Harrison Bergeron - Film and HistoryThe Zombie Awakens “Finally everyone was the same. Not only were they equal before God and the law. They were equal in every way. Nobody was smarter than anyone else. No one was more beautiful than anyone else. No one was stronger or faster than anyone else. This is a short but powerful excerpt from the short story Harrison Bergeron. Not only does it make you wonder why everyone is the same, but it also makes you wonder how did everyone become the same? In the story and the film, Kurt Vonnegut presents a frightening vision of human society in the United States of the future, in which US citizens are all uniform. This then leads to the loss of their individuality and thus to the absolute deformity of humanity. Both the film and the short story share these themes, they also have a multitude of other similarities, but they also have just as many differences. These differences, the irony and symbolism between the two, are what I will try to explore. The first apparent difference between the film and the short story is that the short story is set in 2081. In the story the government regulates everything, not just intelligence, but also strength and beauty, and handicaps people appropriately. The strong are forced to wear bags full of lead balls; beautiful people are forced to wear masks so that others don't feel the same as them in appearance. Overly intelligent people are forced to wear radio transmitters in their ears, tuned to a government station that constantly bombards them with horrible sounds to confuse their thoughts. In the film, the year is 2053 and everyone is forced to wear mind-altering headbands resting on their temples. These bands electronically modify intelligence, effectively decreasing one's IQ to the desired "average" point. Unlike the story, in the film no one wears masks to hide their appearance and some are more beautiful than others making them look different from everyone else. Additionally, the only "weight bag" worn is that of a dancer on television who wore a small ankle weight bearing no resemblance to the enormous weight bags described in the story. Another difference is that in the story Harrison Bergeron had the apparent status of a god among these ordinary people. He was fourteen, six feet tall, athletic, good-looking, and a genius.