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Harrison Bergeron is all about a futuristic society in 2053 where, in the U.S. at least, a form of mind control has been exercised to render all people "equal" by removing their capacity to be individuals.Harrison, played by Sean Astin, is simply too smart to be brainwashed, though, and is recruited into the elite society of brainiacs that purposely keep the populace dumbed down.
He ends up revolting against the fact that his family and the entire U.S. are little more than mindless puppets, and tries to change that...but only succeeds when he blows his own head off on national T.V.
(There's a great love story in this too; I'd recommend you watch it if you can, even though I've pretty much now told you the entire plot! Duh...)
A fascinating flick, and it reminds me of a similarly brilliant movie, Pleasantville, where everyone was mindlessly happy and the same, if completely ignorant of all that was going on around them.
It brought me to thinking about today's mass media and CNN and Enter"taint"ment Tonight and the filtered, completely subjective main messages sent to all in North America and around the world...
...And how the masses seem to be completely brainwashed by the crap we are fed every day, whether it be from CNN's "The Week in War" to Entertaintment Tonight's nightly "Mel" file.
Kurt Vonnegut, an American, was amazingly right on with his book on which the movie is based. The only part of this that's 2053 are the bands placed on people's heads to supress their creativeness and intellect.
I think the brainwashing is happening right now, without the bands...they don't need 'em. Many of us are falling for this crap on our own, blinded by the reality of what's really happening.
That's not a comment on our intelligence, it's a statement about how we're being distracted from it all by everything else we're confronted with in a world that's moving far too fast in front of our very eyes.
Which is just the way the power elite want it...
