KURT VONNEGUT'S NEOCON AMERICA: WAR & SOCIALISM
IN PLAYER PIANO
by Thomas M. Sipos, managing editor.
[May 1, 2005]
[HollywoodInvestigator.com]
Although released in 1952, Kurt Vonnegut's dystopian Player
Piano serves as a satire of modern America. That may not be readily
apparent to those who focus only on its theme of technology obsoleting
workers.
Seemingly influenced by Fritz
Lang's Metropolis and foreshadowing The
Twilight Zone's "The Brian Center at Whipple's," Player
Piano paints a future America where a technocratic oligarchy has established
a corporate command economy and cradle-to-grave socialism. The leaders
think they've created a utopia but the proles disagree.
One big problem is that advancing
technology makes more people useless every day. Retraining is no
answer; even engineers are being replaced by computers. Society has
become a player piano, creating flawless music without aid of human hands.
However,
this Darwinism is not untempered. The useless do not go homeless
and hungry. On the contrary, everyone's basic needs are met: pre-fabricated
homes, washers, TV, even national health care. And twelve years of
free education, which is pretty pointless, as most people graduate to idleness.
Well,
not quite idleness. Those with top test scores enjoy free college,
then join the ever-diminishing ranks of engineers and managers. They
run those computers.
The less-brainy
majority must choose between the Army or the Reconstruction & Reclamation
Corps (aka, the Reeks & Wrecks), and begin a life of menial make-work
rather than real jobs.
Yes, that
includes the Army. Wars are primarily fought with machines, so millions
of soldiers remain idle in the US, training with wooden guns. Only
those stationed safely abroad are trusted with real guns.
The less-gifted
wealthy can go to private college, though I'm not sure what they'd become
in this meritocratic society. Perhaps politicians. Player
Piano's America enjoys complete separation of politics and power. Elections are free, but elected officials are impotent PR shills. The President is a goofy dunderhead whose main job is telling everyone
how great things are, while publicly "ooooing" and "aaaahing" over the
engineers' latest computer.
Despite
their safety net, men feel useless and miserable because they're paid for
make-work. Women feel useless because of all those kitchen appliances,
and miserable because they're married to losers. (Yeah I know, but
it's a 1950s book.) With few exceptions (entertainer, athlete, politician),
it's mostly engineers and managers who enjoy meaningful work and its concomitant
prestige. They also make more money, but that's not the main gripe
of the useless majority. Player
Piano has an anti-materialist theme. Despite calling himself
a socialist, Vonnegut has written a novel in which national health care
doesn't bring happiness.
How does Player
Piano parallel modern America? There is the loss of good jobs;
in the book through technology, in modern America through outsourcing.
Both Americas
relegate ever more people to menial, government-subsidized work (Wal-Mart
reputedly advises employees how to obtain food stamps to supplement their
paychecks).
Both Americas
employ rising police surveillance to fight terrorism, and feel rising suspicion
toward dissenters. In Player
Piano, terrorists are also called "saboteurs," the ugliest of obscenities.
Alleged saboteurs cannot appeal to a judge. Judges have been replaced
by computers that analyze precedents and spit out verdicts.
Most importantly,
in Player
Piano, the centralization of corporate/government power over the economy
and security forces is a legacy of the last war, which was largely responsible
for putting engineers and managers in charge of a command economy. It was a big war, fought overseas with drones and nukes and Gamma rays. A real turkey shoot, except for the soldiers attending the high-tech weapons
during a return fire. Young engineers and managers were exempt from
combat, their brain power too important to the home front.
Vonnegut's
book was doubtless inspired by America's command economy during World War
Two, but libertarians have long noted that "War
is the health of the state." Some conservatives may not like
to hear it, but even "good wars" invariably expand government and diminish
liberties. Just ask Louis XVI what the American Revolution did for
his treasury. Thus, true conservatives, like all true patriots, are
always sceptical of war, and suspicious of those who say we must not question
or doubt our elected leaders in time of war.
Player
Piano's neocons imagine that they've ended history. The last
war is referred to as the Last War. America's high-tech weapons and
economy dominate the globe. Yet freedom does not abound, not even
in the US. "Anti-machine" books are banned for encouraging terrorism,
the authors risking jail. Indeed, a visiting autocrat, hosted by
the State Department, mistakes average Americans for slaves.
Vonnegut
regards himself as a man of the left, but I've met many libertarians, conservatives,
and objectivists who admire Vonnegut's work. Libertarians admire him because he's antiwar and distrusts government. Objectivists mostly enjoy his atheism and Bokononist satire of religion. And conservatives discern a patriotic nostalgia
for small town America in some of his work. While I think that's
especially true of his short
stories, I've met one conservative who was taken with Vonnegut's midwestern
family history in Palm
Sunday. Ralph Nader has praised
such "true conservatism," distinguishing it from corporatism or
empire building.
With a
little updating, Player
Piano would make for a fine film satire of modern America. Vonnegut's
never been adapted effectively, though he was reportedly pleased with Slaughterhouse-Five. The problem is that his greatest strength is not his plots or characters,
but his unique authorial voice. Mother
Night was adapted with unusual faithfulness to the plot, yet the film
was dreary and grim, unlike the often hilarious
book.
Player
Piano shouldn't have this problem. It was Vonnegut's first novel,
his voice still undeveloped and not yet evident, so the book's merits are
not based on something unfilmable.
Unfortunately,
a critique is not a solution. I don't know what can be done about
the outsourcing of jobs. Socialism breeds poverty, corruption, nepotism,
and ethnic clashes. Protectionism leads to trade wars, and then,
say some, to shooting wars. What we have today -- a sort of statist
crony corporatism? -- produces government favoritism and contracts for
politically-connected insiders. But even an authentic free market
would drain good jobs to the lowest foreign bidder. Good for foreign
workers and consumers, bad for domestic workers.
Like many
satirists, Vonnegut is better at identifying and ridiculing a problem than
in offering a solution. Player
Piano ends on a pessimistic note. That may be because some problems
have no solution.
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by HollywoodInvestigator.com
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