Emotions: Floating or Sinking the Ship of Rule-Based Authoritarianism?
The author, as the adventure traveler that he is, often gets the question of where his "most interesting" destination have been. Generally, without a doubt, the answer has been North Korea, a foreboding land for most who has the yearning to go but no courage to do so. The author's own trips to North Korea occurred both from the Chinese and the South Korean side, years before the existence of this blog, and thankfully, before the more stringent regulations governing travels to the Hermit Kingdom today. It was a different time when curiosities of foreigners was keeping a modest state-led tourism sector growing at steady pace.
Of course, while the destination in itself is interesting enough for those who do not travel as much, North Korea as a trip destination also presented itself to be interesting in a more substantial way. That is, the North Korean state continues with a vision for society building completely divergent from the global norms of materialist progress and capitalistic competition, most notably displayed in its southern neighbor. It, despite continued economic difficulties, continue to espouse the ideal that differences among individuals ought to be systematically limited, a necessary precursor to the very maintenance of domestic peace and order.
This concept of social engineering to ensure peace has been a constant feature in Hollywood fictions of the recent years. Creating the hypothetical in which the existence of certain social superstructure that imposes itself over what seems, at least on the surface, familiar everyday relations of friendships, families, and workplace hierarchy, such films have allowed the casual audience to think about the fragility and unpredictability of human nature in reaction to differing circumstances. Some films have taken the resulting social instability to a logical extreme, pessimistically offering violence as the plausible outcome.
Yesterday, the author came upon the other logical extreme in this particular category of Hollywood in the form of the Giver. The film is set in a futuristic world where a surviving, isolated community functions as an authoritarian society where all residents are assigned lifetime jobs by the state and distributed the same type of housing, clothing, food, and vehicles by the same authorities. The authorities ensure standardized enforcement of rules and codes of behavior, supported by complete eradication of collective memories as well as constant and mandatory application of medications that take away emotional extremes in all citizens.
The film concludes with a certain rebel breaking the system through recovery of the memories, through the emphasis of those joyous traditions that come with normal human emotions. As the young rebels rediscovered the happiness associated with music, dance, and above all, love, the film also portrayed that interpersonal differences led to violent conflicts that lead to destruction of previous civilizations and motivated creation of the current rule-based society. The viewers, however, are firmly directed to think that positive impacts of such emotions can overcome any possible negatives associated with potential violence.
At this point, certainly the astute will detect the obvious political undertones of the film. The "sameness" achieved in the community of the Giver strongly correlate with the ultimate goals of the North Korean ideology on paper, much in the same political way the country's gruesome reality of inequality is illustrated by the society of the Hunger Games trilogy. But the film's emphasis on the power of emotions, rather than that of a systemic social class system takes the underlying meaning of the film to a whole new level beyond other films of the same type. This emotional aspect is where the North Korean analogy feels under-explored.
When the author was conversing with his tour guides on his trips through North Korean towns, he was constantly told of the sheer happiness the citizens of the country felt living under the existing system. This concept, along with the propagandized songs and dances that become the happiness' physical manifestations, are visually absent from the Giver's universe. Instead, the audience can deduce that the lack of emotions became the cornerstone of the system's stability and survival. It could lead one to extrapolate that lack of complete control over citizens' emotions may be the Achilles' heel of the North Korean social engineering.
People are born with certain innate understanding of emotions, possibly programmed into their genes to allow for smoother adaptation to collective nature of social organization that was and still in many ways is indispensable for human survival. Such is the emotional attachment to others that drive a person to oppose authorities and their rules despite near certainty of extreme punishment. Well-used by the likes of the North Korean state, emotions can lead to blind professions of allegiance to irrational structures, but the fervency of such blindness can also be turned on the state that seeks to breed and control it. This is a point that is often visual unseen until too late, whether it be on the streets of North Korea or in the universe of the Giver.
Of course, while the destination in itself is interesting enough for those who do not travel as much, North Korea as a trip destination also presented itself to be interesting in a more substantial way. That is, the North Korean state continues with a vision for society building completely divergent from the global norms of materialist progress and capitalistic competition, most notably displayed in its southern neighbor. It, despite continued economic difficulties, continue to espouse the ideal that differences among individuals ought to be systematically limited, a necessary precursor to the very maintenance of domestic peace and order.
This concept of social engineering to ensure peace has been a constant feature in Hollywood fictions of the recent years. Creating the hypothetical in which the existence of certain social superstructure that imposes itself over what seems, at least on the surface, familiar everyday relations of friendships, families, and workplace hierarchy, such films have allowed the casual audience to think about the fragility and unpredictability of human nature in reaction to differing circumstances. Some films have taken the resulting social instability to a logical extreme, pessimistically offering violence as the plausible outcome.
Yesterday, the author came upon the other logical extreme in this particular category of Hollywood in the form of the Giver. The film is set in a futuristic world where a surviving, isolated community functions as an authoritarian society where all residents are assigned lifetime jobs by the state and distributed the same type of housing, clothing, food, and vehicles by the same authorities. The authorities ensure standardized enforcement of rules and codes of behavior, supported by complete eradication of collective memories as well as constant and mandatory application of medications that take away emotional extremes in all citizens.
The film concludes with a certain rebel breaking the system through recovery of the memories, through the emphasis of those joyous traditions that come with normal human emotions. As the young rebels rediscovered the happiness associated with music, dance, and above all, love, the film also portrayed that interpersonal differences led to violent conflicts that lead to destruction of previous civilizations and motivated creation of the current rule-based society. The viewers, however, are firmly directed to think that positive impacts of such emotions can overcome any possible negatives associated with potential violence.
At this point, certainly the astute will detect the obvious political undertones of the film. The "sameness" achieved in the community of the Giver strongly correlate with the ultimate goals of the North Korean ideology on paper, much in the same political way the country's gruesome reality of inequality is illustrated by the society of the Hunger Games trilogy. But the film's emphasis on the power of emotions, rather than that of a systemic social class system takes the underlying meaning of the film to a whole new level beyond other films of the same type. This emotional aspect is where the North Korean analogy feels under-explored.
When the author was conversing with his tour guides on his trips through North Korean towns, he was constantly told of the sheer happiness the citizens of the country felt living under the existing system. This concept, along with the propagandized songs and dances that become the happiness' physical manifestations, are visually absent from the Giver's universe. Instead, the audience can deduce that the lack of emotions became the cornerstone of the system's stability and survival. It could lead one to extrapolate that lack of complete control over citizens' emotions may be the Achilles' heel of the North Korean social engineering.
People are born with certain innate understanding of emotions, possibly programmed into their genes to allow for smoother adaptation to collective nature of social organization that was and still in many ways is indispensable for human survival. Such is the emotional attachment to others that drive a person to oppose authorities and their rules despite near certainty of extreme punishment. Well-used by the likes of the North Korean state, emotions can lead to blind professions of allegiance to irrational structures, but the fervency of such blindness can also be turned on the state that seeks to breed and control it. This is a point that is often visual unseen until too late, whether it be on the streets of North Korea or in the universe of the Giver.
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