Red Box Review: Divergent - Granite Grok

Red Box Review: Divergent

divergent_poster_hqBefore I get all political, let me say that I enjoyed the movie, Divergent.  I liked the characters, and took an interest in their circumstances, even though I had a hard time suspending disbelief with regard to the world they live in.

Divergent is set in a classic post-apocalyptic progressive utopian society.  Human natures and people in general suck so  experts created an isolated society (in what is left of Chicago) where people are divided into groups with specific roles for which they are “best suited.”

You grow up in the faction your parents chose to live and work in until you ‘come of age’ you are given a test that is supposed to tell you to which the five factions you are most mentally predisposed. 

The day after the test you can choose to join any faction you like, but there is strong social pressure not to buck the test.  Should you choose a different faction, that is your faction for life.  You leave your family (Faction before blood) and join your new ‘family’ unless they find you incapable of meeting their requirements or you fail (in some way) to satisfy those in the factio’s leadership.  If you are expelled you cannot join or go back to any other faction.  You must join the ranks of the factionless, a class of homeless helpless rabble with no purpose that relies on the other factions to survive.As a quick aside, I have heard comparisons made between Divergent and The Hunger Games.  Divided society, female lead who bucks the system, why not compare it to a Jane Austen Novel?

In Games, while you are also divided up like Hobbsien chattel, but you are trapped in your District from birth.  There are no opportunities to alter your circumstances except by lot, as one of 24 children who (physically) survives an annual gladiatorial spectacle that turns them into a murderer for the amusement of others.  Accordingly, those ‘benefits’ are likewise fleeting and subject to the tyrannical will of a dictator and ruling class.

Members of the faction leadership in Divergent do appear to exercise tyrannical will within their own faction.  But the movie is dissimilar to Games in too many ways to be a parallel or copy-cat.  Divergent’s faction members all appear well fed, well off, and dutifully drone like in their self-imposed identity class lives.  The factionless are the only ones who appear needy or impoverished but the other factions provide some measure of  protections and subsistence care to them as part of their duty to the whole society.

These stories simply draw from the same defective philosophical well to demonstrate why that well is and always will be poisoned.

Aside from your journey alongside the main character, Tris (Beatrice), the story arc that runs beneath hers is the very telling.  The ordered society, with its five factions (and the purposeless unorganized factionless), has a government class whose defining traits are service to others. They are almost like Quakers, the way they dress simply and shun vanity.  They are always looking to the needs of others before themselves.  They are the ideal civil servants.

One of the other factions feels the desire (they use the word need) to replace the civil servant class in their role as keepers of the ‘government.’  They believe they would be better at running things.  To make this case they wage a propaganda campaign throughout the society to build political capital for a move against the humble and passive public servant class.   They insist their “rule” has lead to disorder.  That they are actually child beaters, pedophiles, maybe even tea-baggers?  Their continued leadership will lead to disorder and chaos, has lead to chaos (don’t let even a manufactured or pretend crisis go to waste).

That the entire system will collapse if we do not act in the interests of all factions.

To restore order they have plotted with leaders in the militant faction (appointed to enforce the law first and protect the peace–Laws before men) to use chemicals to create (essentially) an already trained drone army that will bend to their every will.  This is the typical ruling class tyrants take control of the military leadership and then the soldiers for domestic action against those claimed to be a threat to “national security.”

The plan is to then use this army to subvert the current faction system by force (destroying the existing “institutions”).

These even smarter ‘experts,’ smarter than their societies founders by the way, are just going to sow a little disorder and chaos so they can then restore order from the chaos they created, to prevent some impending chaos that never actually existed.

You gotta break some eggs, right?

This is a perfect example of the end game behind Progressivism, Marxism, National Socialism, or the Modern democrat party.  Not only do we start with the ordered systems imagined by Plato, More, Hobbs, etc., we see how human nature, even within that utopian system, rebels against it in pursuit of power.

Members of two factions simply “sign their own executive order or two,” giving themselves authority to engage in a domestic war against their own society (for their own good ‘cuz they know better) using any means necessary even to reform or change their world order.

The other theme throughout the movie is the cultural fear of citizens for whom the movie is named.

Divergent’s are those that when tested prove to be well-suited to more than one faction.  They are mentally predisposed in opposition to being pigeon-holed.   As a result they think outside the box, find themselves more capable at multiple disciplines, and because they represent a risk to the system the system hunts them, isolates them, and even kills them to prevent them from disputing the system.

Can you think of any modern examples of where opposing thought is met with intimidation and oppression by factions of the ruling class?  Hmmmmm?

And yes, the faction looking to seize power has ramped up its pursuit of the Divergent to cleanse them from the system in anticipation of their even newer vision of the perfect society.

I’ve generalized a great deal, but that is the thrust of the movie.  Tris is found to be Divergent during her test and encouraged to hide it by her tester.  She chooses to train in Dauntless, the militant policing faction, where she finds another Divergent, and later learns things about her parents and others (many or all of whom are hiding something from the powers that be) as she proceeds through conflict and resolution.

This is a trilogy so the ‘final’ resolution is suited to the next chapter in the tale, but overall I enjoyed the film.  I would recommend it to anyone who wants to observe one interpretation of the utopian experiment so often imagined and tried, but always failing. Failing, because human nature is not predisposed to the kinds of limitation such a system demands.

It’s $1.20 to rent the DVD at Red Box.  It is well worth the pocket change, in my opinion.

Oh, and yes, I am sure the book is ‘different.’

>