Logan’s Run, The Giver and Life

When I was young I watched a movie called Logan’s Run. I’m not sure where I saw it or even when, but it embedded itself into my memory like one of those happy moments from childhood that returns unexpectedly as an adult. It was my first introduction to the world of Utopian societies. At the time of the viewing, it was just another movie that was exciting and weird all at the same time. I got to thinking about it ….again, the other day as I drove towards northern Virginia. As the Kudzo overgrowth loomed over the highway, I had a flashback of the protagonists as they saw Washington DC for the first time. It was the scene in the movie that would come back over and over again throughout my life. I never knew why, nor do I know now why it should surface in my memory, but the other day I smiled just thinking about it. In the movie the protagonists come across our nation’s capitol after hundreds of years of abandonment…it is covered in Kudzo and canopies of trees and shrubs.

I remember thinking how odd the scene was in the movie… like, how would the director or set designer know what DC would look like if it were abandoned for years? Now that I live in Virginia, I can fully see how they got the idea that the capitol would turn out to be an overgrown mess with monuments peeking through the greenery. Today the vegetation  near the city is already overtaking nearby deserted structures…it’s quite beautiful actually. The closer I got to the city, I found the whole idea of the movie to be deeper than I once thought. Strange that the writer should take two people from a youth-only-society and unleash them into what is now anything BUT utopian and one that probably has the make up of more young adults than anything else. Strange but very cool….very thought provoking.

As I grew older I was lucky to have some incredible teachers and professors who forced almost every Utopian/Dystopian society book, story, or movie on me.  One of the earliest was Animal Farm. Imagine my shock when I realized it wasn’t about a bunch of pigs that lived on a farm…it wasn’t Charlotte’s Web! Then it was off to read 1984, and then  off to watch all of the Charlton Heston’s Planet of the Apes movies. Still, by then it really hadn’t hit me that there was this big political theme going on…but I would figure it out when I had to tear apart Brave New World, Utopia, Fahrenheit 451, and Plato’s Republic! HOLY COW… I finally got what everyone was writing about… a perfect world with no hate, war, or pain. Could there be such a thing? Apparently not…

Now as an adult, I am enjoying a new generation of Utopian stories that have our youth engaged and eager to read; The Hunger Games, Harry Potter (yes, there is some discussion as to the type of society the wizards live in) and my favorite…The Giver and all of Lois Lowery’s sequels. Ironically, unlike the previous books and movies mentioned earlier, with the exception of Logan’s Run,  the latest manuscripts depict worlds where the young are the future of the world. At the moment I find that odd and a bit scary since I am NOT the youth of the world. But then I got to thinking….uh oh…

Shouldn’t these new books be aimed at our youth so that they actually learn from them? Us old geezers already got the message and know that there is no world of “perfection.” WE want the generations below us to know what happens when leaders force rules and regulations that take away our personal rights and ideas. WE want these young people to realize that they should never walk blindly into a world that appears to be perfect, that they must be prepared  to see the world as it truly is… and that they  must cherish the old and learn from them, for they have the answers they seek if they are willing to listen. Jonas, in The Giver, got it. He asks, “What’s the point.” If everything is taken away, all feelings, emotions, love…than what is left? IF our youth can’t figure it out…then our world will surely be ruined beyond recognition. To this I say…Thank God for authors, teachers, leaders, and yes…crazy bloggers like me, that continue to bring these things to light for the next generation…