Besides being a very politically motivated book are there any other underlying meanings?

When I read the book I made some connections to what is going on today. What are your thoughts?

First of all, sorry for my English (i live in Russia).
Well, this books tells us not only about political things, but also about some cultural processes: how mass-culture fights with individual requests. I think Bradbury has predicted the meaning and the quality of "mainstream" - it's very clear.
Also some aspects of the relations with social and individual inside one man - Montag has made a choise to fight with the politics and power instead living in comfort, so he became social-active... it's hard to explain in foreign language :-)

I think it goes to two basic things -- although, like all good literature, it is capable of being interpreted on a lot of levels.

First, I think it's about censorship. But, in F451, censorship is not just about government censorship. As the discussions with Beatty and Faber attest, a lot of the censorship was not due to government actions, it was a lazy mass-market that refused to provide support for the activity of real thought. Thinking was work, and it was avoided by the majority of people who would rather numb out their lives in front of a television (or whatever other subsitute one chooses). We censor ourselves by sloth. We also censor each other by what has been called "The tyranny of the majority". We pressure each other to conform. Conformity is easier than non-conformity (great essay on this is Emerson's "Self-Reliance") and so independent thinking gets wiped out without any attempt by government to halt free-thinking. This occurs in politics, mass-consumption, religion and academia.

The second area the book deals with is the need for individuals to be "real". We have to find and develop who we are. If all we do is vegetate in passive media consumption, we are not real humans. We have given up our unique contribution to humanity and our relationships become, by definition, shallow. Without depth, there is no real human joy. Thoreau argued that the development of mass communications technologies wasn't that important if all we were going do with the technology is to gossip.

Quote: "Thoreau argued that the development of mass communications technologies wasn't that important if all we were going do with the technology is to gossip."

Well, just suck the fun right out of it!

Fahrenheit 451 and Thoreau. Interesting match....

Dandelion::::

Per Thoreau's mass communication ideas, well, no wonder !! Take for instance, something from his classic, "Walden" :::

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as... solitude."

or:

"My greatest skill has been to want but little."

Having mentioned in previous postings somewheres.... about Ray being a Unitarian, interesting to note that both Thoreau and R.W. Emerson found Unitarianism wanting. They found...

..." unitarianism wanting both spiritually and emotionally, and, begun in the 1820's, expresed the need for and conviction of... a more personal and intuitive experience of the divine..."

Back to Fahrenheit 451 stuff ::::

In Chicago...we have a cable service channel, slipped in amoungst other channels, that is part of the package plan.... that definitely makes one sit up and wonder about censorship, and shades of Fahrenheit 451. ( ( By the way, what is the temperature in which televisions burn? ... or Dish Antenna's, or how about TV Cables?...or how about Monitors, and Computers? Do Dells, IBM's MACs, and Gateways all burn at about the same temperature? How about the Internet System itself? What temperature would shut down all the operations? Gee, a whole lot of new Fahrenheit books can be written...... ) )

Anyway, this particular channel, channel 19... has programming that any person can put something on the television. You sign up, wait whatever the wait is nowadays 'till your name comes up , and see your little 1/2 hour or so project on television. So, what do we have lately on channerl 19? ? Last week, somebody put the 'F'.. word on the screen, and that's all there was... Gee, 1/2 hr. of that! Week before...a single sentence was put on there that said screw America, in more direct language..... And there has been other stuff. So, is this the general aim of making sure there is no censorship? Gee, I was brought up on TV when the drama 'Marty'...set a new 'standard' for television, and changed the course of history of TV. Anybody remember that?

Anyway, what other things out there are in need of temperature designation for burning?

How about all the gas-guzzling suv's??? I'd light the match!!!!!

Well, maybe the fate of SUVs is to simply keep rolling over until people stop buying them . . .

I think your example of the kind of crap that is out there in the media speaks in support of Beatty's arguments (in F451) that often censorhip is kind of self-generative. Who needs a government to censor ideas when the only ideas out there are vacuous?

In our paper today (Dallas Morning News, Feb 15, 2003) there is a terrible story about a guy who OD's in a video chat room. People were egging him on to take higher and higher dosages of illegal and prescription drugs. He consumed until he stopped providing responses. Gradually it began to dawn on some participants that he had OD'd. While some queries involved trying to figure out how to get help to him (the chat room info does not provide locations and identifiers), many were just idiotic, stupid jerks who were getting a voyeuristic thrill by watching a guy OD in front of them. The anonymity of the experience severed almost all human feeling. There are definitely plusses to these message boards, chat rooms, video chat rooms and web sites; but there is also horrific level of alientation, depression, anxiety, hatred, pornography, etc., that cannot be beneficial to man. (The article is called, "Voyeurs to Tragedy" and includes the transcripts from the people involved in that video chat session.)

But how do you legislate decency without restricting "rights"? Because we are losing our cultural sense of restraint, we are becoming increasingly dependent on legalism to try to mandage behaviour that used to be simply a part of our culture.



[This message has been edited by Mr. Dark (edited 02-16-2003).]

>>>> But how do you legislate decency without restricting "rights"?

A very good question indeed. Of course, in the OD example, I believe those involved could clearly be prosecuted for murder/attempted murder...if anyone knew who they were.

It's scary to think that given free access to mass communication media, all some people can think to do is display the F word for 1/2 hour.

The real question for me is not why do those with nothing to say speak up, but why to those of us with something real to say remain silent?

And here's what scares me the most...

This is from the Parents Television Council web site (http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/aboutus/main.asp)

"The gratuitous sex, foul language, and violence on TV (along with stories and dialogue that create disdain for authority figures, patriotism, and religion) are having a negative effect on children."

Did you see what they did there? We went from criticism of foul language (like displaying the F word for 1/2 hour) and jumped to general DIALOGUE that expresses IDEAS that they consider dangerous!

And THAT is the slippery slope you find yourself on when you try to regulate "decency".

What would TV be like if only it would adhere to the PTCs values? Touched By An Angel and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Frankly, I'd rather stare at the F word for 1/2 hour.


[This message has been edited by WritingReptile (edited 02-16-2003).]

Anyone fondly recall the memorable episode of "WKRP in Cincinnati" where the station owner, Mr. Carlson, was faced with this very problem? A special interest group kept asking him to refuse to air certain songs on the grounds of their lyrics being offensive. Finally someone brought him the lyrics to John Lennon's "Imagine" (what makes it even more interesting is that this show was made before Lennon's death) and were livid at the song's questioning of patriotic and religious values. Mr. Carlson said, "There is not one offensive word anywhere in this song. You are censoring the man's ideas, and I can't support that." The show really portrayed Mr. Carlson's struggle with conscience, not just bowing to pressure, and his use of his own mind and intellectual faculties to reach a decision. It is a real treasure and I sincerely hope John Lennon got to see it.

"Non-Censorship and Consequences..."

Now there's a juicy bit of a topic starter.......

Oh, please--why provoke frankanger to further disagreeable displays?

Dandelion:::::::Hey ! That's pretty funny.............

Mr. Dark... wasn't it you that said you were going to add something to this string a while ago? Or was it uncle?

By the way, uncle... did you get out to LA last week like you mentioned that you might well do?

Snowman,
I don't think the book was so much political as it was social commentary. The whole point was that you don't have to burn books, just get people to stop reading them. Our society is burning the books, not the government.

"...they don't gotta burn the books, they just remove 'em..." -Rage Against the Machine

Groon,

Exactly! There's a bit of difference between the popular notion of F-451 and what it's really about. Bradbury was talking about a society that willingly allows books to be burned, not a government that forces the policy on an unwitting populace.

Let the opinions fly!

Best,

Pete