Duels to the death. Reality shows where the winner has to kill all participants to survive. A world where you are hunted down if you do not belong. A world where a few control resources meant for many. If there is a universal theme that cuts across elements of popular culture today, it is dystopia.
Take The Hunger Games , set in a country where children battle to their death in a reality show. Or Mad Max: Fury Road , where a group has taken control over key resources, or the Divergent series, where an all-powerful regime hunts down people who do not fit into their society. Dystopia is a catchphrase for a whole section of popular books, TV series and movies that are climbing popularity charts the world over.
It has often been suggested that the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, on a platform that negated issues such as climate change and talk of remilitarisation, alongside the raging conflict in West Asia, has resulted in an uptick of the genre. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle are examples.
The huge success of the book and movie versions of The Hunger Games and the Divergent series predates Trump and Brexit. Dystopic worlds have been showcased and received well in books like 1984 , a terrifying tale of complete governmental surveillance, and movies such as A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner .
Most of the dystopian worlds that clutter our social media and popular culture, feed on our immediate fears. What if an all-powerful individual or group sabotages the nuclear plants on the planet, or mankind stops having children and is governed by a fanatic ruling elite ( The Handmaid’s Tale ). What if there’s a complete breakdown of authority and law and order, resulting in a military-run state, where all fundamental rights are sacrificed for the ‘greater good’ ( The Hunger Games and 1984 ), not to forget machines taking over the world ( The Matrix series) or a shortage of a key resource like water, resulting in a dystopia, in Mad Max: Fury Road . In many cases, these dystopian worlds offer us a peek into the mirror on events that could happen, if one was not careful enough. Most of these movies and books deal with similar themes—dictatorship by an elite group, complete lack of freedom of speech and expression, all sacrificed on the altar of maintaining order, and of course, machines outsmarting and outthinking us and taking over the planet( Westworld ) and many more.
In the late 1990s, the first Matrix movie portrayed a science fiction dystopia to perfection, with a world ruled by machines. As we depend more and more on our machines, this sort of dystopia seems rather probable. However, with the exception of Westworld , the theme of machines taking over the planet has been largely ditched in favour of dystopia, where a tiny current elite, rule the masses, junking concepts like democracy and free speech for establishing peace and order in society.
Many also aver to the belief that most dystopic writing showcases a sense of dread for the future. As George RR Martin, the creator of Games of Thrones , pointed out in an interview with People’s Choice recently, “Sci-fi novels of the ’50s and ’60s tended to focus on the exciting possibilities the future held. These days, however, the page-turners— including The Hunger Games , The Maze Runner , or Divergent —tend to centre around the doom and gloom that occur in various dystopian worlds. It seems like we are afraid of the world of tomorrow.”
The Hunger Games is seen as a statement against rampant consumerism, absolute power, and the ever-increasing power of reality TV in our lives. In the world inhabited by Katniss Everdeen and her family and friends, an all-powerful Capitol forces citizens of 12 districts to send their children to fight each other to death on a reality TV show. Soldiers from the Capitol maintain the peace in all districts and ensure that divisions in society are maintained to keep the peace. Unlike 1984 , which deals with a populace living under a complete dictatorship, the world of Panem seems more realistic to the contemporary viewer. For instance, Katniss is allowed to continue hunting game, in return for paying off the peacemakers. As long as the reality show garners more viewers, the game makers continue to build on her story arc. It reminds us of mindless television shows, where human misery is broadcast, only till it draws eyeballs and is quickly forgotten. In India, Prayaag Akbar’s novel, Leila , that is essentially a search for a daughter by her mother, is set in an Indian city in the future, governed by rules of staying within their own community. Issues of purity of blood, a shared cultural bond, are seen as more important than living in a diverse city. Here too, a vigilante group enforces the strict segregation rules and punishes those who stray outside the boundaries. As the world becomes more interconnected and news of wars and disputes are beamed into our living rooms, it is quite natural that books, TV series and movies set in places where the natural order is inverted gain in popularity.
The one where we discuss all things freaky and geeky
