A Late Look at Divergent
Ahhh, Divergent.
While the quality of this production surpasses many of the other YA Supernatural books-to-films of it's ilk, I still fail to see why names like Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson get drawn into this stuff, except that they do get the play the scene chewing villain. Chicks don't often get to do that, so maybe that's why. You get to be wack-a-doo villain, but not the one in the push-up bra and heels playing second banana to the main villain.
Keep in mind, I have nothing against romance novels or speculative fiction, I love both, but there is a fact that cannot be escaped; Best-selling or not, they're not terribly good, most of these YA blended books.
**SPOILERS!!**
Divergent suffers the same problem as many of these tales, only this one moreso. Which is to say, crap world-building. The only bits of this universe that are fleshed out are the ones touching the teenager's life specifically, leaving the functioning of the rest of this society at large a mystery. And were this a throw-away tale, I might have forgiven it, except Divergent's purpose is to put this way of life at risk and ask me to care about it, when I have no idea how it works. Except for what it's like when you turn sixteen.
Worse, Divergent assumes it's telling me something impactful. It thinks it has a message
Here's my thing with invented societies; the unlikeliness of the society must be directly parallel to the pay off. However bizarre and unlikely your proposed reality, the suspension of disbelief required for me to accept it's happened must either be met or surpassed with Stuff To Think About. Which means, the moral/ethical questions such a society raises, and the tribulations our characters will go through, how it reflects back of humanity and our own future, ect, ect, must be worth me believing in an unrealistic scenario.
For example, The Hunger Games. Now, Panem and the Hunger Games would never in a million years happen, right? No society would ever think televised child slaughter competitions would be a great idea. If you think about it at all, it totally falls apart. However. Suzanne Collins uses this idea to look at a lot of unpleasant facets of humanity, what happens when we're asked to kill and survive it, when we use propaganda, when we stop caring about other people, he facade of 'reality' television, how media intersects with politics, ect. You forgive the improbability of that world because it gives you other things to think about. You can also see and intuit how Panem works on all levels, what it is like to be a child, a teenager, an adult and a senior. While we mostly see the world through the eyes of our teenage protagonist, we're aware, as she's aware, that there is a whole adult world that exists beyond her scope, not just in terms of the closed-door machinations of the government heads, but in the every-day variety.
Divergent's post-apocalypse Chicago does not such thing. Here is a world which focuses only on what being a teenager/20-something is like. The constructed society is faultily taped together, but has nothing meaningful to say, no questions to pose beyond the author's own black-and-white definitions. The society is sorted into five categories who don't seem to interact at all, and indeed, are mistrustful of each other. Abnegation, Dauntless, Amity, Erudite and Candor. Then of course there are the faction-less, apparently people who wash out of/are evicted from their factions, and just kind of...hang around, helpless? There don't appear to be industrial workers, despite the fact these people are clearly handling made goods. Urgh, whatever.
Despite being within those systems we don't really get how they function, and what your longevity in that group will be like. We never even known if these kids go to school, as a primary goal of the factions is to keep you as ignorant of other factions as possible. You know, because informed choices are bad. We wouldn't want to prepare kids before we sent them to the ever popular Make Life Decisions Before You Finish Puberty ceremony, which may include being cut off from your entire family. You are born into a faction and at the ripe age of sixteen (You know, the time in a person's life where ze is suited to make the absolute best decisions) you officially chose a faction which is mostly based on some serum induced test, isolating a primary trait of some kind. Or, your own teenage whims. Whichever. The sorting process is basically the bastard love child of the Sorting Hat mixed with Reaping Day. Usually you do not sort out of your 'class' and everyone walks around color coded at all times, but you can leave where you were born, join a different faction, but you abandon all prior connections.
And so, at once, we are aware that these are clearly not people as we know them, and yet they seem to be normal? This pocket of humanity, presumably survivors of some apocalyptic event, have somehow been diminished into one core personality trait? How does that even work? Real people are not one thing, and one thing only, sorry. Bravery is not a trait based on whether or not you want to fling yourself out of a moving train on a regular basis (Please see; Longbottom, Neville and Eowyn)
We deal primarily with Abnegation and Dauntless in the movie, which are effectively your civil servant and warrior classes.
Dauntless is the group Tris (our heroine) joins. Which is also a big deal; the world must use genetics to do some of the stuff they're doing, but they fail to understand it in an everyday sense. If your Mom was Dauntless, your genetics are not freaking erased. It doesn't become a slight against your parents when you go to a different faction...except of course, in this universe if leave your faction it means there's something wrong with your parents? WTF. Doesn't anyone remember Tris' Mom was Dauntless? Why is this OMGSHOCK? Don't you people have memories?
Dauntless is the warrior class, and appear to contain all the ADHD aggressive douchebag thrill-seeker bullies in the world. They have no enemies, so life as a Dauntless includes patroling the fences, jumping off moving trains, getting tattoos, beating each other up and and running down zip-lines. It's a warrior class with no one to fight, and yet a distinct lack of anyone over the age of 40. Much is made of the initiation process into what is, effectively, the army. The initiates go through basic training of beating the shit out of people, flinging yourself around bodily, undergoing Dream-state fears and being pointlessly belittled and verbally assaulted. People who fail unannounced tests and quotas (Which just seem to happen because the higher ups are assholes, rather than a sound reason. We Only Want The Best they say, and, no offense, any armed forced as canon fodder. It makes no sense to be kicking people out based on an imaginary standard when you are prepping for battle- WHEN THEIR CAPACTIES WON'T MATTER ANYWAY, BECAUSE THEY WILL BE DRONES.) will be branded 'faction-less' and basically thrown out to be homeless and live on the goodwill of Abnegation. Who all other factions hate, despite Dauntless apparently being the top populator of the faction-less ranks.
Let's be clear, here. Our military leaders are casting off troops they've given military training to an ever growing potential army, essentially because they're assholes.
Smart.
Not that Dauntless is doing the thinking. That's Erudite.
As an atheist academe of a kind, I found the villanizing of the Erudite faction one of the more troubling aspects of the story. Not because I feel that you shouldn't be able to do anti-intellectual or anti-atheist stories (hello, freedom of speech), but because the picture being painted here is fraudulent.
Erudite are the intellectuals, the researchers, the inventors, apparently allll the brain stuff. They are responsible for inventing the serum which makes the poor stupid Dauntless soldiers who can hardly function on their own into zombies and sic them on helpless, pious, pure and kind Abnegation. Erudite lies about Abnegation. What lies are never stated, only a vague idea that maybe Abnegation is holding out food(? You're in a walled city. Search the fuckin' place) and that one Abnegation leader was abusing his son. Mostly, Erudite's beef with Abnegation boils down to the smart people are ganging up on the pious because the smart people want the governmental power.
What I find troubling is this idea that government should be in hands of the pious because they are innately selfless and better people, as compared to those Erudite who try to woo poor gullible people with their facts and their propaganda, despite the fact that some of the stuff they said about the guy running Abnegation was true; he was abusing his son. Yet that character is never painted as evil, really, while we don't see the same of Erudite. While units of people are not one way or another. Just because you belong to a pious 'faction' does not make you an innately better person.
Let's be clear here; Christian identified people are 77% of the population in the United States. The remainder of us are Other, Non-Religious or don't know. Yet, most of our government is loudly religious, across all parties. If anything, the Non-Religious people are UNDER REPRESENTED. Is there a loud and proud Bhuddist, Agnostic, Athiest or, hell, even Jewish Senator or Congress person? No. So, I'm not in the mood to hear your unfounded bitching about how we all wanna steal the government from your rightful hands, Veronica Roth.
Also this idea of technology enslaving people. Erudite are evil not only because they have evil intentions, but they make evil tools. I hate to break it to you, sister, but the bible is full of plenty of people who enslaved and destroyed others. Technology is not the enemy. Shitty people are the enemy.
The title refers to Divergents, people who hide in the society because they do not belong to one faction or another innately, but don't worry. They don't matter, except that Dauntless and Erudite want to kill them (We're never clear how the other factions think of Divergents)
This is the core of my problem with Divergent; it is convinced it has something important to say about individuality, when indeed, it does not. Rather than recognizing humans as varied, flawed and strong, as, purportedly the tale is about the celebration of individuality which cannot be slotted and organized, the role of divergents themselves seem merely to give specific characters a specialness to put them on the baddies radar. A divergent is born, and does not learn to be a more fully realized human through intent, but just happens to be immune to classification. But, as later proved in the movie, plenty of the characters can be brave or smart or selfless outside their allotted faction strengths. The story does not reject the internal system as inherently flawed in all aspects, no, it's those evil Erudite and the puppet Dauntless attacking the poor Abnegation. Abnegation and Amity aren't a problem of the system.
There's no suggestion that the species as a whole needs to evolve and change, and that their whole system is flawed. The system is only flawed because Jeanine Matthew's, an evil Erudite, is apparently in charge (another flaw in the society; there are apparently no checks and balances amongst the factions while apparently reviling any form of centralized control or communication,).
The factions also only recognize one form of their core concept. IE; if you are Brave who will constantly be at bodily risk. Again, think Harry Potter. Griffindor are brave, but that might be the bravery of going into combat, or standing up to your friends, the courage to sneak around and break lots of rules and not give a damn. Bravery or intelligence or friendship are not binary, they don't come in one form and one form alone.
Urgh. This is stupid. Quit insulting the human experience to get across some bullshit religious anti-intellectual propaganda.
All in all? I want to be excited by the girl power, but between the shitty world building and the number of times the the movie is convinced the main love interest penetrating Tris with needles is super sexy, I just want to puke.