the harrison bergeron show
How Vonnegut's story comes to life on Hong Kong television.
"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."
So begins Kurt Vonnegut's short story, Harrison Bergeron. Bergeron is an amusing tale of egalitarianism run amok in a dystopian future America. Written in 1961, Vonnegut's methods for insuring a perfectly equal population in his tale are absurdly antiquated by design - the strong wear bags full of lead balls, the beautiful wear grotesque masks, the intelligent have random loud noises blasted into their ears to constantly break their concentration. It takes little imagination to craft more realistic ways of guaranteeing complete human equality of outcome, such as genetic engineering, drugs, forced public school attendance, &c. The issue at hand is not plausibility though, it is oppression. In Harrison Bergeron's world, his strength and intelligence result in imprisonment and, following his brief rebellion against the state, violent death.
In our world, absurdity is manifest in television game shows. The South China Morning News reports that Hong Kong television network RTHK is developing a program called "Count Our Blessings" where an able-bodied team, hobbled by dark glasses, mouth gags or headphones blasting noise, battles against a handicapped one. The usual suspect advocacy groups have complained, but Wang Kai-fung of the Hong Kong Society for the Deaf has a more enlightened attitude about the show, stating: "Maybe at first we will be put on the spot and laughed at but I don't care. Sometimes we just need to play a game and relax."
20.03.2003 © ljr