Talk:Dystopia

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Thank you for shifting my list, I had to run and didn't get to fix it. It is certainly prettier now.  :)Kittensauce

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Minority Report wasn't really dystopic. More "hey, lets have some wacky stuff happen ... but in the future." Webfork

Have to disagree Webfork. The police system in Minority Report was set up to keep everything 'perfect.' It actually did make the world a safer place, but what it did was not only take advantage of the 3 kids that could see into the future, but it also took away the free will of the public at large. It took away their choice to think the things that they want to think. It was similarly dystopic in the same way that A Clockwork Orange was. The fact that doctors forced him to be a good person was evil in and of itself. The made a once violent person a functioning member of society, but at what cost? I think one of the biggest things about dystopian societies, is that your choices become so limited that you actulally lose your free will, for 'the greater good.' Kittensauce

Well, according to the definiton of we have up, the future Minority Report portrays is not one that benefits only a select few nor is it a bad place to live. You've got to modify that definition or we'll continue speaking about two different subjects. Webfork

Please note, it did not say that it "benefits a select few"... but since you made the mistake I see the error of my clarity and I tried again. Kittensauce

I made the mistake? I didn't write the definiton. Webfork

Oh dear, that's not what I meant... originally it said, "benefits all but a select few." What I meant was, you read through it and heard, "benefits a select few." Making a note of this, I changed the wording of my definition, hopefully, so that it would be more clear. It was not a personal attack. I was actually admitting that my definition was mucky. Kittensauce

No problem. I remember feeling saucy while writing that anyhow.

I found some type of backing to help acknowledge that Minority Report is a dystopic story: Merriam-Webster defines it as "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives." I like that better than our gradually increasing definition that seems to gradually be encompassing everything "dark" and sci-fi. Webfork

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I removed some of the painfully pretentious stuff on this list ("Animal Farm" dystopian?!) but it's still pretty borderline. If "dystopia" means "an apparent utopia where in reality people are being exploited" then hardly any of the books and films mentioned there are dystopic. To me a dystopia is more a description of a world that in general is more restrictive, more dangerous, more manipulative and generally just more unpleasant than we have today. And it can't be a fantasy world, there has to be a clear path from today now to this future. I wouldn't call Clockwork Orange dystopian at all because it's no different than life has always been. Young people are wankers, the cops catch them, they go into rehabilitation, end of story. -- Amw

Amw, tell me how you really feel, don't hold back... Not really sure what constitutes a 'painfully pretentious' dystopian example. Obviously, the definition is still unclear if you guys still have no idea what dystopian means. Animal farm is exactly a dystopia at it's most obvious. The animals revolt and set up the perfect society only to have the society be even more oppressive under the new rule. They made what should have been the perfect situation and it became oppressive to satisfy the desires of the elite. The underlings were exploited to the point of death, and it was justified to the masses by saying that it was necessary to do these things to reach societal standards of what they should be to be in power.

A Clockwork Orange is about freewill. If you read the book you will catch an alternate ending to the movie, but it weighs the cost of protecting the public at large. Alex, is a veritable demon from hell, but after his treatment, he is powerless to be the person he was before. They took away his humanity. Along the same lines as the other stories, there is a fascistic drive to help the greater good of the mass populous no matter the individual cost. He was forcibly and voilently rehabilitated.

I think that a dystopia is a negative utopian society. One of the main points that makes them so painful is that they have a facade of justifiable perfection, but they typically have some terrible character flaw that lends to the self-destruction of their own perfection. If Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopia then Minority Report is too. I don't see how you could cut it from the list. I don't think that a dystopia must be restricted to sci-fi and futuristic representations of our current lives. Lord of the Flies is another quintessential utopian society gone wrong. That is a dystopia. It is the opposite of perfection. In the persuit of absolute freedom the boys begin to terrorize the weak until it had become a place where the questionable are no longer wanted, but are also hunted. Much like the androids in Bladerunner, the people who want to read in Farenheit 451, the women who do not want to breed in A Handmaid's Tale, people who want the freedom to thing destructive and dangerous thoughts and even act them out like A Clockwork Orange, Minority Report, and those that want the freedom to live happy lives-Animal Farm and Brave New World. Kittensauce

I was in a bit of a spikey mood the other night and maybe cut more than i intended... but certainly calling "Animal Farm" dystopian is like calling Modern History 101 dystopian. It wasn't a fiction book. I think i disagree with your definition of dystopia. "Lord of the Flies" is some desert island Swiss Family Robinson thing as far as i can gather. (I've never read it.) I don't consider it dystopian because it's not about society going from here to dystopian point X. It's a group of kids on a desert island. It doesn't matter whether their trials and tribulations "reflect" society or not - part of the point of dystopian novels (to me) is that they actually show a dystopian society, not some kind of metaphor for it. What's the point of showing a metaphor? You might as well just be reading an abstract academic paper.

Hence, pretentiousness. It kinda irks me to see most of the books listed are straight off a high school English reading list. That doesn't mean they're bad books per se, but saying certain books are this or that deep metaphor for dystopian theory political existentialism something or other blah blah is really going off on a tangent. I thought the list here was a list of dystopian worlds - books you could read for entertainment, not for chin-scratching.

Let's flip this round the other way. One of my favorite authors is Kim Stanley Robinson. He has been for a long time, i even read some of his books back when i was a kid, when i was still in elementary school. Almost all his books are based on a socialist utopia, but he doesn't get wanky and academic about it. He doesn't write with this superior tone where he's trying to get a "message" across. He just writes a good book. Philip K Dick is on the other angle - many of his books are about a capitalist dystopia, but he doesn't sit around preaching either. But open up Burgess or especially Orwell or any of those "academic" writers and it's one lecture after another, which can get pretty tiresome when all you want to do is read a story. -- Amw

Animal Farm is not a fictional work? I can't begin to comment at the moment... criticizing a book because it has a message to get across "when all you want to do is read a story" has little to do with the actual subject matter of the book. And how can you have a considered opinion on Lord o' da Flies if you've not read it? Back later... TheDarkShirt

Thank God, I thought I was going insane... I always liked you DarkShirt. Amw, I'm just going to let this die here, because I cant seem to figure out why this is bothering you so much. This topic isn't about reading a story for pure pleasure. A dystopian novel is written for a purpose. I could back up why each movie/book that I had on the list before was infact a dystopian novel, but I don't want to get preachy especially since I seem to be outvoted here. I am not trying to attack you, by the way, I just don't understand where the communiction breakdown is happening. Here are some sites I found to back up my definition and my list. I'm not saying that everything there is right, but I think that they and I have simmilar opinions on the subject and you should check them out to see if they express the point with more clarity to help you flesh out the definition and list.

[[1]] -site filled with movie/book suggestions. I don't agree with all, but most are right on. [[2]] -game, but has an interesting definition Kittensauce