HBO: Fahrenheit 451

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Bradbury was a sentimentalist. All the small-town, coming-of-age, and boyhood nostalgia that can be found in Stephen King was done by Ray Bradbury first. And obviously Bradbury loved books, libraries, and the like. So while the big picture themes are there, I'd say he was just as concerned with books as a source of wonder and mystery. Fahrenheit 451 is about his love of books and a warning about the dangers of people no longer valuing books properly.

Censorship is definitely a theme, but I could see why Bradbury would become irritated at overwhelming focus on that particular element. It's one of the dangers that books face, and it's necessary for the story to exist as science fiction, but the book isn't about the state or authority like 1984. Censorship and government overreach are corollaries to everyday people (who are definitely at least complicit; ignorant if not actively hostile toward books) no longer loving books.

[CharlesPhipps]

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.

Bradbury's dystopia is a tyranny of the majority versus a Illuminati-esque conspiracy. The public got the people in charge to remove everything offensive and that is something which has happened at many times in US history.

Look at the times Huckleberry Finn was banned.

And that was often because it made people uncomfortable about the South/slavery than the language.

[GandALF]

The book is heavily influenced by Brave New World and draws on the theme of the ubiquity of technology leading people to choose comfort over freedom.

The 20th century totalitarians used newer and more malleable mass media technology like radio to control information. At the time television was newer and even more malleable so it had huge potential to be corrupted.

Books are a pre-20th century technology and not very malleable at all. The state can control television, it can control radio stations, it can control newspapers, it can control ISPs, but it can't control old books it can only destroy them.

So it is about censorship but it's more about how books are superior to other media because they can't be sanitized to make people comfortable.

[Admiral X]

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.

I thought it was something like that, because I remember the bit about how people kept insisting to the author what his book was really about, which is as hilarious as it is sad.