Assessment Task 2 Flashcards
(17 cards)
What are the two themes in the body paragraphs?
Governmental control and dehumanisation through advanced conditioning + The Illusion of Happiness and Stability through Consumerism
What is the name, author and date of the novel
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932
What is the name, author and date of the novel
Happiness, Steven Cutts, 2017
What type of novel is Brave New World?
A satrical dystopia
What type of short film is happiness
A satrical dystopia
Why were these works made?
to challenge the dominant ideologies of their time, whether through authoritarian governance or consumer capitalism.
What is Huxleys novel reflecting on?
Huxley’s satirical novel reflects the anxieties of an interwar society fascinated by technology and obsessed with order
What is Cutts critiquing in his short film?
Cutts critiques the dehumanising pursuit of material happiness in the 21st century.
How does Huxley create his dystopia?
through expository world-building, depicting a regime that exerts total control through biological engineering and psychological manipulation.
What is a quote for the first body paragraph for your argument about Brave New World? What is the technique? What is the effect?
“History is bunk,”
dismissive aphorism
demonstrating how the State suppresses knowledge to maintain its version of stability. The blunt tone of the phrase reflects the regime’s intentional erasure of the past, preventing citizens from developing independent or critical perspectives.
What is your scene for the first body paragraph of your argument on happiness? What is the technique? What is the effect?
portraying a rat protagonist navigating a bleak, monochrome city populated by identical rats. In a chaotic scene, a mass of rats stampedes onto a train labelled “Happiness”
visual allegory
The decision to render the characters as indistinguishable rodents serves as a visual metaphor for the loss of individuality in a system that values conformity. In a chaotic scene, a mass of rats stampedes onto a train labelled “Happiness”—a literal representation of the population’s blind rush toward state-sanctioned satisfaction.
Why is consumerism used in both texts
explore how systems maintain dominance by manufacturing an illusion of happiness, using comfort and consumerism to mask suffering and suppress resistance.
What is a quote for the second body paragraph for your argument about Brave New World? What is the technique? What is the effect?
“A gramme is better than a damn,”
rhyme and repetition
uses rhyme and repetition to embed the idea that emotional pain should be avoided at all costs. This technique demonstrates how language is used to normalise drug use, and more broadly, how the regime suppresses emotional depth to keep its population passive.
What is your scene for the second body paragraph of your argument on happiness? What techniques are used? What is the effect?
The protagonist cycles through addictive consumption—alcohol, pills, shopping, sex—all in the hope of achieving fulfilment. One of the most striking visuals is a bottle labelled “Joy” in which the rat protagonist floats, dazed and lifeless.
montage and visual satire
This visual metaphor emphasises how consumer culture packages emotional well-being as a product, distorting the idea of happiness into something hollow and mass-produced. Through rapid editing and repetitive scenes of crowded shops and chaotic advertising, Cutts builds a world that mimics the overstimulation of contemporary life, suggesting that modern societies sedate their populations with material excess instead of soma.
What is an aphorism?
a pithy observation which contains a general truth.
What is a visual alleogry?
A visual allegory is a type of visual art that uses images and symbols to represent deeper, often abstract, moral, or political ideas or concepts.
What is visual satire?
a medium used to visually mock, ridicule or draw attention to a negative aspect of a thing, event, person or place
