Although it was published in 1932, Brave New World has yet to inspire any major Hollywood adaptations. Nevertheless, two made-for-television adaptations have been produced—one in 1980 and the other in 1998. The 1980 adaptation, directed by Burt Brinckerhoff, stays very close to its source, seeming merely to disseminate its content, while the 1998 adaptation, directed by Leslie Libman and Larry Williams, takes several liberties with Huxley’s novel, presenting new content within the source’s frame. With contemporary adaptation studies having shaken loose the constraints of fidelity criticism—which concentrates on the adaptation’s fidelity to the source text—scholarly interest in film adaptations of Brave New World should not be based solely on their fidelity to the novel. Instead, both adaptations of the novel can be judged by the utopian maneuvers—or attempts to proffer utopian content—mounted by each adaptation. Brinckerhoff, for instance, would seem to have maintained fidelity to the novel in his adaptation, thereby disseminating the utopian maneuver contained in the source, which is its warning against a dystopian reality, a utopian maneuver in and of itself. The production value of Brinckerhoff’s adaptation, however, betrays the seriousness of the novel, resulting in what appears to be unintentional camp. On the other hand, Libman and Williams fare a bit better with their adaptation, injecting new utopian content into the narrative via the changes that are made, which essentially involve converting the classical dystopia of the source into a critical dystopia via some plot changes. Regardless of their successes or failures as adaptations, the cultural influence of the novel is shown by the fact that it has already been adapted twice over, not to mention the interest of director Ridley Scott, who has been involved in plans to bring another adaptation of the novel to theaters, though the project has yet to come to fruition.

Huxley’s novel is a famous example of the classical dystopia, which, according to Tom Moylan, is an “epic” or “open” genre, containing a “militant pessimism” that leaves “no meaningful possibility of movement or resistance, much less radical change, embedded in any of the iconic elements of the text” (Moylan, Scraps 157, 162). Classical dystopias “maintain utopian hope outside their pages, if at all; for it is only if we consider dystopia as a warning that we as readers can hope to escape its pessimistic future” (Baccolini and Moylan, Dark Horizons 7). Moreover, Naomi Jacobs says of the classical dystopia that its “repulsive force … comes from its portrayal of a world drained of agency—of an individual’s capacity to choose and to act, or a group’s capacity to influence and intervene in social formations” (Jacobs, “Posthuman Bodies” 92). The endings of novels like Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Huxley’s Brave New World, then, situate them as classical dystopias because no hope for the resistant protagonists of their plots exists within the pages of the narratives, in part because of the lack of agency that Jacobs mentions, as well as the influence and/or intervention of the systems portrayed in the works. Brave New World presents a world that has been socially engineered via eugenics (and dysgenics), as well as conditioning, so that society will run according to the way the system wants. Bernard Marx is exiled when he is found to have resisted the social order, and it is said that this “punishment is really a reward” because:

For some readers, the enclave to which Marx is being sent represents some hope within the pages of the novel, undermining its status as a classical dystopia, but this enclave remains under the control of the novel’s imagined system, so there will be little room for agency or resistance, even if pleasures abound. In this way, Bernard is re-subjugated by the system (as is his friend Helmholtz, another resistant character). John Savage, on the other hand, continues to resist the system, only to be frustrated to the point of suicide by the novel’s end—after, in a rage, he has beaten Lenina to death. Lenina is another character who resists the system by, in her case, falling in love with John Savage. With all of these resistant characters either being re-subjugated by the system or killed, it is clear the novel is an example of the classical dystopia.

Brave New World opens somewhat like a film itself, although neither of the films discussed in this analysis make use of the novel’s script-like exposition, easy as it would be to do so. Huxley’s filmic prose style comes as no surprise, considering Huxley’s work in Hollywood from the 1940s until his death, and Brave New World seems to anticipate this turn to the movies; Huxley’s first paragraph reads like a screenplay direction for a Hollywood establishing shot: “A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and, in a shield, the World State’s motto, Community, Identity, Stability” (1). Everything, in fact, before the reader joins the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning’s tour, and intercut with it throughout, provides description of what could be the mise en scène of a film. This description includes the direction the ground level room of the hatchery faced, the winter scene visible through the windows, the description of the light in the laboratory, the workers’ white overalls and rubber gloves, the yellow-barreled microscopes, the interior of the fertilizing room, and more. Further, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning’s dialogue throughout the tour (joined, at different points, by Mustapha Mond and Henry Foster) functions much like the dialogue in a screenplay, familiarizing the reader with Huxley’s fictional world and providing the necessary knowledge of that world to contextualize the coming plot. One example of this contextualization is Henry Foster’s description of the goings-on in the Embryo Store, where embryos are stored while they mature into babies ready to be “decanted.” While in the Bottling Room, the embryo feeds on “blood surrogate” (10–11), which, via a centrifugal pump, is “kept … moving over the placenta” (11). This information contextualizes the oft-repeated rumor of Bernard’s embryo having accidentally had alcohol in the blood-surrogate, which is brought up in the text by Lenina’s friend Fanny—“They say somebody made a mistake when he was still in the bottle—thought he was a Gamma and put alcohol into his blood surrogate. That’s why he’s so stunted” (46)—and again by Benito Hoover, who asserts that the alcohol “touched his brain, I suppose” (60). This filmic contextualization of the plot pervades the first three chapters of Huxley’s text, along with other pseudo-filmic devices, such as the flashback to the discovery of sleep-teaching, parenthetical cues for the child respondents to the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (D.H.C.) on the tour, and the corresponding intercuts of the novel’s characters with Mustapha Mond’s explanation of the development of history to the civilization depicted in the novel. In spite of the ways that the novel could act as a blueprint for a film adaptation, however, both of the film adaptations to date have largely ignored these cues, even as their adherence to the plot details varies.

Brinckerhoff’s Brave New World

Burt Brinckerhoff’s 1980 film version of Brave New World ignores the film-like structure of the novel, choosing instead to provide much of the back story contained in the novel through dramatization. Rather than presenting a tour headed up by the D.H.C. and joined at various points by other characters, as in the novel, Brinckerhoff opens his film with Mustapha Mond (Ron O’Neal) lecturing a group of young Alphas. In Mond’s lecture, much of the information provided through the whole of the novel’s first section is delivered, including the set-up of sexual behavior, worship of Henry Ford, and an overview of the Fordian society. Before Brinckerhoff’s opening credits roll, Mond concludes that the “perfection” of Fordian civilization is that “everyone is adjusted. Everyone has been conditioned to want to do the work he has to do. And thus everyone is perfectly happy, perfectly content” (Brave New World, 1980). Mond’s short lecture encapsulates Huxley’s three-chapter exposition in a minute or so, but without the character development that Huxley gets across, in part because the lecture takes place before Bernard Marx or Lenina Crowne have been decanted—the film actually aims to dramatize the love affair of the future D.H.C. (Keir Dullea) with Linda (Julie Cobb), who will become mother to John Savage (later Kristoffer Tabori) when the pair visit the savage reservation.

Brinckerhoff’s overall approach to the adaptation seems to be to remain true to the novel, thereby disseminating the utopian content of the source to the film’s audience, but the film’s production value may undermine the attempt. Made for Universal Television, the film was aired on NBC in a miniseries format. Characters clad in nylon jumpsuits indicating their social strata—alphas, betas, etc.—contribute to the overall camp of the film, as do the blank-stared performances of the actors, though this aspect of the film might be rationalized as reflecting the naïveté of the characters. In spite of its low production value and the dramatization of the D.H.C.’s relationship with Linda, however, the film’s content actually does stay fairly close to that of the source.

The relationship between these characters reinforces the parallelism that is suggested in the novel between Bernard and the D.H.C. as well as Linda and Lenina. In addition, dramatizing the backstory creates an opportunity to delve even more deeply into details of the World State, such as the birth control used, which foreshadows Linda’s pregnancy. Even more parallelism is achieved by juxtaposing John’s delivery with Bernard’s embryonic trip down the production line, the former featuring an ashamed, viviparous mother and the latter an emotionless occurrence that reinforces the mechanization of human birth premised by the source text. At this point, however, the film does take one liberty: the D.H.C., because he has no emotional tie to Linda, is back in the bottling room flirting with a woman, who mistakenly adds alcohol to Bernard’s bottle, undoing the novel’s ambiguity of whether Bernard actually has been stunted by such a possibility. The D.H.C., learning of the error, decides to let the child be born, considering it a research possibility, and then, after some narrative elision, Bernard (Bud Cort) is shown full-grown, a proverbial cog in the machinery at “Central Hatcheries.” Soon after, his trip to the savage reservation comes along, and, though the scene is heavily elided, the result is the same as the novel—John Savage and Linda return with Bernard and Lenina to the World State.

On arrival, the D.H.C. is shamed for his having fathered John, and he is transferred to Iceland to escape—the same place to which Bernard will later be transferred. Afterward, the film more or less follows the novel throughout, complete with John’s celebrity status, his infatuation with Lenina and her failed attempt to seduce him, his outburst at the soma distribution after the death of Linda along with Bernard and Helmholtz (Dick Anthony Williams), and his encounter with Mustapha Mond. This encounter leads to his exile at a lighthouse in Surrey, and his discovery there by a filmmaker whose secretly gathered footage leaves John overcome with tourists.

Unlike the novel, the final scenes of the film present a situation, in which so many people have come to gawk at John in his lighthouse that he comes outside to yell at them, encountering Lenina, who is upset from having seen the film of John, which makes him look ridiculous. Although Lenina professes her love for John in this scene, officials use a thick soma vapor to disperse the crowd, and John loses Lenina in the cloud of vapor. When he finds her later, unconscious, he believes her to be dead, and he leaves her, indicating that he intends to commit suicide, but she begins to wake as he walks away. Still, it is too late; the scene cuts to a hanged John in the lighthouse. This approach to the film’s ending, though not entirely derived from the novel as is much of the rest of the film, does pay homage to the role of Shakespeare in the text, given its obvious parallel to the end of the Bard’s Romeo and Juliet. Lenina, meanwhile, is actually taken to a “moral reconditioning center,” where she will forget all about John and her transgressions against the World State, which signifies her own re-subjugation and keeps the film consistent with the classical dystopia.

There is a utopian maneuver inherent in trying to keep in line with the novel that equals what might be referred to as a utopian function of dissemination. In disseminating the utopian content of the source that comes in the form of a warning against its imagined reality with little interference, that utopian content is proffered to a potentially new audience—i.e., the film’s audience—and kept alive within the larger culture. Nearly fifty years after the novel’s publication, then, its utopian content is presented in a new medium for what could be a wider audience, and this dissemination is utopian through and through.

Libman’s and Williams’ Brave New World

The differences between the endings of Huxley’s novel and Libman’s and Williams’ film reveal the way the latter utilizes the novel to frame its own new utopian content. The utopian content that is present in Libman’s and Williams’ adaptation comes from several key changes in the conversion from novel to film, including the fact that Bernard and Lenina actually conceive their own child and escape the World State, presumably to live happily ever after. This aspect of the film, among others, produces a kind of hope within the work itself, which converts Huxley’s classical dystopia into a critical dystopia. A change as significant as that of the fate of Bernard and Lenina, moreover, in addition to a variety of other changes, significantly reframes the narrative so as to allow for the inclusion of new utopian content.

Libman’s and Williams’ adaptation of Huxley’s novel is a decidedly modernized production that portrays the World State as a society organized around a kind of fashionable decadence. Lenina Crowne (Rya Kihlstedt) is a schoolteacher in the World State who is romantically involved with Bernard Marx (Peter Gallagher), an emotional engineer that specializes in conditioning. The relationship between Lenina and Bernard is looked down upon, given that promiscuity is encouraged by the World State, so they remain just promiscuous enough to keep the reproach of others at bay. Meanwhile, emotional engineering has been failing, as workers in the lower strata of the World State are resisting their conditioning and acting out. Maintaining the frame of the source, Lenina and Bernard head to the savage reservation, and, when their helicopter crashes there, they are rescued from hostile locals by John Cooper (Tim Guinee), who takes them to his mother’s house, a mobile home on the reservation. After learning that John is the son of a man from the World State, and that he has been raised on the savage reservation by a woman—his natural mother—from the World State, Bernard decides to bring John and his mother, Linda (Sally Kirkland), back with him because of “the research possibilities.” John’s presence in the World State is met with some resistance, but the World Controller, Mustapha Mond (Leonard Nimoy), approves the experiment nonetheless. When the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (Miguel Ferrer) realizes that he is the father of John, however, he destroys the evidence and reconditions a disgruntled Delta (through a reconditioning process reminiscent of what we see in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange) to “Kill Bernard Marx.” The plan fails when the Delta cannot bring himself to carry out the task, and the Director is revealed as John’s father anyway, when Bernard is able to recover the evidence that was thought to have been destroyed. All the while, since the arrival of John in the World State, he has become a celebrity, along with Bernard, for having been responsible for bringing him back from the reservation. During this time, John and Lenina develop feelings for one another, but John has reservations about acting on them because his Shakespeare-derived morals cause him to question the promiscuity of the World State. As in the novel, he is driven to incite a riot amongst workers receiving a soma ration outside the hospital where his mother has just died from a soma overdose, and he is brought before Mustapha Mond to explain himself. Unsatisfied with the exchange he has with Mond, John ventures off on his own to be alone, but is soon discovered by the media, who unintentionally force him off a cliff, where he falls to his death. Bernard, who has taken over as D.H.C., is then presented with the information that Lenina has become pregnant with his child, and he is faced with the choice of either reporting the pregnancy or escaping the World State. He chooses the latter. The film ends with the couple and their child together on a beach, just as Mond, laughing, realizes what has happened.

Although Libman’s and Williams’ adaptation reactivates Huxley’s novel in some ways, the significance of the ending having been changed from that of its source takes the adaptation a step further, completely reframing the source. Nevertheless, some aspects of the adaptation demonstrate a reactivation—within the cultural and/or historical context of its production—of the source. First, in Huxley’s novel, the savage becomes something of a celebrity in the World State: “All uppercaste London was wild to see this delicious creature” (153), but in Libman’s and Williams’ film, the savage becomes not only a celebrity, but a media sensation, demonstrating a direct critique of contemporary culture’s obsession with fame. A newscast early in the film, shortly after John arrives in the World State, reports that “there’s something new in town, and he’s savagely attractive.” The newscasts continue throughout the film, establishing the impact John has on the World State as the narrative develops. John’s level of celebrity, however, begins to weigh on him, and this is compounded by his struggle to adjust to the World State and what he sees as its immorality, as well as his mother’s death. After he is pardoned for inciting the riot during soma distribution outside the hospital where his mother has died, he is reported by the news as saying, “I want to be alone” before wandering to the countryside and camping out atop an “abandoned microwave tower.” After he is discovered by the media—who appear as paparazzi might in the viewer’s empirical world—and overwhelmed by the numbers that assemble, he attempts to escape the tower and the media, but they are upon him as soon as he reaches the ground, and his attempt to run away from them is foiled when he comes to the edge of a cliff, is left with no escape, and falls to his death. The role the media plays in John’s death is not unlike the real-life story of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, which took place not even one year before the film’s appearance on television in April 1998. Although the official reports regarding Diana’s death were that her driver, Henri Paul, had been driving drunk, the car was being pursued by paparazzi, which may have been partly responsible for Paul’s loss of control of the car as he attempted to lose the pursuers. In this way, Diana’s fame may have contributed to her death, just as John Cooper’s fame contributes to his death in Libman’s and Williams’ Brave New World. Given this (admittedly quasi-) parallel, the film seems to reactivate the novel’s indictment of media sensationalism within the historical context of its production.

In the novel, as in Libman’s and Williams’ film, Bernard Marx also becomes a celebrity. In bringing John back to the World State from the Savage Reservation, Huxley’s Marx suddenly finds himself no longer an outcast, instead becoming just the kind of social butterfly he abhors as the narrative begins. Because “it was only through Bernard, his accredited guardian, that John could be seen, Bernard now found himself, for the first time in his life, treated not normally, but as a person of outstanding importance” (Huxley, Brave New World 156). This importance earns him the favor of much of the upper-caste people of the World State, as well as the affection of women, who, prior to his guardianship of the savage, would have thought him “ugly,” “small,” and even “stunted” (46). After returning to the World State with John, however, it is said that “[a]s for the women, Bernard had only to hint at the possibility of an invitation, and he could have whichever of them he liked” (156). Nevertheless, Bernard’s newfound popularity earns him the disapproval of the one person who had been his friend previously, Helmholtz Watson, but it is no matter because he is so happy that he tells himself “never would he speak to Helmholtz again” (157). In this way, Bernard relinquishes his resistant protagonist status, being re-subjugated by the system and replaced as a resistant protagonist entirely at this point by John and, to a lesser extent, Helmholtz. This might serve as further evidence of the novel’s classification as a classical dystopia, since Bernard is the initial resistor as the narrative gets underway.

Peter Gallagher’s Bernard Marx in Libman’s and Williams’ Brave New World comes off as an innocent, scholarly-type character, and he brings John back from the reservation solely because he wants to study him as a genetic World State subject untainted by conditioning, not because he figures out early on that the D.H.C. is John’s biological father. Furthermore, Bernard does not himself become that much of a celebrity. Instead, only his career seems to be affected positively; as the D.H.C. says, “You’re moving up in the world, Marx. Congratulations.” Bernard also becomes friendly with Mustapha Mond as a result of his research and from having brought John back to the World State. He also seeks out John’s father, revealing that it is the D.H.C. only after an attempt on his life orchestrated by the D.H.C. As a result of all this, Bernard is positioned to take over as the new D.H.C., suggesting his possible complicity in the World State system. When Lenina comes to Bernard to tell him that she is pregnant with his child, however, he is faced with the decision of whether to attempt to explain the pregnancy away publicly, risking death or worse, or banishing Lenina from the World State, choosing the latter. Initially, this decision positions Bernard as an insensitive character, who chooses status and career over family; in effect, he is re-subjugated by the system, albeit in a different way than in the novel. However, in the end, Bernard is revealed as having joined Lenina in exile with his child after all.

Speaking of Lenina, the changes made to her specific narrative in Libman’s and Williams’ film also exemplify a reframing of the source. Huxley’s Lenina starts out as a fairly typical World State subject, except that she has a mild scandal surrounding her near-monogamy with Henry Foster. She intends to subvert the scandal by becoming involved with Bernard Marx, and so the couple travel to the savage reservation together. Lenina is appalled by the sights and sounds she encounters there, until she lays eyes on John. Lenina’s monogamy with Foster seems to signify her own resistance to the system, which comes in the form of her ability to, for all intents and purposes, fall in love, which is forbidden in the World State. Her capacity for love then centers itself on John, who rebukes her because of his morals, to the extent that she begins to represent for him his own moral weakness because he is sexually attracted to her, but the World State’s conditioning has made her too willing for his renaissance-based ideas about love. Once alone at the lighthouse, John attempts to find solace, but can only think of his own desire—specifically for Lenina—so he punishes himself for these thoughts via self-flagellation. Lenina then arrives at the lighthouse herself; she cannot keep away, so intense is her love. This further demonstrates her resistance to the system. John, however, sees her and flies into a rage, beating her with the whip he had used to whip himself, ultimately killing her. In this way, no hope exists for Lenina in Huxley’s text.

As an “ex-centric” subject, Libman’s and Williams’ Lenina comes to a different end, one that includes escape from the World State. Instead of Foster, the film presents Lenina’s near-monogamous relationship as being with Bernard. As a result, John assumes they are married. Lenina does become interested in John, but it reads more like infatuation than love, and he rejects her one advance. This prompts Lenina to reach for her soma and forget the unhappiness, but she stops short, allowing herself to feel the emotion, which shows some resistance on her part. Next, she sits with John at the hospital as his mother dies, and afterward, John prompts some intimacy himself, and the viewer is led to believe that she reciprocates. At this point, she comes to accept that she may be in love with him, and that it is harming her relationship with Bernard, which may well have been love also. Lenina again turns to soma to dull the pain she is experiencing, and, during this “soma holiday,” John escapes to the abandoned microwave tower. When Lenina sees John on television later, she goes to try and see him, but he dies, and she leaves with Bernard, whom she sees there, and they have sex that night, professing their love for one another. Bernard next becomes the new D.H.C., appointed by Mustapha Mond himself, and Lenina is shown teaching her class, but she goes off script, inspired by her internal struggle with the system, of which she is a subject. Next, she visits Bernard to report her pregnancy and is sent into exile. Lenina, then, resists the system herself in the film, but to a much greater extent than she does in the novel.

Another manifestation of hope in Libman’s and Williams’ film that contributes to its abandonment of the source’s narrative frame is the character Gabriel (Jacob Chase), who appears to question the ideology of the World State on a couple of different occasions throughout the film. Gabriel is one of Lenina’s students, and he is established, early in the film, as a kind of resistant subject himself. The character’s likely analogue in Huxley’s text is the little boy in the garden, who “seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play” (32). The child’s reluctance to participate in the “sexual game” (31) may exemplify his resistance to the World State system, but he is merely taken “in to see the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology. Just to see if anything is at all abnormal” (32). With that, the child disappears, never to be seen in the novel again, and the reader can assume that he will be reconditioned until he has what the World State would see as a healthy appetite for the sexual games.

The reader, meanwhile, might well respond with abhorrence at the suggestion that children be encouraged to participate in such games, and any hope that the little boy’s resistance will make an impact falls by the wayside when he is taken away. The film’s character Gabriel is first encountered early in the film, as Lenina explains how the World State society came into existence (the film’s analogue to the D.H.C.’s tour at the beginning of Huxley’s novel). Gabriel, stone-faced, explains, as taught via conditioning, “today we have no crime, no disease, no war, no aging, no suffering. Each of us is genetically designed to fit perfectly into our place in society. So everyone is happy.” In the next scene, Gabriel is shown in bed, seemingly uncomfortable as he sleeps and the “hypnopædia” voice drones on. It is as if he is resistant, in this moment, to hypnopædia itself, and Lenina responds by drugging him with soma. When the viewer next sees Gabriel, John is visiting his school to recite Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for the students. Most of the class thinks the play is irrelevant and outdated, but Gabriel seems intrigued, looking ashamed of his classmates for their inability to appreciate the play. Although Gabriel’s resistance is mostly only manifested up to now by facial expressions, it is clear he is a resistant character himself—he seems to want to reject the system of which he is a subject in spite of his indoctrination. When Gabriel is next shown, it is in Lenina’s class, watching intently as she abandons The World Concensus Textbook, saying, “heroes change things. We’re not supposed to want anything to change. Heroes mean that one person can make a difference.” While another student chides Lenina for going outside the textbook, Gabriel watches, seemingly hopeful that she will stand behind what she has said, but, when she backs down, he shows disappointment and despair. In spite of his seeming loss of hope, Gabriel remains a manifestation of hope within the narrative that leaves the viewer with hope, even more evidence that Huxley’s novel has been transformed into a critical dystopia from its original classically dystopian frame. As the film comes to a close, Gabriel is once again shown in bed, but this time, he does not let the hypnopædia voices disturb him; instead, he reaches beneath his pillow, retrieving cotton swabs, which he places in his ears to block out the voices. This moment is so important to the film’s reinvigoration as a critical dystopia that it is the last scene before the credits roll, and the importance that is placed on this moment solidifies the reframing of the source, as it leaves hope within the narrative itself. This in turn provides the viewer with the hope that even if such a future did come to pass, we would still be able to overcome it. That is, we would be able to “escape [such a] pessimistic future.”

In their adaptation of Brave New World, then, Libman and Williams convert the classical dystopia of the novel into a critical dystopia, as hope is present within the proverbial “pages” of the narrative. This hope comes in several forms throughout the film, but not without still critiquing some aspects of its cultural/historical context. This conversion of the source to a critical dystopia might be indicative of what could be called the utopian function of framing within adaptation studies. Contributing to the source’s utopian content by injecting new manifestations of such content into the source equals another utopian function of adaptation, and Libman and Williams achieve this end through their adaptation of Huxley’s novel.

In spite of the deviations from the source text, both of the adaptations discussed here show different utopian functions of adaptation. Brinckerhoff’s 1980 adaptation—though it is by no means a fidelity critic’s darling—stays fairly close to its source and demonstrates what might be termed adaptation’s utopian function of dissemination. While this adaptation does not exact any new critique or present much in the way of utopian content not already contained in the source, the approach to the adaptation is characterized more by fidelity than anything else, and this results in a dissemination of the utopian content of the source to a potentially wider audience, while keeping that content culturally alive. Libman and Williams, meanwhile, introduce new utopian content into Huxley’s narrative, and this is a manifestation not only of the utopian function of framing, but also of the utopian impulse in general. This shows how cultural production can be an outlet for filmmakers to exercise the utopian imagination. Brave New World provided Libman and Williams with such an outlet, and they introduced utopian content by reframing the narrative. The conversion of a classical dystopia into a critical dystopia, moreover, might more generally demonstrate the need for hope under late capitalism, and this is yet another utopian aspect of the adaptation. In any case, these Brave New World adaptations call attention to Huxley’s text, which, in our own brave new world, keeps hope alive.

Works Cited