New London is home to the stratified society of Alphas, Betas, Gammas and Epsilons, the genetically engineered and incubated equivalents of Mrs Alexander’s rich men in their castles and poor men at their gates, who neck soma and waft round the shining city in varying degrees of affectless bliss. This future-proofed assemblage follows Huxley’s book in bare outline. Which, given how ready our current reality is to outpace anything even the most masterful of storytellers, satirists or spinners of dystopian tales can dredge up from the darkest corners of their psyches is probably quite a sensible move. Not since Game of Thrones have I seen so many nude scenes so happily, lavishly and gratuitously staged for our viewing pleasure (or at least some of ours – I haven’t seen a penis wagging about yet, but maybe they’re just shy) while something of practically no import goes on in between or in the foreground.įor this Brave New World has nothing to say. I am pleased to report Sky’s new nine-part series has plumped firmly for the latter. Or you can take the other way, which is to say: “Hang on – if these dudes are all doped-up pleasure seekers who have disapplied standard moral rules and are encouraged by the state to pursue free love in the service of a harmonious collectivity instead of maintaining sexual probity that, it’s argued, marks and fuels the individualism, selfishness and jealousy that leads to aggression, war and strife … we could – fill the whole screen with tits?”
You can take the “Oh, my goodness – what a richly fertile field of possibilities we have before us, to tease out inferences and draw parallels new and old between the vision of what was to become of humanity and where we find ourselves! To mark what was prescient in the imagination of the 30s and what it could not, and never did envision! To site ourselves in Huxley’s world and use its masterful commentary on his own era to propel and inform one on our own! What an opportunity to probe enduring ethical quandaries and stress test psychological theories! To contribute in some small way to the furthering of an answer to the question that has vexed mankind since time immemorial – what is happiness?!” approach.
T here are two main ways you can approach the adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic of dystopian literature, Brave New World.
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