Media and Dramatic Performativity: The Parallels between the Feely and Shakespeare in ＂Brave New World＂

In ＂Brave New World＂, Aldous Huxley draws ironic parallels between the feely and Shakespeare’s plays, presenting a satire of vulgar standardized amusements. Love is the thread by which Huxley strings together these parallels. While ＂Three Weeks in a Helicopter＂ faithfully presents the philosophy of love, that is, ＂love is sex,＂ of the New Worlders, ＂Romeo and Juliet＂ sanctifies love by means of writing that has a long literary tradition of tropes, metaphors, and symbols describing the beauty of love. Huxley is very concerned with the banalization of high culture led by the prevalence of a mass culture that pursues uniformity. The quotidian drabness arising from the pursuit of the greatest stability and order in a society, seems to be the necessary evil, as it is presented in the story. The banality of love, which is seldom discussed in the studies of ＂Brave New World,＂ can contribute to the discussion of the dystopian dimension of the New World. Whereas the feelies epitomize the dystopia of love, the sacredness of love depicted in Shakespeare’s plays seems to be a critical force used to wrestle with the New Worlders’ vulgar views of love. Nevertheless, the utopia of love, as the protagonist John strives to find by applying Shakespeare’s concept of love in the real world, is very problematic. John’s love for Lenina, ironically, is never ＂divine＂ because his love always involves the eruption of his strong sexual desire. The description of John’s love for Lenina is more erotic and sensual than that of the sex scenes in ＂Three Weeks in a Helicopter.＂ The ambiguous contrasts between the feelies and Shakespeare’s plays arise from Huxley’s choice of drama, among all the genres in literary tradition, to represent the beauty of love. His selection of Shakespeare’s plays involves an issue which has long been debated heatedly: were these plays written for reading or for performance? This question actually serves as the key to observing John’s failure in his pursuit of the utopia of love: does John’s reading of Shakespeare’s works aim to help him gain knowledge, learn what love is, or is his recitation of Shakespeare’s words also a performance of love? In this paper, this question will be answered from the perspective of dramatic performativity and media. Dramatic writing is a technology of writing which involves the function of the script according to William Worthen. The script marks the dynamic relationship between theatrical performance and a playwright as a unique form of print culture. When John is reciting Shakespeare’s words, he is doing a performance of love, by which he is also pursuing his utopia of love. His utopia of love is doomed to become a dytopia since the one who is supposed to be Juliet in his performance could never be the right Juliet.