Meta: Dystopia and Moral Voices: A Politico-Aesthetic Response to V for Vendetta

[alixtii]

deliriumdriver was discussing V for Vendetta (the movie version, not the comic) in a flocked post on her journal, and it had me thinking about my own reaction to the movie. No one (and by "no one" I mean "neither deliriumdriver nor I") denies that it's a powerful emotional experience while one is in the theatre, but there is a sense in which it sort of falls apart when one

Comments

[deliriumdriver]

I think "put it off" is idiomatic. I need to check out that Philosophy song website and send it to my brother. And I kind of like being half of everyone. :-D

[alixtii]

Yeah, I think "put it off" is idiomatic, too. Although I'm not sure how much of an explanation that actually is.

The Philosophy song website is awesome, at least to people who would understand the references. Is your brother interested in philosophy? (Did I even know you had a brother? I have a brother.)

[deliriumdriver]

My brother graduated with a philosophy degree this spring from Depauw.

[alixtii]

Out of morbid curiosity, is he finding his philosophy degree any more useful than I am finding mine? (And now that you say it, I vaguely remember a story about how you can get away with anything because at least you're not majoring in phil.) My brother will be beginning his senior year this fall at the same Catholic high school from which I graduated.

[swedish15]

Here via pygs_lj's friend page.

As for Brave New World: I don't know the author's background, but as I read it, I really don't know whether it protested against anything; in my opinion, both ways of life - the one of the clones as well as the naturalists - were portrayed with both advantages as well as disadvantages. The biggest concern, I think, was the transplantation of people grown up in one world to the other, something that failed catastrophically in both recorded cases, the "Island full of Alphas" as well as the Savage, with dramatic consequences

[alixtii]

Of course not! All are always welcome to comment, so no intrusion at all, and I'm v. grateful to you for actually summing up a lot of my own thoughts about BNW at least as eloquently as I could. I've thought for a long time that the reason why the conflict in the novel is so late in being introduced is that Huxley takes care first to paint the "dystopia" as a place which is genuinely attractive, as a future which could happen not because Governments Are Evil And People Are Stupid but because it actually has real human appeal. But that's an interpretation that I always thought I held by myself until now; this is the first time I've seen anyone else make a similar comment, so I don't think this is a mainstream position.

The clone world wasn't described negatively, at least not from an objective point of view. Unfree, yes. Not according to our (or at least my) moral paradigm, yes. But not negatively.But I think that in the societies (with their dominant moral paradigms) both in which Huxley was writing and in which we are reading the

[swedish15]

But I think that in the societies (with their dominant moral paradigms) both in which Huxley was writing and in which we are reading the novel, our conclusions as to which way of life is better are more or less overdetermined, you know?
What exactly do you mean with overdetermined? I'm not a native speaker, and what would lend itself would be the mathematical definition; that there are too many constraints for it to be fulfilled. If this is what you mean, I totally agree with you

[alixtii]

I don't know much mathematics, and I'm not sure what you mean by "constraints" or "fulfilled" in this context, but I'll try to explain what I mean in this context. (It seems like it might mean what I mean, but also that it might mean the opposite.) In philosophy (which in the English-speaking world has been very stongly influenced by mathematics in the last 100 years), we'll say that A is determined by B if we can truthfully say something along the lines of "If B, then A." If B is prior to A temporally, we might say something along the lines of "A is causally determined by B." A case of overdetermination occurs in a situation in which we can say not only of B, but also of C and D, "If B or C or D, then A." In a case in which B, C, and D all apply, then any single factor can be removed and A will still be the case--it is overdeterminedAs for texts and moral voices: I suppose I should have limited myself to fictional texts, which were the ones of which I was really thinking. While I'd still claim a non-fictional text like the claim "

[swedish15]

Well, okay, it ain't Sunday, but still...

Still no word. A fictional text can still have a certain moral voice - even if a reader is willing to suppress it. You are, for example, ignoring the possibility of a reliable, all-knowing narrator. Pratchett uses one in all of his Discworld novels - we can trust the narrator. In fact, we have to.

As for your example of the Constitution - no, it could still not be read as satire. The reason for this is simple - it is a manual, and holds personal beliefs. It doesn't proclaim perfection - in fact, it only proclaims to be a way to a more perfect world, at least in the eyes of the authors. The authors' intention is clear and cannot be misunderstood. (Well, it can be; but not on the underlying principles.)

So, no, I can't agree with you, sorry.

[alixtii]

You are, for example, ignoring the possibility of a reliable, all-knowing narrator.

How do we recognize such a narrator? A narrator can be "3rd-person omniscient" and still be unreliable.

Pratchett uses one in all of his Discworld novels - we can trust the narrator.

This seems like a curious choice, because I really can't think of many 3rd-person omniscient narrators that I trust less than Pratchett's. A good chunk of his humor stems from just how unreliable his ostensibly "omniscient" narrator really is.

In fact, we have to.

This in particular confuses me. Why do we have to? A text can't make us do anything we don't want to. I can't even think of a reason why we should do it, yet alone have to.

As for your example of the Constitution - no, it could still not be read as satire. The reason for this is simple - it is a manual, and holds personal beliefs.

Dean Swift's essay is also a manual which (ostensibly) holds personal beliefs. I'm not sure I see a formal distinction between the two.

Now admittedly there is a shared

[swedish15]

How do we recognize such a character?
Easy. Does s/he make mistakes? I.e., is the story told inherently inconsistent? Do some parts violate the canon of itself? For example, a story in which the narrator told us "2+2 = 37", under any and all circumstances, only to later claim different, would break consistency. This would make him/her an unreliable narrator.

Of course, you can distrust even a flawless narrator. But then, you're caught in the same problem in reality - what are our senses but narrators to our mind? The only thing I can know for sure is that I exist, and only because I am conscious of myself. I can neither accept the existence of this world, nor of my body as given. So, if you distrust such a narrator, you can throw the book away as well - nothing you'd read you could accept as true, in the context of itself.

Pratchett's narrator is reliable. Everybody else in his works isn't. But the narrator him/herself? Is reliable. We are *never* told something only to learn later: "Allabätsch, that wasn't like you thought

[alixtii]

Easy. Does s/he make mistakes? I.e., is the story told inherently inconsistent? Do some parts violate the canon of itself? For example, a story in which the narrator told us "2+2 = 37", under any and all circumstances, only to later claim different, would break consistency. This would make him/her an unreliable narrator.

These rules seem unnecessarily stringent to me. Wouldn't "2 + 2 = 37" by itself be enough evidence of unreliability? (Which is not to say that I am a Platonist about mathematics; far from it. But I'm talking about how a reader would typically approach the text.) And if a mathematical fact, why not a moral one?

Also, do these rules apply only to to omniscient narrators, or to all of them? Because Poe's narrators (in, say, "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat") never contradict themselves. They tell a coherent albeit fanciful tale as they coherently albeit hysterically defend their sanity.

The only thing I can know for sure is that I exist, and only because I am conscious of myself. I can neither accept the