I've also noticed that a. conformism and b. ignorance lead to c. age control, which is a sort of tangential topic to your topic of body control/change.
A great example of this is the movie Logan's Run. It's about a "utopian" society in which everyone over 30 or so was "disposed of". I watched this when I was about 9, so I might be remembering its themes wrong, but the impression I got was that they both wanted to keep people pretty (body control) and stupid (mind control).
I *think* the point was that the PTB in Logan's Run didn't want people to be old/wise/experienced enough to think for themselves. This idea of inexperience = ignorance = utopia is often, in my experiences of fictional future societies, grafted onto the much larger idea of *collective* experience.
For instance, the people in Logan's Run are all ignorant of the Ancients, or whoever, which often means us. "We" are generally smarter, more productive, more independent than these children of utopia; we are also greedier, more war-like, and more self-destructive.
The Giver by Lois Lowry is all about keeping the population ignorant of the past, of collective experience, of human development. It's reflected physically in the society by the fact that no one can see color; the change is not in the bodies but in man's perception of the bodies.
As a side note, a really really fascinating look at the importance of collective experience to the evolution of society is A Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It has nothing to do with your topic of physical bodies, though.
While I'm on the issue of reading material, etc, these things came to mind:
Star Trek: the only humans who are really physically different are the Borg, who are all about mind control, conformity, yada yada. Firefly: no humans look noticably different in that future. Possibly, the Reavers look different. As a result of an attempt at enforced conformity, mind control. Stepford Wives: creepy shit, yo. This ep of the Twilight Zone my s-i-l told me about: I wish I could see this ep, because it sounds right up my alley, and it's what you were talking about. Anyway, apparently, in this ep it's a future society, and there's this woman they keep locked away, because she looks like a freak. She's really awful to look at, they say, yada yada yada. But at the end you see her, and turns out she's beautiful. The point, apparently, is that everyone in the future society is ugly, and beauty is built on social conceptions, not objective reality. The Tripods, YA sci fi series by John Christopher: This doesn't have anything to do with bodies, but rather, again, with age. Children roam free, but adults are "capped" (mind controlled) by aliens. Because naturally, adults, with their experience etc etc, are more dangerous.
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Date: 2007-03-06 07:36 pm (UTC)From:A great example of this is the movie Logan's Run. It's about a "utopian" society in which everyone over 30 or so was "disposed of". I watched this when I was about 9, so I might be remembering its themes wrong, but the impression I got was that they both wanted to keep people pretty (body control) and stupid (mind control).
I *think* the point was that the PTB in Logan's Run didn't want people to be old/wise/experienced enough to think for themselves. This idea of inexperience = ignorance = utopia is often, in my experiences of fictional future societies, grafted onto the much larger idea of *collective* experience.
For instance, the people in Logan's Run are all ignorant of the Ancients, or whoever, which often means us. "We" are generally smarter, more productive, more independent than these children of utopia; we are also greedier, more war-like, and more self-destructive.
The Giver by Lois Lowry is all about keeping the population ignorant of the past, of collective experience, of human development. It's reflected physically in the society by the fact that no one can see color; the change is not in the bodies but in man's perception of the bodies.
As a side note, a really really fascinating look at the importance of collective experience to the evolution of society is A Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It has nothing to do with your topic of physical bodies, though.
While I'm on the issue of reading material, etc, these things came to mind:
Star Trek: the only humans who are really physically different are the Borg, who are all about mind control, conformity, yada yada.
Firefly: no humans look noticably different in that future. Possibly, the Reavers look different. As a result of an attempt at enforced conformity, mind control.
Stepford Wives: creepy shit, yo.
This ep of the Twilight Zone my s-i-l told me about: I wish I could see this ep, because it sounds right up my alley, and it's what you were talking about. Anyway, apparently, in this ep it's a future society, and there's this woman they keep locked away, because she looks like a freak. She's really awful to look at, they say, yada yada yada. But at the end you see her, and turns out she's beautiful. The point, apparently, is that everyone in the future society is ugly, and beauty is built on social conceptions, not objective reality.
The Tripods, YA sci fi series by John Christopher: This doesn't have anything to do with bodies, but rather, again, with age. Children roam free, but adults are "capped" (mind controlled) by aliens. Because naturally, adults, with their experience etc etc, are more dangerous.