Ship of Fools: Dystopias

Thread: Dystopias Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

I have noticed how a number of the new TV series I watch are highly dystopic. I realise that my particular viewing choices are a) not definitive and b) SF-orientated, but series like 12 Monkeys and Continuum portray a future that is so bad that it is worth trying to destroy to hope for a better one. And Resurrection, which portrays something that many people would hope for, as a nightmare vision. Even the superb and surreal series titled "Utopia" was severely dystopian.

And then there are the dystopian historical programs, which seem determined to show that the past was nothing like as good as we remember (Back in time for Dinner, for example).

So is it just that I am drawn to the miserable, or is this a reflection of a lack of hope, a rejection of the modernist belief in progress? Do we no longer have a way of seeing the future in positive terms?

Posted by pimple (# 10635) on :

I have every hope for the future. I grow trees.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

SC wrote:

quote:
So is it just that I am drawn to the miserable, or is this a reflection of a lack of hope, a rejection of the modernist belief in progress?

I think a rejection of modernism might explain the original motivation of dystopian writers(*) but I don't think it neccesarily explains why the genre is so popular with the general public at any given time.

There is a certain "tennis with the net down" quality to attempts at explaining why certain cultural styles seem to be prominent at certain times. They usually sound plausible enough, but then so would any other, and they can often be refuted by pointing to other periods of time when the style was also prominent.

Horror films were popular in the 1930s because of anxiety over the Depression? Sure! But they were popular in the late 70s as well. Vietnam was over, so that can't explain it. Maybe just generalized post-Watergate malaise? Hey, why not? Of course, the slasher genre continued into the Reaganesque "Morning in America" era, but maybe that was a reaction AGAINST all the forced optimism of the 80s? And so on and so forth.

You see what I mean by "tennis with the net down". And, with dystopias, you've got a built-in relevance, because there are also going to be people worried about the future, especially as it petains to scientific development. I'm sure the first time it was announced they were using pig valves for transplants, someone was yelling "OMG, it's Brave New World!!"

(*) Assuming the dystopia portrayed is ostensibly modernist, like Brave New World or, in a rather different way, 1984. Off the top of my head, The Handmaid's Tale is the only one I can think of portraying a society that purported to be looking to the archaic past for its inspiration.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

The trend I believe is leaking over from literature, where dystopian YAs like Hunger Games have enjoyed enormous popularity. There is a fashion in these things, which you can see ebbing and flowing.

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

There's always been dystopias, but I think it is popular now in movies and television. Some of that is just a fad, but I think some of it is also due to the decline of the baby boomers and their progressive hope for a better future.

There's also the global breakdown of the global empires like the United States and Soviet Union, being replaced with smaller states that are often struggling. Few buy the dreams of empire that used to inspire.

Posted by Mere Nick (# 11827) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I have noticed how a number of the new TV series I watch are highly dystopic.

The highest rated cable show in the US is about the zombie apocalypse. Surely that counts as dystopia.

quote:
So is it just that I am drawn to the miserable, or is this a reflection of a lack of hope, a rejection of the modernist belief in progress? Do we no longer have a way of seeing the future in positive terms?

It probably depends on the person. I love zombie stuff because zombies are like life, totally relentless. It's interesting to see folks under such pressure. Compared to them, I have no problems. As long as the zombie apocalypse doesn't happen, what ever happens in life is better than what's on the tv.

As for something dark, scary and true, try Hoarders.

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:

So is it just that I am drawn to the miserable, or is this a reflection of a lack of hope, a rejection of the modernist belief in progress? Do we no longer have a way of seeing the future in positive terms?

We're in the postmodern phase now, which supposedly means that few of us in the West believe unreservedly in 'progress'.

The most hopeful people seem to be in parts of the developing world where mortality rates have dropped hugely in recent times and the standard of living has increased. And people who risk migrating to distant western countries for a better future are clearly people who have great hope.

If you're already in the West and aren't a baby boomer who's benefited from the sweeping improvements of the post-war years, though, a lot of things don't seem very hopeful.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

(*) Assuming the dystopia portrayed is ostensibly modernist, like Brave New World or, in a rather different way, 1984. Off the top of my head, The Handmaid's Tale is the only one I can think of portraying a society that purported to be looking to the archaic past for its inspiration.

Depends on how you look at it. My understanding is that Atwood was trying to draw a cultural parallel to Khomeni's overthrow of the Iraninan government-- in which women actually did go into banks only to find their husbands were now the sole holders of their bank accounts. The book was published in 1985, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and when the Moral Majority was at full throttle. The last several years of laws affecting women shows she was right to be worried.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Re OP:

I think it's a combination of things. Folks like what-ifs; they want to vent their fears and explore them; and the media push something they think will make money, *creating* a need. That all mixes together in a sort of mushy cycle.

That's why we get a streak of vampire shows, of police procedurals, etc. And hybrids, like Grimm. X-Files was dystopian, but at least it ended on an up note. The very last line was "Maybe there's hope".
[Cool]

Re stories:

Apocalyptic religious literature might be considered dystopian. E.g., Revelation.

There's a good novel called The Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk. She's a Pagan leader, and there's a strong Pagan thread throughout. It's sort of post-apocalyptic. (Similar to what I've heard of The Handmaid's Tale.) Horrible things have happened, society is fractured, and San Francisco is trying to find a way through. Alternately harrowing, intriguing, profound, and inspiring, and there's one scene that's on my short list of favorite scenes ever. Well worth a read.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

(*) Assuming the dystopia portrayed is ostensibly modernist, like Brave New World or, in a rather different way, 1984. Off the top of my head, The Handmaid's Tale is the only one I can think of portraying a society that purported to be looking to the archaic past for its inspiration.
Depends on how you look at it. My understanding is that Atwood was trying to draw a cultural parallel to Khomeni's overthrow of the Iraninan government-- in which women actually did go into banks only to find their husbands were now the sole holders of their bank accounts. The book was published in 1985, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and when the Moral Majority was at full throttle. The last several years of laws affecting women shows she was right to be worried.

Right. But my point was that the ideologues in the novel, as well as their real-life counterparts like Khomeni and the Moral Majority, were explicitly rejecting modernity and embracing values thought to come from the past.

As opposed to the ideologues in Brave New World and 1984, who thought of themselves as being on the cutting edge of modernity. (Ironically so in 1984, since their sexual puritanism and veneration of Cromwell gave them more in common with Christian fundamentalists than with socialist utopians.)

Posted by Sarasa (# 12271) on :

Brenda Clough said:

quote:
The trend I believe is leaking over from literature, where dystopian YAs like Hunger Games have enjoyed enormous popularity. There is a fashion in these things, which you can see ebbing and flowing.

I was going to say this. As a school librarian I've seen the popularity of supernatural romances fade among my readers to be replaced with Hunger Games read-alikes. I'm not sure if the pupils are relating anything in these dystopias to the life around them (more testing etc) or not.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

I think it is definately reflecting literature - but that only pushes the question back one more stage. Nobody (including me!) writes utopias, and hasn't for a long time.

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
X-Files was dystopian, but at least it ended on an up note. The very last line was "Maybe there's hope".

I think that is the difference that I was thinking of (and couldn't quite identify it), that X-Files-era tended to be dark, there was always a positive. It was never as negative as the current crop.

The Hunger Games is an interesting example. In the end, it is a depressing revelation of the truth that (Spoiler alert) even the goodies are baddies. That there is no hope of revolution improving things, all that happens is that people die.

And yes, sad-people-reality programs - hoarders, storage hunters, even Embarrassing Bodies - are current-time dystopia. Not that long ago, they would only have been on paid for point-and-laugh TV, whereas now they are on fairly mainstream shows.

Posted by Full Circle (# 15398) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I think it is definately reflecting literature - but that only pushes the question back one more stage. Nobody (including me!) writes utopias, and hasn't for a long time.

....

The Hunger Games is an interesting example. In the end, it is a depressing revelation of the truth that (Spoiler alert) even the goodies are baddies. That there is no hope of revolution improving things, all that happens is that people die.

I think Utopias are being mass produced at the moment, especially in children''s film, most especially by Disney but also by Pixar and others: The inevitable happy ending, the friendship through the storm, the romance. Perhaps the dystopias are a balance.

Regarding the hungering games, I think they do have a happy ending. True love and children and a tentative hope in the future. Also The heroine never becomes corrupt (makes errors perhaps) but manages to maintain constructive sense of values throughout - very different from, say 1984, where the 'hero''s' sense of self is destroyed

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
....Off the top of my head, The Handmaid's Tale is the only one I can think of portraying a society that purported to be looking to the archaic past for its inspiration.

There are some dystopias which are archaically modelled societies which have grown up after some catastrophe had pushed back 'progress' quite a long way- e.g. John Wyndham's The Chrysalids or, going further back, something like Richard Jeffries' After London. And of course in Morris's News from Nowehere you have an archaically modelled utopia.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
....Off the top of my head, The Handmaid's Tale is the only one I can think of portraying a society that purported to be looking to the archaic past for its inspiration.
There are some dystopias which are archaically modelled societies which have grown up after some catastrophe had pushed back 'progress' quite a long way- e.g. John Wyndham's The Chrysalids or, going further back, something like Richard Jeffries' After London. And of course in Morris's News from Nowehere you have an archaically modelled utopia.

The only book there that I have any familiarity with is News From Nowhere, which I slammed back in one night(along with Bellamy's Looking Backwards) in order to write an essay for university. I understand it's associated with the Arts And Crafts movement, along with 19th Century pastoralism and anti-industrialism generally.

But, based on your descriptions, I'd still have to say that The Handmaid's Tale differs from books where people regress to an archaic state in response to external catastrophes, since in THT the main impetus for embacing Old Testament law was the ideological bent of the ruling elite itself. The book does hint that there had been some sort of mass plague that hit the USA, but that alone doesn't really account for why the Gileadeans go so whole-hog for the theocratic option.

Given that the primary impulse of the US religious right has been decentralizing, rather than centralizing(as in Gilead), it seems to me that the closest real-world parallel to what happens in THT is the Iranian Revolution. I think what some people found the most shocking about that event was that for the first time in a long time(if not ever), the concept and language of Revolution was being employed in the service of a movement aimed at RETURNING to archaic social structures, rather than forging forward, as with every other revolutionary movement from the French to Maoism.

(I suppose that certain third-world liberation movements claimed to be returning their societies to an idealized, pre-industrial past, but I don't think that characteristic was generally recognized by the general public outside the relevant countries, and in any case those utopian visions probably owed more to the fantasies of their creators than to any grounded historical source.)

[ 06. April 2015, 00:05: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
....Off the top of my head, The Handmaid's Tale is the only one I can think of portraying a society that purported to be looking to the archaic past for its inspiration.
There are some dystopias which are archaically modelled societies which have grown up after some catastrophe had pushed back 'progress' quite a long way- e.g. John Wyndham's The Chrysalids or, going further back, something like Richard Jeffries' After London. And of course in Morris's News from Nowehere you have an archaically modelled utopia.

I have seen this in Defiance - another post-apocalyptic series. I suppose there are two routes I can see in this:

1. An idealisation of the Amish-style life, which is probably not realistic, and which get around many of the problems by using modern-tech.

2. An acceptance that the current technology requires specialist knowledge held by an elite. This seems like a dystopic vision where loss of knowledge is the core problem. I see a real fear in that position - genuine dread.

Posted by Demas (# 24) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
The only book there that I have any familiarity with is News From Nowhere, which I slammed back in one night(along with Bellamy's Looking Backwards) in order to write an essay for university. I understand it's associated with the Arts And Crafts movement, along with 19th Century pastoralism and anti-industrialism generally.

The quip was that Morris' vision was of the 14th century with better plumbing. But if you read Looking Backwards first (which is the archetypal dreary oppressive industrial utopia) then you can see his point. Looking Backwards is a great example of the unintentionally dystopic utopia...

There is a scan of Morris' original edition with funky Jenson revival typography on Archive.org.

Posted by Demas (# 24) on :

Oh, and News From Nowhere isn't really luddite. There are clear indications that it is a high tech civilisation which does arts and crafts because it likes to.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Oh, and News From Nowhere isn't really luddite. There are clear indications that it is a high tech civilisation which does arts and crafts because it likes to.

Thanks for filling in the substantial blanks from my late-night, three-hour reading marathon.

Posted by Demas (# 24) on :

Well you get points for slogging through it - nowadays you could just google for a summary [Smile]

Back on topic - has there ever been a utopian future which was interesting? Even Star Trek relied on baddies to drive tension.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Demas wrote:

quote:
Back on topic - has there ever been a utopian future which was interesting? Even Star Trek relied on baddies to drive tension.

Well, even if the setting itself is a utopia, you still need some sort of conflict to push the story along, even if said conflict doesn't actually call into question the benevolence of the society(as in a Dystopian story).

Unless the whole work is just devoted to explaining how the utopia came into being, such as(I think) was the case with Looking Backward and News From Nowhere.

Posted by Hiro's Leap (# 12470) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Unless the whole work is just devoted to explaining how the utopia came into being, such as(I think) was the case with Looking Backward and News From Nowhere.

Even then the existing society usually provides a threat to the fledgling utopia (e.g. Asimov's Foundation). If there's no threat or tension, it's perhaps a treatise not a story.

One great example of a utopia is Iain M. Banks' Culture - a post-scarcity society where virtually all social problems have been solved. I've noticed in online discussions how polarising these books can be. Some people utterly loathe The Culture and argue they'd prefer to live in the cruelest dystopia. Perhaps there's a feeling that your actions can have a greater significance in a flawed world than a perfect one?

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Back on topic - has there ever been a utopian future which was interesting? Even Star Trek relied on baddies to drive tension.

I suppose you might think some human conflicts or questions just aren't resolvable by any imaginable society. For example, in any recognisable society people will have romantic conflicts.
You could put up a theory that Friends is really set in a futuristic utopia that consciously keeps the tech level at late 20th century Earth. After all, even though Rachel and Joey and Phoebe are all pursuing what should be irregular or low paying jobs they never seem to worry about the rent.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Back on topic - has there ever been a utopian future which was interesting? Even Star Trek relied on baddies to drive tension.

As others have said, you need conflict for story, but some of the utopias defined come out of the conflict, and the message of the story is that the utopia is something to work for, something that might work if the problems were resolved or removed.

Dystopias make the point that the utopias are not achievable or desirable. Even if some form could be achieved, it would be less than utopia for some if not all.

I suppose Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) is a form of utopia, because the place that the industry leaders disappear to is a form of utopia for them. Of course, everyone else suffers and dies, but Rand seems not to care about them. For most people, it is dystopian, but I think it is written more as a utopian vision.

I wonder whether the change is as much in our perspective - the Star Trek universe was reasonably utopian at the time, today, we question so much about what happened, what was done, who suffered, the negative sides of the same stories. Maybe this is what I mean by it being a cynicism in our society, a rejection of the broadly modernist utopias presented in the past.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

The City and the Stars would be an example of a utopia that somehow does have conflict.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Well you get points for slogging through it - nowadays you could just google for a summary

Sloggging through it? It's great. Why would you want to google a summary?

Posted by Callan (# 525) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
....Off the top of my head, The Handmaid's Tale is the only one I can think of portraying a society that purported to be looking to the archaic past for its inspiration.
There are some dystopias which are archaically modelled societies which have grown up after some catastrophe had pushed back 'progress' quite a long way- e.g. John Wyndham's The Chrysalids or, going further back, something like Richard Jeffries' After London. And of course in Morris's News from Nowehere you have an archaically modelled utopia.

Dystopias tend to be Awful Warnings - 1984 was about totalitarianism, Brave New World about mass society and social conditioning,Threads about the horror of nuclear war, Oryx and Craike about genetic engineering and so forth. If you are going to have an archaic dystopia you need bad guys who want to implement it - transposing Actually Existing Islamic societies onto the religious right. By and large, really memorable dystopias extrapolate from existing social conditions to something completely horrible.

Other dystopias postulate a return to archaic forms of society because of some kind of catastrophe - nuclear war in The Chrysalids, ecological catastrophe in The Death Of Grass or alien invasion in The Tripods. Postulating something really horrible and then developing really nasty social conditions is a perfectly legitimate trope for a writer of speculative fiction but not quite the same. The Empire of Granbretan in Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon sequence, for example, is a thoroughly nasty regime but I imagine that Moorcock didn't really think that Jim Callaghan and Denis Healey were invested in creating an Empire of sadists dedicated to the veneration of Aral Vilsn. On the other hand, 1984 does draw its strength from its use of contemporary totalitarian praxis.

Put it another way. If I write a novel entitled 2115 where my protagonist is destroyed by a futile revolt against gangster capitalism in a world dominated by Moscow and Beijing, it might, hopefully will, fail as prophecy but might well contain some sharp critiques of gangster capitalism as practiced by those regimes - the 1984 scenario. If I write a novel where sufficiently advanced alien squirrels conquer the world and make the protagonist work down their hyper efficient nut mines then any social critique of modern society is going to be incidental to the main plot.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

If literature is a reflection as well as prediction or warning, it strikes me that dystopia is a common experience. From the perspective of many native peoples and nations of the Americas, for example, it's ongoing and being lived now. The fall of Rome and any number of other nations also seems dystopian.

The outline of movies and books seems to involve the hero breaking out, the redemption of the society, the hero developing a brave new future for the helots, the resumption of the dystopia so there can be a sequel, or the Marxist prediction that what comes first as tragedy returns as comedy.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

It is difficult to write a book or script in which, after valiant effort and titanic combats, the heroes fail. Far far easier are the plots in which it turns up trumps, which is why so many dystopian novels either end with the dystopia wound up, or with its end in sight.

Posted by Hiro's Leap (# 12470) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
Postulating something really horrible and then developing really nasty social conditions is a perfectly legitimate trope for a writer of speculative fiction but not quite the same. The Empire of Granbretan in Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon sequence, for example, is a thoroughly nasty regime but I imagine that Moorcock didn't really think that Jim Callaghan and Denis Healey were invested in creating an Empire of sadists dedicated to the veneration of Aral Vilsn. On the other hand, 1984 does draw its strength from its use of contemporary totalitarian praxis.

The feature that stands out for me in a dystopia is that the protagonist can't alter the system. John can't escape the society of Brave New World, and any small victory Winston Smith has in 1984 is purely to make his destruction all the more absolute. In neither case will the world change.

If a protagonist can change the world for the better, even if it's an ugly world, then in my book you're not dealing with a dystopia - you've probably got some flavour of dark heroic fiction. As far as I can remember, Moorcock's stories focus on evading and out-smarting Granbretan, often with a fair degree of success. I think it's this that prevents the books from being a dystopia, not the lack of a real-world moral message.

(Then again it's a long time since I read Moorcock so I'm pretty hazy.)

[ 12. April 2015, 23:45: Message edited by: Hiro's Leap ]

Posted by Demas (# 24) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:

quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Well you get points for slogging through it - nowadays you could just google for a summary

Sloggging through it? It's great. Why would you want to google a summary?

It's not so great late at night when you're trying to slam it back all in one go to meet an arbitrary university essay deadline which was what Stetson was trying to do.

As I say, been there done that [Smile]

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

If there's some acceptance of a dystopian story, imitation can proliferate.

Dystopia is easy, comedy is hard. : [Devil]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

I see xkcd mirrors SoF once again...

[Fixed code so I could check out link-- K.A.]

[woah, I wondered what happened there for a minute! - E.]

[ 13. April 2015, 05:10: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
The Empire of Granbretan in Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon sequence, for example, is a thoroughly nasty regime but I imagine that Moorcock didn't really think that Jim Callaghan and Denis Healey were invested in creating an Empire of sadists dedicated to the veneration of Aral Vilsn.

I suspect that as a member of the counterculture in the late sixties he thought it was one way in which the UK Establishment could develop.

Posted by cynic girl (# 13844) on :

Almost all utopias in literature prove to be dystopias in the end. My favourite sci-fi series is Iain M. Banks' Culture series - all of which are actually set outside of the utopian Culture, exploring the darker sides of the society through its interactions with other cultures. [ETA: Just realised that someone mentioned the Culture above - sorry! I think it's good enough to be mentioned twice though. [Big Grin]

)

I suspect there's something here of human nature and our tendency towards concern rather than hopefulness for the future - but I have no evidence for that. I certainly find the conflict inherent in dystopias much more believable than dull utopias where far less *happens*.

On a more demonstrable sociological level, the 'prepper' mania in North America, which seems to have led to a fascination with the concept of the zombie apocalypse and so on, may be leading to a social obsession with the (not-necessarily-religious) apocalypse. A ridiculous number of North Americans are actually preparing for the collapse of society. It's entering social consciousness in a way that's bound to emerge in literature and television/films.

(I love 12 Monkeys!)

[ 24. April 2015, 08:05: Message edited by: cynic girl ]

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Very interesting, cynic girl. And in real life, utopian visions have a habit of flipping into their opposite, thus, the proclamation of universal fraternity and reason in the French revolution was drowned in blood; ditto, other revolutions. I think it's partly that the idealist often carries a club behind his back, or in the immortal words of Robespierre, virtue without terror is impotent.

I'm not sure what the widespread apocalyptic fantasies mean, I suppose the zombies are a comment on the dehumanization of the shopping mall and the smartphone? Romero set one of his films in a mall, can't remember which.

[ 24. April 2015, 09:06: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

[Just a tangent]

Why do SF films and TV which are the most anti technology have the most technology used to make them. I'm thinking here of The Terminator and its film and TV sequels/prequels.

[/Tangent]

Posted by cynic girl (# 13844) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm not sure what the widespread apocalyptic fantasies mean, I suppose the zombies are a comment on the dehumanization of the shopping mall and the smartphone? Romero set one of his films in a mall, can't remember which.

Quite possibly. We are the zombies. Makes sense, as a metaphor for our late modern era with its consumerist mindlessness.

I find it interesting to track the causes of the apocalypse, in apocalyptic films and TV. The virus in 12 Monkeys speaks of fear of scientific progress and its unintended side effects, to me. Oryx and Crake was mentioned above, related to similar fears but specifically of genetic engineering. The ones based on the idea of the 'singularity', where computers or robots take over, are much more long-term, going back to things like Asimov's Law of Robotics, although accelerated recently by theories of when we're going to hit that singularity. This might suggest that our fear of technology is a deep-rooted, long-lasting thing. We're seeing far fewer nuclear winters on screen now, of course. Natural causes like floods or earthquakes are often related to environmental fears. What am I missing? (There must be lots more.)

[ 24. April 2015, 10:01: Message edited by: cynic girl ]

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I think those are key factors, our love/hate relation with machines, our fascination and dread of science, global warming, and possibly the runaway nature of neo-liberalism. My local post office and police station have closed, but you can contact them online! So there is a kind of insane anti-community logic actually built into the economy now. Press 1 for meaningless garbage, press 2 to hear a robot, press 3 to go back to the beginning, press 4 to enter a dark nightmare.

I was thinking that Robespierre was a prophet also, virtue is allied with terror today. O brave new world!

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

There is an old strain of don't-mess-with-nature dystopia. All those movies -- Birds, Tremors -- in which the meddling and/or nuclear experimentations of mankind have made animals or earthworms or whatever strike back. A subclass of this is when it is humans themselves who are the calamity. X-Men is essentially based on this premise, the good mutants banding together to fight the bad ones who plan to eradicate humanity.

A different thing from the wotthehell kind of dystopia, in which calamity arrives from outside without our doing anything to elicit it. Pacific Rim was like this, the nasty monsters storming up out of the Pacific Ocean for no particular reason except to supply humanity with an excuse for constructing gigantic battle bots. All meteors-hitting-the-earth and aliens-invading-destroying-humanity kinds of stories are in this category too.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Some of the Jungians also interpret such fantasies as indicative of eruptions within the unconscious psyche, particularly of a destructive or self-destructive nature. Hitchcock lends himself to this kind of analysis, for example, the attacks of the Birds have been linked to the various sexual overtones, e.g. the lovebirds bought in a shop. But Psycho is very Freudian, and Marnie explicitly so.

Posted by Amika (# 15785) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:

So is it just that I am drawn to the miserable, or is this a reflection of a lack of hope, a rejection of the modernist belief in progress? Do we no longer have a way of seeing the future in positive terms?

I am certainly having difficulty in seeing the future (or at least as much of it as I shall experience) in positive terms. Every way I look I see the conjunction of 1984 and Brave New World coming to a country near you (or halfway here already).

What scares me is that while I feel that we are already living in a dystopia, at least compared with former times such as the 60s and maybe 70s (and no, I don't believe they were one long spell of sunshine either!) most people seem not to be aware of the steady descent into all those scary speculative fiction books I have read.

Perhaps people are actually subliminally aware that their world has become increasingly unpleasant but can't quite work out why, and that is the reason for the increase in dystopian TV and films, etc.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Quetzlcoatl wrote:

quote:
Hitchcock lends himself to this kind of analysis, for example, the attacks of the Birds have been linked to the various sexual overtones, e.g. the lovebirds bought in a shop. But Psycho is very Freudian, and Marnie explicitly so.

There's an interesting exchange in The Birds, where Tippi Hedren's character asks Suzanne Pleshette if her relationship with Rod Taylor floundered because it got in the way of his relationship with his mother. Pleshette replies "With all due respect to Oedipus, no". But then proceeds to give some other explanation that still sounded(to me anyway)fairly Freudian, I think involving the idea that if Taylor hooks up with Hedren, he might leave town and abandon his mother.

My overall takeaway from the film was that the birds went berzerk because the arrival of Hedren in the town constitutes a disruption of the natural order, a disruptiion represented partly by the possibility that she might lure Taylor away. Near the beginning, it is stated that while living in Paris, she had dived naked into a fountain or something. So, the kind of person who would be an affront to the small-town values cherished by the other characters.

quote:
e.g. the lovebirds bought in a shop

As I recall, the lovebirds are among the only birds in town who don't join in the attack, and I remember thinking that there was something significant about this.

[ 25. April 2015, 12:36: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Very good. I think there's a scene where the mother hangs onto Taylor, kind of, 'don't leave me'. Freud has an essay somewhere about breaking the romantic liaison with one's parent, as a prerequisite to adulthood.

Another idea is that the birds represent the mother's rage and revenge at being usurped.

Of course, Melanie Klein, bless her soul, argued that the breast is conceived of as both bliss and hell in the very early years, thus, the nipple becomes the sharp beak of the predatory bird. Do you want to be eat, or be eaten? Yowzer towzer.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amika:
What scares me is that while I feel that we are already living in a dystopia, at least compared with former times such as the 60s and maybe 70s (and no, I don't believe they were one long spell of sunshine either!) most people seem not to be aware of the steady descent into all those scary speculative fiction books I have read.

I think there is a different branch of story that does really cover this - not quite dystopian, which is am imagination of another place, but a dys-now-pia. A lot of Charlie Brooker (Black Mirror) and Reece Shearsmith (Inside No. 9) address this. Many pointed dystopias are actually saying "this is where we are now, we just cannot see it".

In my worst times, I do think that we are living in a nightmare, a disintegrating world, that is even more hideous than the worst of our nightmares. The problem is, we always have been. Reality is a dystopian world, which explains why so many people use all sorts of means to escape from it.

The one thing we cannot afford is to have a true sense of perspective.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amika:
What scares me is that while I feel that we are already living in a dystopia, at least compared with former times such as the 60s and maybe 70s (and no, I don't believe they were one long spell of sunshine either!)

Unless of course you were black or gay or a single mom or a child being abused by a priest or or or or ....

The utopia of the mid 20th century worked pretty well for straight white suburbanite Protestant Christians. It was a dystopia for pretty much everybody else.

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

I suspect we as a society are addicted to adrenaline.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
So is it just that I am drawn to the miserable, or is this a reflection of a lack of hope, a rejection of the modernist belief in progress? Do we no longer have a way of seeing the future in positive terms?

I think this is a serious point. Those of us who remember 60s TV can recall a time when the future was looked on with great optimism and fascination. This was primarily to do with the advance of technology.

In 1969, with the moon landings, many thought that by taking a leap from proto-type aeroplanes to getting a craft to the moon in a mere 60 years meant the next 60 years could bring unimaginable changes to our lives. There was many a futuristic vision which predicted people in silver overalls going around with jet-packs etc. come the year 2000.

Yet here we are in 2015 and very few of those predictions have actually materialised. Maybe IT, Skype and mobile phones are a little along the way to Star Trek, but on the whole our daily lives remain unaltered. We get in a car, go to work and come home again. Wars continue, injustices continue. In many ways it's not so much a bleak vision of the future that afflicts us but more a sense of inertia.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Amika:
What scares me is that while I feel that we are already living in a dystopia, at least compared with former times such as the 60s and maybe 70s (and no, I don't believe they were one long spell of sunshine either!)
Unless of course you were black or gay or a single mom or a child being abused by a priest or or or or ....

The utopia of the mid 20th century worked pretty well for straight white suburbanite Protestant Christians. It was a dystopia for pretty much everybody else.

More of a dystopia than now? Certainly in the UK and I'd say probably, from what I've read, in the USA too, ethnicity and gender and sexuality and so on matter less now than they did forty or fifty years ago, but class and money matter much more. Now black people and women and gays can become rich enough to join the oppressors, and straight white men can become poor enough to (re-)join the oppressed. That's progress? Big flick.

[ 27. April 2015, 09:17: Message edited by: Albertus ]

Posted by Amika (# 15785) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:

I think there is a different branch of story that does really cover this - not quite dystopian, which is am imagination of another place, but a dys-now-pia. A lot of Charlie Brooker (Black Mirror) and Reece Shearsmith (Inside No. 9) address this. Many pointed dystopias are actually saying "this is where we are now, we just cannot see it".

In my worst times, I do think that we are living in a nightmare, a disintegrating world, that is even more hideous than the worst of our nightmares. The problem is, we always have been. Reality is a dystopian world, which explains why so many people use all sorts of means to escape from it.

The one thing we cannot afford is to have a true sense of perspective.

All very true! And yes, you are right, the Black Mirror series is trying to point out to us the direction in which we are heading and/or that we are almost there already - ditto some of the Dr Who episodes of a few years ago (not sure about more recent ones as have stopped watching).

Posted by Amika (# 15785) on :

In the Star Trek (original series) vision that I bought into wholeheartedly, there was the expectation that people would change along with the improvements in equality and technology. In the TOS (and early Next Generation) universe there were no poor, and no one sought money for its own sake. This was the sort of utopia I wanted to believe in, and as a child growing up I even thought it was possible.

So many of those hopes have now died. People do not change, and we seem to be doomed to endlessly repeat the mistakes of history. Whatever ground we gain we seem to lose again, albeit in a different form. For instance, yes, women were freed from domestic slavery but now they are appearance slaves, constantly worrying about how they look, trying to live up to an impossible image of perfection. (Men are also perhaps beginning to do this, although far more slowly.)

So maybe dystopian stories flourish because sixties optimism has been replaced by a new cynicism (or realism?).

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amika:
women were freed from domestic slavery but now they are appearance slaves, constantly worrying about how they look, trying to live up to an impossible image of perfection. (Men are also perhaps beginning to do this, although far more slowly.)

We were appearance slaves in the 50s, it was just considered normal instead of talked about as a problem. It's not only that hem lines and colors had to match everyone else's, but skin had to be flawless and waistlines - I was scrawny and underweight but thought I was fat because I didn't have Scarlette O'Hara's 18 inch waist, nor the "ideal" promoted by the Miss America contest of 36 26 36. 1950s and today. And before, when women wore corsets (that prevent proper breathing) to look attractive. High heels, real bad for feet, in the 40s women were shown in ads wearing high heels to vacuum the living room!

Impossible or health endangering standards is nothing new.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I think we have to move the entire issue of appearance and appearance enhancements to one side. It can't be either dystopian or utopian, because it is ubiquitous. Even cavemen were drawing on their skin with ocher; the only thing that changes is what enhancements we're doing at the moment. Nor are men free (shaving, anybody?). When something afflicts all of humanity from its beginning to this very instant, it cannot be a bug, it's a feature.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amika:
In the Star Trek (original series) vision that I bought into wholeheartedly, there was the expectation that people would change along with the improvements in equality and technology.

I always remember the veiled contempt for fictitious newly discovered planet populations that hadn't progressed over hundreds of years. All very Imperialistic and I suppose. An inter-galactic re-run of what Europeans and others have done for a couple of millennia on this planet, minus the exploitation maybe.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amika:
In the Star Trek (original series) vision that I bought into wholeheartedly, there was the expectation that people would change along with the improvements in equality and technology...

Yes - that 1960s optimism has a number of strands:
- technology solving our problems
- economic growth taking people out of poverty
- education for all unlocking human potential
- democracy harnessing the forces of government to serve the people
- social progress - the idea that improved nutrition and living conditions would cut crime and disease.

And now we're living in that future (remember Space 1999 ? 2001 - a Space odyssey ?)

And our democracy is broken, the economy is mired in a huge crisis of debt, our technology has created new diseases and allowed others to spread uncontrollably, education has been dumbed down, electronic crime is on the rise, the news is full of old religious hatreds (Shias and Sunnis, Arabs and Jews, Sikhs and Hindus) given a new lease of life by modern weapons and modern communications. Education and technology have given us an Internet full of people who think they know what they're talking about, with a huge capacity to hear about and care passionately about a whole lot of stuff that they're powerless to change. More people believe more rubbish, watch and listen to more rubbish, and are less happy with their lot in life than ever before...

Is it any wonder that any imaginative extrapolation to what a future society might be like shows unpleasantness ahead ?

Best wishes,

Russ

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