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Dystopia > Final > Flashcards

Final Flashcards

1
Q

What is utopian studies?

A

the discussions about the progressive or regressive aspects of historical development

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2
Q

What is a utopia?

A

Lots of things
- but in ESSENCE: the imagined better world or society that points to shortcomings in our real, present world

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3
Q

What is utopian fiction?

A

often involves salvation, perfectibility, or the imagined, improved reordering of society in this world, and the more harmonious reconstitution of human relations and attitudes towards nature

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4
Q

What is a dystopia?

A
  • A “bad and deceased place”
  • “Too bad to be predictable”
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5
Q

What is a eutopia?

A

A place of ideal well-being, as a practical aspiration

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6
Q

What is a euchronia?

A

A time of perfect social, technological, and ecological harmony
- Rooted in the belief that the Golden Age lies before us and not behind us

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7
Q

What is an ecotopia?

A

An ecologically ideal place or situation

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8
Q

Explain Plato’s “Republic”

A

Socrates on the importance of self-rule, self-harmony and inner peace
- Threat: getting involved in politics and guiding an imperfect world
- Yet Plato also insisted that cutting oneself off from involvement led to alienation
- Very hard to say if Plato supports getting involved or not

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9
Q

Explain Saint Augustine’s “The City of God”

A

Religious Alotopia
- Focuses on many existential questions (why do the righteous suffer? Why does evil exist? Etc.)
- Part 2 focuses on the city of God vs the earthly city on their parallel development and our access to it

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10
Q

What is an alotopia?

A

Religious notion of heaven

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11
Q

Explain Tao Yuanming’s (T’ao Ch’ien) “Peach Blossom Spring”

A

Example of an archistic utopia (opposite of anarchy)
- The name is a Chinese equivalent for utopia

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12
Q

Explain Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia”

A
  • A work of fiction and philosophy – mixes real people and fictional characters
  • Book 1: dialogue of counsel
  • Book 2: discourse on utopia
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13
Q

What were the 16-17 century trends?

A
  • Anarchistic utopias looking backwards to a pastoral ideal
  • Archistic utopias like More’s but religiously inspired
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14
Q

Explain Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis”

A

Fit into the ‘Age of Discovery’ premise: shipwrecked crew near Peru discover an Island
- Hence a model for colonies in the New World

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15
Q

What is a primitivist scheme?

A

Pointing to primitive societies that could teach Old Europe a thing or two in their simplicity and common sense

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16
Q

What are individualistic utopias?

A

celebration of the self-imposed exile or shipwreck and the building of a better society

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17
Q

What are Poly-Utopia & Anti-Utopia ?

A

stress plurality of possible social models without offering a single ideal

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18
Q

Explain Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”

A
  • Anti-Utopia and Polyutopia
  • Parody of popular ‘Traveller’s Tales’
  • Menippean Satire (general political satire disguised as a burlesque novel)
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19
Q

Explain the two-stage movement in 19th century utopias

A
  1. Late 18th & first half of 19th century: much NON-FICTION, pamphlets, manifestos; more concrete social planning than symbolic fictions
  2. Latter half of 19th century: sudden burst of UTOPIAN FICTION late in century, fantasies pointing to tomorrow’s solutions
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20
Q

What was the peak in the first movement of the 19th century?

A

Peak in 1848: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engel’s The Manifesto for the Communist Party
- The first step was a workers’ revolution and the abolition of private property to create a fair and centralized state

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21
Q

Explain Samuel Butler’s “Erewhon”

A
  • Uses many different forms of satire & hyperbole
  • Mocks self-righteous Victorian society & some progressive movements (as well as criminal punishment, religion and Man’s hubris)
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22
Q

What was the most important new subgenre in the late 19th century?

A

the euchronia

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23
Q

What were the most popular euchronias of the late 19th century?

A
  • Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward
  • Elizabeth Corbett’s New Amazonia (1889)
  • William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890)
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24
Q

Name other other (supposedly) positive euchronian visions in the late 19th century

A

Darwinism and eugenics

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25
Q

Who was the key pivotal author who bridged gap between speculative fiction and science fiction?

A

HG Wells
- Science fiction born out of speculative fiction
- Many hybrid works, but clear movement from dystopia to utopia over career

26
Q

What was the rise of dystopia fuelled by?

A

Fueled by fear of socialism and communism
- Early ones: mostly British euchronias (on loss of privacy, freedom, productivity, living conditions, etc.)
- One of the most remarkable dystopias: Jerome’s “The New Utopia”

27
Q

Who is Ayn Rand?

A
  • heavily involved in anti-Communist groups & efforts during Red Scare
  • became recognized more as a conservative philosopher than a novelist
28
Q

Who is George Orwell?

A
  • Rebellious and intellectual socialist
  • Devoted most writing from 1939-1949 were exposing horrors of both totalitarian fascism and of misguided Soviet and socialist movements
  • Changed English language and coined political terms still used today
  • Big Brother, Orwellian, thought police, being ‘vaporized’, etc.
29
Q

What is the main difference between 1984 and Zamyatin’s ‘We’?

A
  • ‘We’ is more speculatively based on early trends, less realistic as less grounded in actual events and atrocities
  • 1984 is firmly grounded in real events and tendencies
30
Q

Who is Alan Moore?

A

Inspired by Orwell
* Frequently described as the best graphic novel writer in history
* Written 4 very successful graphic novels/series (then turned into films like V for Vendetta)

31
Q

What are the luddites?

A

Revolt of anti-machinery textile workers in England – anger that machines would replace their craft
- Traces in We and earlier works

32
Q

Explain the significance of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

A
  • Leading technotopia of the 20th century
  • Began as mockery of HG Wells –> mockery of Victorian religion
  • Orwell convinced until end he had read We, but Huxley insisted he had never heard of it in 1962 letter
33
Q

What did Huxley’s parents do for a living?

A
  • Father a writer/professor/editor of Cornhill Magazine
  • Mother founder of Prior’s Field School (Aldous attended), family of renowned poets & authors
34
Q

Describe Huxley’s novels before BNW

A

Biting satires mocking the cultural elite
- Crome Yellow
- Antic Hay
- These Barren Leaves

35
Q

What were Huxley’s fears?

A

Overpopulation, propaganda and mind-control by advertisers and politicians

36
Q

What are the 5 Black Mirror themes?

A

1: Social Media Pressure / Blackmail
2: Reality TV & Tech
3: Tech & Military
4: Trapped in VR
5: Digitizing Consciousness / Memories

37
Q

Who is Kurt Vonnegut?

A
  • Depressing “cynic, skeptic, a pessimist, a fatalist, a malcontent”
  • Family of pacifist and atheists
  • Young journalist
  • Sent to military training college program and made to remove and cremate corpses, pretty traumatic
  • Return to US and quit job to become a writer
  • Kept releasing his “last novel” but kept popping em out
  • Mixes personal life with political positions
38
Q

What is the narrative setup of Player Piano?

A

World seen from outside in 8 shah chapters, from inside with Paul chapters

39
Q

Explain Player Piano

A
  • Division of society – after third great war, machines (not women) replaced men in factories
  • 2 extremes: super-educated vs uneducated
  • Eugenics through computer-controlled IQ tests & college exams
  • Ideology outweighs common sense
  • All people are easily replaced parts in the big machine
40
Q

What are films that call back to Vonnegut and Huxley?

A
  • Gattaca
  • Divergent
  • 3%
  • Bladerunner
  • Her
  • Ex Machina
41
Q

Who is Ray Bradbury?

A
  • Refused to be labeled a ‘science fiction author’ but accepted label of ‘fantasy’
  • Won Pulitzer Prize in 2007
  • Insisted on how much he was self-taught
  • Too poor to go to college, so went to the library 3x a week, created a magazine, created short stories, and then became a full-time writer
42
Q

What is 1984 based on?

A

based on real manipulation of photos/archves/history in
Soviet Union

43
Q

Who are the 3 women who influence Montag?

A
  • Clarisse, a 17-year-old girl but an old soul
  • Talks of politics of non-conformity
  • Walks on alternate paths (literally)
  • Woman who refuses to give up her books
  • Montag tries to save her books, but then she decides to burn with them in the end
  • Mildred Montag – lives in virtual world
  • Never really sleeps, half-awake
  • Pops so many sleep lozenges that she sometimes overdoses on
44
Q

How did the world of censorship come about in Fahrenheit 451?

A

According to Beatty, special-interest groups and other “minorities” objected to books that offended them
- Soon, books all began to look the same, as writers tried to avoid offending anybody
- This was not enough, however, and society as a whole decided to simply burn books rather than permit conflicting opinions

45
Q

What films and novel are related to censorship and surveillance?

A
  • The Book of Eli
  • The Giver
46
Q

What were the early trends in feminist dystopias?

A
  • conservative vision of ‘equality’ within the women’s sphere
  • Early 19th century in China: Li Ruzhen’s “Flowers in the Mirror” (vision of women stronger than men)
  • Late 19th century in the West: women’s territories (no men allowed!)
47
Q

What were the early 20th century trends in feminist dystopias?

A

women often sexually liberated co-conspirators or muses for male revolutionaries

48
Q

What were the main works in the next wave: 1970s-80s of feminist dystopias?

A
  • Joanna Russ’s The Female Man
  • Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time
49
Q

What were the ecotopia trends in the Late 18th/Early 19th Century?

A

fear of the Industrial Revolution & of Malthusean theories on
overpopulation
- certain tech would find a way to save nature/man
- Malthus’s “An Essay on the Principle of Population”

50
Q

What were the Mid-19th century ecotopia trends?

A

darker French visions

51
Q

What were the Late-19th century ecotopia trends?

A

UK, Nature will win out in the end

52
Q

What were the early 20th-century ecotopia trends?

A

prescient tales of a future in shelters or underground

53
Q

What were the mid 20th-century ecotopia trends?

A
  • The effects of Dust Bowl migration (‘30s) & the atom bomb (‘40s)
  • Caused spike 1950s & 60s of Haldanean novels on overpopulation
54
Q

What were the 1970s ecotopia films?

A

Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, Death Race
2000, Omega Man (later I am Legend)

55
Q

What are some more recent film ecotopias?

A

Wall-E, Elysium, Oblivion, Snowpiercer, After Earth, Interstellar

56
Q

Name some Post-Dismal Painting / Dystopian Surrealism artists

A
  • Zolzislaw Beksinski
  • John Wentz
  • Bansky’s Dismaland
  • Jeff Gilette
57
Q

Name the works mentioned in the far-left/right dystopia presentation

A
  • animal farm
  • waiting for godot
  • seksmija
  • role of disguise
58
Q

Name the works mentioned in the dangers of technology presentation

A
  • social dilemma
  • deep fake
  • the giver
  • the island
  • stalenhag’s paintings
59
Q

Name the works mentioned in feminist dystopias presentation

A
  • don’t worry darling
  • mad max
  • the power
  • red clocks
  • woodman painting
  • debate on reproductive rights
60
Q

Name the works mentioned in ecological dystopias

A
  • Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy
  • wall-e
  • rockman’s art
  • another place

Dystopia (1 decks)

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