well Lois Lowry's 1993 novel the giver
has been very popular in the
english-speaking world because it's been
assigned to a lot of middle school and
high school classes and of course you
know Hollywood's on a kick with young
adult novels think of Hunger Games and
Harry Potter the Twilight movie so this
most recent one is the film version of
of The Giver interesting that it was
Jeff Bridges who I guess for 20 years
been trying to get this film made he's
the producer he's also a star of it
it also has Meryl Streep so some pretty
big players are in this movie and not
knowing a thing about the novel I went
to the movie with no expectations or
anything I must say I was really
surprised by its rather incisive
societal critique but also it's very
intriguing Christian themes so I wanted
to talk about that a little bit the
story is set in the near future in a
sort of utopian society a post
conflictual you imagine some great war
or something a post-conflict society and
the city is laid out perfectly all the
roads are symmetrically aligned all the
buildings are in kind of a harsh
modernist architecture the people all
dress in same clothes they ride bicycles
so it's not to pollute the environments
the elders of the community control of
birth and death they assign people their
vocations they're very interested in in
saying things just the right way if
someone fears in their speech in the
wrong direction a person who was a
precision of speech and you've got to
come back to saying things just the
right way to control emotions because
emotions lead to volatility which lead
to conflict everyone each day is given a
kind of sedative to calm them down
emotionally most remarkably their
memories have been erased I won't go
into all the metaphysics of that but
their memories of the previous society
have been erased so all they know is
this tightly controlled sort of utopian
world one of the most disturbing and
remarkable features of this society is
the way death is handled so euthanasia
is practice elderly people are done away
with and abortion is practice or really
infanticide babies are killed but it's
under the guise of going to elsewhere so
as though people are just dulled to any
sensitivity to death and what death
means so here's this tightly control you
might say totalitarian society and this
is a an ancient you know trope in our
tradition goes back as far at least as
Plato think of Plato's Republic is a
tightly controlled utopian society the
last century witnessed lots of examples
of this
you know from Hitler's Germany to Mao's
China to Stalin's Russia to Pol Pot's
Cambodia there are a lot of attempts to
produce the ideal society through a sort
of iron control but you know what this
movie made me think of above all even
though traces of all those examples can
be found think of the people wearing the
same clothes and riding bicycles made me
think of mile was China but I make
traces of all these fatality Aryan
systems can be found but what I thought
of most was a kind of totalitarianism
it's a softer one namely the liberalism
that obtains especially in Europe today
think of the enormous stress you know on
equality as a supreme value think of the
excessive use of drugs I mean to sedate
ourselves think of the preoccupation
with of controlling the environment
think of the obsession with politically
correct speech but think maybe most
disturbingly of the prevalence
increasingly so of both euthanasia and
abortion and both being covered over by
a sort of patina of of nice language as
though death is being denied in all
these ways this society and the giver
reminded me of what's increasingly
obtaining in the sort of liberal of
societies of Europe now here's the thing
will this kind of totalitarian control
produce a sort of societal equilibrium
yeah yeah
but at a terrible price and that's I
think what the movie really is about the
plot hinges on this young man named
Jonas who's been chosen to be the
recipient of the society's memories so
one member one of the elders is allowed
to remember the old world and then he
passes that on to one figure because
they figure well they might need this
knowledge to help them in in crisis or
something so they choose one person to
bear the memories so Jonas through a
kind of telepathy with the giver the
givers played by Jeff Bridges is he
takes in these wonderful colorful vivid
memories of the world before the the
utopia and he's of course overwhelmed by
them by their color by their vividness
by their the sheer life you know he also
as the giver fills out the picture he
also receives memories of conflict of
warfare and of all the terrible things
and at first it it almost crushes him
but then in time he realizes that that
world even with its tragedy is better
and richer than the the iron controlled
clean well-lighted space that he's
living in so I won't give you all the
details but Jonas eventually escapes
from the city he's being pursued by the
elders and their army but he gets out of
the city and he goes outside the realm
of control he comes to a snowy
environment they knew nothing about
snows he could snow was controlled it
would lead to too much conflict he
discovers snow and then he finds this
sled and when he was receiving memories
from the giver he had received this
image of himself sliding down a snowy
hill on a sled so he finds that sled he
slides down the snowy hill and he comes
to a house it's cold night but it's now
lit from within and he hears the strains
of a song now mind you they didn't know
anything about music because music was
part of this dangerous emotional
volatile thing so he didn't know about
music but now he hears music for the
first time and what's he hearing he's
hearing the strains of silent night
the
Christmas hymn and was at that point as
I'm watching the movie I thought now
that's what it's about it's about a
society that has forgotten Christianity
now you see especially why I focus on on
postmodern Europe a society which has
forgotten what the truth of the
Incarnation now here's the connection
what leads to the real trouble in
totalitarian societies the conviction
that we can deal with the original sin
on our own if we Institute enough
economic political cultural reforms if
we just control things well enough we
will deal with the problem of conflict
and pain and cruelty and violence but
see here's the thing that actually leads
to far more problems Blaise Pascal the
great Catholic apologist said Saluki
felons fail abet which means the one who
would make himself an angel makes
himself a beast so in the very attempt
to control the society so as to
eliminate the effects of original sin we
in fact make a dystopian society what
will save us what will save us I would
argue is the memory of Christianity
namely that God has come into our
humanity in its beauty and its tragedy
that God has worked a salvation of the
world in its tragedy and this allows us
once we let go of salvation is our
project it allows us to live in the
world robustly even with its tragedy
forgetfulness of the Incarnation leads I
know it might sound too glib to say it
this way but I think it's right
forgetfulness of the Incarnation leads
by a short route to totalitarianism when
we forgotten that original sin is not a
problem that we can solve it leads to
enormous dysfunction often under the
guise of a just society something tells
me that's the lesson
this movie is trying to communicate