Dystopias: On the Rise

Today, dystopias are on the rise.

The Walking Dead is the most-watched basic cable drama with 16.1 million viewers for its fourth (current) season premier.  Nearly two million of these fans follow the show on Twitter.  

Another dystopia, The Hunger Games, is one of Kindle’s top five all-time bestselling books, and the movie adaptation set records for the highest-grossing, non-sequel opening day, earning $67.3 million.  

The Road won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was subsequently adapted for film.  

Summit Entertainment bought media rights to Divergent and was given a budget of $80 million for a planned release in 2014.  

As the numbers show, dystopias are wildly successful with today’s audience — and these audiences want more, or else they would have lost interest in these series.  The Walking Dead’s audience grows with every season, with 5,400 viewers of the season one, 2010 pilot; 7300 viewers of the season two, 2011 premier; 11,000 viewers of the season three, 2012 premier; and 16,000 viewers of the season four, 2013 premier.  Similarly, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire film adaptation was Fandango’s 2013 advance-ticket top seller, and the opening day grossed around $70.5 million, earning even more than The Hunger Games.  


Dystopian audiences have grown massive, no longer just a small group interested in George Orwell’s 1984 (although they too are included).  And as huge as dystopias are today, they are only growing in popularity.

A Clockwork Orange Review

          Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, published in 1962, endures as one of the most iconic dystopian works despite the fact Burgess considered his novella manipulative and preachy.  While the book thrives under its dystopian label and does address the plight of the individual versus the collective state, A Clockwork Orange is primarily a discussion of free will as the defining characteristic of humanity.

           Told in first-person from the perspective of “your humble narrator” Alex, the story follows Alex and his group of droogs—friends—chronicling their horrifying crimes until Alex is imprisoned and undergoes state-supported involuntary conditioning to rid him of his violent tendencies. The book is divided into three parts: the first details Alex’s gang’s crimes, the second Alex’s stay in prison and “rehabilitative” conditioning, and the third Alex’s return to society with his new involuntary aversion to violence.  The first and the third part mirror each other, illustrating the complete reversal of Alex’s life as soon as he is deprived of his free will.  In both the first and third parts, Alex is out on the streets; however, while in the first Alex is portrayed as a lively degenerate who commits horrifying crimes by choice, the third part shows him as hapless and purposeless, incapable of committing any crime. 

            Set in a post-war, fictionalized, lifeless England, Alex’s crimes seem no better or no worse than the society he lives in.  At the milkbar, listless citizens drink down beverages laced with mind-numbing, incapacitating drugs—the legal alternative to escaping society in lieu of Alex’s liberating violence. When viewed in light of the apathy of the rest of the population, Alex’s choice of violence becomes almost justified for readers—at least he is making a choice.   

            Burgess hammers the importance of choice home even more as he begins each part with the question, “What’s it going to be then, eh?” automatically underscoring the role of free will with the very opening lines of his novella.  Burgess then blatantly discusses free will through Alex’s involuntary “rehabilitation” conditioning.  The procedure—Ludovico’s Technique—uses Alex as its test subject, and Alex is conditioned to have intense physical sickness in response to violence, thereby depriving him of choice.  As the prison chaplain argues, “Goodness is something chosen.  When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.”  The chaplain also raises the point that humanity is defined by free will, and to deprive someone of choice is to deprive them of their humanity, making them a machine. 

The title itself—A Clockwork Orange—refers to mankind becoming machinery.  “A clockwork” refers to the automatic operation of machinery, and “orange” can refer to man (referencing ‘orangutan’), as well as nature, the natural world, or humanity in general.  Within the novella, Alex reads from a book also titled A Clockwork Orange: “The attempt to impose upon man… laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen.”  Here, Burgess uses the book to discuss not only mankind’s relation to machinery when deprived of choice but also the dystopian motif of the government’s role in this loss of humanity.

Similar to the collectivism and loss of individuality seen in George Orwell’s 1984, the State in A Clockwork Orange is preoccupied with maintaining power and ignores the needs of the individual, even going so far as to turn mankind into machinery by depriving people of their free will through Ludovico’s Technique.  This discussion of the government’s oppression of its people in the name of “the greater good” makes A Clockwork Orange one of the most iconic dystopian works; however, Burgess takes the discussion a step further by nullifying the idea of “the greater good” with the State’s removal of choice because, as Burgess emphasizes, good is a choice.

            Burgess harnesses language to wonderful effect: the entire story is told in Nadsat, the Russian/Cockney slang Alex speaks.  Even excluding Burgess’s discussions of free will and governmental roles, this novella is likely the most linguistically engaging work of fiction ever created. Without glossary or footnote, readers must learn the language as the story progresses.  This allows Burgess to manipulate his readers by language alone.  Because Alex is “your humble narrator,” everything is filtered through his perspective, and this filtering allows even a despicable criminal to become a sympathetic character since readers are only exposed to his version of events.  The readers’ acclimation to the language also provides an initial barrier to understanding during the first part; Burgess uses this barrier to his advantage and details the most horrifying of Alex’s crimes in this part where readers will understand and care the least, making Alex’s crimes appear less significant.  Nadsat itself is manipulative in the sense that readers are presented with nadsat—teen—slang that only has the capacity to convey certain limited meaning.  Because Nadsat is heavily Russian-based, Burgess may have been alluding once again to the story’s communist/collectivist backdrop; however, if this was his intent, it was executed poorly because Nadsat serves as a rebellious language in his story and functions in opposition to the State rather than in accordance with it. 

            Originally, the novella was written with twenty-one chapters.  Prior to 1986, all American publications only included the first twenty chapters.  While Burgess insisted the final chapter was necessary to make the story complete through Alex’s development, American publishers disagreed and thought American audiences would find the darker ending of the twentieth chapter more believable and more appealing.  Both forms are valid: with the inclusion of the last chapter, the novella becomes a story about a character’s choice, whereas the novella becomes more of a hard-hitting parable describing the simultaneous danger and necessity of free will if the last chapter is excluded.  Either way, A Clockwork Orange is a necessity for any literary discussion pertaining to free will, especially in relation to government.        

Nadsat!

Here's a handy little Nadsat dictionary for all who haven't read A Clockwork Orange in a long time and  need a refresher...

Timeline Too!

And here is your Dystopian timeline - a beautiful list organized by year noting important social, political, technological, and literary influences of dystopia!

A Good List of Great Books

Check out the article Best Dystopian Science Fiction Books.  Wow what a list.

1984 Book Analysis: Spoilers.

What better way to start off a discussion of dystopias than with the ever-classic 1984?

The flap copy for my cheap edition gives a decent analysis:

“The world of 1984 is one in which eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity, in which the Party keeps itself in power by complete control over man’s actions and his thoughts.  As the lovers Winston Smith and Julia learn when they try to evade the Thought Police, and then join the underground opposition, the Party can smash the last impulse of love, the last flicker of individuality.”

One of the most iconic dystopias, 1984 depicts an imagined future as described above.

In the first part, Winston quietly rebels the demands of the party.  He buys a notebook and writes.  Orwell uses this first part of the novel to introduce his readers to the world Winston is acclimated to, and illustrates, through Winston’s doubts, fears, and hatred for the Party his inherent humanity.  He resists doublethink, and he despises that whoever controls the present controls the past, and whoever controls the past controls the future.  Orwell creates an atmosphere of fear and describes a cold, unavoidable and unalterable future.

Julia and Winston’s affair makes up a hefty chunk of the second part; here, Orwell incorporates one of the biggest human motivators – love – and suddenly we’re worried with Winston and Julia.  We need them to succeed against Big Brother.  Toward the end of this section, they join The Brotherhood and read Goldstein’s book, a scathing breakdown of the Party and its methods to stay in power, including perpetual warfare and a learned ignorance.

Julia and Winston are caught, and part three concerns itself with Winston’s torture by the Party.  He is tortured until his physical pain overcomes everything else – he “gives up” Julia and with her any ounce of resistance he had.  At the end, Winston comes to love Big Brother and the Party.  With this ending, Orwell’s warning against totalitarianism is foreboding; the Party will eliminate all human needs and desires – like love – to perpetuate its own power.

Written in 1949, Orwell’s tale predicts a near-future communist-totalitarian regime.  Orwell uses specific themes and details to envision a world under complete communist/totalitarian rule.  Important elements used by Orwell (and common to all dystopias) to illustrate the dangers of an all-powerful government include:

-       Propaganda -  Beyond all the posters, banners, and rallies, newspapers edit politicians’ speeches to make the leader always seem right; more than this, the perpetual stream of songs, announcements, and propaganda streaming from the telescreen can never be turned off.  Citizens are taught to fear their own family, and sex is seen as a requirement to keep the population going – otherwise, it is frowned upon.  Doublethink – the ability to believe a “fact” even with directly contradictory knowledge – is a must for all citizens. Just take the Party's slogans: War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; and Ignorance is Strength. Add in some made-up rebellion to keep the people on their toes and dedicate a 2-minute hate frenzy to keep it fresh in their mind, and this all amounts to a level of propoganda completely overwhelming. 

-       Fear – While you can’t escape the noise of the telescreen, you also can’t escape its ‘view,’ and you never know when the Thought Police are watching.  Even if you say something slightly off in your sleep, they’ll know, and once they know, you’re done for – you’ll either be tortured or killed.  All of the posters with Big Brother watching should remind you, as well as the secret microphones hidden around the city.  And the Thought Police will train your kids to report on you – so you can’t even trust your own family.

-       War – Because the nation is in a perpetual state of war, citizens are united under the false pretense of a foreign enemy and never question their government.  Their rabid patriotism allows them to accept whatever the Party is telling them, and their hatred for foreign enemies and rebels like the Brotherhood blinds them to all.  War for the citizens is peace for the Party, comfortably in power.  

-       Ignorance – The Party controls all information.  It re-writes books, newspapers, and even songs daily.  As the quote goes, who controls the present controls the past; who controls the past controls the future.  Along with the fact that citizens are completely ignorant concerning their own Party, of course they are completely uninformed as to the citizens of other countries – citizens who are in as bad of a situation as they are – and fear foreign takeover.  As if they could lose any rights.  Even their language – Newspeak – eliminates multiple words a year so citizens don’t even have a way to think about rebellion.  The less the people know about how horrible their own conditions are, the less the chance they'll rebel against the Party.  

And because this book ends with Winston having the spirit stamped out of him through torture, we readers are left with Orwell’s warning of what could possibly happen.  Our only hope lies in the robust, lively prole woman, hanging her laundry…

A Sneak Preview

With so many dystopian works - from A Clockwork Orange to The Road to Walking Dead - where can we even begin a discussion?

Wikipedia has lists of dystopian films and literature (linked here).  While these lists are definitely a magnificent place to start in our search for dystopia, the choice of works included and not included are fascinating.  For example, Wikipedia considers the Batman series to be dystopian, but it does not include A Clockwork Orange in its list of dystopian films.  

What should we consider as truly dystopian?  Or are there varying degrees?

To prime the pump for further discussion, I thought I would include a link to the film 1984, produced, ironically, in 1984, and based on George Orwell's book:  

Enjoy!