Leisure Studies 19 (2000) 77–90
Anti-leisure in dystopian Žction:
the literature of leisure in the worst of
all possible worlds
G. WESLEY BURNETT and LUCY ROLLIN
Calhoun Honors College and Department of English, Clemson University, Clemson, SC,
29634, USA; E-mail: [email protected]
Literary utopias, i.e. designs for the theoretically perfect society, have been common
in Western literature since Plato’s The Republic. A variation on this genre which
emerged in the nineteenth century is the anti-utopia, or dystopia, in which an author
depicts the worst of all possible societies. Dystopias usually exaggerate contemporary
social trends and in doing so, offer serious social criticism. This essay examines the
treatment of leisure in four widely-read dystopian novels. The leisure described in
these novels we call anti-leisure. It is not leisure’s opposite, work, but leisure
perverted to achieve the perpetuation of tyranny. Such leisure regulates identity,
prevents individual thought, impedes self-sufŽciency, encourages immoderation, and
distracts citizens from social injustice through various compulsory activities. Such
novels encourage the re-examination of theories of leisure from a humanistic
standpoint.
Introduction
Leisure may be viewed, functionally, as activity conducted at distinct times of
reviviŽcation, or, classically, as a deliberative or contemplative state more or
less independent of time or activity (Sonmez et al., 1993). This latter,
humanistic view, is elaborated in Plato’s The Republic where he deŽnes his
version of a politically perfect state. Ruled by altruistic philosopher-kings
schooled in and predisposed to the contemplative life, society is freed of the
greed that had led Athens to destruction. Plato insists that material things are
poor duplicates of things in the world of ideas; consequently, his utopian
republic did not, and never would, exist anywhere in the material world.
Plato’s republic is the Žrst of a long series of utopian constructs that includes
such masterpieces as Augustine’s The City of God and Machiavelli’s The
Prince, Thomas More’s Utopia which gave the genre its name, Bellamy’s
Looking Backward, and many lesser works (for example, Roemer, 1981,
pp. 231–282; Haschak, 1994).
But the genre of utopian Žction has also, perhaps inevitably, produced its
opposite: the anti-utopia, or as it is often called today, the dystopia. This
recent term was coined for its overtones of disease and malfunction, making
it an accurate label for the genre’s depictions of human foibles, weaknesses,
and messiness that defeats attempts to create a perfect society. Kumar (1987)
Leisure Studies
ISSN 0261-4367 print/ISSN 1466-4496 online © 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd
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G. W. Burnett and L. Rollin
explains that ‘Utopia is the original, anti-utopia the copy’, and that they
spring from the same disaffection with society. Whereas utopias celebrate the
human possibility for perfection, the anti-utopia – or dystopia as we call it
here – ‘takes a certain melancholy pleasure in the recital of failed and aborted
reforms and revolution’ (Kumar, 1987, p. 10). Those who write dystopias,
Kumar says, long for utopia and cannot Žnd it, so they vent their frustration
by imagining perfect societies gone wrong. In English, Swift’s Gulliver’s
Travels (1726) and Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) are the most notable
examples of this type of Žction from the eighteenth and nineteenth century,
while Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Orwell’s 1984 (1949) are the
most famous twentieth century dystopian novels. As these books develop
their images of the worst of all possible worlds, they offer pungent critiques
of their own societies, one of their targets being the uses of leisure.
In this essay we examine the portrait of leisure in four dystopian novels. In
utopian Žction, leisure often appears inferior to practical industry, whereas in
the dystopia, leisure is fundamental to culture. But in the dystopia it takes a
peculiar form which we call anti-leisure, a phenomenon not fully realized or
described by leisure’s philosophers but which we have described in an earlier
essay (Burnett and Rollin, 1997). The leisure of these particular dystopias
offers an exceptionally fertile area for speculation among students of leisure
and leisure philosophy because it not only comments on the history of the
early and mid-twentieth century but also outlines with startling clarity several
major concerns of our own decade.
Anti-leisure, the concept
Anti-leisure is neither anti-social leisure nor leisure’s supposed opposite:
work, labour, or occupation. It is something else, something closely akin to
our own acceptable leisure but perverted to suit dystopian ends. The elitist
political philosophers (Curtis, 1981), such as Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano
Mosca, and Roberto Michels, argue that all political systems, anarchy to
monarchy and including democracy, are in fact operated by a minority, a
governing elite, surrounded by a privileged non-governing elite. The governing elite are so universal that they must answer a real social need, possess
some real or apparent attributes esteemed and inuential in society and have
preponderant importance in determining the level of civilization, including
presumably the leisure, in society. Consequently, the commoners, interested
only in bettering or at least maintaining material conditions, are both
dependent on and remarkably tolerant of the elite.
The elitist political philosophers are, however, fully aware that the
governing elite, no matter how rigid the class appears, are not a Žxed, closed
social class. All elite classes, no matter how hard they try to resist change,
have some means of admitting new members and excluding the old and
obsolete. The political scientist’s intellectual task is, therefore, to document
how the governing elite evolve.
All the Žctional dystopias are governed, predictably, by an elite. But, unlike
real ruling classes, there is little to indicate that any of the dystopian elite are
Anti-leisure in dystopian Žction
79
subject to change; they have achieved stability through the rigid control of
society that technology – spying, genetic control, televisions that broadcast
both directions – permits (Beauchamp, 1986). Of course, when technology
fails to control the thought and behaviour to the extent necessary to maintain
the elite’s sense of security more direct techniques are available. Short of
employing the ultimate, however, dystopias use leisure as a means of retaining
the power of the elite by regulating identity, suppressing individual thought,
manipulating self-sufŽciency and moderation, providing distraction and
requiring non-voluntary and often vicious forms of leisure. Regulating leisure
is by no means the only mechanism for achieving these ends but it is certainly
signiŽcant. It is this characteristic, the use of leisure to achieve and maintain
the power of the elite, that distinguishes leisure from anti-leisure. Disquiet
with the parallels between anti-leisure in dystopias and certain aspects of
leisure in contemporary society is, consequently, predictable since critical
readers are certain that at least some of contemporary leisure, even some of
the most socially acceptable and subjectively most valued leisure, is intended
to accomplish the very same thing that anti-leisure achieves in dystopian
society: the establishment and perpetuation of tyranny. The difference
between anti-leisure and classical or humanistic leisure is its humanistic
purpose. Even among neo-Platonic philosophers who understand leisure to be
essentially social, the emphasis is still on the individual ‘becoming’ while
existential philosophers place the emphasis almost exclusively on the
individual’s self-actualization. Anti-leisure is, on the other hand, hostile to
both the individual and any suggestion of self-actualization.
The sources and themes
Drawing from standard texts available in the Želd of leisure studies (Dare et
al., 1987; Godale and Godbey, 1988; Ibrahim, 1991; Kando, 1980; Kraus,
1984; Murphy et al., 1991), we have identiŽed four fairly consistent,
interrelated themes which help to deŽne the qualities of anti-leisure. These are
(1) the use of leisure to manipulate identity;(2) the use of leisure to control
individual thought;(3) the use of leisure to impede self-sufŽciency and
moderation; and (4) the use of compulsory leisure activities to distract
attention from the injustices the society perpetrates. In the remainder of this
paper we discuss how four famous dystopias treat these themes.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s 1984 (1949),
Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1952), and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Žrst appealed to an elite, academic audience because of
their literary skill, but have become popular novels revered for their dark yet
compelling themes played out through the lives of ordinary people. Kumar, in
his discussion of such works, comments on their power:
The formal anti-utopia . . . makes its objections not in generalized reections
about human nature but by taking us on a journey through hell, in all its vivid
particulars. It makes us live utopia, as an experience so painful and nightmarish
that we lose all desire for it. (Kumar, 1987, p. 103)
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Their vividness and accessibility along with their apocryphal themes have
made these four books required reading in many school and college curricula;
some of their languages and images, such as Huxley’s soma and Orwell’s Big
Brother, have entered popular vernacular. In the case of Huxley and Orwell
especially, these works have overshadowed all of the other writing by these
authors.
1984 portrays a totalitarian state similar to Nazi Germany and the USSR in
their combination of repressive laws and managerial technology (Elkins,
1982). It represents what Neil Postman (1993) calls a technopoly. Orwell
relentlessly portrays the individual as helpless before monumental tyranny;
his novel offers little hope outside of some survival of emotion. Orwell’s
dystopia is set in post-World War II England. Huxley’s Brave New World,
inspired by pre-World War II England, is more concerned with consumerism
and mass production. His dystopia is seductively benign, awash in drugs and
sex, valuing stability above all else and sacriŽcing the suffering associated
with creativity for the happiness that accompanies the mindless pursuit of
mediocrity (Matter, 1986). The Handmaid’s Tale (Deer, 1992; Ketterer, 1989)
concerns a society governed by a Puritan monotheocracy (p. 380) which has
evolved because of reproductive problems and environmental collapse.
Atwood, writing in 1980s Canada, seems to warn that something like Iran’s
fundamentalist revolution could happen in the West. But in this book, as in
her other well-known poetry and novels, her political views are secondary to
her sympathy for women. Her dystopia is unusual because it is seen through
the eyes of a woman. Vonnegut’s Player Piano is resolutely male. In his
nightmare vision, the tyrant is technology (Segal, 1986; Burnett and Rollin,
1997), the ruling classes divided into engineers and managers, while everyone
else is relegated to drab lives of consumerism and welfare. Vonnegut drew on
his own experience in public relations for General Electric in the late 1940s
and his dystopia has a particularly American viewpoint with its backslapping
salesmen and corporate games.
These novels, like all great works of literature, are larger and more complex
than discussion of them can be. Characters such as John the Savage in Brave
New World, Winston in 1984, Paul Proteus and the drunk Finnerty in Player
Piano, and the Handmaid Offred, continue to resonate in the imagination
long after we read the novels. Through them, we feel what the authors want
us to feel: the shabbiness of life after the ‘dreadful perfection of some modern
system or idea’ (Kumar, 1987, p. 125). In them, the authors have transcended
the boundaries of their politics and created art. In this essay, however, we
keep the focus on the societies in which these characters live–more particularly, on the similarities among those societies in the four novels. The
differences among the authors, their politics and styles, are secondary to our
purpose of examining leisure in these Žctional settings.
Anti-leisure and identity
Leisure is often cited as a means of enhancing identity, indeed as a therapy for
the anonymity, alienation and indifference often imposed by modern life.
Anti-leisure in dystopian Žction
81
Through leisure, disillusioned teachers, lathe operators and accountants reject
their assigned social roles based on their vocations as they come to think of
themselves as bowlers, golfers, or campers, enjoying the company of other
bowlers, golfers or campers. Such an alternative identity, e.g., being a
successful bowler rather than a failed accountant, contributes to a strong
sense of self. People who know themselves are anomalies in a dystopia where
a strong self-identity is a threat to ‘big brother,’ or his equivalent, who always
knows best and who must consequently know who we are without our
knowing. If leisure contributes to self-identity, it follows that anti-leisure
contributes to our self-confusion.
Huxley’s dystopia regulates most aspects of identity by breeding ‘standard
men and women; in uniform batch’, ‘a prodigious improvement . . . on
nature’ (p. 5), ‘the principle of mass production at last applied to biology’
(p. 6). The process includes being ‘predestined in detail’ (p. 9). What genetics
does not do, intense conditioning, or ‘sleep-teach’ (p. 185), does. Conditioning assumes that the secret of happiness and virtue is liking what must be
done and aims at ‘making people like their unescapable social destiny’ (p. 15).
Castes dress uniformly, and the caste system clearly establishes identity. One
child reects that castes above her are better because they do not have to
work as hard as lower castes that are stupid and not to be played with
(p. 27).
More orthodox identity control is the recreational use of drugs to induce
artiŽcial emotional states. In Brave New World, soma induces euphoria as a
means of avoiding confrontation with reality and the genuine emotions
provoked by these confrontations. It provides a holiday, almost a form of
tourism (p. 77), a ‘bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity’ (p. 156).
Still, it must be regulated since ‘you can’t allow people to go popping off into
eternity if they’ve serious work to do’ (p. 157).
While Atwood’s Commanders in the Handmaid’s world are marked as elite
by their access to a nightclub providing forbidden pleasures (pp. 299–312),
Atwood takes a unique approach in using leisure to control identity among
her Handmaids: she simply eliminates it. With viable reproductive systems,
the Handmaids are socially prescribed reproductive vessels in the established
marriages of the elite. As such, they live completely anonymous lives where all
communication is reduced to trite formalities. Offred, the protagonist, reects
that ‘we aren’t supposed to form friendships, loyalties among one another’
(p. 363) and that ‘temptation was anything much more than eating and
sleeping’ (p. 252). When Offred becomes her Commander’s mistress, a
forbidden relationship even if it entails little more than a game of Scrabble
and a goodnight kiss, she reects: ‘But even so, and stupidly enough, I’m
happier than I was before. It’s something to do for one thing. Something to Žll
the time . . .’ (p. 210).
The ideal elite Party member in 1984 is competent, industrious and
narrowly intelligent but also ‘a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose
prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph’ (p. 158).
Orwell achieves this by imposing on them, as Atwood does on her
Handmaids, a grotesque isolation. Party members cannot shop in ordinary
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shops (p. 9), and they have no friends, only comrades (p. 43). The Partyimposed sexual Puritanism removes all pleasure from sex and assures that
men and women do not form loyalties the Party cannot control. There is a
constant fear of being discovered in some unorthodox thought or action.
Orwell systematically enlists children in this enterprise (pp. 23–24). They
come to adore the Party through its ‘songs, the processions, the banners, the
hiking . . . it was all a sort of glorious game . . .’; however, as spies, they were
‘systematically turned into ungovernable little savages’ (p. 24). Orwell’s Party
members are distinguished from the working masses who are exempt from
the rigid sexual mores and who are fully occupied with, among other things,
Žlms, football, beer, and gambling (p. 61–62).
Player Piano, however, gives the most detailed analysis of the use of antileisure to control identity. Witlessness arises, much as it does in Brave New
World, from lack of meaningful work and its replacement with mindless
entertainment. The Shah, a visiting foreign dignitary is assured by his guide,
Halyard, that ‘. . . any man who cannot support himself by doing a job better
than a machine is employed by the government, either in the Army or
Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps’ (p. 16). A barber reects (pp. 178–
179) that ‘dumb people’ used to distinguish themselves by doing dangerous
jobs but they are now swept aside with no hope except what disaster or war
might offer. Being overseas and at war was ‘more grown up than marching up
and down with a wooden rie, even if rank was determined by an IQ that
everyone knew, most of all the machines’ (p. 58). Lasher, a defrocked
minister, observes that since people have been engineered out of the economy,
what is left of their lives is ‘just about zero’ (p. 78.) The Shah remains
convinced that the people are ‘Takaru’, slaves.
Set apart by their IQs, subsequent education, and ability to work among
the machines where a living thing is a curiosity (p. 12), Vonnegut’s engineers
are a privileged class. Leisure for the elite centers on ‘the club’ where they
gather regularly with others whose ‘college experience has instilled in them a
sense of rightness about the hierarchy topped by managers and engineers . . .
and there were no bones about it’ (p. 5). Finnerty, a super-achiever whose
unorthodox life is a ‘studied and elaborate insult to the managers and
engineers . . . and their immaculate wives’ (p.29), describes the club set as
‘stupid, arrogant, self-congratulatory, humourless men . . . the dull wives
feeding on the power and glory of their husbands’ (p. 75).
The Meadows, a camp for rising stars among the engineers and managers,
is a quasi-mandatory recreational experience clearly intended to solidify the
elite’s self-identity. Paul, the protagonist, describes it cynically:
Honor! . . . For fourteen days . . . I . . . captain of the Blue Team, am going to have
to lead my men in group softball, golf-ball driving, badminton, trapshooting,
capture the ag, Indian wrestling, touch football, shufe board, and trying to
throw the other captain into the lake . . . For two weeks you drink and sweat,
drink and sweat, drink and sweat, until you feel like a sump pump. (pp. 119–120)
All this is backed with endless, banal cheers which must be memorized
(pp. 120–121); however, honour and prestige are conveyed by merely being
Anti-leisure in dystopian Žction
83
asked to participate. The participants are urged by the loud speaker to get to
know each other in an environment where every minute is planned and
behind schedule, a deliberate ruse to assure that acquaintances remain
superŽcial (pp. 171, 190). The center piece of the Meadows is a play
(pp. 183–194), a shallow allegory about the importance of engineering,
which portrays the common man as beneŽting as a consumer from
engineering. A senior engineer comments on this amateurish propaganda
enthusiastically:
I mean, Christ, boy, that was a show. You know, it’s entertainment, and still you
learn something, too. Christ! When you do both, that’s art, boy. Christ, and that
wasn’t cheap to put on . . . (p. 194)
Anti-leisure and individual thought
It is in the quiet moments of repose where experience is internalized, analysed
and reected on and where self, its full humanity, is discovered. Thought is
vital to life, and central to leisure, so much so that classical or humanistic
leisure, while not denying activity, equates leisure with contemplation or
meditation. But, dramatically individualistic, independent thought is a threat
to ‘Big Brother’. Thought control is consequently a characteristic of dystopia,
and since thought and leisure are so intimately associated, leisure is used to
control thought. If leisure in utopia is a tool for stimulating thought, antileisure in dystopia is a tool for thwarting thought.
Party members in 1984, like Atwood’s Handmaids, who are also not
allowed to read, are not allowed to write at least in private. Winston is not
certain of the penalty for keeping a diary, a singular act of contemplation and
introspection but he is sure there is one and that it is severe (p. 9). The act
must be hidden from the telescreen with its uncanny ability to transmit in
both directions. The Party freely rewrites history and characters openly hold
that, ‘We make the laws of nature’. Minds are controlled by long work hours,
generally in excess of 60 hours a week. The mind is besieged with endless
propaganda, Two Minute Hates, Hate Week, and ‘the lies that streamed out
of the telescreens’ (p. 63). Characters thoughtlessly shift their hate ‘this way
and that by voluntary act’ (p. 16), and direct it against purity, goodness and
virtue. Everyone becomes corrupt to the bone (p. 104). Similarly, in Player
Piano, machines free people to have fun watching propagandist television. A
typical program (p. 225) centres on the low IQ of a father and son with the
message that high IQ is a source of great unhappiness. Little wonder so many
feel worthless.
The control of literature, since it demands reection, is a constant theme in
these four novels. In Player Piano (pp. 210–11), book production responds to
market demand and thus culture is kept cheap, a book being cheaper than
seven packs of gum; in fact, books are cheaper than rock wool for insulating
houses. Of course, books critical of technology are not produced. In 1984,
more than history is mass produced and regularly revised. A mild, ineffectual,
dreamy poet applies his talent for juggling rhymes and meters to producing
‘garbled versions . . . of poems which had become ideologically offensive’
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(p. 38), the new deŽnitive texts of standard anthologies. Others deal with
proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally and even
pornography (p. 39). Julia, the heroine, is an acknowledged expert in the
production of novels, ‘from the general directive issued by the Planning
Committee down to the Žnal touching-up by the Rewrite Squad’ (p. 108).
Atwood takes care of the problem presented by creative literature directly:
by forbidding it. In this monotheocracy even the Bible (potentially seditious)
is kept under lock and key; it may be read by the Commander to his
household, but individual householders may not read it (p. 112). An exciting
feature of Offred’s evening trysts with the Commander is his collection of
forbidden magazines and a few novels, which she reads voraciously, and
sometimes they read together as if they were an old married couple (p. 199,
238). His collection is not his by right of his status but through his subterfuge
and cunning and is as dangerous to him as it would be to Offred.
Books, except for technical manuals, are equally forbidden in Huxley’s
world. History is not taught (p. 34) and there is a campaign against the past
that includes closing museums and blowing up historical monuments (p. 51).
Westminster Abbey has become a cabaret (p. 76). Things are prohibited
simply because they are old and particularly if they are old and beautiful
(p. 225). New things are supposed to be liked, and anyway, old things cannot
be understood and they may be destabilizing. Tragedy is impossible without
instability so there is a trade-off between stability and ‘high art’ (p. 226).
Orwell clearly identiŽes the objective of controlling literature and language
– to ‘narrow the range of thought’. Eventually thought crime will become
impossible because ‘there will be no words with which to express it’ (p. 46).
This control seems to work. When Orwell’s proletariat becomes discontent,
their inaccessibility to general ideas limits their complaints to the speciŽc
(p. 62). Likewise, Offred is unable to explain her Commander’s wants in their
evening trysts because, ‘I still have no name for it’ (p. 288).
Anti-leisure, dependency and immoderation
Moderation is centre stage to humanistic leisure, the pursuit of the good life.
The life lived in moderation has the further advantage of being self-sufŽcient.
We are prepared to take responsibility for ourselves, to make our own
decisions. In dystopias, everything is done, or not done, in extremes. If leisure
demands that we be self-sufŽcient and moderate, anti-leisure demands our
dependency and immoderation.
Physical activity contributes to a sense of self-sufŽciency. A person who has
learned to swing a golf-club, for example, is prepared to accept conŽdently
other challenges. If physical activity teaches us self-sufŽciency, dystopian
characters are remarkably wanting. The only exercise Vonnegut’s Paul gets
is going up his ofŽce stairs (p. 62) and his wife, Anita, drives to the house
across the street and denies ‘all tenets of physical culture’ while remaining
inexplicably Žt and trim (p. 214). Similarly, Orwell’s Winston loathes exercise
(p. 33) and Huxley’s Lenina hates walking (p. 108).
In Player Piano, Paul is described as unable ‘to make his own decisions for
Anti-leisure in dystopian Žction
85
reasons anybody could understand’ (p. 257). He longs for self-sufŽciency
and, rejecting as immoral the idleness he could afford, believes ‘Somewhere,
outside of society, there was a place for a man . . . to live heartily and
blamelessly, naturally, by hands and wits’ (p. 126). He contemplates
becoming a grocer but realizes that he would have to put up with the same
nonsense and posturing, and besides the machines would never let him into
the business. He decides on farming and Žnds a farm where he can get ‘life
from nature without being disturbed by any human beings’ (p. 132). With her
love for things colonial, he anticipates Anita’s being enchanted by this
‘completely authentic microcosm’ (p. 132). His expectation is, of course,
completely wrong, and the entire attempt at farming, at Žnding a selfsufŽcient life of leisure, is only a brief comedy.
In Vonnegut’s world people are paid in labour-saving machines, wanted
or not, thus enforcing orderly consumer habits, replacing the old market
where industrial planning was frustrated by illogical, impulsive buying. The
Shah, visiting a typical home (pp. 138–46), cannot understand what it is
that the occupants are freed to do through their machines. He is assured that
the machines make them free to live, to have fun. But, we learn that the
housewife leaves broken machines broken so that she can do chores the old
way to pass the time. Machines seem to have more rights than humans. At
Paul’s club, when it becomes apparent that he will defeat the dysfunctional
checkers-playing machine, people object that it is unfair to play a sick
machine (p. 47 ff.). Finnerty, the heretic, objects that Paul has to worry about
his own wiring and that the machine can ‘damn well Žx his own connections
. . . those who live by electronics, die by electronics’.
Atwood’s Wives have dominion over the garden but Offred is so dependent
that she ‘hungers to commit the act of touch’ (p. 14), and she can’t make
decisions about cigarettes, alcohol and coffee because they are forbidden to
her. Offred’s society, believing that too much freedom to choose is fatal, offers
her ‘freedom from, rather than to’ (p. 33). But the night is hers so long as she
is quiet – to the point of not moving (p. 49). Her baths are a luxury though
required and scheduled (p. 81). She used to be able to use her body to make
things happen, but no more (p. 95). In her quest for independence, she longs
to steal something, anything, and Žnally sneaks about her Commander’s
house at night reecting ‘I like this. I am doing something on my own’
(p. 126). In rebellion against dependency Orwell’s Julia sees clearly that ‘The
clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same’ (p. 109). Offred
would likely agree.
In Brave New World, the voice of sleep-teach asserts that: ‘old men in the
bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time
reading, thinking – thinking!’ (p. 55). Lenina believes that to be free is ‘to
have a wonderful time’ (p. 91) but Helmholtz feels he could do something
‘more important . . . more intense, more violent’ (p. 70). He longs for action.
Likewise, Bernard is delighted by a view of the sea which makes him feel
more like himself, more his own person, ‘not completely a part of something
else’ (p. 90). Lenina is appalled by the same view and generally dislikes
Bernard’s mania for doing things in private, which means doing nothing at
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all, ‘For what was there one could do in private[?]’ (p. 88). As Bernard’s
conict with his supervisor mounts, he, like Atwood’s Offred, feels exhilaration: ‘. . . he stood alone, embattled against the order of things; elated by the
intoxicating consciousness of his individual signiŽcance and importance’
(pp. 98–9). Youths are not encouraged to ‘indulge in any solitary amusements’ (p. 166) and sleep-teaching provides ‘at least a quarter of a million
warnings against solitude’ (p. 185). Lenina believes time is for wasting and
argues ‘ “Talking? But what about?” Walking and talking – that seemed a
very odd way of spending an afternoon’ (p. 45).
Huxley’s dystopia is clearly immoderate: a world given over entirely to
drugs, free sex, conspicuous consumption and instant gratiŽcation. If ever
moderation were offended, it must be in Huxley’s vision of the future;
however, the depraved Puritanism of The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984 is
certainly as immoderate as Brave New World’s hedonism. The death of
Huxley’s Savage is simply an unfortunate curiosity, but the ability of the other
dystopias to turn executions into spectacle, a form of entertainment or
enforced leisure ritual, a focal point of contemplation and often activity,
renders them horribly immoderate. Atwood’s characters execute by tearing
the condemned to pieces in a public ceremony, an amalgamated worship
service-sporting event.
Anti-leisure, distraction and mandate
Leisure, to be leisure, must be entered into freely, as a matter of election or
choice. This does not imply that activities entered into freely do not carry
some measure of commitment and discipline. Some margin of adherence to
golf’s rules is what makes golf ‘golf’ rather than something else. However, for
golf to be leisure one must be free to elect to golf rather than not golŽng.
Likewise distraction, the mindless employment of mind or body simply to
pass the time, is not leisure. It follows that anti-leisure is both distractive and
non-voluntary.
Child’s play in Brave New World consists often of sexual exploration,
encouraged by the state; if a child doesn’t enjoy such play, he is shipped off to
a psychiatrist to see if anything is wrong with him. Children and adults also
play such games a Centrifugal Bumble-puppy, an elaborate game with a ball
and a steel tower. One character, watching this game, muses that games in the
past required little equipment and adds:
Imaging the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing
whatever to increase consumption . . . It’s madness. Nowadays the Controllers
won’t approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as
much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games. (p. 29)
Adult play consists of sex, of course, and such amusements as the ‘feelies’,
Obstacle Golf and enjoying ‘London’s Finest Scent and Colour Organ, all the
Latest Synthetic Music’ (p. 76). And there is always soma, to raise ‘quite an
impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds’ (p. 78), to
take them on mental trips for a night, a weekend, a week. Required
Anti-leisure in dystopian Žction
87
attendance at mass Community Sings ensures that their dedication to the
system remains enthusiastic; at these events, participants ritually toast their
‘annihilation’ with soma-laced drinks and experience orgiastic pleasures
(pp. 80–5).
In the world of 1984, children are mostly ‘horrible’ (p. 24). They play with
frightening intensity at being spies, and are completely dedicated to the Party:
‘It was almost normal for people to be frightened of their own children’. NonParty-member adults have few amusements besides drinking beer or gin and
playing chess in seedy bars – Winston’s ultimate destination at the end of the
book. Movies consist of Žlms of whatever war is going on at the moment.
Pornography is available to those who are not Party members but members
are strictly forbidden to read it. The telescreens are instruments of control
more than entertainment: during the compulsory morning exercise routines,
the leader can see into one’s room. As in the other dystopias, one compulsory
group activity dominates the social life: the Two-Minutes Hate, a daily
exercise in which Party members focus all their hatred on a Žgure known as
Goldstein. Only in sleep and in his clandestine meetings with Julia can
Winston Žnd any leisure but it is leisure full of fear.
In Player Piano, college football has turned into a business to be run like a
business and the ‘silly mess’ of letting students play the game is not allowed
(p. 235). For the elite, voluntary participation in the club and the Meadows
is a sham since failure to participate would be disastrous for any career.
However, for the masses leisure is largely a matter of vapid distractions. As if
mass produced books and propagandist television programmes are not
enough, we have the example of the recreational activities at a saloon where
the Player Piano holds forth. In fact, early in his career, Paul’s attempt to
automate such a saloon is atly rejected by customers in favour of a badly lit,
unsanitary, inefŽcient, dishonestly run Victorian bar (p. 23). In the saloon the
favourite game, exploited by talented sharks, is to bet on song titles
performed on the television with the volume turned off (p. 84).
What we see of the leisure of Serena Joy, Offred’s Commander’s wife, is
gardening and seemingly endless knitting. We don’t know what Serena Joy
thinks of these activities but we do know what Offred thinks. The gardens are
something for the wives to ‘order and maintain and care for’ (p. 16). The
knitting has purpose – to provide scarves for the men at the front. Offred
thinks these scarves never reach the front but are unravelled, turned back
into balls of yarn and knitted again into scarves. She thinks, ‘. . . it’s just
something to keep the Wives busy, to give them a sense of purpose’
(p. 17).
Three events of ritualized leisure are permitted the Handmaids: a gathering
with Wives and other Handmaids at the birth of a child, the Prayervaganza,
and the Salvaging. Offred clearly supposes the Prayervaganza, which involves
a group wedding, to be a form of entertainment, ‘like a show or circus’.
(p. 277) where the Handmaids can exchange news (p. 278) in a society where,
for them, any news ‘is better than none’ (p. 105). A Salvaging is thrust on the
Handmaids as a surprise, before they have a chance to get used to it (p. 350)
and the ceremony is begun with ‘the same platitudes, the same slogans, the
88
G. W. Burnett and L. Rollin
same phrases: the torch of the future, the cradle of the race, the task before
us’ (p. 353). The executions are by hanging or by the Handmaids dismembering the victim. Participation is compulsory.
Conclusion
Critics of dystopian novels risk becoming pundits. While, like utopias,
dystopias exist only in theory, they achieve their effects by exaggerating
modern society. However, that dystopian elements can be found in contemporary society does not imply that dystopias and anti-leisure are predestined.
Kumar (1987, p. 104) believes that anti-utopian literature as we know it
originated in the response to Bellamy’s Looking Backward becoming possible
only when social conditions – world war, the advance of technology,
increasing class distinctions–made utopian ideas seem fuzzy-headed. In our
four examples, dystopia has resulted from a calamity such as war, revolution
or environmental crisis. Dystopias are not evolutionary or inevitable.
None the less, readers of dystopian Žction are made uncomfortable, as the
authors intend, by the obvious parallels suggesting that what we are calling
anti-leisure is prospering in our own age, especially in the confusion over the
deŽnition of work. Places similar to Vonnegut’s Meadows are commonplace
in business and industry while an evening of mayhem on American television
makes Atwood’s Salvaging look tame. Another parallel is that white-collar
labour has become so blended with leisure that it is difŽcult to tell the
difference. The ‘virtual workplace’ may now be home, or – as in a recent
television advertisement – a swimming pool. Business gets done on a
cellphone or laptop while we shop in a department store, drive to the
supermarket, take the children to an amusement park, sit in an airport or
coffee house, or attend a concert or sports event. As Kumar puts it in
discussion of Vonnegut’s Player Piano, ‘The new technology may prove so
productive at to make the question of future work largely one of creative play
or leisure’ (p. 417). Whether this is progress or yet another idea become
tyrant, remains to be seen.
Social scientists generally profess to avoid making subjective judgments
about the ethical worth of social norms. Authors of dystopias are not so
constrained. For them, humanists to the hilt, there is no question that there
are moral imperatives and absolute values (Adler, 1985, pp. 108–27). They
are, in fact Žlled with the idealism of utopia. They believe passionately that
the world can be better. But when they look around them, they see a
nightmare. Kumar (1987, p. 110) describes them as divided, Saturn-like,
seeing the glorious possibilities in society and despairing at the uses to which
equality, science and reason have been sacriŽced. Functional leisure, that is
recreation in preparation for more work, is a characteristic research
assumption in much social science inquiry into leisure; it potentially embraces
and institutionalizes anti-leisure. But functional leisure assumes that leisure is
preparation for more work in a society ethically worth working in. Dystopian
novels show what might happen when the society itself has become
abhorrent. Art has it morality, Huxley said, and its rules are the same as those
Anti-leisure in dystopian Žction
89
of ‘ordinary ethics’ (vii). Novels like these dystopias, which offer vivid images
of individuals caught in abhorrent societies, link social science and art in an
examination of ethical issues which neither can fully address alone. The
concept of anti-leisure offers one way of looking at those issues.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge and thank the graduate students in Clemson
University’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management for
their often unwilling criticism of the concept of anti-leisure. Tracy Lee Davis
is particularly thanked for her help in organizing our thoughts.
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