In the short story, Harrison Bergeron, the author, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. depicts an extreme egalitarian future for society based on the mistakes we are making today.
In the story, the parents of Harrison, George & Hazel, spend the entire time watching and discussing what they see on television. Anytime a possibly intelligent thought begins to pop into George's head, he is quickly confused by a noisy disturbance produced by a mental handicap in his ear that the United States Handicapper General forces people of above average intelligence to wear. .
While Vonnegut's idea of the future may seem a little unusual, think about how often many of us have been distracted from a conversation or doing homework because some image or sound comes on the TV that grabs our attention and we either forget what we were talking about or what we were doing.
The movie of Harrison Bergeron elaborates even more on the way too many people rely on media for information without ever questioning whether what we are viewing is accurate information.
In the movie we see that the National Administration Centre is deciding what people can and cannot watch so that they can control society in order to avoid anyone from getting any ideas that could destroy mankind or overtake government.
This is not such a far-fetched scenario. In fact, it's a common theme in many movies. I just recently watched the movie Wag the Dog, where a Hollywood film producer is able to work with the government in order to lead people to believe that a war had erupted between the US and a foreign country just to cover-up the president's infidelity and get him re-elected. All of this of course is relayed to people through television.
Sounds similar to the way President Bush was suspiciously put into power even though a whole state believed the election was fixed, then the Twin Towers got bombed and Bush became everyone's favourite president for encouraging a war.
