but -- how are they going to top Truffaut?

Impossible for me, my favorite movie, as I saw it first at exactly the right age, not just for the story but the music, the monorail and Julie Christie and everything... but you know, that production's just gotta seem so archaic to kids these days. How about those wallscreens, though -- Truffaut got that one exactly right.

A big appeal to me was how the original was so clearly European, possibly the first French film I ever saw... and yet, the novel is set in the US so, after seeing this, I am cautiously optimistic that it will be good (unlike when Mel Gibson was going to star in a remake -- mercifully, that notion faded away).
posted by Rash at 2:54 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


There's a lot to like in the Truffaut film. The music by Bernard Herrmann is amazing. The book burning scenes are particularly beautiful and affecting. And there's a great performance by Cyril Cusack.

Let us not forget the brilliant opening credits.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:57 PM on February 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


Bradbury's book railed against T.V. but it's not T.V.... it's HBO!
posted by Megafly at 2:59 PM on February 27, 2018 [9 favorites]


Let us not forget the brilliant opening credits.

Or the snow which fell on their last day of outdoor filming. In the 'Making of' on the DVD, Ray says sometimes a bad ending can ruin a good movie, and sometimes a good ending can save a bad one.
posted by Rash at 3:00 PM on February 27, 2018


No disrespect, but -- how are they going to top Truffaut?

I'm looking forward to battling this out in FanFare.
posted by rhizome at 3:15 PM on February 27, 2018


Bradbury's view on what his book is about was an interesting take, but he was wrong, so I never paid him much mind about it.
posted by kyrademon at 3:19 PM on February 27, 2018 [8 favorites]


THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS IS ABOUT THE DOG

IT WAS. FIGHT ME.
posted by numaner at 3:34 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


It's alright to watch the movie version so long as you aren't using a wall-sized screen.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:36 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


It's not, or rather, it's not just about government censorship, as is plainly explained in the novel, not once, not twice, but by three different characters, none of whom ever meet within the world to collaborate details on their unauthorized history of how the world turned to shit and created the Firemen by a populist mandate. Misinterpreting the text as just about government censorship just reduces the central argument to a mere tautology.

Yes, this is the part that I'm most concerned about being lost in a movie adaptation. The issue isn't that the Firemen are anti-intellectual fascists - because they are - it's the majority of the population wants them to do their job. The Firemen were not forced upon people, they asked for it. To turn the book into a slight upscale literary generic dystopian action movie would be a bummer.

At least Shannon looks like a pretty intense Captain Beatty.
posted by GuyZero at 3:55 PM on February 27, 2018 [7 favorites]


Um, that’s how regemes that do censorship work.
posted by Artw at 4:01 PM on February 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


Fascism is a product of a society that desires its own repression. NB: I am a broken record on this topic.
posted by rhizome at 4:03 PM on February 27, 2018 [21 favorites]


Honestly Bradbury’s whole deal is like saying the problem in 1984 is the Telescreens.
posted by Artw at 4:04 PM on February 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


No disrespect, but -- how are they going to top Truffaut?
At least we can hope for better special effects...
posted by elgilito at 4:13 PM on February 27, 2018


It's kind of interesting that the book is so frequently misunderstood, and we're in "Sauron was code for Stalin" and "Romeo and Juliet is a romance" territory here. The text itself is hypocritical in that it tells you exactly what it is about multiple times: complex and "difficult" texts vs. simple texts that satisfy the audience's pre-existing biases.

I think Farber says that broadcasting could be complex and difficult, but it isn't in the world at that point. Beatty gleefully describes how before Firemen, there were bowdlerized books that gave the audience what they wanted. There's no reason to believe that Beatty is lying about this or about shutting down higher education because no one showed up. That history is supported by both Farber and Granger.

Some flaws: Fahrenheit 451 is, IMO, a lot closer to a simple text in which the villain monologues about his populist hatred of the humanities and two secondary protagonists monologue the moral of the story at Montag. It falls a bit too deeply into the "great men and great art" model of the humanities, although Clarisse stands out as sort of the pastoral romantic ideal. I don't remember that the McClellan family were literate, although they were described as loving, curious, and interested in each other's internal lives, for which, Clarisse was forced into treatment. I realize looking at the wikipedia synopsis that I didn't really catch Clarisse's fate in my previous post, but she just kind of disappears and what Montag is told about her isn't necessarily reliable. Clarisse and Mildred are contrasting examples to show the importance of an internal life. Montag's self-awareness is embryonic, and he spends most of the book not understanding anyone, including himself, and trying to get easy answers from others.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 4:15 PM on February 27, 2018 [10 favorites]


Honestly Bradbury’s whole deal is like saying the problem in 1984 is the Telescreens.

I wonder how seriously we should take his words. If I'm not mistaken, he started claiming the thing about Fahrenheit 451 being purely a critique of tv since around 2007, when he was 87. He had been ill since 1999, and had never really mentioned it before.
posted by Omon Ra at 4:17 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hot take: Fahrenheit 451 is bad, actually.
posted by tobascodagama at 4:19 PM on February 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


But it has great brand recognition.
posted by Artw at 4:31 PM on February 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


I felt a bit underwhelmed when I watched the Truffaut version ages ago, but now that I think about it, there were some fairly interesting scenes (the interactive TV was pretty funny). I'll have to look at it again.
posted by ovvl at 4:33 PM on February 27, 2018


I'm not sure I'm going to take old cranky racist Bradbury over younger Bradbury.

Old cranky racist homophobe whose last novel ruined Dandelion Wine for me by creating a metaphor for puberty that involved homoerotically-shared literal talking penises. Yeah, Old Bradbury I don't need.
posted by nicebookrack at 4:42 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


Huh, that's weird nicebookrack. He actually seemed quite tolerant of homosexuality in the Sam Weller interviews:

“I knew Rock Hudson for years. His sexuality didn’t matter. We didn’t talk about those things. I don’t care if someone is gay. Like I said, love is love. It is the basis of everything.”

Ray Bradbury. “Listen to the Echoes.”
posted by Omon Ra at 4:52 PM on February 27, 2018


I have zero interest in Bradbury as a proto Neil Postman, railing about American pacifying itself because it indulges in an entertainment they despise rather than the entertainment they enjoy. If the book is not about government censorship, it is not interesting.

I wonder how seriously we should take his words. If I'm not mistaken, he started claiming the thing about Fahrenheit 451 being purely a critique of tv since around 2007, when he was 87. He had been ill since 1999, and had never really mentioned it before.

This sort of thing was always a major theme in his other work, so it would be silly to dismiss his claim that it's a core theme of Fahrenheit 451. The assertion that it's the only core theme is really questionable, though.
posted by atoxyl at 4:52 PM on February 27, 2018


My Bradbury feelings aside, I'm completely in favor of Michael B. Jordan's artistic expressions of his low-key pyromania, and I will support all of his future attempts as an actor to set himself beautifully on fire onscreen. Has MBJ put his name up to play Heat Wave in The Flash movie yet?
posted by nicebookrack at 4:59 PM on February 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


Everyone who loves Ray Bradbury knows there were two. There was young Ray Bradbury and the One Who Came After. It's okay. It's Ray Bradbury. Don't be surprised if he was in fact killed and surreptitiously replaced by a faulty, meaty robot.


…no, don't be surprised.

But you would do well to be mortally terrified.
posted by Mike Mongo at 5:02 PM on February 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


Omon Ra: the short story that Bradbury was discussing in the interview I linked, "My Son, Max," is some vile homophobic sneering shit about about a man who walks out on his son and wife because the son (it's insinuated) is camp gay and the mom supports him, so the poor poor dad will never have grandchildren.

I know I know, unreliable narrators + story POV is not author POV + blah blah blah, but the way Bradbury's focus in the interview is all "omg no grandkids it's so sad!!!" I'm not generous enough to cut him a lot of slack.
posted by nicebookrack at 5:13 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


(If you don't have a copy of Bradbury's One More for the Road collection at hand, here is "My Son, Max," badly google-translated from Russian.)
posted by nicebookrack at 5:18 PM on February 27, 2018


I read a short essay Bradbury wrote in the LA Times around 1970 titled "Book Burning Without Striking a Match" in which he declared clearly that 451 was not really about censorship, rather the degradation of modern media. I was sorely disappointed. But then I was already dedicated to reading any book a movie I liked was based on, after getting into the novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey and finding Arthur Clarke's words far superior before they got 'all-Kubricked-up'. A later book-to-movie comparison with the sequel 2010 just got me all "meh" toward both, but then I discovered Ursula K. LeGuin via the TV movie version of The Lathe of Heaven.

In 1984, I saw Bradbury live at an animation festival "in conversation with" his close friend, Looney Tunes genius Chuck Jones, and found a new appreciation for him, only to have it dashed a year later by his then-new book Death Is a Lonely Business in which he tried to do a Raymond Chandler mystery with a version of his younger self as the protagonist. NOT recommended to anyone wishing to keep fond memories of the author.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:23 PM on February 27, 2018


Excellent -- this gives me a chance to ask a lot of smart people a question that has been nagging me for decades: Is it reading that is considered dangerous in the future society depicted in Fahrenheit 451? Or is it books? Or only literary fiction?

If I remember the 1960s movie version right, there was no writing anywhere. At one point a character pulls up a personnel file on a fireman, and all it contains is photos. Now how can that be a useful personnel file? And how do you build buildings, create TV scripts or run the economy if you don't write things down? Or are you allowed to write things down, as long as it's not fiction?

I have only seen the movie, not read the novel. Perhaps the book goes into more details about these things.
posted by Triplanetary at 5:24 PM on February 27, 2018


Excellent -- this gives me a chance to ask a lot of smart people a question that has been nagging me for decades: Is it reading that is considered dangerous in the future society depicted in Fahrenheit 451? Or is it books? Or only literary fiction?

They have technical manuals and comic books.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 5:31 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


It’s basically a Star Wars prequel.
posted by Artw at 5:35 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


The Brain Eater [warning: tvtropes] got Bradbury a long time ago.
posted by benzenedream at 5:57 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hot take:

how hot, exactly
posted by Sebmojo at 6:13 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


Make a dragon want to retire, man.
posted by nicebookrack at 6:20 PM on February 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


how hot, exactly

What's the temperature at which takes burn?
posted by tobascodagama at 6:22 PM on February 27, 2018 [5 favorites]


Yeah the trailer makes this adaptation seem pretty thin and YA-ish; but looking it up this version is directed by Ramin Bahrani (!!!) so maybe a case of one those projects that fakes you out with a trailer that inaccurately represents the end product.
posted by jettloe at 6:49 PM on February 27, 2018


GenderNullPointerException, thank you for your reply. My nagging question has finally gone away.
posted by Triplanetary at 7:05 PM on February 27, 2018


...one those projects that fakes you out with a trailer that inaccurately represents the end product.
Alas, 'The Witch'. Marketed as a horror film, ugh. The film is an Art film ffs. Utterly brilliant. Fucking focus-groups and fucking trailers.

posted by j_curiouser at 7:38 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Ehhh... Absolutely a horror film. Maybe a tad artsier than the trailer implies, I guess. Main thing is that it’s good.
posted by Artw at 7:52 PM on February 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


Hmm. We’ll see.

I saw the Truffaut movie as a kid and found it very dour and preachy. Kept me from reading the book until early adulthood. When I did, I was surprised at how different in tone and message it was from the movie; I enjoyed the book quite a bit.

As to what is the book about? Well, Bradbury is free to tell us his intent, I suppose, but I really think the meaning of any art depends on the viewer. It’s been 20+ years since I read the book, so I feel I need to read it again to see if my memory holds up.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:09 PM on February 27, 2018


In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends."

Interviewer: So, when Guy first makes the decision to...

Ray Bradbury: DO YOU MEAN MISTER MONTAG?!
posted by straight at 8:41 PM on February 27, 2018 [7 favorites]


Old Bradbury can say (well, more past tense, I suppose, at this point) whatever he pleases, but it doesn't really seem to have gained much traction in how the public appreciates the book. And you can bet that the movie is going to lean a hell of a lot more heavily on the popular conception of the book than on authorial intent when the two diverge, particularly when the authorial intent makes the very existence of the movie problematic.

I'd be willing to bet that the way most readers in the US approach Fahrenheit 451 is through a highschool English class, and that the framing is very firmly "who wants to tell me what the book is about? [HINT THE CORRECT ANSWER ON THE TEST ON FRIDAY IS "CENSORSHIP", YOU ADOLESCENT REPROBATES]". That's certainly how it was taught when I read it for the first time, and successive conversations with others over the years suggest strongly that it's pretty common and hasn't changed that much.

You can take that as an indictment of an overly-simplistic teaching of a nuanced work, or maybe it's a case of a cigar just being a cigar.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:22 PM on February 27, 2018


rhizome: Fascism is a product of a society that desires its own repression. NB: I am a broken record on this topic.

Hi fellow broken record. One of my favorite & best literature professors was an intellectual escapee of Nazi Germany who came to Oregon to teach French. His blistering exposés on fascism and the woven threads that could be studied in literature about freedom, interdependence, responsibility, meaning and destruction of it through individuals+society, and fascism, left an indelible mark. Massive reason that I cannot stomach individuals removing themselves from equations of repression.

Is it reading that is considered dangerous in the future society depicted in Fahrenheit 451? Or is it books? Or only literary fiction?

Thinking as represented by literature that makes one think. When you start to ask hard questions and empathize with differing points of view – which "good literature" does (scare quotes because that in and of itself is an oversimplification, but here we'll take the book-burning of Fahrenheit 451 as symbolic, which it is) – you start to comprehend the importance of individual responsibility+freedom as an integral part of societal development.

Side note, which takes quite a different tack, and I'm offering it mainly as a way to view the resistance in F451 (not as a definitive judgement; that would be counter to itself): one of the critiques of written literature as opposed to oral traditions is that putting things in writing also lessens the individual responsibility to remember, interpret, and create. What is shared knowledge and thought if it can so easily be destroyed? How can so much humanity be bound into fragile objects and forgotten if we don't take it upon ourselves to remember? (Again: not meant as a definitive judgement, but as a view. Obviously having both written and oral literature is great.)

It wasn't for nothing that the Nazis, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, etc. also targeted intellectuals. Remove a key source (not the only source, but certainly a key) of flexible, deep thinking, and you take a sledgehammer to a foundation of resistance.
posted by fraula at 1:19 AM on February 28, 2018 [10 favorites]


I'd be willing to bet that the way most readers in the US approach Fahrenheit 451 is through a highschool English class, and that the framing is very firmly "who wants to tell me what the book is about?

I think the way censorship is viewed publicity in Fahrenheit 451 has been dominated by red-scare bias in public schools, which treated censorship along the same lines as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was one of those things that the Soviets did to maintain power over a silenced majority, who would surely choose Western democracy if it were not criminalized to talk about it. Dystopias seem to involve either power-over or populist censorship, and I think power-over censorship has generally dominated over the populist in print.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 4:45 AM on February 28, 2018 [2 favorites]


I... simply don't understand the impetus to transfer it to the very medium which it was so heavily critiquing.

Maybe you can bring down the master's house with the master's tools. A sledgehammer is a sledgehammer.

So, Human Torch is going to star in Fahrenheit 451?

Co-starring General Zod--don't forget that heat vision!

And WRT Old Bradbury saying regrettable things: can you count the number of times that a favorite creator has said stupid stuff, particularly later in life? I've lost track.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:23 AM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


I... simply don't understand the impetus to transfer it to the very medium which it was so heavily critiquing.

Bradbury refused for years to allow an ebook edition. He only gave in on that one because the publishing contract was coming to its end, and while several publishers wanted the rights, none of them would go for a deal that didn't include an electronic edition. So either it got an ebook version or it went out of print.
posted by Naberius at 6:54 AM on February 28, 2018


No disrespect but wasn't one of the biggest themes of the book

"Y'all watch too much god damned television."

I... simply don't understand the impetus to transfer it to the very medium which it was so heavily critiquing.

"HE SAYS THE CULPRIT in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends."

I know it's technically a movie, but hey it's made by HBO, so I think the point stands.


Faber, a Bradbury mouthpiece character in the book, in the book, says outright:

"The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this."

Bradbury reportedly loved adaptations of his work, including the film.

Also, he scripted a TV show.

I don't think that Bradbury's beef was with screens or films or culture, and the movie is not just about censorship, as many people have written upthread.

"Remember the firemen are rarely necessary. The public stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but its a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line. So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily. Can you dance faster than the White Clown, shout louder than 'Mr. Gimmick' and the parlor 'families'? If you can, you'll win your way, Montag. In any event, you’re a fool. People are having fun."

Bradbury wanted people to think, above all else. I don't think he wanted anybody to think the book was the final word on it, either.

I'll wait for the movie to be disappointing before I'll pass judgement on it. If it updates the material to make it palatable to a new generation, who picks up the book again, then it's doing a good thing, even if the movie itself is not that good.
posted by Strudel at 8:15 AM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


You can find the media critique in this book, unquestionably. But his choice to feature book burning by firemen as an appropriate context for his critique was like setting a story criticizing animal testing on an oil rig that explodes and pollutes the ocean. In an era where people saw images of Nazis burning books quite recently, that particular narrative overwhelms everything else, including his points about the enemy of the people being, well, the people. Sure, dumb English teachers looking for easy critiques, fine. But, also, bad writer for diluting his narrative in the first place with a distracting hook.
posted by xyzzy at 1:29 PM on February 28, 2018 [2 favorites]


This is why I think it's a bad book. Every single authorial choice just screams "this is a top-down dystopia, just like 1984".

What evidence do we have against that interpretation? A couple of characters -- one of whom is basically the villain of the piece -- tell us that people demanded this world be created for them. The weight of "some guy said so" does not stand against the evidence of the world, the plot, the anything else.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:40 PM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


What evidence do we have against that interpretation?

A majority of the book's chapters, including the testimony of every character who is literate, self-aware, and witnessed some of the events in question.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:51 PM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


The book is also about how shitty tv is. That's just the part of it that is wildly uninteresting.
posted by maxsparber at 1:59 PM on February 28, 2018 [3 favorites]


Definitely needed more dinosaurs.
posted by Artw at 2:05 PM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


Even if we discount Beatty's monologue, even though he has no reason to lie in that exchange, we need to get rid of Farber, Granger, and the other "living books" who relate the same history from the perspective of teachers and academics, not to mention the whole tragedy of Mildred Montag quite deliberately rejecting enlightenment multiple times in favor of "the family." And likely Claresse as well.

The algorithmically manipulative "families" described don't sound like broadcast television to me, but they do sound a heck of a lot like Facebook.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 2:12 PM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


“What if Wall but too much?”
posted by Artw at 2:31 PM on February 28, 2018 [2 favorites]


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