dys·to·pi·an
disˈtōpēən/
adjective
1. relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.
One of the earliest movie memories I have was Logan's Run. Mid-70s, probably a TV edit (and thus taking out a lot of the sex and language). People are raised in a hedonistic city and live to a point of time and are conditioned from birth to believe in a process in which they might be able to live forever, but instead are inevitably blown up on their climb to utopia. A few people try to escape the process and are chased down and killed by 'Sandmen'. Yet two survive and get out and find the remains of Washington DC and some old people and realize that they had believed a lie. They come back, destroy their ideal world, and the movie ends with everybody leaving and wondering how to live the rest of their lives.
Dystopia in those days and through much of the next few decades was about a future world that was unpleasant. Blade Runner. Terminator. Death Race 2000. Mad Max. The list goes on, and the worlds created are scary but basically similar. Nobody was well off but only trying to survive in a world gone crazy.
Yet somewhere along the way the Dystopian world of the future started to change. Instead of a place in which everything was bad, dystopia became a place in which everything was bad except for a privileged few.
Perhaps it has always been this way. The world of Planet of the Apes wasn't so bad, if you were an ape. More and more things started to evolve until we came to the Hunger Games series. In it, there are the districts in which people survive, and the capitol, Panem, in which people live for bread and circuses as they are surrounded by and aspire towards luxury. Many other shows and movies have carried on this theme; I am currently watching a Brazilian import called The 3% in which people aspire to move from the slums to the 'Offshore', a place in which life is luxurious and healthy.
So, why has dystopia changed so much? Why is that inequality seems to be a greater form of injustice and misery than equality in which all are in the same crappy boat? Perhaps the answer lies in our world today. Deep down we cannot really imagine a world in which life is lived on the edge of survival, where day-to-day existence seems impossible. But we can imagine a world in which there is great inequality. We just elected a billionaire president who is appointing his billionaire friends to cabinet posts. We look around and the tax policy and priority of much of the ruling class is geared towards taking the 'burden' off of the rich and shifting it towards the poor and middle-class. All around us it seems like we are already moving towards a world in which the 3% is the aspiration, and only people like Donald Trump can enable that to happen.
What does this say about now? Conservatives might say that much of this comes because of the sin of envy...we want what other people have and do not want to have to work for it. Strive to make yourself better and you will receive it, if you only work hard enough. Liberals would point out how upward mobility seems to be increasingly impossible today, and how many barriers there are to it. What's the point of hard work when your options are limited by a system designed to keep the rich and powerful in their place?
Maybe dystopia is so popular not because it expresses some of our greatest fears, but because it hints at our current reality. Our reality-TV president could tomorrow announce that the Purge (or Running Man, or the Hunger Games with urban ghettos filling in for the 12 districts) will be coming to a TV near us, and we honestly might not be surprised. Professional sports remind us that people can be easily replaced, and the political situation today gives support to the class of undesirables striving to be accepted by the MadeIt culture.
Dystopia will continue to remain a real part of our entertainment, if not the year-round horror show we are warned about.
