HBO: Fahrenheit 451

[Ordo]

youtu.be/UEhsFEgsI5U

[Durandal_1707]

Seems like the advent of digitization would make it a lot easy to hide stuff from this regime than in Bradbury's day. The entirety of Project Gutenberg can fit on a tiny USB flash drive, which is obviously much easier to conceal than an attic full of books.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Censorship is an easy, timely theme to unpack, but there's a lot more to the message of the book than that. Ironic if this of all adaptations is dumb and pandering (not saying it looks that way- impossible to tell just from a trailer).

The literal book-burning was always a metaphor, of course, but to me this is one of those cases where it would be perfectly fine to update some of the plot specifics to fit the circumstances of the modern world. I still want to see a mechanical hound though.

[Admiral X]

Wasn't the original book more about people simply turning their backs on books because they replaced them with visual media rather than about censorship?

[TGLS]

Here are some quotes from the first part of Fahrenheit 451.

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war.

"Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That's against the law!"

Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it.

Now brainless visual media was part of it, but there was censorship to keep people in line too.

[Darth Wedgius]

"I want to burn."

Didn't Trank's Fantastic Four teach you anything??

[SuccubusYuri]

Seems like the advent of digitization would make it a lot easy to hide stuff from this regime than in Bradbury's day. The entirety of Project Gutenberg can fit on a tiny USB flash drive, which is obviously much easier to conceal than an attic full of books.

I'd say no. It will probably be reframed, of course. But, already if you don't patch an app, the company can prevent you from opening that app entirely. It's not a big stretch to say the same wouldn't be done with books, always patching, always hidden, no one the wiser. Only a couple people who "mis"remember "Didn't this use to say that?" only to check their copy and not be able to find it.

Books can be reframed as a constant, a fixed point in knowledge and understanding.

[CharlesPhipps]

Wasn't the original book more about people simply turning their backs on books because they replaced them with visual media rather than about censorship?

A bit of the opposite actually as the man says nothing prevented television from showing intelligent thought provoking media the same way as existed in books but the goal of the regime was to eliminate the inteligent thought provoking media rather than books itself. Books were much much easier, for example, to spread ideas than the dumbed down stupid feel good television substitute that the regime had full control of.

The scary thing about F451 versus, say 1984, was the Inner party was aware it was a scam while the Firemen genuinely believed eradicating all knowledge but "feel good" bubblegum fiction was good and worthy.

[J!!]

Wasn't the original book more about people simply turning their backs on books because they replaced them with visual media rather than about censorship?

according to the author:

youtu.be/uG0xKNE5UQA


allegedly, Ray Bradbury once stormed out of a talk at UCLA because some students insisted it was really about censorship, and would't stop arguing with him about the meaning of his own book.



i might be misremembering as it's been quite a few years since i read F.451, but wasn't the big twist that it wasn't some despotic regime who made books illegal? that it wasn't some kind of scheme to control minds & keep people ignorant? as i recall, the big reveal was that the reason books were illegal & tv was stupid, was because that was what the voting public wanted. they voted to get rid of anything that anybody might find offensive, or upsetting, or controversial, and all that was left was puerile television entertainment. which is exactly what the voting people wanted.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I thought it was sort of a blend? Like, some despotic overlords wanted to get rid of books, and the voting public was sort of...either acquiescent or didn't object loudly enough?

Regardless, they better do a good job with the Hound. That was my favorite part of the book.