A Guide to The Guide
Douglas Adams’ famous multi-volume (and increasingly inappropriately named) “trilogy,” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has finally been made into a movie of the same name. The movie takes up mostly the first volume of the series. I personally found it moderately well-acted, moderately amusing, and moderately engaging.
The story tells of the inter-galactic travels of a very ordinary Brit, Arthur Dent. Just before the earth is destroyed to make way for a hyper-spatial express route, Arthur is rescued by his friend, Ford Prefect. Ford is an alien observing earth for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a book providing advice on just what it says. Ford helps Arthur hitch a ride with the Vogon constructor fleet that destroys the earth. Soon the two team up with runaway Galactic President, Zaphod Beeblebrox, earthling Trillian and the manic-depressive robot, Marvin.
Their adventures take them at length to the planet of Magrathea, where planetary designer Slartibartfast explains that the earth was really a giant computer. Another mighty computer, Deep Thought, had been asked the ultimate question of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. He eventually supplied the answer: forty-two. To understand the answer, however, one needed to know the correct question. The question could only be supplied an even mightier computer. That computer was Earth, now destroyed by Vogons. In the book, Deep Thought describes itself as a forerunner, using the Biblical language concerning John the Baptist. The Earth is described in Messianic terms. The movie does not dwell on this aspect. But in both the book and the movie, the whole thing comes to nothing with Earth’s destruction, indicating a philosophy of ultimate meaninglessness.
Both the movie and the book contain very British “Pythonesque” humour—inane on the surface, but also clever and deeply philosophical. Douglas Adams, who was involved in the making of the movie, explained the “anti-Star Wars principle” operating in it: when a scene would lead the audience to expect a certain outcome, they would simply do the opposite. Expect the unexpected!
The movie has time and audience constraints that did not trouble the original book or TV series, and it is therefore much abridged. The result is a de-emphasizing of the inane and the philosophical, in favour of great special effects and action scenes. I had the opportunity to see part of the TV series again recently, and was struck by how much funnier—and deeper—it was.
Take, for example, the ship powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive. The heroes of the story are jettisoned into the vacuum of space by their Vogon captors. The chances of being rescued by a passing spaceship were infinitesimally small. But a spaceship powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive feeds on infinitesimally small probabilities. The heroes were therefore rescued by a ship of this type, precisely because it was so unlikely. The movie, while mentioning the name of this invention and demonstrating its effects, provides no explanation of what it is. Given Adams’ awareness of philosophical issues, it is quite possible he was humorously interacting with the Christian argument that the theory of evolution can be discarded, since it involves vast numbers of highly improbable mutations. Evolutionists have responded to this that even the highly improbable may happen eventually in infinite time and space.
A far more obvious case of Adams’ interaction with philosophy comes with the explanation of the “Babel Fish.” A Babel Fish placed in one’s ear enables instant understanding of anything said in any form of language. The book (and TV series) explains that some used the fish as evidence of God’s existence. The Babel Fish could not have evolved by chance. God, however, refuses to prove that He exists: “For proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.” When confronted with the evidence of the Babel Fish, He exclaims, “Oh dear, I hadn’t though of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. Here Adams interacts with classical “theistic proofs”—in this case, the “teleological” proof. He is also aware that Christian responses to the theistic proofs vary from the rationalistic end of the spectrum (these really are logical proofs) to the fideistic extreme (faith excludes reason).
The mention of these philosophical and apologetic arguments demonstrates the biggest issue for the Christian viewer: the movie (and even more so the book and TV series) is sometimes overtly blasphemous. In the movie, the earth is depicted as created by a team of planetary designers, not by the Living God. There is also a scene where an alien god is worshipped in what appears to be a parody of Christian worship. The service involves liturgical sneezing, whereupon the response is, of course, “Bless you!”
If you read the whole series, it becomes apparent that it is not only Christianity that becomes the butt of Adams’ irreverent humour, but virtually every other philosophy popular in the Western world.
Because of the blasphemous elements, I do not feel I can recommend the movie (less so the book or TV series). Having said that, I must also admit that Adams’ irreverent attitude towards other, unbelieving philosophies has provided me with a wealth of illustrations for explaining unbelieving thought.