It was Shakespeare's Juliet who asked "What's in a name?" The answer to that question appears at times to be: more than you might think. This truth, which seems to recur in my thinking again and again like a musical theme, struck me again recently as I was watching the science fiction action film Demolition Man (1993). In that film, Sylvester Stallone plays John Spartan, a late 20th-century police officer sentenced to 70 years in a "Cryo-Penitentiary" for the death of 30 hostages in the course of apprehending the mass-murdering Simon Phoenix. 36 Years later, when Phoenix escapes during his parole hearing, the practically violence-free world that has developed in the interim finds itself unable to deal with him, and must revive the 20th-century "barbarian" John Spartan to apprehend him.
The revived Spartan finds himself in a world very alien to him, a world apparently free of violence, but also free of nearly everything potentially "bad" for you: tobacco, alcohol, chocolate, caffeine, meat, physical contact, foul language[1]—and apparently, differences of opinion. One of the people Spartan encounters in this brave new world is Lenina Huxley, played by Sandra Bullock. When I first saw this film, not too many years after its 1993 release, Ms. Huxley's name did not register with me as important. Back then, I did not pay attention to such things, because I did not know what I know now—that everything is at least potentially meaningful. When I saw the movie again recently, however, I could not help but notice her last name: Huxley.
Huxley is an uncommon name, but a well-known one (and all the more significant, being rare). Thomas Henry Huxley a 19th-century biologist, was one of the first and most prominent advocates of the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin; among other things, he is famous for introducing the young H.G. Wells to evolution. His grandson Julian Huxley followed in his footsteps, acting as one of the architects of the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. However, far more relevant in this context is Julian's younger brother, Aldous Huxley.
Aldous Huxley, following less in his grandfather's footsteps and more in those of his mother's uncle, Matthew Arnold, became a writer. His most famous work, Brave New World (the title of which, like the question that opens this essay, comes from a play by Shakespeare), is a horrific vision of a future world even less human—and yet, more plausible—than that later envisioned in George Orwell's 1984. Like the world of Demolition Man, it is a world where order is produced not by the application of government force, but by the dissipation of the vital force of the citizenry; in the case of Huxley's novel, this is accomplished via drugs, feelies (full-immersion films that stimulate more than just two senses), and dissolution of the family in favor of unrestrained sexual promiscuity.
Remembering Huxley's novel, I of course recognized Lenina Huxley's last name as an homage to that great book and it's author. Furthermore, I recalled that Lenina (again, not a very common name) was also the name of the main female character in Brave New World. Was this part of a larger pattern?
Yes. Those of us who have read Huxley's novel will recall the one character who is a true outsider, the "Savage" John, born on a Reservation outside of civilization. At this point, we might suggest a parallel between this character, and Stallone's character in Demolition Man. They share a common first name (although it is a very common one—yet, this might suggest their status as everyman characters), and while the man in the novel is called simply "the Savage," John Spartan's last name reminds us of those Greek warriors who dedicated their lives wholeheartedly to combat; meanwhile, he is often referred to in the movie by terms that are essentially synonyms for "savage": "caveman," "Neanderthal," "Cro-Magnon," "barbaric," "savage creature."
All of which simply illustrates what I have said before, that even our lighter book reading and film viewing may be deepened by the realization of the points at which such reading or viewing touches upon those stories that lie at the back of our collective memory—here, we see Demolition Man in a new light, as in some small way a re-imagining of an earlier, deeper and darker story in a lighter key. Of course, to do that, and to recognize any such points of contact between the old stories and the new, we have to know those old stories. It is in the hope of returning us to those stories that are both the best and the oldest, and the oldest because the best, that I write these thoughts here.
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