Mass culture in a consumerist society: Huxley’s anti-utopia

Utopia is a name for an ideal community or society, taken from the title of a book written in 1516
by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, possessing a seemingly
perfect socio-politico-legal system.
Utopia has performed many functions in its long history, and systematic thinking about the future
of society is only one of them. The same is true of ‘the design of the perfect
society’(Kumar:2001,22). The different forms of utopia-from Socratic dialogues and Biblical
prophecies to ideal cities and ideal societies, from social and political speculation to satires and
science-fiction, from the realist novel to the popular culture of films and television-need to be
treated with respect for those differences, and the different aims and meanings that they carry.
As referring to the society an utopia supposes, this may be a totalitarian one, a society where the
state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private life. Totalitarian societies maintain
themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda
disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state,
personality cults, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and
criticism, the use of mass surveillance.
Totalitarian societies, along with liberal democracies, have been viewed as types of mass society.
The concept of mass society has formed one important perspective on the role of mass media and
mass culture in modern capitalist societies.
Mass culture is a set of cultural values and ideas that arise from the common exposure of a
population to the same cultural activities, communications media, music and art, etc. Mass
culture becomes possible only with modern communications and electronic media. Mass culture
is imposed on individuals, rather than arising from people's daily interactions, and therefore lacks
the distinctive content of cultures rooted in community and region. Mass culture tends to
reproduce the liberal value of individualism and to foster a view of the citizen as consumer.
Webster's dictionary defines consumerism as "the promotion of the consumer's interests" or
alternately "the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable". It is
thus the opposite of producerism. Consumerism is the equation of personal happiness with
consumption and the purchase of material possessions.
In the modern era popular culture has been identified with mass culture. The debate over mass
culture isn’t something totally new in the modern times.
There is a sociological theory that says that technology, the loss of the support of religion have
led to cultural chaos. However this theory is disproved because culture puts the same label on
everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in
every part. The building and exhibition centres in authoritarian countries are much the same as
anywhere else. The houses outside the concrete city centres look like slums, and the new
bungalows are very up to date. The inhabitants, as producers and consumers are drawn into the
centre in search of work and pleasure. Mass culture is identical because of monopolism. Those

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things that ceased to be called art became industries and the only purpose is to make money. In
this situation are movies, radio and other forms of art that changed their statute.
The major claim of mass society theory refers to the disruptive consequences of industrialisation
and urbanisation.
There is a theory on mass culture that argues that industrialisation and urbanisation serve to
create what is called ‘atomisation’. A mass society consists of people who can only relate to each
other like atoms in a physical or chemical compound. Mass society consists of atomised people,
people who lack any meaningful or morally coherent relationships with each other. The links
between people are said to be purely contractual, distant and sporadic rather than close,
communal and well integrated. In a mass society, there are fewer and fewer communities or
institutions in which the individual may find identity or values by which to live, and has less and
less idea of the appropriate ways to live.

This theory is available also in the case of Aldous Huxley’s anti-utopia,Brave New World (1932).
Written in 1931 and published the following year, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is an anti-
utopian novel. In it, the author questions the values of 1931 London, using satire and irony to
portray a futuristic world in which many of the contemporary trends in British and American
society have been taken to extremes. Though he was already a best-selling author, Huxley
achieved international acclaim with this now-classic novel. Because Brave New World is a novel
of ideas, the characters and plot are secondary, even simplistic. The novel is best appreciated as
an ironic commentary on contemporary values.

The story is set in a London six hundred years in the future. People all around the world are part
of a totalitarian state, free from war, hatred, poverty, disease, and pain. They enjoy leisure time,
material wealth, and physical pleasures. However, in order to maintain such a smoothly running
society, the ten people in charge of the world, the Controllers, eliminate most forms of freedom
and twist around many traditionally held human values. Standardization and progress are valued
above everything else. These Controllers create human beings in factories, using technology to
make ninety-six people from the same fertilized egg and to condition them for their future lives.
Children are raised together and subjected to mind control through sleep teaching to further
condition them. As adults, people are content to fulfill their destinies as part of five social classes,
from the intelligent Alphas, who run the factories, to the mentally challenged Epsilons, who do
the most menial jobs. All spend their free time indulging in harmless and mindless entertainment
and sports activities. When the Savage, a man from the uncontrolled area of the world (an Indian
reservation in New Mexico) comes to London, he questions the society and ultimately has to
choose between conformity and death.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a startling depiction of someone's vision of utopia. This
fictional novel is the same as Orwell's 1984 and W.M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle of Leibowitz,
which all deal with philosophical and ethical controversies brought about by advances in science
and technology in a future society. Brave New World portrayed a hedonistic paradise in which all
needs and desires were painlessly satisfied-but also rigidly shaped-by the ruling elite of scientific
controllers in the interests of social stability. The causalities, Huxley suggested, were freedom,
love and creativity, indeed all that made life truly worthwhile. Huxley meant to write a satirical

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and fictional novel, but it turned out to be a scientific prophecy. We can see in his book a
consumer society, dominated by mass culture.
The inhabitants of London in 632 A.F. prey to Our Ford, instead of the Christian Our Lord. This
means that Henry Ford is now a cult figure. Aldous Huxley knew perfectly well Ford’s life and
also his theories, so he picked out some dangers of Ford’s theses. Ford himself was aware of the
dangers of mass production and industrial progress in general, although he was strongly in favour
of the industrial era. One of Henry Ford famous sentences is: "...absence of fear of the future and
of veneration for the past...What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means of progress".
He defended progress, and found that the probable consequences were worth it. Ford’s
conception of history is a chain of technological progress. There are social problems but this are
only temporary. Ford distinguishes two types of working personalities: there are the manual
workers and the manager. We can also see this distinction, which is followed by caste and class
differences, in Brave New World. Standardization is the key of mass production. Huxley is
sarcastic and he exaggerates the principle of standardisation by grotesquely applying it to human
beings. The society in the Utopian World is so dehumanized that mass production is even applied
in creating babies, but this is a way of having lots of people working for such a consumistic
society and these people don’t even care because they hardly think. Thinking is quite like banned
in this society, and to be free you have to think first, as Hume said. One of Hume’s most famous
theories was the one on freedom; according to it, you are only free and act freely when you are
able to analyse the different options between which you can choose; the more you know about
these options, the better, because you will then be able to analyse which is the best of the
different options, and decide by yourself. But in Brave New World, there are no alternatives, no
options, you can’t decide by yourself because the state and the Controllers decide for you. These
citizens are not free. They all live in a bottle, limited, and even more so the lower castes, although
they don’t notice it. Is the perfect system for a society that wants stability. Manual workers don’t
get fed up with their work, they don’t protest, and work is efficiently done, because these people
are created only for this cause, for working, and making people from other castes’ lives easier.
The assembly line is the instrument of standardized manufacturing, therefore the most precise
engineering is needed; we can see all these technological machines in the first chapter, for
example. Working in an assembly line also makes work a routine, and this is what the Controllers
want, because routine gets the workers away from thinking.

Progress is very present in Brave New World; it is a society focused on progress, and created
according to it. The world has changed a lot since the Nine Years War; it is as if the world had
been born again but with all technological devices and facilities there so that people could use
them. They don’t want to look at the past; their new world is happy, without dangers or wars or
problems; and progress has been the method of achieving this situation. Without this system of
mass production in terms of creating embryos, stability wouldn’t have been achieved. The way of
creating human being assures the state a whole caste of people who are glad doing the worst job
of all. But Huxley wants to warn us: there is a big danger in progress; there are horrible
consequences when technologies are applied without rational methods. When dealing with
progress, you have to be rational, measuring every step and the possible results, and even though,
you sometimes fail to control every aspect. With this satire, Huxley tells us that, instead of living
in a perfect Utopia with all these technological facilities, as in Brave New World, the situation
might turn out to be as dystopia, as it really happens in the novel. Is all the progress worth having

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lost things like feelings, individualism, and so on? You have to decide between completely
dehumanized progress and real love, feelings, literature...

Another thing Huxley is very critical with is the political system. He lived through fascism and
communism, and also capitalism, and he disagreed with all three systems. The state or
government of Brave New World is a mixture, a synthesis of capitalism and communism. The
aim of capitalism is to encourage trade markets to generate more and more money which results
in the economic benefits of the state and of the country in larger terms. The similar aspect with
the ruling system in Brave New World is the importance that the state has in the functioning of
the country, and the tendency towards consumerism. In the New World, there are no wastes,
everything is used, and even the dead bodies are useful, whereas consumerism is what they try to
develop. This idea also has a Fordian basis. Ford created the T-model, which is also a symbol in
Brave New World, for example, people make the T sign, instead of the cross sign. By the time it
was created, people started to complain because cars were dangerous for nature, but all Ford said
was that, instead, the cars would allow people to get to know nature better; so nature was an
incentive to buy a car, according to Ford. In one passage in Brave New World, it is explained to
the students that people are not supposed to like nature for its own sake, but only insofar as it
helps intensify the consumption of transportation, so that people may be able to play certain
outdoor games.

The political system of Brave New World is also similar to communism, as it is a dictatorship. In
both systems, the rulers try to control everyone and everybody’s way of thinking, although they
don’t always achieve this aim (there are a lot of people who go away from countries of
communistic ideologies, because they don’t agree with this system, and, in Brave New World,
there are also some people who don’t want the state to control them, who really want to be free,
like Watson or Marx. George Orwell was a contemporary of Aldous Huxley, and they were often
compared. In Animal Farm, Orwell criticises the communistic method of ruling, which is similar
to Huxley’s criticism. Orwell’s 1984 also reminds us of Huxley’s anti-utopia, and the oppressive
methods that the rulers use.

There is a chapter in Brave New World that emphasizes the most important aspects of the
theories that were used in order to build this Utopian World; there is also a lot of philosophy in
this chapter. The conversation between Mustapha Mond and John the Savage starts in chapter
XVI. Bernard, Hemholtz and John are in the Controller’s study. The Resident World Controller
of Western Europe asks the Savage if he doesn’t like civilization; the answer of the Savage is
negative. So both of them start discussing about the methods that the state uses to achieve
happiness among the citizens. They have created a caste system that is useful for society and
keeps everyone happy. The twins from the lower castes are the basis on which everything else is
built, and, as someone has to do the nasty jobs, these twins do it; stability is achieved. John
proposes that they create an Alpha Double Plus society, but the Controller tells him, that these
Alphas wouldn’t be happy, because they would go mad doing Epsilon work. An Epsilon can do
great sacrifices because they are so conditioned that these aren’t real sacrifices for them, they just
do their work, and they obey. Mond narrates to him the Cyprus experiment, undertaken in 473
A.F. Cyprus was cleared of all its inhabitants and recolonized with Alphas that had agricultural
and industrial equipment necessary to survive. The result of this experiment was that the land
wasn’t properly worked, there happened to be strikes, orders were disobeyed, ambition grew. So,
in six years, the first-class civil war took place. The optimum population, as described by the

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World Controller, is the one that is like an iceberg; there are only very few at the top. The lower
castes are happy because they do unexhausting labour, they have soma and unrestricted
copulation; they are so conditioned that, having very few things they are happy and think that
they can’t be happier, that there isn’t a situation better than theirs. The hypnopaedia lessons teach
the children that they have to be happy with their own caste, the other castes have worse lives.
The state could reduce the lower caste workers their working hours, but this would only increase
the consumption of soma. So with this perfectly ideated caste system, stability has been achieved,
and they don’t want to change anything, because each change is a menace to stability.

With this book, Aldous Huxley tried to create a new world,different from that he lived in and so
he hoped to change something,but he himself states: ‘I wanted to change the world. But I have
found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself’.

As presented in Huxley’s anti-utopia, mass culture is therefore a culture which lacks intellectual
challenge and stimulation, providing instead the undemanding ease of fantasy and escapism. This
culture discourages the effort of thinking and creates its own emotional and sentimental
responses. It does not demand that its audience think for itself, workout its own responses, and
entertain responses which are intellectual and critical. In this sense, it begins to define social
reality for the mass public. It therefore tends to simplify the real world and gloss over its
problems. It equally encourages commercialism and celebrates consumerism. It tends to silence
other opposing voices because it is a stultifying and pacifying culture.

REFERENCES
Adorno, Theodor, 2001. “Free time”, The culture industry. Selected essays on mass culture,
London and New York
Adorno, Theodor; Horkheimer,Max,1993. “The culture industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception”, Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York: Continuum
Kumar, Krishan; Bann Stephen, 2001.Utopias and the Millennium, London: Reaktion Books
LTD

Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences URL: http://bitbucket.icaap.org/dict.pl? (visited on

2009/03/10)

http://mural.uv.es/~mifepra/mainthe.htm