The Village & Thoughts of A Modern Utopia – 6/11/2008

June 11, 2008 in History, Social Issues, Trailers, Videos, YouTube
Tags: pennsylvania, Film, the village, village, shaker, quaker, amish, co-housing, cohousing, utopia, global interaction

WARNING:  I reveal big-time spoilers so if you have not seen the film, don’t read further. Feel free to check out the below trailer.  Rent the film, and come back later.

 

 

 

 

I finally got around to watching M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village last night.  The film at the time of the reviews was somewhat panned, but had it in my Netflix queue and it showed up at my door step three years later.  Personnally I thought that this was Shyamalan’s best work, though critics for the most part panned it.  He is the master of showing what seems to be a normal setting, like the film The Sixth Sense, but there is always something not quite right that you could not put your finger on. Not to mention it scared the daylights out of me!

In the case of The Village I was looking at the overall scenery trying to figure out just what kind of village it was.  It appeared to be utopian in nature with no contact with the outside world.  The dress are mid to late 1890’s – 1900.  The hair in the young girls appear to be trussed up amish-style (a religious quasi-utopian society), the buildings and furnishings Shaker (another near-gone utopian era), the main community building was referred to as the Meeting House (Quaker).  Though with all three religious utopian elements intertwined in the film, there was no sense of religion to speak of, purely non-sectarian.  In an era where religion was still a dominant factor in home and community life, it drove me nuts! 

Then came the ultimate twist that the whole society was the creation of one of the ‘Elders’; a former American History Professor who owned a vast tract of land and wealth to pay off officials to keep ‘the world out’ and out of their notice. The ‘Creatures’, a fabrication to keep the villagers in line and not venture out of the area.

In this nearly entire digitized world it seems that we are more disconnected with physical community and the term ‘it takes a village’ seemingly has little meaning nowadays.  I take pride that I send my children to a private school that emboldens the sense of community that one will never find in public school.  Families take care of other families and all religions are represented and even some with no religion at all; it matters not.

I have been looking into the possibility of finding a co-housing community in which I know that my children will be not only loved and looked after by not only our family, but a whole village of families living close-by and interacting with each other on a near daily basis. Is this considered a closed community? A utopia? No, I do not think that in this world of global interaction, a true utopia in the sense is not possible.  However a small community within a larger community is entirely possible and should be encouraged.  In addition, my job involves working in a virtual environment and I prefer to remain in a close-knit community in order to get me out of the office and interact with human beings!