Typical Divergent

[Millman]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1840309/

I'm not thinking up some clever title for my own topic. I saw the movie recently and paid full price. I didn't mind though the plot follows the mundane good guys vs bad guys. Despite that the story is solid and is good message for not giving up.

My qualm is what happened if you didn't make the cut. Considering my wide range of interests I'd have a hard time choosing a path as well.

 

[sophie]

That movie was awful. Mostly because it was so boring that you couldn't even really make fun of it. It was just...a movie, a run-of-the-mill poorly-executed movie, clearly targeted at one specific demographic with a cookie-cutter script and cookie-cutter actors. The problem, of course, is that it made a ton of money, which means we're going to see loads more of these kinds of movies. Ugh.

 

[BvBPL]

I haven't seen the movie, but I did listen to a review of it on NPR and listened to an Overthinkingit podcast on the movie, research that I feels qualifies me to make statements about the movie.

Apparently the setting of the film involves a post-apocalypse Chicago where the surviving community separates itself into various groups that advocate a particular virtue. So you have a group that works towards truth, one that works towards intelligence, one that works towards bravery, etc. During adolescence, children are given tests that determine which virtuous group the individual is expected to be in for his or her adult life. The main character comes up as not fitting into any particular group.

What struck me is that there's a lot of emphasis on the protagonist's want to choose her own path rather than be pigeonholed into a set road. Now being able to set your own path is a fine message to send young adults, the target audience. However, I don't think that continues to be an acceptable message if the greater community requires that you conform.

Apparently, the system of virtue segregation came about as a means to prevent the disaster that ruined everywhere in the world but the Windy City. Assuming that is the case, I think it is worth asking whether or not a segregation is still necessary for the survival of the community. Do the people in Divergence need to stay segregated or has the need for segregation passed?

In any case, I'm not sure if the young adult main character is in a good position to make that determination. Adolescents naturally tend towards forging their own identities, rather than have them imposed by outside actors (that those identities are often informed by peer groups is beside the point). An adolescent's natural predisposition is to reject identity imposed by authority figures. The adolescent does not view any need to conform with an unbiased mindset.

The movie implicitly suggests that those who march to the beat of a different drummer are heroic in their way. Is this the case in the setting as presented by the movie? If the world in the movie needs segregation for the continuation of the community then nonconformity to the segregation rules is villainous and evil, not heroic.

There's an implicit message here for individuality and against communitarianism. Certainly individuality among adolescents is something that I think we should generally promote. However, that may not be the case where the welfare of the greater community is threatened by individual non-conformity.

For example, if you live in a family of farmers and your uncle needs you to work another season so that he can afford to hire hands then you have a responsibility to the community to put off your application to the academy.

 

[Traitorfish]

What struck me is that there's a lot of emphasis on the protagonist's want to choose her own path rather than be pigeonholed into a set road. Now being able to set your own path is a fine message to send young adults, the target audience. However, I don't think that continues to be an acceptable message if the greater community requires that you conform.

"Soviet dissidents had it coming"?

I mean, I get that Hollywood tends to espouse a reflexive, vulgar individualism that doesn't really understand things like "context" or "other people", but this is kind of a weird angle to make the criticism from.

 

[Farm Boy]

I read that more as unfettered individualism in the face of adversity can quite possibly be destructive selfishness?

 

[Traitorfish]

That's what I mean, though: there's a difference between arguing that we have obligations to others that take priority over individual desire, and arguing that collective desire takes priority over individual desire, and BvBPL seems to be suggesting the latter.

 

[BvBPL]

Ah, but I'm only arguing for communitarianism in a situation where conformity is a necessity for life as in the setting of the movie. Presumably the segregation in the film is keeping the last bastion of humanity from being destroyed. In that context, conformity to the social order is required.

Both communitarianism and individualism must be weighed against their consequences. Where the consequences for nonconformity are severe then that weighs in favor of conformity.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't think there's a social order in history which hasn't insisted on it's being the only thing between mankind and barbarism.

 

[BvBPL]

That's as may be, but most social orders do not impose the same sort of requirements upon their citizenry as the Divergent caste system. A liberal democracy may well say that it is only conformity of law that keeps the citizenry from descending into barbarism, but the burdens of law in a liberal democracy are far fewer than in a society with a caste system.

 

[illram]

That movie looks really sucky. I'd be very upset if I had to spend any precious minutes of my life watching it.

Why is it hard for Hollywood to make good sci-fi movies?

 

[Gori the Grey]

For example, if you live in a family of farmers and your uncle needs you to work another season so that he can afford to hire hands then you have a responsibility to the community to put off your application to the academy.

Unless a higher duty calls on you to rescue a princess.

 

[BvBPL]

Well, it is quite possible that your family may be slaughtered by storm troopers beforehand which I would argue would nullify your obligation.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I don't think there's a social order in history which hasn't insisted on it's being the only thing between mankind and barbarism.

That is a hilarious and good point.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Well, it is quite possible that your family may be slaughtered by storm troopers beforehand which I would argue would nullify your obligation.

Yeah, maybe Lucas missed an opportunity for greater complexity there. Luke comes back and has to argue with Uncle Owen that his desire to leave is now not just his longstanding, primarily selfish desire to go to the academy, but represents a obligation to a larger community, the galaxy as a whole, that supersedes his obligation to the small community of the farm.

From the descriptions of Divergent that I've read here and elsewhere, it does seem targeted to a particular age group, young adolescents, who are just taking the first steps of self-definition. People at that stage of their development need to frame things as a manageable set of personality options, hence (what to an older mind is) the cartoonishness of a whole tribe committed to bravery, and a different whole tribe committed to intelligence. What do the brave people do all day? Do they brush their teeth more bravely than the intelligent clan does? But that's the way for the young mind to frame these things up as rankable priorities.

But then not-fitting-in-to-these-norms is valorized because 1) not fitting in is how young people feel, 2) not fitting in to old categories is the life-project they're engaged in and 3) the young mind half knows that the five-tribes breakdown is reductive and that no one fits in such monolithic categories.

Hollywood may or may not no how to make good sci-fi movies. This is a sci-fi movie in outward appearance only. It's a fable, and a mechanism for youngsters to mature. And Hollywood will make a lot of those, because that audience will pay money to define themselves by imaginatively aligning themselves with the Team Edward and Team Jacob du jour.

Star Wars was mine, and it had some of the same cartoonish reductiveness. Every planet, for instance, is an x-planet: desert planet, ice planet, jungle planet, city plant.

 

[sophie]

That movie looks really sucky. I'd be very upset if I had to spend any precious minutes of my life watching it.

Why is it hard for Hollywood to make good sci-fi movies?

Because making good movies requires taking risks, and Hollywood is generally opposed to taking risks. Much easier to take a stock script with a known-quantity in the director seat and bland-but-appealing-to-the-target-demo actors and just have at it.

Based on the box office returns, it's little wonder why we keep getting movies like this one.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I believe to have also made the observation that many don't go to the movies to see good movies. There is just this idea that you go to the movies for light entertainment.

 

[BvBPL]

This is a sci-fi movie in outward appearance only.

Yeah, but can't that be said about every sci-fi movie? Strip away the sci-fi setting and not much is left.

Star Trek is, at it's core, Wagon Train.
Star Wars is, at it's core, the monomyth crossed with Invisible Fortress.
Alien is, at it's core, about the primal fear of the dark.
Time Bandits is, at it's core, about how dwarfs are untrustworthy thieves whose greed may threaten Creation itself and how Agamemnon would be a cool dad.
etc.

 

[Farm Boy]

That's what I mean, though: there's a difference between arguing that we have obligations to others that take priority over individual desire, and arguing that collective desire takes priority over individual desire, and BvBPL seems to be suggesting the latter.

It should more often than I think we give it credit for. I think the constant drive for self-esteem and self-actualization, particularly in the young/adolescent, sometimes to the exclusion of many other factors, can wind up being harmful rather than beneficial to long term happiness. It's one of the reasons I wind up being such a proponent of <shudder> organized middle and high school sports teams. They help with that. But they're a pretty sketchy mechanism for lots of kids when there is a) too much emphasis on winning and b) the reality that not everyone is the star. A lot will sit on the bench. And there's a difference between participating to the best of one's ability and merely showing up for practice without getting any play. Wouldn't you say? Which makes things like band and choir probably better options in that regard.

 

[illram]

Yeah, but can't that be said about every sci-fi movie? Strip away the sci-fi setting and not much is left.

Star Trek is, at it's core, Wagon Train.
Star Wars is, at it's core, the monomyth crossed with Invisible Fortress.
Alien is, at it's core, about the primal fear of the dark.
Time Bandits is, at it's core, about how dwarfs are untrustworthy thieves whose greed may threaten Creation itself and how Agamemnon would be a cool dad.
etc.

Some excellent sci fi books that someone needs to write a good script for:

Ringworld--would need some editing down, but the story is there.
Leviathon Wakes (The Expanse) series--mindless adventure space opera, perfect hollywood-ready blockbuster trilogy fare. If they make a zillion Harry Potters they should at least do this too.
Rendezvous with Rama--simple, elegant, timeless.
Pushing Ice--awesome page turner by Alastair Reynolds
Mars--classic Ben Bova

a million others I am forgetting. Help me out here...

After Gravity I think the public is ready for a "hard" sci-fi blockbuster. How cool would a "real" space flight space battle be.

 

[Millman]

All about time, money, resources, etc.,. I haven't been to space camp. Though being able to hear a blaster shot in space always gets me.

I'm on one of my 'let the truth destroy a story masquerades'.