![]() While a few aspects resonate as hauntingly prescient (the prevalence of psychiatric drugs, technology that enables constant connection at the cost of privacy), it’s a sad quirk of 2020 that it’s become harder to argue against a society free of indigence, violence, cults of personality and, poignantly, disease. What’s strange is how tame what the author called a “negative utopia” sounds today. This wasn’t such a problem for Huxley because his Brave New World is a philosophical novel, where characters serve primarily as vehicles for criticism of ideas that captivated the cultural conversation when it was published, in 1932-from the efficiency gospel of Henry Ford to Soviet Communism. Brave New World meets Westworld-until the story abruptly shifts back to New London. ![]() ![]() But a faction of militant Savages is rising up against this minstrelsy. Inhabitants play redneck caricatures of themselves in reenactments of, in one case, Black Friday at a big-box store. Peacock’s version combines it with a theme park where World State tourists come to learn how lucky they are. In the novel, this place is a sort of American reservation. After an initial encounter in which he humiliates her with a holographic replay of her monogamous trysts ( Brave New World has as much weird sex as anything on premium cable), they form a bond based on mutual stirrings of discontent.įar from the grand, rose-tinted vistas of Lenina and Bernard’s home city New London, a young man named John ( Solo star Alden Ehrenreich) lives with his mother (Demi Moore, nice to see but underutilized) in a wasteland populated by so-called Savages, where religion, poverty and family persist. Entangled in a sexual relationship that has become exclusive, Beta-Plus hatchery worker Lenina Crowne (Jessica Brown Findlay of Downton Abbey) is sent to Alpha-Plus counselor Bernard Marx ( Game of Thrones’ Harry Lloyd) for a scolding. Showrunner David Wiener ( Homecoming) keeps the foundation of Huxley’s world intact, and populates it with mostly the same characters. The World State has, in effect, hacked consciousness to eliminate dissatisfaction. And to control for the X-factor of brain chemistry, there’s soma, a drug whose mood-altering powers (depending on the dosage) resemble Xanax or Ecstasy. Each rank performs a crucial function, has its material needs met and is conditioned to prefer their lot in life over any other. Epsilons are the simpleminded manual laborers. Here, each person is genetically engineered to be an ideal member of a certain caste: Alphas are the beautiful, brilliant ruling class. The futuristic World State of Aldous Huxley’s classic novel Brave New World, which is coming to TV via NBC Universal’s new streaming service Peacock after years in development limbo, believes it has solved that paradox. It’s what makes us dream of utopia and-because any perfect society would still require drudge work no self-actualized individual would be satisfied doing-what keeps that idyll out of reach. But it also opens us up to authoritarianism, inequality, war, genocide, systematic destruction of the environment. Sure, it’s what defines humanity-what allows us to make choices, feel emotions, form societies, create art, understand the world around us. Consciousness is, at best, a mixed blessing.
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