"The Veldt" by deadmau5 ft. Chris James, Sunday March 21, 2021

I must admit that I know very little about deadmau5. Somehow the DJ music of the late '00s and '10s just never appealed to me beyond a few catchy songs I heard at the gym just because I heard them over and over again. But when I heard this song today, I had to listen again. The calm House electronica and the melody were pretty catchy. And what was that about being raised by machines, digital families? And lions? It started making me think about something I had read before. But what was it? Was it Hemingway? No. It was based on Ray Bradbury's short story by the same name, "The Veldt" or originally "What the Children Made."

HERE, THE WORLD THAT THE CHILDREN MADE. A few years ago, I binge read Ray Bradbury. I think I became aware of Bradbury from the episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents which were adaptations of his short stories. I became enthralled with Bradbury's description of the double-edged sword that is technology. Though the story "The Veldt" was written at a time of black and white television, Bradbury imagined a time when television would become so vivid that what is real and what is digital would be so close that the digital could even become real. The story can also be a cautionary tale of what can happen when the television becomes the babysitter. And all of this was written before the advent of cable television with 24/7 children's programming. But when my generation, raised on Nickelodeon, the Disney Chanel, and MTV grows up, we've been completely submerged in a "happy life with the machines."  

OUTSIDE THE LIONS ROAR, FEEDING ON REMAINS. Ray Bradbury died in 2012, a few weeks before "The Veldt" music video was released. The video is dedicated to Bradbury. Bradbury has made so many contributions to the world of pop culture we live in today. He helped to carry the torch of science fiction writers, taking the flame from authors like H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Arthur C. Clark, to inspiring so much of the Sci-fi we have today. Yet, the technology Bradbury warns us of becomes the means by which he told his stories and tools by which his successors have ultimately diminished the reading public. It's as if to say, "let's base a children's television series on my short story talking about the harmfulness of children's television on childhood development, particularly when children get everything they want." Perhaps the parents that are eaten by the lions are the authors who helped to build the world that led to television. A world of non-readers. A world where we're constantly forgetting our past. 

https://genius.com/Deadmau5-the-veldt-lyrics