This project is an analysis of the distinctions between Utopias and Dystopias, and how they are direct results of one another. Both utopias and dystopias share characters of science fiction and fantasy, and are set in a future where technology has been utilized to establish perfect living conditions. This inherently also changes the psychology, culture, and emotions that humanity experiences in these new worlds.
The term "Utopia is representative of social equality and neglects difference. Although a Utopia is meant to be a true paradise, the face that it's based on the concept of “sameness” treads very closely to the line of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism, which contains centralized dictatorial power, requires absolute subservience to the state; in a Utopia, it upholds the expectation that everyone will abide by all the preset rules of the system with no social or political disruption. What we want to point out is that Utopias are unachievable, and instead exist to disguise what is actually a Dystopia. Utopia’s aren’t practicable because humans were not made to be the same; human beings aren’t statistics or data points that can be manipulated, moved around, and molded. Theoretically, Utopia’s would work with robots or beings that do not have a mind of their own, because Utopia’s are built on the idea that every being that lives within the Utopia functions, lives, and thinks in the exact same way. However, because of the way we’re created and the function of our brains, humans are born to be unpredictable in their decisions. We were made to question the lives that we live and the ways we are asked to live in it, and therefore cannot fit this robotic mold required to thrive within a Utopia.
One real world example of this is Communism, specifically during the Cultural Revolution in China, which was a political movement initiated by Mao Zedong from 1966 to 1976. The Cultural Revolution was a campaign in China ordered by Mao Zedong to purge the Communist Party of any political beliefs that differed from his; Mao Zedong used his power to instill his own revolutionary values into the younger generation and the oppressed parties. In attempt to “purify” the country and reassert his control over the Communist party, the Mao Zedong either killed or threw educators, scientists, revisionists, and anyone with an education into concentration camps; anyone that posed a threat to the “pure” system that he was trying to build was removed. Similar to a Utopia, Mao promised the people of his country a future where he would provide equality, and relied greatly on his vision for a shared changed mentality among his people. Stuart Schram, an expert on Mao Zedong, detects “utopian vision” in Mao Zedong’s approach to the revolution -- what began as a promise for equality and a shared change in ideology shifted into abuses of power in government while violence and socio-economic chaos occurred among China’s people.
The question that our group wanted to answer was: what exactly is a Utopian world? Is there actually a true form of Utopia? It seems that whenever a politician tries to take a political approach towards achieving a Utopia-like society within their country, the “equality” that is pushed for is only one very small group’s idea of what equality is, making it impossible for society to abide by it. Furthermore, by the order of natural discourse, the issues that living in a Utopia would solve would only bring about a whole new set of issues, such as lack of individuality, boredom, and dissatisfaction. As a result, this gives way to violence and moral depravity, which are the issues that we already deal with in our world. To further investigate this issue, we decided to do a case study on popular media content that set their story in a Utopia world, but slowly devolve into a Dystopia as the characters realize that a Utopia cannot exist.
Works Cited
BoutiqueScience. (n.d.). Brave New World: Soma [Digital image]. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/474147509/brave-new-world-soma
Fokkema, D. (2011). Mao Zedong’s Utopian Thought and the Post-Mao Imaginative Response. In Perfect Worlds: Utopian Fiction in China and
the West (pp. 321-344). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt46mwnv.19
Gasketfuse. (2012, August 18). All Animals Are Equal [Digital image]. Retrieved
November 4, 2020, from https://www.deviantart.com/gasketfuse/art/All-Animals-Are-Equal-322026988
Hill and Wang. (2009, July 30). [An excerpt from the graphic novel, Fahrenheit 451]. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106929166
NBC. (2020, January). [Everything is Fine, scene from The Good Place]. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from https://i.redd.it/ll2h5buaamz31.jpg
Nikolava, L. (2017, November 7). 100 Years of Communism - Why it was a Utopian Ideal. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from
https://www.thenationalstudent.com/Opinion/2017-11-07/100_years_of_communism_why_it_was_a_utopian_ideal.html
Shutterstock. (2018, September 24). [Earth from space]. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from
https://www.livescience.com/63655-why-earth-wobbles.html
The Evil Wiki. (2017, May 16). [Dystopian society]. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from
https://medium.com/@malwarwick_98471/a-brief-guide-to-15-important-dystopian-novels-ccf4f4c78520
Walden Media. (2014, August 15). [The Giver movie promotion posters]. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2014/08/15/the-giver-is-faithful-to-the-text-but-flawed-in-many-ways
