If “Jurassic Park” has taught us nothing else, it has taught
us that just because we can, that doesn’t mean that we should. Just because you’ve
figured out how to clone dinosaurs that doesn’t mean that you should do so for
theme park purposes. Even my own mum voices these concerns whenever a major
scientific breakthrough is announced on the news, although when pressed to give
an example of this happening outside of a film, she comes up short. Scientists
in Edinburgh cloned Dolly the sheep 17 years ago but we’ve yet to unleash the
virus that wipes us all out or be overrun by evil clones. While the science of
our lives offers up potentially limitless possibilities to improve and
understand our lives, in mainstream YA the scope seems a little more narrow and
a whole lot less positive. (Side note, if you’re interested in Dolly the sheep,
you can see her in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, stuffed and on
a revolving platform in the same area where you can test your reflexes).
As the release date for the 3rd book in Veronica
Roth’s “Divergent” series is finally revealed to the world (mid-October, in
case you were wondering) and the movie adaptation attracting the Oscar winner Kate
Winslet to the production, the material warrants a deeper analysis. I’ve
written of my dislike for the series before and focused on what I saw to be a
deep anti-intellectual slant to the portrayal of a city divided into factions
based on vague emotional traits. The villains of the piece belong to the
Erudite faction, which values intelligence above all else. These people are
stereotyped by their appearance (usually wearing glasses, whether they need
them or not, because apparently we still believe that impaired eyesight makes
you look smarter. One antagonist is also scrutinised by Tris for having stretch-marks,
which is both childish and confusing) and their blind and arrogant support of clinical
facts above emotion. In the end, the heroine of “Divergent” Tris, who chose the
bravery faction Dauntless, puts violence above reason in order to achieve her
goal. If you need to put a bullet through someone’s head to stop them, so be
it. I found this to be particularly disturbing. The lazy characterisation and
nonsensical nature of the factions barely allowed for any real development of
the concept, but the glorification of violence coupled with the condemnation of
intellect felt very dangerous to me, particularly given our current political
climate and attitudes towards education. “Divergent” may be fiction, and it may
be doing what sci-fi has done for quite some time now, but our entertainment
does reflect our world in many forms.
A
more recent example of these anti-intellect attitudes in YA came with the
highly hyped “Origin” by Jessica Khoury. While the book didn’t quite light up
the literary world in the way its publishers were hoping (they gave it a
250,000 first print and it dramatically undersold), any book that’s compared to
“Lost”, one of the benchmarks of modern mainstream sci-fi, is bound to garner
some level of interest. The book itself is fine in many aspects – it’s strong
in its prose and characterisation of the heroine, a young woman constantly
described as perfect yet remains very stubborn and immature – but ultimately a
disappointment. The general message of the piece is hard to ignore: The
relentless pursuit of knowledge will ultimately lead to evil. The scientists
featured throughout the novel, including the protagonist Pia’s own mother,
discourage emotional displays of all kinds and will go to any means to achieve
their scientific goal. The book also features several animal torture scenes to
illustrate just how bad they are. The portrayal of science being the catalyst
of blind evil is so strong that even the mildly good scientists that side with
Pia can’t counteract it. The anti-science slant of “Origin” is especially odd
since the book takes a diversion into magic territory, which is much more
acceptable than the cold rationalism of the scientists, and don’t get me
started on the noble native stereotype the book invokes to create a contrast to
the evil scientists.
The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction categorises anti-intellectualism
in the genre in two ways: “a persistent if minor theme appears in stories in
which the intellect is distrusted; more common are stories about future
Dystopias in which society at large distrusts the intellect although the
authors, themselves intellectuals, do not.” The former is pretty common in dystopian YA – an all-powerful establishment
takes control of society and every element within it. In Ally Condie’s “Matched”,
the society decides everything for you, genetically modifies the food for your
nutritional needs, and decides when you die (at least they do it peacefully and
without animal torture). They also restrict access to the arts, only allowing
100 poems to be taught in schools. It’s the classic battle between the left
side of your brain and the right.
Anti-intellectualism usually exists in fiction in the form
of a cautionary tale. Don’t overstep your boundaries or play God because bad
things happen when you do that. That can be told in a dramatic and thoughtful
way in fiction, and has been done many times before by people such as Kurt
Vonnegut. The issue here, in relation to “Divergent” and “Origin” is that there
are absolutely no nuances present in their worlds. It’s very obvious that
science and intellect are not to be trusted. Science is cold, emotionless,
obsessive, and ultimately destructive. If it doesn’t make you want to take over
the world, it’ll at least drive you to innocently kill a few cute kittens just
to prove a point. In the world of “Origin”, scientist equals sociopath, while
the Erudite of “Divergent” are arrogance personified, with the depth of a
latter Moore era Bond villain (but not Raoul Silva because he’s amazing). Anyone
who’s ever worked or interacted with a scientist or science student will be
very aware that they’re not ice-cold and emotionally vapid. They’re just as
warm, complex, interesting and hard-working as anyone else, and certainly don’t
deserve to be tarred with such a broad brush. Honestly, a little more respect
for intellect would have done these books wonders (for an example of major
research fail on Khoury’s part, check out Yael Itamar’s piece on the author’sdisrespectful treatment of cerebal palsy in “Origin”).
The battle between intellect and humanity isn’t just a false dilemma, it’s a
boring literary device.
