Huxley Brave New World Critical Essay Response

"Huxley's Feelies" Critical Essay Response

The critical essay "Huxley's Feelies: The Cinema of Sensations in Brave New World" written by Laura Frost begins by analyzing the way Huxley reacted to the first appearance of sound cinema, The Jazz Singer. Huxley utterly despised the addition of sound and said it sent Huxley "into paroxysms of scorn and fury." (Frost, 1) The thesis of this essay is that the talkies raised more philosophical questions about the social, moral, and physical effects of sound films, or talkies.

The first paragraph was about cinema and modernism. Frost discusses how critics stopped the psychoanalytical approach to cinema into a more social and historical view, and how it made the audience feel. Huxley's disgust towards talkies was

seen through Brave New World as he exaggerated the addition of sound cinema by also adding in the sense of feel, called feelies. Frost uses other famous people such as Charlie Chaplin to support Huxley's opinion of talkies since Charlie said "I shall never speak in a film. I hate the talkies and will not produce talking films," (2) as Chaplin thought the exquisite experience of movies was ruined with sound. Frost explains Huxley's view of pleasure in the modern society and the old pleasures saying that the modern pleasure was an imbecilic distraction that didn’t need any form of effort to achieve where old pleasures demanded intelligence and initiative. Frost explains how Brave New World was a cautionary tales about a world where individuality was taken away from the people who were given the modern pleasures such as soma and the feelies. Many critics who read Brave New World believed that Huxley wasn’t a modernist as he was very negative about technology and the progress of cinema. Overall, this paragraph showed how feelies made the story a warning of technological advances and the possibilities for cinemas.
The second paragraph was called Every Hair of the Bear. Frost studied the structure of the buildings that helped produce the feelies such as the College of Emotional Engineers and how big it was. She then discussed the feely Three Weeks in a Helicopter and its inspiration, the Alhambra, a music hall that later on was demolished to make room for a cinema. Huxley used this building in the novel as it was an old pleasure that demanded intellectual curiosity that turned into a modern pleasure. Again, Frost uses famous people with the same opinion as Huxley 's to show the disrespect people had for the talkies, such as Ernest Betts who claimed that "The soul of the film; its eloquence and vital silence was destroyed." (Frost, 3) Huxley uses his favourite hero, Felix the Cat, to explain that with the addition of sound, things made less sense. In a silent film, Felix the Cat sang and the notes that came out of his mouth to show that he was singing was used to make a scooter, showing that if there was sound, the character wouldn’t be able to do that. It shows how cinematography differs from spoken drama and how it can be perceived as something else.
The third paragraph was named Goats and Monkeys, which Mond yells when John was criticizing the feelies, which alludes to Shakespeare's Othello. There were three main sections: 3 Weeks in a Helicopter, Shakespeare, and racial promiscuity. Frost thoroughly explains the 3 Weeks in a Helicopter feely and explains how it was strategically placed representing Huxley's vision of old and modern pleasures. It was a parody and allusion that described the implications of sound cinema. The title alludes to the 1907 novel called Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn, who Huxley thinks represented the lowest point of contemporary fiction and popular cinema. The sensational features of Glyn's novel inspired the feely. Shakespeare was a very important part of the novel as the feelies were juxtaposed with Shakespeare as when John returns from his trip to the feelies, he began to read Othello, since it reminded him of the black hero in the feely. In Brave New World Shakespeare's work represents a more threatening private experience of reading, which isn't allowed. Frost explains how their society wasn’t allowed to even know about old events to prevent social instability. She also provides examples of the cultural division between new popular amusements and Shakespeare and thinks Huxley was suggesting that the cheap desire for stimulation was more appealing than the complexity that Shakespeare offers. 3 Weeks in a Helicopter focuses on free love and miscegenation, so Frost interprets that Huxley is curious about racial mixing in talkies which is shown in the feely as the main character is a black man. Huxley wanted to show the way that cultures contributed to racial injustice, and the feely mocks this. For example, In Three Weeks in a Helicopter, Huxley exploits the image of black males threatening white woman, which would have been banned in that time as it violated the code miscegenation. Overall, Huxley believes the talkies are moving cinema toward dangerous pleasures.
The fourth paragraph was named Savage of Surrey, the name of the feely where John was filmed whipping himself.

Frost believed that the feelies were invented by the inspiration of documentaries, Huxley's favourite type of film. Huxley was fascinated by educational systems and in Brave New World, the way students were educated was by schools showing videos of the Savage Reservation an its citizens beating themselves, whilst the students were laughing. In addition to the educational system, sleep-teaching was another way they taught students specific phrases. Frost explains how it was discovered which was when a child went to bed with the radio left onto George Bernard Shaw's lecture and woke up repeating the same words. Shaw's reputation of enjoying talkies made up a target for Huxley to exploit as Shaw said "The silent film was no use to me.…When movies became talkies my turn came." (Frost, 5) Huxley uses the child to create a connection between talkies and hypnosis like the way feelies and hypnopaedia was used in Brave New World. After Brave New World was published, Huxley made many predictions of cinema and thought eventually there would be stereoscopic movies, which was partially true as we have 3D and 4D

movies.
The last paragraph was about Huxley's life in Hollywood after he moved there in 1938. Huxley attempted to adapt Brave New World into visual representations, one where he proposed an idea that would "revolve around the person of a very clever but physically unattractive scientist, desperately trying to make a gorgeous blonde, who is repelled by his pimples but fascinated by the intelligence of his conversation. The scientist "makes violent passes at the blonde, gets his face slapped and is left disconsolate among the white mice and the rabbit ova—an emblem of personal frustration who is yet the most revolutionary and subversive force in the modern world" (Frost, 6) This idea was never accepted to be made into a movie but Huxley then tried to make it into a musical comedy, containing songs and dancing. However, Huxley never found anyone to write the script so it was never produced. In the 1950's, sound films were actually discarded, obviously it reappeared, but the cinema didn’t try to add in new senses to the films. Huxley's predictions of cinematic films in Brave New World were wrong since we still don't have full stereoscopic features, his predictions only exist in his works. Frost ends the essay off by explaining that literature is still the moist capable of representing the most fantastic pleasures ever felt, modern and old.