Comments | k4hl4n: Go watch Harrison Bergeron.

k4hl4n

Go watch Harrison Bergeron.

Jun 29, 2009 23:30

Watching "Harrison Bergeron" again. It's kind of a low-level sad movie most of the way through, but I like it anyway. I like it a good deal. "They're happy, Harrison, they're happy." "Yeah, well, I'm really f***ing unhappy. And you know what? I like it. It, it's real. I feel alive." Saddest two lines of the whole movie: "What just happened?" "I'm ( Read more... )

Comments 2

f0rd_prefect June 30 2009, 12:06:10 UTC

I have a thing for these kinds of stories. Like 1984, the Running Man (NOT ARNOLD SCHWASENAGERS VERSION), and a few others I can't name right now...
The sequences with his father and the 'head house' make a lot more sense than the school though.
It doesn't really seem to make sense to me to teach kids the right answers than just have them get them wrong on the test if you want them to be ACTUALLY 'average'. But I can't think of another way, usually they just don't educate them beyond what the minimum required.

k4hl4n June 30 2009, 17:36:18 UTC

I think the idea is not that they get the answers wrong, but that they only have the *capacity* to get a certain number of them right. That, presented with the same information, each student performs to a pre-set average because that's all they *can* do, one way or the other. I always kind of got the impression that, once the breeding program had turned out a majority of naturally average intelligences, then the bands would become like the ankle weights the dancer wears -- not everyone would wear them, because not everyone would need them.