Line #10 YMMV/Fahrenheit451


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
2	** Was Beatty right when he pointed to political correctness as the cause of the current anti-intellectual world? It's possible he could have been misinformed or he could be lying to Montag about it being a major reason why people abandoned books. We only have his word for it, and many of his actions through the book show him to be an [[UnreliableNarrator untrustworthy source]] on a largely unknown period of this world's history.
3	** Likewise, his reasons for being a Fireman. Bradbury writes that in the stage version, Beatty reveals that he has an entire apartment full of books and explains that the law bans ''reading'' them, not owning them. He says he used to be a voracious reader, but then one day they lost their meaning. In response, he decided to start burning them.
4	** Is Mildred just a lazy and immature woman? Or is she also aware of how bleak her society is, but she's too frightened to really change?
5	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The 1966 film is scored by no other than Music/BernardHerrmann, and it is one of his finest scores, ethereally beautiful and at times intensely moving. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgZwUznchu8 The first track]] sets the tone excellently.
6	* DeathOfTheAuthor: Everyone knows how ''Fahrenheit 451'' is about the dangers of government censorship... except Ray Bradbury. He vehemently denied this when the subject came up; according to him the story he wrote has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with the dangers of AntiIntellectualism. To be specific, he was actually writing about how the TV boom has resulted in more people watching TV over reading books, hence the book burning.
7	* EnsembleDarkHorse: Clarisse enjoyed a similar fate to Franchise/SherlockHolmes', as her popularity among readers and their interest in her ambiguous fate in the novel prompted Bradbury to follow the film's example and [[spoiler:reveal she's still alive]] at the end of the stage play (and the video game sequel).
8	* FriendlyFandoms: There's a lot of overlap between readers of this and readers of ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', due to both books being about [[{{Zeerust}} then-future]] {{dystopia}}s and elimination of free thought.
9	* HilariousInHindsight: Bradbury successfully predicted earbuds, as seen here:
10	-->"And in her ears the little seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind."
11	* MisaimedFandom:
12	** Some people have interpreted the novel as saying that television is garbage and is the reason why reading for entertainment is dead. Not only is this not what Bradbury was trying to say, one character directly stamps on the idea. Faber flat out says that the Parlor Families could easily have the same magic that books did, and that the magic of books wasn't unique to books, or even guaranteed to be found in them. He then says that what Montag is looking for is the infinite detail and awareness that were once in books and could, in theory, be found in everything from radio plays, to movies, to old friends. It doesn't help that Bradbury later claimed in a 2007 interview with the LA Times that the book is about "television destroy[ing] interest in reading literature" and has condemned radio, television, and the internet.
13	** Others believe the book is about government censorship. It's true that the government in the story is a big part of it with regulating firemen to burn books and outlawing any material that encourages free thinking and discourse. However, Bradbury himself said that this is not what the book is about in an interview of the LA Times in 2007. Moreover, the government is only one factor of the society Montag lives; it's the ''people themselves'' who willingly reject literature and anything that might make them uncomfortable.
14	* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: Bradbury green-lit (and helped write) a text-adventure "sequel" to the book of dubious canonical status. It was VERY unwieldy to play, as a lot of plot advancement involved having to type literary quotations verbatim...with a [[YouCantGetYeFlask mediocre parser system]]. It [[TheManyDeathsOfYou had a lot of pointless ways to die]] for something as simple as ''crossing the street'' during certain times of day and ended with Montag [[spoiler: and Clarisse]] as {{Doomed Moral Victor}}s if you managed to ''win.''
15	* SlidingScaleOfSocialSatisfaction:
16	** "Too Happy to Care" category. As fun as it is, mindless entertainment harms society. For it to thrive, it needs knowledge.
17	** "Knowledge is Forbidden" category. You can have this take if you think the CentralTheme of the book was censorship.
18	* SpecialEffectFailure: The "jetpacks" in the film are very shoddy. Apparently, they couldn't afford real helicopters.
19	* {{Squick}}: [[spoiler:The above mentioned “stomach pump” scene.]] This one is specifically ''called'' disgusting by the narrator.
20	* TearJerker:
21	** Montag's reaction when he realizes that [[spoiler:bombs have killed Mildred. He imagines her dying oblivious to the danger, only for the screens to shatter and reflect her face. Suddenly he remembers what he couldn't recall earlier: they first met in Chicago. Montag really did love her, at one time]].
22	** [[spoiler:Mildred sees her reflection just before she dies -- "and it was such a wildly empty face" -- and has only a split second to realize what a shell of a woman she is and that she'll never get a chance to redeem herself.]]
23	* ValuesResonance: This novel predicted [=iPods=], giant flatscreen [=TVs=], the decline of quality in public schools, prescription drug abuse, people abandoning old media for new, societal emphasis on convenient, mindless entertainment, shortening social attention spans, sensationalist television coverage of police chases, and everyone living in fear over war, but not really taking action. The Choose Your Own Adventure television shows are awfully similar to video games too and became even more uncanny after shows like ''Series/BlackMirror'' actually started experimenting with CYOA-style interactive episodes. Replace the telescreens with smartphones and you have the phenomenon known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phubbing phubbing]]. The fact that one reason why books fell out of favor was because of increasingly vitriolic distaste towards ValuesDissonance in older literature is also increasingly relevant, with political correctness and the limits of it having become a contentious issue over the past decades.
24	* VindicatedByHistory: Upon release, the 1966 film received mixed reviews and was generally regarded as a somewhat clunky attempt at translating Bradbury's story to a visual medium, not helped by the bizarre decision to cast Julie Christie as both Linda Montag and Clarisse. In the decades since, however, it's garnered a reputation as a good adaptation of the book and an underrated classic in Creator/FrancoisTruffaut's filmography, with even Bradbury going on to approve of the film (with the sole exception of the aforementioned ActingForTwo).

Context YMMV / Fahrenheit451