Clicking on the photo above will take you to a Google search for Pluribus, which is a show created by and aired on Apple TV. As is often the case, my husband and I were late to the party on this one, so you may have already seen it. If you haven't, I'd say it (and the other shows you can watch on Apple TV) are worth at least a few months' subscription.
We wouldn't have said that after the first episode or two, but we decided to stick with the show, and we were both glad we did. In the first two episodes, we both thought we were getting a standard zombie-apocalypse series, but this dystopian world offered something quite different.
I'm going to back up here, but I promise to get back to talking about the TV show. Around thirty years ago, I taught AP Language and Composition at a big public high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I don't remember much about what the class or I covered, but I vividly remember one of the sample AP essay assignments I gave to my students. The prompt asked respondents to explain which dystopian vision seemed more dangerous and likely, a 1948, rule-by-fear idea penned by George Orwell as 1984, or Aldous Huxley's 1932, rule-by-pleasure novel Brave New World. I haven't taught both books together since doing them in 1996-1997 at Pioneer HS, partly because my answer was that I thought Huxley's dangers seemed way more likely to me than Orwell's. I still think that, and I've taught BNW more than two dozen times since then.
Back to Pluribus and what changed after two episodes. (I don't think this is really a spoiler, but if you don't want any hints about the show, maybe go binge it now and come back here when you're finished.) The zombies in the show aren't being controlled by anything terrible. They are supremely happy. They're not dangerous because they'll kill people, but because they "love them so much" that they want to "save" them -- by having them join. The scariest kind of mind controllers are the ones to whom we willingly, eagerly cede our freedoms.
Huxley got that right almost a hundred years ago. And here we are, slaves to our smartphones and tablets, so happy to scroll paid advertisements placidly for hours. At this point, many people who have grown up with phones in their hands struggle to communicate with one another IRL (in real life, for those of you who don't already know). We can't resist the allure of ease and comfort, even when the forces behind the media we consume are selling us products and manipulating our beliefs for their own gains.
The virus of control in Pluribus is scary because (1) it's not wrong and (2) it's not the future. It's real and now. The question is, which characters are we, the ones who want freedom or the ones who want perpetual bliss? If you've read BNW, which you have if I've taught you ninth-grade English in the past dozen or more years, you'll know that John chooses freedom (sorry, another spoiler, but the novel is almost a century old) at the expense of his life. Is there another way to opt out? I guess that's the decision we face now.
Have you seen the show? Read the novels? What do you think? Please share your responses in the comments.