The Uroboros blog a while back tried to define dystopian fiction—a dystopia being a society that’s the polar opposite of utopia, the one where everything has gone wrong.
The problem, as he and my friend Ross Bagby have noted, is that many SF visions of the future present an unpleasant society, but dystopia shouldn’t be just a general description for horrible future worlds. 28 Days Later and other zombie movies, for example, present horrible futures, but I agree with Uroboros they shouldn’t count as dystopia.
His suggestion is that “dystopia” should excluse chaotic, collapsing societies and be reserved for societies that have too much order—tightly controlled societies such as Brave New World or The Matrix. I think that’s a good general definition, but I also don’t think it’s absolute. A decadent, sybaritic society where everyone engages in whatever feels good could certainly be dystopian rather than free, depending how it was presented (Clockwork Orange has some elements of this).
As Ross pointed out to me once, the early dystopias (Brave New World, 1984, We) stuck to a simple formula: Individual challenges conformist society which responds by crushing him. Sticking to that definition eliminates a lot of marginal entries but it also squeezes out a lot of unquestionable dystopias (even if you include ones where the individual fights back successfully).
One thing I think most dystopias have in common is a Warning! element: They’re not simply about an unpleasant future but an unpleasant future that could theoretically come to pass If … we don’t fight communism (Strange Holiday) or we get overzealous about population control (ZPG or The Last Child—the latter is very good, by the way) or the religious right wins the war on women (The Handmaid’s Tale) or the rich/poor gulf gets too wide (the 1980s comic book MICRA) or we take our quest for equality too far (Harrison Bergeron).
One effect of this is that what works for one generation looks quaint to the next, like the worries over rock music and the youth vote in the films Privilege and Wild in the Streets. Likewise, one of the problems with the Atlas Shrugged movie (as noted here) is that while the repression of the wealthy might have been plausible 60 years ago when top tax rates maxed out at 90 percent, it’s pretty laughable when even restoring taxes on the rich to the levels of the Clinton years (and yes, $250,000 is rich) is a controversial position.
Ross, back when he was discussing this with me, added one final thought—one key test is emphasis. Terminator‘s future is (I think) dystopian, for example, but the movie’s an SF thriller, not a dystopia. The Time Machine has an If This Goes On element (what happens if labor and capital split further and further apart?) but it isn’t central to the plot the way future projection is to The Last Child or 1984. Likewise I’d disagree with Uroboros that the Matrix films are dystopian (but I admit it’s a close call).
So if anyone’s planning to write some dystopian fiction this week, you’re now prepared.
If you like my blog …
I read once–no idea where–the theory that a proper dystopia should LOOK like a utopia at first–from a distance, and from the perspective of its most privileged members. Then you get the slow unraveling of everything that’s wrong with that carefully-built society, and the protagonist’s eventual struggle to bring it down. The Hunger Games, for example, would have been a more traditional dystopian narrative if it had been told from the perspective of someone in the Capital–Cinna, for example, getting the prestigious job of styling the Candidates and figuring out slowly just how messed up the situation is. Great post!
Thanks. And while I haven’t read that theory, it’s not a bad way to write one.