The Stoic "objective" "Rationalistic" university bequeathed to by the Enlightenment, may have met its match with the Stoic coolness, laid back "whatever", and disconnected demeanor of the modern, common university student. Of course there are a few universities passionately committed to genuine learning and some students at every school who care deeply and passionately about learning. There are those when asked, "why are you at university" give the only right answer and that is "to become educated." Over recent years, when I ask my Freshmen why they are here, you get the range of consumer answers, and only rarely the answer of one consumed with a desire to know.
Let's begin with the film's single greatest obstacle: the culture Philip Rieff described as "the death culture" is not likely to assemble en masse to pay for viewing a morality tale. A central message in this film is that we have become "shadows." Indeed, those immersed in our death culture do not likely have ears to hear and eyes to see the hollow selves we currently are. In a time such as ours, where very little if anything signifies, it is not probable this movie will be understood. At one key moment The Giver declares, "we are living a life of shadows, of echoes." This sentence captures the essence of the death culture. Add to that the following minor problem of our nearly national obsession with spectacle, as evidenced in news shows and recent popular YA movies such as The Hunger Games and Divergent . It is clear our current death culture is taken with the dystopian novel and dystopian movie version of said novel as long as it provides ...