In Piercy’s He, She, and It there are references to the Y-S ideal, and of the Y-S dome having very patriarchal laws in place to govern their society. How does the Y-S idea of a perfect society compare to our ideal society? How are they different?
ENGL 360 | Future Perfect Human
Prof. Myra Seaman | Fall 2016
I think what distinguishes the Y-S society and what also makes it disturbing to readers is its apparent insistence on uniformity. Most severely, this emphasis on uniformity manifests itself through various forms of material depersonalization. For instance, readers are told that houses in the Y-S dome come in “types” and that Shira’s former house is located on a street “like a hundred others” (14). Even the automated computers that run these identical houses can be “reprogrammed” to treat their former owners as “just another stranger” (14). The residents of Y-S all dress identically and, importantly, according to their rank. All of this suggests that there is little room for expression. Also, and perhaps more disturbingly, this overall uniformity serves to undercut the existence of individual or small group identity. In this way, the residents of Y-S are reduced to individual bits or components of a larger whole, almost as pieces of information inside of a sort of super computer that functions to meet a certain end. Given that residents at Shira’s rank and higher have the ability to “tap into” a kind of hyper-developed internet through their own bodies, their physical uniformity adds to the effect of human computers.
Though the level of depersonalization in Piercy’s novel certainly distinguishes it from our modern era, it is interesting to note the degree to which it is possible for modern readers to connect with its themes. Namely, I think we as readers can imagine the ways that depersonalization and uniformity are increasingly creeping into popular culture, media, design, and even architecture. Planned communities and their rules about yard upkeep and house additions serve as one example of concerted uniformity. Elsewhere, regional styles of dress, speech, food, and art are increasingly absorbed into a larger “global uniformity” that threatens to submerge various cultures.
The Y-S ideal proves to be so intriguing because it realistically reflects a more extreme version of modern society. The “perfecting” laws within the Y-S dome seem to be very similar to modern day expectations and judgments. For example, at the beginning when Shira rushes to pick up Ari from school, she acknowledges that she could be reported for unprofessionally rushing through the dome. In modern day, while a citizen could never be judged for that as a legal crime, other moms and professionals would observe her and make unnecessary judgments on her. Our “ideal” modern society forces a myriad of societal expectations upon people which are solely humanly constructed. Thus, the Y-S system acknowledges these modern societal expectations and turns them into laws, emphasizing the lack of control we currently have but do not even realize yet. The more extreme of the future perfect society highlights the current extreme of our ideal society.
The ideal advanced by Y-S emphasizes conformity and compliance, which Shiva chafes against. Like Shiva, the audience is meant to feel alarm at the level of sameness that Y-S strives for. However, I think that Y-S also has some elements of our ideal society mixed in. It is highly efficient, with little violence, as depictions of utopias often are. Our utopia stories often focus on peaceful societies that erase individual’s concerns, and Y-S seems to function as an apparent utopia. Domes like Y-S protect people from the wasteland left after the Two Week War and provide housing, food, and security to its members. These are things that communities today strive for, but Y-S’s insistence on conformity strips its culture of creativity and basically incorporates each individual into a larger corporate machine. For upper-level employees, Y-S even requires them and their children to change their appearance to better fit the physical model of perfection. To readers, the idea of living in a carefully controlled, mechanical dome void of individuality sparks an inner fear of being subsumed into a larger whole by use of technology.
I agree with Hannah that Y-S society has several elements of our own culture mixed in, even though our ideal societies may differ. The most interesting of these elements are sort of implicit, for example, the strong male dominated character of the Y-S dome. If Y-S society is to be a sort of twisting and future progression of the society Piercy was currently living in, it is both offensive but familiar to see how patriarch paradigms have progressed and strengthened. We haven’t noted yet how much this could be taken to reflect our own society, both in the almost global prevailing male enforced rule in the home and in the government, and the male dominated STEM fields that constantly are under criticism for their treatment of women. It is hard to distance ourselves overmuch from some of the realities presented in the novel.