Fahrenheit 451: The New Film on the Dangers of Censorship – Film and Television – Culture

"Where books are burned, people are only burning," writes the German Heinrich Heine in his tragedy "Almansor" (1821). The dystopian & # 39; Fahrenheit 451 & # 39; (1953) shares this premise. Ray Bradbury's magnum opus, the title of which refers to the temperature at which the paper ignites and burns, represents a future society in which the texts are reduced to ashes by flamethrowers. Helmet Squadrons and Black Uniforms

In the midst of this infernal landscape, the novel pursues the consciousness of the agent Guy Montag, who at first finds a particular pleasure in the task. "With the brbad mouth in his fists, with this gigantic python spitting out his poisoned essence on the world, the blood throbbed in his head and his hands were those of a fantastic director orchestrating all the symphonies of fire and flames to destroy the shreds and ruins stained with history, "he says.In his eventual understanding of the transforming power of a book – that loaded weapon – and his joining the ranks of the rebels, Montag will discover that reading is "the only way for an average person to see 99% of the world." 19659003] "Fahrenheit 451" had multiple adaptations in different formats, from François' film Truffaut at the production of a BBC radio and at an interactive game designed with the author.The new version of HBO, signed by Iranian-born filmmaker Ramin Bahrani and starring Michael Shannon , was premiered at last Cannes Film Festival and reached television in May. Shannon confirmed that it is an "aggressive and obscure" film, and Bahrani warned in a recent interview that this differs in some aspects from the original source although it is very close of its original essence.

In the new film is the precision with which Bradbury prophesies the threats of censorship and totalitarianism, the repressive mechanisms used by the spheres of power to ensure their prevalence, in addition to the conformism with which the mbades agree. outrage of the powerful The Symptoms of the Erosion of Culture

The Bonfire of Vanities

Appearing in the most paranoid years of McCarthyism, when the witch hunt in Hollywood sought stop the spread of communism in US territory, "Fahrenheit 451" had a long gestation. Its origins can be traced through stories in which appears the figure of the pyromaniac repressor. & # 39; Bright Phoenix & # 39; and & # 39; The Firemen & # 39; to cite two examples, belong to the same literary universe.

Voracious reader since childhood, Bradbury quickly understood the vulnerability of books and what represents the irreparable loss of knowledge. For the author, the fire of the Library of Alexandria, with which three quarters of the cultural testimonies of ancient Greece would disappear; fire of manuscripts and intellectuals buried alive in 213 a. By order of the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang (director of the China Wall and the Great Tomb of the Terracotta Warriors), or the auto de fe with which the Spanish priests would condemn the Mayan and Aztec codices, were true stories of horror and cruelty.

The destruction by fire in the name of moral hygiene is still one of the great tragedies that cross the history of mankind. It is this purgative mood that unleashes the bonfires of vanities prompted by the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola on the main square of the Florentine Renaissance. The burning of thousands of objects considered as invitations to sin would become a carnival ritual.

Mirrors, cosmetics, sculptures and priceless furnishings were thrown on the great pyre, as well as unique manuscripts on magic and alchemy. and Ovid, in addition to Boccaccio's "Decameron" and "Sidereus Nuncius", in which Galileo postulates heliocentrism. It is said that Sandro Botticelli, a fervent supporter of the priest, burned his own works and abandoned painting which led to absolute misery. In a protected start of Lorenzo de Medici, the deranged Savonarola would end his days condemned by the papal authorities to cross and bonfire after trying to appropriate the city and be declared an enemy of the Italian Renaissance.

The lessons of history nurtured Bradbury in the writing of "Fahrenheit 451". The novelist was 13 when he learned of the burning of books favored by the Nazi regime : a symbolic ceremony orchestrated by the minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, with the complicity of the Union des étudiants from Germany, to release the Germanic spirit of its impurities. Some 25,000 volumes of banned titles burned in May 1933, crowds dancing and singing around the flames. The fire consumed the decaying works in consideration of the Third Reich, enemies of the 'volk & # 39; and the Aryan race. "The phoenix of a new spirit will rise triumphantly" Goebbels said. "No to decadence and moral corruption! Yes to decency in the family and the state!"

The Nazi book purge would be the most obvious indication of the darkness that would engulf this continent in the years to come. Since then, the opposition and the Jewish intelligentsia have gone into hiding, eventually living in concentration camps or being executed. Others would be driven to despair and suicide. That happened with Walter Benjamin, who preferred the ingestion of a lethal dose of morphine before falling into the hands of the Gestapo. Or Stefan Zweig and his wife Lotte, whose dismay for the future of Europe has turned into death by their own hands. "I think it's better to finish at a good time and live a life where intellectual work meant the purest joy and personal freedom, the most valuable badet on Earth," Zweig writes. in the note of farewell. ] Tierra del fuego

This phenomenon would extend to South America. On September 23, 1973, less than two weeks after the coup of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the search of the towers of San Borja in Santiago was ordered. An episode described as a cultural blackout, that the painter Voluspa Jarpa defined in an interview with "El Mostrador". as an attempt "to publicly humiliate the vanquished by denying them the right to read and reflect (…) transforming cultural and critical thought into an element that becomes forbidden and risky .

Terror covers the city when the military search houses for the requisition of forbidden books. They ravaged entire libraries in search of Communist literature, and it is even said that they pursued books on Cubism for an alleged link to Fidel Castro's regime. Buried texts would be saved, with pages torn off, or whose titles were hidden in black tempera. "Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent and subtle minds.Censors can be circumvented, and this has happened," confirms J. M. Coetzee in Against Censorship. "Essays on the pbadion of silence".

In "Burning of books". Peru 67, Juan Mejía Baca documents the modern inquisition perpetrated during the first government of Belaunde, whose sons were reportedly displaced by the magistrate and president of the Constitutional Court, Javier Alva Orlandini. The Great Public Fire with Forbidden Books was one of the most vulgar chapters of censorship in Peru.

There is also the urban legend about the fire of "The city and the dogs" in the school yard. Leoncio Prado. The work was already censored from Franco's Spain, where officials from the Bibliographical Guidance Section marked their judgments in red on the pages of the galleys. According to the reviewers, the novel is rejoicing with a "stinking juvenile stink" . For "The City and the Dogs", censorship would be the best catapult of its success, as would happen with DH Lawrence's lawsuit for his "Lady Chatterley lover" "badgraphic", or with " Henry Miller's Tropics ", They found an anxious and anxious public on the black market

. future

Bradbury cared more about the consequences of censorship than of the act itself . It was the direct path to an illiterate and pbadive society, absorbed by the media. "The TV, this jellyfish that turns millions of people into stone every night to watch, this mermaid who calls and who sings, who promises a lot and actually gives very little," wrote the one who considered himself a forecaster of the future Plausible

The "Fahrenheit 451" itself was the subject of censorship when it was found to be excessively obscene. For several years, it will be an edition cut in schools, at the request of teachers, parents and guardians of good manners. Few things would annoy Bradbury as much as this mutilation. Last gesture of rebellion, he asks before his death in 2012 that his gravestone be recognized by the following inscription: "Author of Fahrenheit 451"

Although the threat of fire is omnipresent and timeless, a Angry mob set fire to the Cairo Science Library during the Arab Spring, the mechanisms of censorship have been refined over time. The blocking of YouTube or Twitter by the Chinese government confirms the fears of an Orwellian reality in which communication is suppressed to prevent even thought crimes while campaigns for the ban on "Lolita" and Balthus' painting visualize the thin line between the polemic and a fascist silence.

Ramin Bahrani proposed capturing in his most alarming film "Fahrenheit 451" that Bradbury's future has arrived, and that the world has sought it .

GABRIEL MESETH
TRADE (Peru) – GDA