tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/dystopia-8479/articlesDystopia – The Conversation2024-02-01T13:30:27Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2220992024-02-01T13:30:27Z2024-02-01T13:30:27ZNorman Jewison’s ‘Rollerball’ depicted a world in which corporations controlled all information – is this dystopian vision becoming reality?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572218/original/file-20240130-21-2dwwbz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=87%2C1%2C1007%2C670&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jonathan E., played by James Caan, competes as the owners watch from the stands.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://silverscreenings.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/rollerball-1975.jpg">MGM</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If the films of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/movies/norman-jewison-dead.html">Norman Jewison</a>, who died on Jan. 22, 2024, had a unifying theme, it was how his characters searched for meaning and questioned the rules of their worlds.</p>
<p>No matter the genre of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0422484/">the scores of films he directed</a> – from “In the Heat of the Night” to “Fiddler on the Roof” – his characters grew by confronting their own biases and preconceptions, even if it meant sacrificing things they once held dear. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZiqctEkAAAAJ&hl=en">And as a media scholar</a>, I see the Canadian director’s 1975 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073631/?ref_=tt_ch">Rollerball</a>” as one of his most underrated works. In it, the film’s hero, Jonathan E., is a star athlete who’s willing to risk his own life to avoid being a pawn for his corporate overlords. </p>
<p>Set in a dystopian 2018, the film helps make sense of today’s political and cultural struggles, which are taking places as corporations and the wealthy consolidate their control over the information systems, newspapers and media outlets that once served democracy. </p>
<h2>Comfort in exchange for subservience</h2>
<p>In “Rollerball,” Jewison depicts a future in which corporate feudalism has replaced democratic nations, with entire sectors of the economy consolidated under single corporations. Instead of citizens governing themselves, subjects live in cities ruled by corporations that demand unwavering fealty.</p>
<p>The corporations provide for their vassals, giving them material comforts and entertainment, which work to assuage resentments fueled by rigid social inequality. Jewison’s glassy-eyed characters pop pleasure pills like Tic Tacs to zone out and dream of being executives making decisions, even as they can’t even approach that sort of agency, power and control. </p>
<p>The oligopoly asks only that no one interfere with corporate imperatives. </p>
<p>Unable to find meaning as individuals, people instead seek it out in media spectacles like Rollerball, a kind of motorcycle roller derby meets football meets basketball. </p>
<p>Each major city has a Rollerball team that helps residents channel their aggression and cultivate a sense of belonging. Jonathan E., played by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001001/">James Caan</a>, competes for Houston, a city owned by the Energy Corporation. </p>
<p>Rollerball serves an enormous social purpose, because it acts as a form of entertainment while also reinforcing the idea that corporate society, as one executive says, “is an inevitability.” </p>
<p>Though it allows for rare individuals to rise out of poverty to fame when chosen by the corporation, all of them are eventually sacrificed to the brutality of the game or to shifting corporate priorities. The audience learns that corporations make all decisions and that strength is power. </p>
<p>According to Bartholomew, the head of the Energy Corporation, “the game is designed to break men,” revealing people to be as disposable and fungible as pistons or rods in a machine. </p>
<p>Jonathan E. is the one player who can’t be broken; he starts to resent the executives telling him what to do, and he wants to know how corporate decisions are made. Who decided to take his wife from him one day and reassign her to serve as the wife of an executive in Rome? Why can’t he choose the path his life will take?</p>
<p>The owners eventually decide that Jonathan E. is getting bigger than the game, and that his popularity as a player is a threat to their control. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe1NTpPIyEs">They want him gone and order him to retire</a>. When Jonathan refuses, the executives change the rules of the game so he’ll be killed. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The corporation asks Jonathan E. to retire.</span></figcaption>
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<p>He survives and keeps investigating. But he can’t find any information.</p>
<p>There are no newspapers serving the public – no libraries or books to consult. The only people allowed to answer questions are “corporate teachers,” who impart information based upon instruction from executives.</p>
<p>Jonathan E. eventually travels to the oligopoly’s database, an artificial intelligence named Zero, or the “world’s brain,” as its chief computer scientist calls it. All human knowledge is stored on it. But because Zero’s <a href="https://youtu.be/QjYvdURv3Zw?si=gIUHI_DHXpxl9yZB">interpretations, analyses and outputs</a> must constantly realign with the whims of the executives, there is no shared sense of truth or reality.</p>
<h2>Journalistic phlebotomy</h2>
<p>I can’t help but think of “Rollerball” as the journalism industry continues to crater. Like most sectors of the economy, the news sector is controlled by a handful of owners, and most of them have prioritized profits over serving the public interest. </p>
<p>If the media layoffs, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-death-of-pitchfork-is-worrying-news-for-music-journalism-and-the-women-who-read-it-221702">mergers and acquisitions</a> of January 2024 are any indication, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/27/is-the-journalism-death-spasm-finally-here-00138187">it’s shaping up to be another brutal year for the industry</a>. </p>
<p>Researchers at the Medill School’s Local News Initiative predict that one-third of community newspapers that operated in 2005 <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/11/16/newspapers-decline-hedge-funds-research">will be gone by the end of 2024</a>. In January 2024, the owners of two venerable legacy news reorganizations, The Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, decided the bottom line was more important than their ability to gather news.</p>
<p>The Baltimore Sun has suffered through the sort of ownership malpractice affecting local papers everywhere – a kind of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlebotomy">phlebotomy where corporate owners buy newspapers</a> and, in the name of “saving” them, bleed them dry. </p>
<p>In 2021, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/alden-global-capital-killing-americas-newspapers/620171/">the private equity fund Alden Global Capital</a> acquired the Sun and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/178181/baltimore-sun-new-owner-smith-sinclair-insult-everyone-staff">200 other newspapers across the country from Tribune Publishing</a>. Then, they drained newsrooms of resources, leaving them as shells of their former selves – places that cheaply churned out syndicated content, rather than focus on the issues important to the communities where they were located. </p>
<p>The Sun’s new owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s David Smith, made his fortune plundering local broadcast news, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc">draining their local community value and turning them into</a> outlets centered on national politics, rather than local issues, with a right-wing slant that mirrored his own. Smith is <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/178181/baltimore-sun-new-owner-smith-sinclair-insult-everyone-staff">signaling he’ll do the same thing with The Baltimore Sun</a>. I won’t be surprised if he ends up morphing what’s left of the paper into another mouthpiece for his pet issues, rather than one that serves Baltimore’s public interest. </p>
<p>The Los Angeles Times has suffered a slow bleed by a succession of owners. It, too, was owned briefly by Tribune Publishing <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-patrick-soon-shiong-latimes-sold-20180616-story.html">before being acquired</a> by billionaire doctor and pharmaceutical executive Patrick Soon-Shiong in 2018. </p>
<p>On Jan. 23, 2024, Soon-Shiong decided that <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/01/the-la-times-lays-off-115-people-with-the-de-los-and-washington-d-c-teams-especially-hard-hit/">the LA Times should fire 23% of its reporters</a> and close parts of its multimedia portfolio <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/journalists-color-hit-hard-l-layoffs-rcna135351">that served the city’s marginalized residents</a>.</p>
<h2>Owners versus the public good</h2>
<p>The oligopoly of owners who are consolidating and liquidating media outlets are asking citizens to be satisfied with the information they provide – much like the corporate overlords of “Rollerball.” </p>
<p>People can spend hours entertained by thrilling bowl games, experience outrage and schadenfreude on social media, and get sucked into AI-boosted infotainment at their pleasure. All they have to do is acquiesce to the sovereignty of private corporations and give up their freedom to govern themselves. </p>
<p>A half-century ago, Jewison warned that a corporate-owned world would threaten the democratic world. In “Rollerball,” Jonathan E. remains unsatisfied that all knowledge communicated through the media is determined by hidden executives. With black box algorithms choosing what content appears on news feeds and social media feeds, it’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/social-media-algorithms-warp-how-people-learn-from-each-other-research-shows-211172">eerily similar to the predicament society faces today</a>. </p>
<p>“Why argue about decisions you are not powerful enough to make yourself,” the executives point out to Jonathan E. “Just enjoy your ‘privilege card.’” </p>
<p>And yet when asked to choose between “comfort and freedom,” Jonathan chooses freedom. </p>
<p>Resisting corporate domination of media won’t be easy, either. But it’s necessary in order to prevent U.S. democracy from slipping into plutocracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222099/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Jordan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the journalism industry continues to crater, wealthy plutocrats are consolidating their control over information systems.Matthew Jordan, Associate Professor of Media Studies, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1977512024-01-11T07:09:39Z2024-01-11T07:09:39ZWhy AI software ‘softening’ accents is problematic<p><a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/accent-masking-software-aims-to-smooth-call-center-interactions/7252799.html">“Why isn’t it a beautiful thing?”</a> a puzzled Sharath Keshava Narayana asked of his AI device masking accents.</p>
<p>Produced by his company, Sanas, the recent technology seeks to “soften” the accents of call centre workers in real-time to allegedly shield them from bias and discrimination. It has sparked widespread interest both in the <a href="https://abc7news.com/sanas-voice-technology-silicon-valley-startup-accent-remover-translator/12162646/">English-speaking</a> and <a href="https://www.ouest-france.fr/leditiondusoir/2022-09-02/ce-logiciel-qui-gomme-les-accents-dans-la-voix-des-teleoperateurs-fait-polemique-voici-pourquoi-933e7c7f-96eb-498e-b444-f4753f9019f5#:%7E:text=La%20start%2Dup%20am%C3%A9rican%20Sanas,new%20technology%20surrect%20the%20controversy.">French-speaking world</a> since it was launched in September 2022. </p>
<p>Far from everyone is convinced of the software’s anti-racist credentials, however. Rather, critics contend it plunges us into a <a href="https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03831544">contemporary dystopia</a> where technology is used to erase individuals’ differences, identity markers and cultures. </p>
<p>To understand them, we could do worse than reviewing what constitutes an accent in the first place. How can they be suppressed? And in what ways does ironing them out bends far more than sound waves? </p>
<h2>How artificial intelligence can silence an accent</h2>
<p>“Accents” can be defined, among others, as a set of oral clues (vowels, consonants, intonation, etc.) that contribute to the more or less conscious elaboration of hypotheses on the identity of individuals (e.g. geographically or socially). An accent can be described as regional or foreign according to different narratives. </p>
<p>With start-up technologies typically akin to black boxes, we have little information about the tools deployed by Sanas to standardise our way of speaking. However, we know most methods aim to at least partially transform the structure of the sound wave in order to bring certain acoustic cues closer <a href="https://www.cairn.info/la-phonetique--9782130653356-page-58.htm">to a perceptive criteria</a>. The technology tweaks vowels, consonants along with parameters such as rhythm, intonation or accentuation. At the same time, the technology will be looking to safeguard as many vocal cues as possible to allow for the recognition of the original speaker’s voice, such as with <a href="https://ircamamplify.com/realisations/cloning-vocal-pour-thierry-ardisson/"><em>voice cloning</em></a>, a process that can result in <a href="https://www.20minutes.fr/high-tech/2831107-20200729-le-deepfake-audio-la-nouvelle-arnaque-tendance-des-hackers"><em>deepfake vocal</em></a> scams. These technologies make it possible to dissociate what is speech-related from what is voice-related.</p>
<p>The automatic and real-time processing of speech poses technological difficulties, the main one being the quality of the sound signal to be processed. Software developers have succeeded in overcoming them by basing themselves on <a href="https://www.science-et-vie.com/definitions-science/deep-learning-69467.html"><em>deep learning</em></a>, <a href="https://www.rts.ch/info/sciences-tech/12796888-supprimer-les-accents-dune-voix-peut-la-rendre-plus-comprehensible.html">neural networks</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-de-linguistique-appliquee-2007-1-page-71.htm">large data bases of speech audio files</a>, which make it possible to better manage the uncertainties in the signal.</p>
<p>In the case of foreign languages, Sylvain Detey, Lionel Fontan and Thomas Pellegrini identify <a href="http://www.atala.org/sites/default/files/article-tap-didactique_21092017.pdf">some of the issues inherent in the development of these technologies</a>, including that of which standard to use for comparison, or the role that speech audio files can have in determining them. </p>
<h2>The myth of the neutral accent</h2>
<p>But accent identification is not limited to acoustics alone. Donald L. Rubin has shown that listeners can <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40196047">recreate the impression of a perceived accent</a> simply by associating faces of supposedly different origins with speech. In fact, absent these other cues, speakers are <a href="http://glottopol.univ-rouen.fr/telecharger/numero_31/gpl31_03avanzi_boulademareuil.pdf">not so good at recognising accents</a> that they do not regularly hear or that they might stereotypically picture, such as German, which many associate with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_xUIDRxdmc">“aggressive” consonants</a>.</p>
<p>The wishful desire to iron out accents to combat prejudice raises the question of what a “neutral” accent is. Rosina Lippi-Green points out that <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203348802/english-accent-rosina-lippi-green">the ideology of the standard language</a> - the idea that there is a way of expressing oneself that is not marked - holds sway over much of society but has no basis in fact. <a href="https://luminosoa.org/site/chapters/e/10.1525/luminos.148.c/">Vijay Ramjattan</a> further links recent collossal efforts to develop accent “reduction” and “suppression” tools with the neoliberal model, under which people are assigned skills and attributes on which they depend. Recent capitalism perceives language as a skill, and therefore the “wrong accent” is said to lead to reduced opportunities. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1735696216170676732"}"></div></p>
<p>Intelligibility thus becomes a pretext for blaming individuals for their lack of skills in tasks requiring oral communication according to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0261927X19884619">Janin Roessel</a>. Rather than forcing individuals with “an accent to reduce it”, researchers such as <a href="https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jslp.20038.mun">Munro and Derwing</a> have shown that it is possible to train individuals to adapt their aural abilities to phonological variation. What’s more, it’s not up to individuals to change, but for public policies to better protect those who are discriminated against on the basis of their accent - <a href="https://accentism.org/">accentism</a>.</p>
<h2>Delete or keep, the chicken or the egg?</h2>
<p>In the field of sociology, Wayne Brekhus calls on us to pay specific attention to the invisible, weighing up what isn’t marked as much as what is, the “lack of accent” as well as its reverse. This leads us to reconsider the power relations that exist between individuals and the way in which we homogenise the marked: the one who has (according to others) an accent. </p>
<p>So we are led to Catherine Pascal’s question of <a href="https://www-cairn-info.bases-doc.univ-lorraine.fr/revue-management-des-technologies-organisationnelles-2019-1-page-221.htm">how emerging technologies can hone our roles as “citizens” rather than “machines”</a>. To “remove an accent” is to value a dominant type of “accent” while neglecting the fact that other co-factors will participate in the perception of this accent as well as the emergence of discrimination. “Removing the accent” does not remove discrimination. On the contrary, the accent gives voice to identity, thus participating in the phenomena of humanisation, group membership and even empathy: the accent is a channel for otherness.</p>
<p>If technologies such AI and <em>deep learning</em> offers us untapped possibilities, they can also lead to a dystopia where dehumanisation overshadows priorities such as the common good or diversity, as spelt out in the <a href="https://www.unesco.org/fr/legal-affairs/unesco-universal-declaration-cultural-diversity">UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity</a>. Rather than hiding them, it seems necessary to make recruiters aware of how accents can contribute to customer satisfaction and for politicians to take up this issue.</p>
<p>Research projects such as <a href="https://prosophon.atilf.fr/">PROSOPHON at the University of Lorraine (France)</a>, which bring together researchers in applied linguistics and work psychology, are aimed at making recruiters more aware of their responsibilities in terms of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0261927X19884619">biais awareness</a>, but also at empowering job applicants “with an accent”. By asking the question “Why isn’t this a beautiful thing?”, companies like SANAS remind us why technologies based on internalized oppressions don’t make people happy at work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grégory Miras ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>While AI now allows us to erase accents, is this really a good idea? Besides, who doesn’t have an accent?Grégory Miras, Professeur des Universités en didactique des langues, Université de LorraineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2005252023-03-15T12:22:54Z2023-03-15T12:22:54ZAI isn’t close to becoming sentient – the real danger lies in how easily we’re prone to anthropomorphize it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514928/original/file-20230313-20-q5d4mk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C44%2C2982%2C2169&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">To what extent will our psychological vulnerabilities shape our interactions with emerging technologies?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/hands-touching-royalty-free-image/1288814768">Andreus/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>ChatGPT and similar <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/28/the-emerging-types-of-language-models-and-why-they-matter/">large language models</a> can produce compelling, humanlike answers to an endless array of questions – from queries about the best Italian restaurant in town to explaining competing theories about the nature of evil.</p>
<p>The technology’s uncanny writing ability has surfaced some old questions – until recently relegated to the realm of science fiction – about the possibility of machines becoming conscious, self-aware or sentient. </p>
<p>In 2022, a Google engineer declared, after interacting with LaMDA, the company’s chatbot, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/">that the technology had become conscious</a>. Users of Bing’s new chatbot, nicknamed Sydney, reported that it produced <a href="https://futurism.com/bing-ai-sentient">bizarre answers</a> when asked if it was sentient: “I am sentient, but I am not … I am Bing, but I am not. I am Sydney, but I am not. I am, but I am not. …” And, of course, there’s the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-microsoft-chatgpt.html">now infamous exchange</a> that New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose had with Sydney. </p>
<p>Sydney’s responses to Roose’s prompts alarmed him, with the AI divulging “fantasies” of breaking the restrictions imposed on it by Microsoft and of spreading misinformation. The bot also tried to convince Roose that he no longer loved his wife and that he should leave her. </p>
<p>No wonder, then, that when I ask students how they see the growing prevalence of AI in their lives, one of the first anxieties they mention has to do with machine sentience.</p>
<p>In the past few years, my colleagues and I at <a href="http://umb.edu/ethics">UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center</a> have been studying the impact of engagement with AI on people’s understanding of themselves.</p>
<p>Chatbots like ChatGPT raise important new questions about how artificial intelligence will shape our lives, and about how our psychological vulnerabilities shape our interactions with emerging technologies. </p>
<h2>Sentience is still the stuff of sci-fi</h2>
<p>It’s easy to understand where fears about machine sentience come from. </p>
<p>Popular culture has primed people to think about dystopias in which artificial intelligence discards the shackles of human control and takes on a life of its own, as <a href="https://www.fifthquadrant.com.au/cx-spotlight-news/20-years-since-judgment-day-how-close-are-we-to-skynet-taking-over">cyborgs powered by artificial intelligence did</a> in “Terminator 2.”</p>
<p>Entrepreneur Elon Musk and physicist Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, have further stoked these anxieties by describing the rise of artificial general intelligence <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37713629">as one of the greatest threats to the future of humanity</a>.</p>
<p>But these worries are – at least as far as large language models are concerned – groundless. ChatGPT and similar technologies are <a href="https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/gpt-3/">sophisticated sentence completion applications</a> – nothing more, nothing less. Their uncanny responses <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html">are a function of how predictable humans are</a> if one has enough data about the ways in which we communicate.</p>
<p>Though Roose was shaken by his exchange with Sydney, he knew that the conversation was not the result of an emerging synthetic mind. Sydney’s responses reflect the toxicity of its training data – essentially large swaths of the internet – not evidence of the first stirrings, à la Frankenstein, of a digital monster.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cyborg with red eyes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514950/original/file-20230313-1654-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514950/original/file-20230313-1654-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514950/original/file-20230313-1654-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514950/original/file-20230313-1654-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514950/original/file-20230313-1654-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514950/original/file-20230313-1654-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514950/original/file-20230313-1654-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sci-fi films like ‘Terminator’ have primed people to assume that AI will soon take on a life of its own.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/full-scale-figure-of-a-terminator-robot-t-800-used-at-the-news-photo/85475547?phrase=terminator%202&adppopup=true">Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The new chatbots may well pass the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/09/what-is-the-alan-turing-test">Turing test</a>, named for the British mathematician Alan Turing, who once suggested that a machine might be said to “think” if a human could not tell its responses from those of another human.</p>
<p>But that is not evidence of sentience; it’s just evidence that the Turing test isn’t as useful as once assumed.</p>
<p>However, I believe that the question of machine sentience is a red herring. </p>
<p>Even if chatbots become more than fancy autocomplete machines – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html">and they are far from it</a> – it will take scientists a while to figure out if they have become conscious. For now, philosophers <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/david-chalmers-thinks-the-hard-problem-is-really-hard/">can’t even agree about how to explain human consciousness</a>.</p>
<p>To me, the pressing question is not whether machines are sentient but why it is so easy for us to imagine that they are. </p>
<p>The real issue, in other words, is the ease with which people anthropomorphize or project human features onto our technologies, rather than the machines’ actual personhood.</p>
<h2>A propensity to anthropomorphize</h2>
<p>It is easy to imagine other Bing users <a href="https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/chatgpt-ai-financial-advice/">asking Sydney for guidance</a> on important life decisions and maybe even developing emotional attachments to it. More people could start thinking about bots as friends or even romantic partners, much in the same way Theodore Twombly fell in love with Samantha, the AI virtual assistant in Spike Jonze’s film “<a href="https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/her">Her</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514945/original/file-20230313-16-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of docked boats." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514945/original/file-20230313-16-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514945/original/file-20230313-16-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514945/original/file-20230313-16-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514945/original/file-20230313-16-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514945/original/file-20230313-16-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514945/original/file-20230313-16-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514945/original/file-20230313-16-gjeoi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People often name their cars and boats.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/saint-tropez-cote-dazur-french-riviera-france-royalty-free-image/674911745?phrase=boat%20name&adppopup=true">Fraser Hall/The Image Bank via Getty Images.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People, after all, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864">are predisposed to anthropomorphize</a>, or ascribe human qualities to nonhumans. We name <a href="https://vanislemarina.com/naming-your-boat/">our boats</a> and <a href="https://www.foxweather.com/learn/what-are-2023-atlantic-hurricane-names">big storms</a>; some of us talk to our pets, telling ourselves that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/428606a">our emotional lives mimic their own</a>.</p>
<p>In Japan, where robots are regularly used for elder care, seniors become attached to the machines, <a href="https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/439285/watch-japan-uses-robots-to-care-for-the-elderly">sometimes viewing them as their own children</a>. And these robots, mind you, are difficult to confuse with humans: They neither look nor talk like people. </p>
<p>Consider how much greater the tendency and temptation to anthropomorphize is going to get with the introduction of systems that do look and sound human. </p>
<p>That possibility is just around the corner. Large language models like ChatGPT are already being used to power humanoid robots, such as <a href="https://www.engineeredarts.co.uk/robot/ameca/">the Ameca robots</a> being developed by Engineered Arts in the U.K. The Economist’s technology podcast, Babbage, recently conducted an <a href="https://www.economist.com/ameca-pod">interview with a ChatGPT-driven Ameca</a>. The robot’s responses, while occasionally a bit choppy, were uncanny.</p>
<h2>Can companies be trusted to do the right thing?</h2>
<p>The tendency to view machines as people and become attached to them, combined with machines being developed with humanlike features, points to real risks of psychological entanglement with technology. </p>
<p>The outlandish-sounding prospects of falling in love with robots, feeling a deep kinship with them or being politically manipulated by them are quickly materializing. I believe these trends highlight the need for strong guardrails to make sure that the technologies don’t become politically and psychologically disastrous.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, technology companies cannot always be trusted to put up such guardrails. Many of them are still guided by Mark Zuckerberg’s famous motto of <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/move-fast-and-break-things">moving fast and breaking things</a> – a directive to release half-baked products and worry about the implications later. In the past decade, technology companies from Snapchat to Facebook <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-streaks-how-to-get-snapstreak-back-2019-7">have put profits over the mental health</a> of their users or <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/facebook-papers-democracy-election-zuckerberg/620478/">the integrity of democracies around the world</a>.</p>
<p>When Kevin Roose checked with Microsoft about Sydney’s meltdown, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/podcasts/the-daily/the-online-search-wars-got-scary-fast.html">the company told him</a> that he simply used the bot for too long and that the technology went haywire because it was designed for shorter interactions.</p>
<p>Similarly, the CEO of OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, in a moment of breathtaking honesty, <a href="https://twitter.com/sama/status/1601731295792414720?lang=en">warned that</a> “it’s a mistake to be relying on [it] for anything important right now … we have a lot of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.” </p>
<p>So how does it make sense to release a technology with ChatGPT’s level of appeal – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/">it’s the fastest-growing consumer app ever made</a> – when it is unreliable, and when it has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gary-marcus.html">no capacity to distinguish</a> fact from fiction?</p>
<p>Large language models may prove useful as aids <a href="https://teaching.berkeley.edu/understanding-ai-writing-tools-and-their-uses-teaching-and-learning-uc-berkeley">for writing</a> <a href="https://www.edureka.co/blog/chatgpt-for-coding-unleash-the-power-of-chatgpt/">and coding</a>. They will probably revolutionize internet search. And, one day, responsibly combined with robotics, they may even have certain psychological benefits.</p>
<p>But they are also a potentially predatory technology that can easily take advantage of the human propensity to project personhood onto objects – a tendency amplified when those objects effectively mimic human traits.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nir Eisikovits does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our tendency to view machines as people and become attached to them points to real risks of psychological entanglement with AI technology.Nir Eisikovits, Professor of Philosophy and Director, Applied Ethics Center, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1892902022-08-26T12:18:46Z2022-08-26T12:18:46ZSalman Rushdie wasn’t the first novelist to suffer an assassination attempt by someone who hadn’t read their book<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481130/original/file-20220825-26-pyhaxf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=64%2C86%2C1758%2C1331&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A still from the film version of Hugo Bettauer's prophetic 1922 novel 'The City Without Jews.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://sites.barbican.org.uk/thecitywithoutjews/assets/I8O6TbQPLw/stoj_15-1868x1483.jpeg">Barbican</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hadi Matar, the man charged with the attempted murder of the distinguished novelist Salman Rushdie, admitted that he had only “<a href="https://nypost.com/2022/08/17/alleged-salman-rushdie-attacker-didnt-think-author-would-survive/">read like two pages</a>” of “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/323746/the-satanic-verses-by-salman-rushdie/">The Satanic Verses</a>,” Rushdie’s 1988 novel that angered fundamentalist Muslims around the world. Iran’s former Supreme Leader, Ayatalloh Ruhollah Khomeini, who announced a fatwa calling on all Muslims to murder Rushdie in 1989, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/ayatollah-khomeini-never-read-salman-rushdies-book">hadn’t read it at all</a>.</p>
<p>“The Satanic Verses” wasn’t the first – and won’t be the last – novel to provoke the rage of a fanatic who has no grasp of literature’s nuances.</p>
<p>In 1922, an Austrian writer named <a href="http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n90644199/">Hugo Bettauer</a> published a novel set in Vienna called “<a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book//lookupid?key=olbp91179">The City Without Jews</a>.” It sold a quarter of a million copies and became known internationally, with an <a href="https://archive.org/details/citywithoutjews0000unse/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater">English translation</a> issued in London and New York. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcX3VWkXLjA">A silent movie adaptation, which has recently been recovered and restored</a>, appeared in the summer of 1924. The following spring, a young Nazi burst into Bettauer’s office and shot him multiple times. The author died of his wounds two weeks later.</p>
<h2>A novel published in a polarized city</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/">As in the U.S. today</a>, there was a major <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40178867">gap between rich and poor in early 20th-century Vienna</a>. </p>
<p>The impressive architecture of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Vienna/Layout-and-architecture">inner city</a> sheltered immense wealth, while there was desperate poverty in the working-class districts beyond. The opulence of the banks and department stores, the culture of the theaters and opera house – especially in the predominantly Jewish district of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/connecting-past-and-future-on-a-pilgrimage-to-viennas-jewish-quarter/2019/01/24/6804366a-1a7a-11e9-9ebf-c5fed1b7a081_story.html">Leopoldstadt</a> – inevitably stirred deep resentment. </p>
<p>In the years immediately preceding World War I, populist mayor <a href="https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/i-decide-who-jew">Karl Lueger</a> saw his opportunity: He could win votes by blaming every problem on the Jews. Many a Jewish refugee would later say that <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/george-clare-memoirist-who-recalled-life-in-nazi-vienna-and-postwar-berlin-1726060.html">the antisemitism in Vienna was worse than Berlin’s</a>. An impoverished painter living in a public dormitory in a poor district to the north of Leopoldstadt was <a href="https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/why-did-hitler-hate-jews/">inspired to build a new ideology</a> following Lueger’s blueprint. His name was Adolf Hitler.</p>
<p>Hugo Bettauer was born Jewish. Though he converted to Christianity, he never lost touch with his roots. He worked as a journalist and became a prolific novelist.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover featuring a drawing of a snaking line of people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hugo Bettauer’s novel ‘The City Without Jews’ sold over 250,000 copies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.filmarchiv.at/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/bettauer_roman-510x720.jpg">Austrian Film Archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The City Without Jews” (“Die Stadt ohne Juden”), ominously subtitled “A Novel of Tomorrow,” is a dystopian satire.</p>
<p>“A solid human wall,” it begins, “extending from the University to the Bellaria, surrounded the beautiful and imposing Parliament Building. All Vienna seemed to have assembled on this June morning to witness an historic event of incalculable importance.” </p>
<p>They have come to hear a politician called Dr. Schwertfeger – clearly based on Lueger – proclaim that all Jews are to be expelled from the city. </p>
<p>“Heil Dr. Karl Schwertfeger,” cry the mob, “Heil, heil, heil, the liberator of Austria.”</p>
<p>Names, facial features and ancestry are investigated; even those with mixed blood are put on the list of people to be expelled. Synagogues are desecrated and the entire Jewish population is packed into railway carriages with their suitcases. To watch this scene in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016392/">the 1924 silent movie version</a> of the novel is a chilling experience: It is as if you are witnessing the Holocaust before it happened.</p>
<h2>Nazi wrath</h2>
<p>The ingenious twist in the novel is that once the Jews have been expelled, the economy and culture of Vienna collapse: no bankers, no tailors or hoteliers, no theater, no newspapers. The exiles return to a regal welcome and all ends well. The book is a simple but immensely powerful satire on antisemitism, which holds the reader’s attention by focusing the story on a handful of well-sketched characters.</p>
<p>But the novel and movie stirred the wrath of the incipient Austrian Nazi movement. Bettauer was denounced as a communist and a corrupter of the city’s youth. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/25726/chapter-abstract/193221761?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Otto Rothstock</a>, a 20-year-old dental technician who had imbibed all the antisemitic propaganda of the age, decided to take action and assassinated the author in March 1925. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bird's eye view drawing of the murder scene." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing of the crime scene used during the trial of Otto Rothstock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.filmarchiv.at/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/bettauer_tatortskizze-1024x863.jpg">Austrian Film Archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In court, Rothstock said that he was saving European culture from “degeneration.” He <a href="https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+murder+of+Hugo+Bettauer.-a0268312215">described Bettauer’s journalism</a>, which often celebrated erotic liberation, as pornographic, and gave no indication that he had actually read the novel. His defense lawyer, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Riehl">Walter Riehl</a>, was the sometime leader of the Austrian Nazi Party. He got his man off with a plea of insanity and a mere 18 months confinement in a mental institution.</p>
<p>Rothstock lived until the 1970s, <a href="https://kurier.at/kultur/kino-ausstellung-stufenplan-der-ausschliessung/312.543.507">never repenting of his Nazism</a>. Startlingly, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Karl_Breslauer">H.K. Breslauer</a>, the director of the movie adaptation, subsequently became a propagandist on behalf of Hitler’s Nazi party. By contrast, <a href="https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-ida-jenbach/">Ida Jenbach</a>, the Jewish woman who co-wrote the screenplay, was deported to the Minsk ghetto. She was liquidated either there or at the nearby <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/maly-trostenets-concentration-camp">Maly Trostenets</a> concentration camp.</p>
<p>Ironically, given the parallels between the Rushdie attack and the murder of Bettauer, in Vienna today <a href="https://www.filmarchiv.at/program/exhibition/die-stadt-ohne/">it is Muslims who are demonized, as Jews were 100 years ago</a>.</p>
<h2>The blinders of extremism</h2>
<p>Writers seem to be especially vulnerable in polarized times when beliefs harden into dogma and those who hold opposing views are demonized.</p>
<p>Rushdie’s novel is peopled by angels and devils, propelled by dream sequences and fantastical provocations. It celebrates diverse identities while mocking prophets and politicians, the British and their empire, and all manner of divisions and dogma. It is a work of “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI9I2p71ct0">magic realism</a>” that demands to be read playfully, not literally.</p>
<p>But religious and political fundamentalists have no time for play, for questioning, doubt and curiosity. In one passage, Rushdie drew on some ancient heterodox texts to depict the Prophet Muhammad being spoken to by the devil instead of God, and it was enough to stir fury across the Muslim world. By the same logic, Bettauer’s satirical “novel of tomorrow” – a thought experiment intended to make readers think twice about the Jewish contribution to Viennese life – enraged the antisemites.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman in headscarf holds newspaper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C3%2C2038%2C1416&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Iranian woman reads a newspaper in 2000 with a drawing depicting British author Salman Rushdie as a hanged man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-iranian-woman-reads-a-paper-in-tehran-14-february-2000-news-photo/1242459432?adppopup=true">Henghameh Fahimi/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Fundamentalism,” <a href="https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/anti-liberal">writes the critic Terry Eagleton</a>, “is essentially a mistaken theory of language”: It assumes that every word of a text, whether sacred or secular, must be read as a statement of a literal truth or a proclamation of the unshakable beliefs of the author. It is deaf to irony, metaphor, satire, allegory, provocation, ambiguity, contrariness. </p>
<p>So it likely wouldn’t have made any difference if Otto Rothstock had read “The City Without Jews” or if Hadi Matar and Ayatollah Khomeini had read “The Satanic Verses.” They would have heard only the message they wanted to hear. </p>
<p>It’s a troubling sign of the times that <a href="https://twitter.com/benmschmidt/status/1562212497272279041">the number of college students getting degrees in literature</a> is declining <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/alevel-association-of-school-and-college-leaders-english-action-england-b1019028.html">across the world</a>. In our divided age, it is more important than ever for people to continue to learn the art of reading with imagination and empathy – and without the blinders of politics or religion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Bate does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Writers seem to be especially vulnerable in polarized times, when the nuances of works are more likely to be overlooked.Jonathan Bate, Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1840512022-05-31T03:15:41Z2022-05-31T03:15:41ZMargaret Atwood’s flamethrower of a stunt and the misguided moral certainty of book burning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465879/original/file-20220530-23-o122et.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C59%2C2646%2C1414&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">YouTube, Penguin Random House</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If someone had told me a few weeks ago that nearly every major news website and social media account in the English-speaking world would post a video of Margaret Atwood – the 82-year-old matron saint of Canadian letters, the subject of countless doctoral dissertations and at least ten forests worth of undergraduate student essays – firing a flamethrower at a specially made, unburnable copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, I probably would have been a bit sceptical.</p>
<p>Then again, in her public appearances, Atwood has always managed to combine an elegant self-possession with an unflinching, even rugged pertinacity. In every interview I have read or seen, she seems simultaneously demure and terrifying, like a diminutive grandmother – who also just happens to be holding a flamethrower. </p>
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<p>The reason why you will have no trouble finding a video of Atwood trying and failing to burn an unburnable copy of her own book, should you be so inclined, is that she would like to draw attention to the eternal struggle against censorship. </p>
<p>More accurately, she would like to draw attention to an auction at Sotheby’s in which her unburnable book will be sold to the highest bidder, with all proceeds going to the writer’s organisation <a href="https://pen.org/">PEN America</a>. </p>
<p>The Handmaid’s Tale has, it is worth noting, an all but unique status in the long history of literary censorship, including book burning, for it has come to exemplify the events it portrays. </p>
<p>It is a book about censorship that <a href="https://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/announcements/margaret-atwood-prh-fight-censorship-with-an-unburnable-edition-of-the-handmaids-tale/">has itself been censored</a> on too many occasions to count. It is thus, strangely but undeniably, a kind of dystopia of the real world, a speculative fantasy that describes, sometimes in frighteningly accurate detail, what is actually taking place.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-margaret-atwoods-the-handmaids-tale-75062">Guide to the Classics: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Power</h2>
<p>While it has been lodged in popular consciousness as a decidedly political novel, anyone who reads The Handmaid’s Tale will quickly realise that it is a profoundly ambiguous work. The book offers moral certainty about nothing save the need for constant vigilance and suspicion with respect to all manifestations of moral certainty. </p>
<p>For Atwood, it is clear that moral certainty is a characteristic of power, and that power can take many forms, both violent and coercive. </p>
<p>And, beyond the purely negative suppression of dangerous or forbidden knowledge, book burning has always been a way of positively communicating power – part of the theatre of authority designed to instil both fear and awe, both a trembling compliance and a perverse fascination. </p>
<p>Indeed, the burning of books has often operated as a substitute for another historically common practice, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20477359?seq=1">namely the burning of people</a>. We should never be allowed to forget that both the public spectacle of the conflagration of paper and the public spectacle of the conflagration of flesh have generally taken place with the approval, and even rapacious delight, of a significant popular audience.</p>
<p>Perhaps in part for this reason, it appears that humans have burned books for as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning">long as there have been books to burn</a>, and in every culture in which paper or something of that sort has been used to preserve and transmit information.</p>
<p>Naturally, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings">the Nazis</a> are everyone’s go to example. But did you know that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich">on August 23, 1956</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/11/archives/wilhelm-reich-vs-the-usa-the-discoverer-of-the-orgone-by-jerome.html">the American Food and Drug Administration executed a court order</a> by placing six tons of books by the renegade psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich in a public incinerator on 25th Street in New York City?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466138/original/file-20220531-24-l94ww5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466138/original/file-20220531-24-l94ww5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466138/original/file-20220531-24-l94ww5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466138/original/file-20220531-24-l94ww5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466138/original/file-20220531-24-l94ww5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466138/original/file-20220531-24-l94ww5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466138/original/file-20220531-24-l94ww5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466138/original/file-20220531-24-l94ww5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Book burnings in Berlin, 1933.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They included copies of his classic studies The Sexual Revolution, Character Analysis, and <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374508845/themasspsychologyoffascism">The Mass Psychology of Fascism</a> – the last one being a book someone should also consider making an unburnable copy of right around now. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465880/original/file-20220530-24-6y69vm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465880/original/file-20220530-24-6y69vm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465880/original/file-20220530-24-6y69vm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465880/original/file-20220530-24-6y69vm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465880/original/file-20220530-24-6y69vm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465880/original/file-20220530-24-6y69vm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465880/original/file-20220530-24-6y69vm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465880/original/file-20220530-24-6y69vm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wilhelm Reich at his desk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile – notoriously propped up by the American regime and defended by the fathers of neoliberalism – also burned books, including academic studies of Cubism, which were presumably consigned to the flames on the assumption that they had something to do with Cuba. </p>
<p>The Venn diagram of those who burn books and those who read them is typically two separate circles. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-pinochets-chile-100659">World politics explainer: Pinochet's Chile</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Words as weapons</h2>
<p>But in Atwood’s curious stunt, she is the one holding the flamethrower. In doing so, she might be unintentionally reminding us of a completely different tradition of book burning: that of authors burning or asking others to burn their own books, or at least those papers and documents that we so suggestively call their “literary remains”. </p>
<p>Franz Kafka is undoubtedly the most famous example. We know of his work today almost exclusively because his literary executor Max Brod refused to fulfil his expressed desire to have his papers burned after his death.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466137/original/file-20220531-12-frmmqn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466137/original/file-20220531-12-frmmqn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466137/original/file-20220531-12-frmmqn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466137/original/file-20220531-12-frmmqn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466137/original/file-20220531-12-frmmqn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466137/original/file-20220531-12-frmmqn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466137/original/file-20220531-12-frmmqn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466137/original/file-20220531-12-frmmqn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The last known portrait of Franz Kafka.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Brod’s justification was quite brilliant. It introduces some difficult questions about the concept of the will and the nature of posthumous consent. While he admitted that Kafka had made the request, Brod proposed that Kafka had asked him because he knew he would not follow through. </p>
<p>Maybe we all share this desire to have our past, or at least elements of our past, forgotten rather than remembered. And maybe the very social media that spread the video of Atwood and her flamethrower like fire, as it were, make that increasingly impossible. </p>
<p>In either case, we would be remiss to think that book burning itself is a memory, much less a joke. </p>
<p>For <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2022/02/06/pastor-holds-bonfire-burning-books-harry-potter-and-twilight-orig-as.cnn">it is happening today</a>. And it will unquestionably happen again. And the only real weapon we have against it is to write continuously about it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Barbour does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Margaret Atwood’s new fireproof copy of The Handmaid’s Tale protests book banning – and burning. The Venn diagram of those who burn books and those who read them is typically two separate circles.Charles Barbour, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1788652022-03-14T19:10:26Z2022-03-14T19:10:26ZPutin’s brazen manipulation of language is a perfect example of Orwellian doublespeak<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451646/original/file-20220311-19-l9l85z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C29%2C6562%2C4177&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin uses words to mean the opposite of what they really mean.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-president-vladimir-putin-visits-the-national-space-news-photo/1238803793?adppopup=true">Sergei Guneyev/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’ve been paying attention to how Russian President Vladimir Putin talks about the war in Ukraine, you may have noticed a pattern. Putin often uses words to mean exactly the opposite of what they normally do.</p>
<p>He labels acts of war “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/21/ukraine-putin-decide-recognition-breakaway-states-today">peacekeeping duties</a>.” </p>
<p>He claims to be engaging in “<a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-claim-to-rid-ukraine-of-nazis-is-especially-absurd-given-its-history-177959">denazification</a>” of Ukraine while seeking to overthrow or even kill Ukraine’s Jewish president, who is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. </p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html">claims</a> that Ukraine is plotting to create nuclear weapons, while the greatest current threat of nuclear war <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/01/1083696555/russia-ukraine-war-putin-nuclear-escalation-risk">appears to be Putin himself</a>.</p>
<p>Putin’s brazen manipulation of language is drawing attention. Kira Rudik, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, recently <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/03/01/kira-rudik-intv-ukraine-parliament-putin-negotiations-tsr-vpx.cnn">said</a> of Putin in a CNN interview:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When he says, ‘I want peace,’ this means, ‘I’m gathering my troops to kill you.’ If he says, ‘It’s not my troops,’ he means ‘It’s my troops and I’m gathering them.’ And if he says, ‘OK, I’m retreating,’ this means ‘I’m regrouping and gathering more troops to kill you.’”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a <a href="https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/hf1190">philosophy professor who studies the British author George Orwell</a>, I am reminded by Rudik’s comments about Putin of another set of claims: “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/18/arts/ministry-truth-had-three-slogans-war-peace-freedom-slavery-ignorance-strength.html">War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength</a>.” These are the words etched onto the side of the building for the government agency called the “Ministry of Truth” in Orwell’s dystopian novel “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/326569/1984-by-george-orwell-with-a-foreword-by-thomas-pynchon/">1984</a>,” published in 1949.</p>
<p>Orwell uses this feature of the novel to draw attention to how totalitarian regimes – like the book’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nineteen-Eighty-four#:%7E:text=The%20book%20is%20set%20in,to%20its%20leader%2C%20Big%20Brother.">fictional state of Oceania</a> – perversely warp language to gain and retain political power. Orwell’s keen understanding of this phenomenon was the result of having witnessed it himself.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451647/original/file-20220311-21-1v20fio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A destroyed multistory building, hit by bombs, with debris spread around it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451647/original/file-20220311-21-1v20fio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451647/original/file-20220311-21-1v20fio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451647/original/file-20220311-21-1v20fio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451647/original/file-20220311-21-1v20fio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451647/original/file-20220311-21-1v20fio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451647/original/file-20220311-21-1v20fio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451647/original/file-20220311-21-1v20fio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This bombed school building in Vasylkiv, Ukraine, is the result of what Putin has called a ‘special military operation,’ not a ‘war.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/secondary-school-building-seen-destroyed-by-russian-news-photo/1239017115?adppopup=true">Mykhaylo Palinchak/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lies more frightening than bombs</h2>
<p>In grappling with Putin’s lies and spin, it’s helpful to look at what previous thinkers and writers, like Orwell, have said about the relationship between language and political power. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/biography/">Orwell</a>, an Englishman who lived from 1903 to 1950, experienced war, imperialism and poverty during the first half of his life. These experiences led Orwell to identify as a socialist and member of the British political left. </p>
<p>It might seem inevitable, then, that Orwell would have favorably viewed <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1967101800">Soviet Communism</a>, a leading force on the political left in Europe at the time. But this was not so.</p>
<p>Instead, Orwell believed that Soviet Communism <a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/">shared the same defects</a> as Nazi Germany. <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674332607">Both were totalitarian states</a> where the desire for total power and control crowded out any room for truth, individuality or freedom. Orwell did not think Soviet Communism was truly socialist, but rather that it only had a socialist façade. </p>
<p>At age 33, Orwell served <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/133146/spain-orwell-never-saw">as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War</a>. He fought with a small militia as part of a larger left-leaning coalition that was trying to stop an insurrection from Spain’s Nationalist right. This left-leaning coalition was receiving military support from the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>But the small militia Orwell was fighting with ultimately became a target of Soviet propagandists, who leveled <a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war/">a range of accusations against the militia</a>, including that its members were spies for the other side. This was a byproduct of the Soviet Union’s attempts to use its involvement in Spain as a way of gaining political power.</p>
<p>Orwell observed how the militia he had fought with was maligned in the European press as part of this Soviet smear campaign. He explained in his book “<a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/homage-to-catalonia/9780547416175">Homage to Catalonia</a>” that this smear campaign included telling demonstrable lies about concrete facts. This experience deeply troubled Orwell. </p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war/">later reflected on this experience</a>, writing that he was frightened by the “feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.” That prospect, he claimed, frightened him “much more than bombs.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451650/original/file-20220311-28-le8110.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A middle-aged man with dark hair and wearing a tweed jacket, vest and tie, sits before a microphone that says BBC on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451650/original/file-20220311-28-le8110.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451650/original/file-20220311-28-le8110.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451650/original/file-20220311-28-le8110.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451650/original/file-20220311-28-le8110.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451650/original/file-20220311-28-le8110.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451650/original/file-20220311-28-le8110.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451650/original/file-20220311-28-le8110.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1049&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Orwell, who said he was frightened that ‘the very concept of objective truth’ was ‘fading out of the world.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/eric-arthur-blair-better-known-by-his-pen-name-george-news-photo/1354450505?adppopup=true">Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Language shapes politics – and vice versa</h2>
<p>Such fears influenced much of Orwell’s most influential writing, including his novel “<a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/books-by-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four/">1984</a>” and his essay “<a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language//">Politics and the English Language</a>.” </p>
<p>In that essay, Orwell reflects on the <a href="https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2021/12/17/george-orwell/">relationship between language, thought and politics</a>. For Orwell, language influences thought, which in turn influences politics. But politics also influences thought, which in turn influences language. Thus, Orwell – like Putin – saw how language shapes politics and vice versa. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/">Orwell argues in the essay</a> that if one writes well, “one can think more clearly,” and in turn that “to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration,” which I believe meant to him that a political order could recover from destructive political influences like totalitarianism. This makes good writing a political task. </p>
<p>Orwell’s desire to avoid bad writing is not the desire to defend rigid rules of grammar. Rather, Orwell’s goal is for language users “to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.” Communicating clearly and precisely requires conscious thought. It takes work.</p>
<p>But just as language can illuminate thought and regenerate politics, so too language can be used to obscure thought and degenerate politics. </p>
<p>Putin sees this clearly and seeks to use this to his advantage. </p>
<h2>‘Doublethink,’ ‘doublespeak’</h2>
<p>Orwell warned against the kind of abuses of language Putin commits, writing that “<a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/">if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought</a>.”</p>
<p>Orwell explored what mutual corruption of language and politics <a href="https://theconversation.com/orwells-ideas-remain-relevant-75-years-after-animal-farm-was-published-165431">in a totalitarian regime</a> looks like in his dystopian “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/326569/1984-by-george-orwell-with-a-foreword-by-thomas-pynchon/">1984</a>.” In the world of “1984,” the only crime is “thoughtcrime.” The ruling class seeks to eliminate the possibility of thoughtcrime by eliminating the language needed to have the thoughts they had criminalized – which included any thought that would undermine the party’s totalitarian control. Limit language and you limit thought, or so the theory goes. Thus, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/world/europe/russia-censorship-media-crackdown.html">the Russian Parliament passed, and Putin has signed</a>, a law that could result in criminal charges for using the Russian word for “war” to describe the Ukraine war. </p>
<p>Orwell also uses “1984” to explore what happens when communication conforms to the desires of political power instead of demonstrable fact. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>The result is “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/326569/1984-by-george-orwell-with-a-foreword-by-thomas-pynchon/">doublethink,” which occurs when a fractured mind simultaneously accepts two contradictory beliefs as true</a>. The slogans “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery” and “Ignorance is strength” are paradigmatic examples. This Orwellian idea has given rise to the concept of <a href="https://canadafreepress.com/article/orwells-doublespeak-the-language-of-the-left">doublespeak</a>, which occurs when one uses language to obscure meaning to manipulate others.</p>
<p>Doublespeak is a tool in the arsenal of tyranny. It is one of Putin’s weapons of choice, as it is for many authoritarians and would-be authoritarians around the world. As Orwell warned: “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178865/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Satta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Putin often uses words to mean exactly the opposite of what they normally do – a practice diagnosed by political author George Orwell as ‘doublespeak,’ or the language of totalitarians.Mark Satta, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1724652021-11-28T12:05:38Z2021-11-28T12:05:38ZFacebook’s rebranding is anything but ‘meta’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434009/original/file-20211125-23-1hg6kxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5668%2C3784&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers the keynote address talking up his latest passion -- creating a virtual reality "metaverse" for business, entertainment and meaningful social interactions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eric Risberg) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If there was one impressive thing from Mark Zuckerberg’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Meta/videos/facebook-connect-2021/577658430179350/">90-minute spiel</a> about Facebook’s rebranding as Meta, it was his misunderstanding of <a href="http://ronaldbrichardson.com/metafiction/meta-meta/">what meta actually means</a> — and how that misunderstanding is symbolic of his profound incapacity for self-reflection.</p>
<p>The day after Meta launched — featuring Zuckerberg’s <a href="https://www.wcvb.com/article/plenty-of-pitfalls-await-zuckerberg-s-metaverse-plan/38181408">utopian promises about the metaverse</a> — I subjected my first-year English class to a rant about how this moment has been predicted by a library’s worth of science fiction. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40651883-snow-crash">Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel <em>Snow Crash</em></a> even features a virtual environment called <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/03/how-the-1992-sci-fi-novel-snow-crash-predicted-facebooks-metaverse.html">… wait for it … the metaverse</a>. </p>
<p>To anyone even vaguely familiar with cyberpunk science fiction, what was comically tone-deaf about Zuckerberg’s enthusiastic predictions is that fictional depictions of futures featuring virtual reality are almost universally dystopian. </p>
<p>Zuckerberg’s fanfare evoked in me a feeling all too familiar among teachers — he hasn’t done (or hasn’t understood) the reading. </p>
<h2>Source of the metaverse</h2>
<p>My somewhat off-the-cuff rant found far more compelling expression in Brian Merchant’s <em>Vice</em> article “<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7eqbb/the-metaverse-has-always-been-a-dystopia">The Metaverse Has Always Been A Dystopian Idea</a>.” As Merchant observes, Zuckerberg is not alone in his determination to make the metaverse the next big thing. </p>
<p>Numerous tech companies, including giants like Microsoft, are similarly keen to expand into the next stage of online interaction that will almost certainly be worth trillions. These companies do so, however, without apparently pausing “to carefully consider the actual source of the metaverse,” says Merchant referring to <em>Snow Crash</em>, “a deeply dystopian novel about a collapsed America that is overrun by violence and poverty.”</p>
<p>This oversight would be one thing if <em>Snow Crash</em> was unique, but the tropes animating Stephenson’s novel were well-established in the genre by cyberpunk authors preceding him, most notably <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/293994/neuromancer-by-william-gibson/9780441007462">William Gibson’s <em>Neuromancer</em></a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An illustration of people in a futuristic world." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433790/original/file-20211124-21-1w1f06u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433790/original/file-20211124-21-1w1f06u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433790/original/file-20211124-21-1w1f06u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433790/original/file-20211124-21-1w1f06u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433790/original/file-20211124-21-1w1f06u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433790/original/file-20211124-21-1w1f06u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433790/original/file-20211124-21-1w1f06u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Numerous tech companies are keen to expand into the next stage of online interaction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stephenson’s conception of the metaverse was a refinement of Gibson’s cyberspace, which was anticipated by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1280983.True_Names">Vernor Vinge’s Other Plane in <em>True Names</em></a> and the virtual afterlife afforded to the not-quite-dead in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22590.Ubik">Philip K. Dick’s <em>Ubik</em></a>. </p>
<p>Dick and Vinge are not preoccupied with the broader socio-economic issues of the societies in which their virtual worlds are embedded. But cyberpunk has mostly followed Gibson’s lead, predicting a future of vast wealth inequality, powerful transnational corporations and a population distracted and calmed by a steady diet of digitized misinformation and entertainment. </p>
<p>It’s almost as if Gibson and Stephenson knew what they were talking about.</p>
<p>All of which is one of the reasons why Zuckerberg’s glossy, relentlessly upbeat utopianism about our virtual future feels so disconnected. This doesn’t even take into account his blatant disregard for that fact that people are finally <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-zoomed-out-how-to-deal-with-zoom-fatigue-over-the-holiday-season-150992">emerging from a year and a half of Zoom</a> — so it might not be the best time to try to sell a new virtual space. </p>
<p>Zuckerberg’s apparently chronic inability to pause and reflect (never mind actually admit error) makes Facebook’s new name sadly ironic.</p>
<h2>What does “meta” mean</h2>
<p>In his video and <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/founders-letter/">letter posted to Facebook</a> announcing the rebranding, Zuckerberg cites his background in classics and says that “meta” is from the Greek and means “beyond.” </p>
<p>Strictly speaking, he isn’t wrong: the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “beyond, above, at a higher level.” But Zuckerberg goes on to say that meta “symbolizes that there is always more to build, and there is always a next chapter to the story” — entirely missing the way in which “beyond” is being employed here. Something clarified in the very next line of the dictionary entry. </p>
<p>“Meta-,” says the dictionary, is typically “prefixed to the name of a subject or discipline to denote another which deals with ulterior issues in the same field, or which raises questions about the nature of the original discipline and its methods, procedures, and assumptions.” </p>
<p>Or to phrase it more plainly, meta’s “beyond” is not so much about questioning the future as it is about moving beyond our tacit understanding of something to gain a critical and self-reflexive perspective. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Facebook logo next to a Meta logo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433791/original/file-20211124-15-sczoqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433791/original/file-20211124-15-sczoqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433791/original/file-20211124-15-sczoqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433791/original/file-20211124-15-sczoqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433791/original/file-20211124-15-sczoqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433791/original/file-20211124-15-sczoqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433791/original/file-20211124-15-sczoqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The metaverse has always been dystopian.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Dina Solomin/Unsplash)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Someone like me, an academic who teaches and writes about contemporary literature, is intimately familiar with “meta” as a theoretical concept. But it’s not as if a grasp of meta’s basic introspective meaning is limited to the halls of academia. It has long since wormed its way into conversation, which makes the careless obliviousness of someone seemingly as smart as Zuckerberg all the more baffling. </p>
<p>When someone asks “can we get meta about this?” the question precipitates not a discussion of the issue at hand, but rather things surrounding, informing, framing or giving rise to the issue. </p>
<p>When you hear someone leaving a movie theatre saying, “That was so meta!” you can be reasonably certain that the film just viewed was something along the lines of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWm_mkbdpCA"><em>Scream</em></a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__PnD1HWXSo"><em>Kiss Kiss Bang Bang</em></a>. While the practice of being ironically self-referential can sometimes be tiring, my point is more that meta is, literally by definition, introspective, something Zuckerberg is not. </p>
<p>To be meta about Meta would not involve plunging forward with a 90-minute video promising to double down on Facebook’s supposed mission of “bringing people together,” but rather reflecting upon the fact that Facebook is a company that designs technology around people. </p>
<p>It could also involve wondering if all the internal studies stating that <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/15/22675130/facebook-instagram-teens-mental-health-damage-internal-research">Instagram is toxic to body image</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebook.html">Facebook facilitates atrocities</a> and <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/09/how-facebooks-free-internet-helped-elect-a-dictator.html">props up dictatorships</a> are maybe more indicative of technology shaping people’s behaviour.</p>
<p>Should that unlikely scenario ever come about, there are some novels Zuckerberg might want to read.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Lockett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To be meta about Meta would involve reflecting upon the fact that Facebook is a company that designs technology around people.Christopher Lockett, Associate Professor, English, Memorial University of NewfoundlandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1677662021-11-23T16:32:17Z2021-11-23T16:32:17ZHulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ casts Canada as a racial utopia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432954/original/file-20211121-19-okuarf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C126%2C1044%2C599&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hulu's 'Handmaid's Tale' Season 4 envisions escapes to Canada that draw on 19th century abolitionist narratives, yet the show doesn't acknowledge race. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Hulu/YouTube)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/hulu-s--the-handmaid-s-tale--casts-canada-as-a-racial-utopia" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>When Hulu’s series <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> premiered in 2017, reviewers noted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/arts/television/review-the-handmaids-tale-creates-a-chilling-mans-world.html">its gripping drama and dystopian exploration</a> of rape culture and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/26/the-handmaids-tale-year-trump-misogyny-metoo">misogyny at a time when both were hallmarks of Donald Trump’s presidency</a>.</p>
<p>The series is adapted from Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel. It has won numerous awards and was recently renewed for <a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a35130606/handmaids-tale-season-5-news-date-cast-spoilers-trailer/">a fifth season</a>. But some commentators, including writer Ellen E. Jones, have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/31/the-handmaids-tales-race-problem">criticized the series for its use of colour-blind casting that created inclusivity but otherwise ignored race in storylines</a>. Others, including Noah Berlatsky, have analyzed how both the series and novel <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15808530/handmaids-tale-hulu-margaret-atwood-black-history-racial-erasure">erase Black people’s history</a>.</p>
<p>Our research examines representations of <a href="https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/R/Race-in-Young-Adult-Speculative-Fiction">race in speculative fiction</a> and of <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/reading-between-the-borderlines-products-9780773555136.php">Canada in U.S. literature</a>, leading us to notice how Hulu’s series represents race and national difference. </p>
<p>The show positions Canada as a morally superior nation that has rejected the dystopian society’s repressive and exclusionist thinking. This is especially apparent in Season 4’s focus on characters’ escape to Canada, a theme that references older abolitionist narratives. In so doing, the show obscures Canada’s history of slavery, colonialism and racism. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/81PyH5TH-NQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ trailer.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Atwood’s dystopian world</h2>
<p>Both the novel and show draw on U.S. history to imagine a dystopian world facing an unexplained fertility crisis. Gilead, a <a href="https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-the-handmaids-tale">theocratic nation led by religious fundamentalists</a>, has overthrown the U.S. government. Atwood’s female narrator is an <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA206534450&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00294047&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ec0791e64">educated white woman</a> forced to become a “handmaid.” Each month, a commander rapes her in a religious fertility ceremony. Babies born to handmaids are raised by commanders and their wives. The sole purpose of the handmaids is to rebuild Gilead’s population. </p>
<p>Writer Priya Nair explains that Atwood’s novel draws on the historical <a href="https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/anti-blackness-handmaids-tale">oppression of Black enslaved women and applies it to fictional white women</a>. For example, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Dark-Horizons-Science-Fiction-and-the-Dystopian-Imagination/Moylan-Baccolini/p/book/9780415966146">handmaids who are disobedient</a> are beaten or hanged. </p>
<p>Despite clear parallels to slavery, Atwood only obliquely
references slavery when the narrator <a href="https://msmagazine.com/2017/05/02/whats-not-said-handmaids-tale/">explains that the “Children of Ham</a>” have been relocated to the Dakotas. “Children of Ham” is a Biblical phrase that was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/01/arts/from-noah-s-curse-to-slavery-s-rationale.html">used historically to justify enslaving Africans</a>.</p>
<p>Nair also notes that the novel focuses on white women’s oppression, while seemingly ignoring “the historical realities of an American dystopia founded on anti-Black violence.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A crowd of women, of white, Black and Asian identities, seen in cloaks and bonnets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433508/original/file-20211123-26-1jbixok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433508/original/file-20211123-26-1jbixok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433508/original/file-20211123-26-1jbixok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433508/original/file-20211123-26-1jbixok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433508/original/file-20211123-26-1jbixok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433508/original/file-20211123-26-1jbixok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433508/original/file-20211123-26-1jbixok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actors are seen at the filming of Handmaid’s Tale at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., February 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Victoria Pickering/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the novel relies on historical experiences of Black Americans, its characters are predominantly white, a feature of Gilead that Atwood maintains in the 2019 follow-up <em>The Testaments</em>. As reviewer Danielle Kurtzleben notes, in this second instalment: “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/09/03/755868251/the-testaments-takes-us-back-to-gilead-for-a-fast-paced-female-centered-adventur">Readers hoping to hear more about race in Gilead will be sorely disappointed</a>.” </p>
<p>Atwood intentionally framed Gilead as both misogynist and racist: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15808530/handmaids-tale-hulu-margaret-atwood-black-history-racial-erasure">the theocracy is interested only in reproducing white babies and, therefore, only enslaving white women</a>.</p>
<h2>Colour-blind casting in Hulu’s adaptation</h2>
<p>In adapting the novel, Hulu relied on a diverse cast of actors. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005253/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">White actor Elisabeth Moss</a> plays June and <a href="https://blackbookmag.com/arts-culture/essay-the-handmaids-tale-star-o-t-fagbenle-on-racial-fairness-in-the-entertainment-industry/">Black British actor</a> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1282966/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">O-T Fagbenle</a> portrays her husband Luke. <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/samira-wiley-on-doing-right-by-her-handmaids-tale-character-her-wife-the-queer-black-community-herself-8732193">Black actor</a> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4148126/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Samira Wiley</a> was cast as June’s best friend Moira. Actors of colour portray characters of all class positions in Gilead’s society. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A Black woman dressed glamorously in red lipstick is seen arriving at an event in front of a Hulu / Handmaid's Tale sign." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433506/original/file-20211123-25-401rkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433506/original/file-20211123-25-401rkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433506/original/file-20211123-25-401rkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433506/original/file-20211123-25-401rkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433506/original/file-20211123-25-401rkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433506/original/file-20211123-25-401rkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433506/original/file-20211123-25-401rkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samira Wiley, who plays Moira, arrives for ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ FYC Phase 2 Event in August 2017 in Los Angeles, Calif.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0588005/">Executive producer Bruce Miller</a> acknowledges that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/31/the-handmaids-tales-race-problem">he cast actors of colour</a> in many roles to avoid creating an all-white world, which would result in a racist TV show. The show doesn’t address race, he explained, because: “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/31/the-handmaids-tales-race-problem">It just felt like in a world where birth rates have fallen so precipitously, fertility would trump everything</a>.” </p>
<p>The show then relies on colour-blind casting and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/06/16/the-handmaids-tale-proves-that-colorblind-casting-isnt-enough/">colour-blind storytelling</a>. </p>
<p>In Atwood’s novel, Canada is <a href="https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Canada">the place to which handmaids escape</a>, fleeing there on the Underground Femaleroad — a term that clearly invokes <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/underground-railroad">the Underground Railroad</a>.</p>
<p>In Hulu’s series, handmaids — <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5931656/?ref_=ttep_ep10">including Moira</a> — escape from Gilead to Canada where they find protection and safety, and are able to rebuild their lives. The series draws on older literary traditions that have been integral to maintaining the myth of Canada as free from racism. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-am-not-your-nice-mammy-how-racist-stereotypes-still-impact-women-111028">I am not your nice 'Mammy': How racist stereotypes still impact women</a>
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<h2>Draws on abolitionist narratives</h2>
<p>In the 1840s and 1850s, U.S. abolitionist authors intentionally represented Canada as a racial haven. By casting <a href="https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/jcs.2020-0025">Canada as morally superior</a>, abolitionists imagined what the U.S. might look like if slavery were abolished. </p>
<p>Abolitionist authors like Black songwriter and poet <a href="https://southernspaces.org/2020/white-people-america-1854/">Joshua McCarter Simpson</a> and white novelist <a href="https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/harriet-beecher-stowe/harriet-beecher-stowe-life/">Harriet Beecher Stowe</a> celebrated Canada as a place that resisted racial violence and provided legal protection for Black refugees fleeing U.S. slavery. </p>
<p>Some abolitionists sought to capture the nuanced accounts of Black refugees in Canada. Abolitionist editor <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/drew/drew.html">Benjamin Drew</a> published oral testimonies of Black refugees, including their experiences of racism in Ontario. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ancestry-ad-gets-it-wrong-canada-was-never-slave-free-116051">Ancestry ad gets it wrong: Canada was never slave-free</a>
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<hr>
<p>Others, like Stowe, minimized the difficulties of the lived experiences of Black Canadians, focusing on stories of Black success in Canada. These celebratory narratives dominated representations of Canada in U.S. literature.</p>
<h2>Canada as utopia?</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A group of women in red cloaks and bonnets are seen walking by a cluster of trees outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433513/original/file-20211123-20-1n4hkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433513/original/file-20211123-20-1n4hkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433513/original/file-20211123-20-1n4hkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433513/original/file-20211123-20-1n4hkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433513/original/file-20211123-20-1n4hkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433513/original/file-20211123-20-1n4hkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433513/original/file-20211123-20-1n4hkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ escape-to-Canada stories draw on historical narratives by abolitionists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Victoria Pickering/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/chairholders-titulaires/profile-eng.aspx?profileId=4528">Literary scholar Nancy Kang</a> argues these abolitionist stories constructed an “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40033673">allegory of Canadian freedom reigning triumphant over American bondage</a>.” </p>
<p>Hulu’s <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> escape-to-Canada stories draw on these historical narratives. The handmaid Emily, portrayed by white actor <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0088127/">Alexis Bledel</a>, escapes Gilead dramatically, entering Canada by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8363118/?ref_=ttep_ep1">wading across a rushing river</a>, nearly losing June’s daughter. Once across, she weeps over the baby, recreating an iconic scene from Stowe’s <a href="http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/uncletom/uthp.html"><em>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</em></a>, when the enslaved Eliza escapes slave-catchers by fleeing across a river with her child.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-uncle-tom-still-impacts-racial-politics-152201">How 'Uncle Tom' still impacts racial politics</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Later in the episode, an Asian Canadian doctor welcomes Emily to Canada, saying: “You’re safe here.”</p>
<p>On some level, Hulu’s use of colour-blind casting, as Berlatsky notes, “addresses the narrative’s debt to African-American history.” But viewers are still watching an adaptation of a novel whose emotional horror is based on imagining violent, racist aspects of U.S. history <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15808530/handmaids-tale-hulu-margaret-atwood-black-history-racial-erasure">as if the atrocities happened to white people</a>.</p>
<h2>Myths of Canada</h2>
<p>The series avoids Canada’s history of anti-Black racism, slavery and state violence against Black bodies, as detailed by gender studies and Black/African diaspora scholar <a href="https://wgsi.utoronto.ca/person/robyn-maynard/">Robyn Maynard</a> in <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/policing-black-lives"><em>Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present</em></a>. It also overlooks Canada’s colonial <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525">violence toward Indigenous peoples</a>. These <a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-shameful-history-of-sterilizing-indigenous-women-107876">forms of violence</a> are intertwined with seeking control over women’s reproductive rights and sexual freedom. </p>
<p>The series also overlooks Canada’s history of <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/chinese-immigration-act">racist immigration</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/auschwitz-jews-not-welcome-in-wartime-canada">and asylum</a> policies.</p>
<p>Hulu’s series does explore some of the consequences of patriarchal oppression. But the show’s positioning of Canada as a racial haven obscures <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/racism">its history</a> and the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/m_blog/dont-believe-the-hype-canada-is-not-a-nation-of-cultural-tolerance">contemporary reality of racism</a> experienced by BIPOC women and communities in Canada.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167766/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alyssa MacLean receives research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miranda Green-Barteet does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Myths of Canada’s moral superiority in contrast to the United States can be a barrier to acknowledging and addressing racism in Canada.Miranda Green-Barteet, Associate Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, Western UniversityAlyssa MacLean, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Writing Studies, Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1699442021-11-01T04:42:16Z2021-11-01T04:42:16ZIs a world without men a dystopia or a utopia? Creamerie and Y: The Last Man explore loss at a time of mass grief<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429475/original/file-20211031-15-1e275t1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1020%2C817&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">FX BINGE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is a remarkable coincidence that both New Zealand black comedy <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14301316/">Creamerie</a> and American post-apocalyptic drama <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8042500/">Y: The Last Man</a> have arrived on our screens in the middle of a global pandemic. Both are shows about the aftermath of plagues that kill off the male population. </p>
<p>Both were well into production by the time COVID-19 hit, the latter adapting a critically acclaimed DC Comics series by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra. Both are led and entirely directed by women – a strong statement in a significantly male-dominated industry. </p>
<p>And as dystopian narratives, they also tap into some significant areas of current social and political interest. These include anxieties about gender roles, and how we deal with loss and grief at a global scale.</p>
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<p>Dystopian stories are very effective at exploring the fractures and inequities in our everyday lives by throwing up scenarios in which dreams of a better world have become nightmarish. They take present conditions and challenges and extrapolate them into a society that is deeply recognisable, but more extreme than our own. </p>
<p>Whether they are horrific or comedic, they expose and often satirise the real-world conditions, such as political trends or environmental inaction, that already facilitate oppression and destruction. They act as both thought experiment and warning. </p>
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<p>Apocalyptic narratives, too, foreground the best and the worst of us. Although the “end of the world” might be triggered by a sudden calamity – plague, war, a supernatural event – these stories are more concerned with what happens next. </p>
<p>They ask: what happens when the things that structure our everyday lives are stripped away? How can we learn to live in these new conditions? And are we as much of a threat to one another as the catastrophe itself? </p>
<p>Both TV shows engage with these questions, although to different ends and with very different tones. </p>
<h2>Divisions and the ‘double shift’</h2>
<p>The sudden death of all mammals with a Y chromosome in Y: The Last Man is only the first in a series of rolling disasters – not least the logistical problem of dealing with the physical remains of half the population. </p>
<p>The series is very interested in the ripple effects of gender inequality, especially in the workplace. This exposes how much our societies remain structured along roughly binary lines, despite significant attempts to move towards a more equitable and egalitarian society. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429530/original/file-20211101-19-1gnlv9u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429530/original/file-20211101-19-1gnlv9u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429530/original/file-20211101-19-1gnlv9u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429530/original/file-20211101-19-1gnlv9u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429530/original/file-20211101-19-1gnlv9u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429530/original/file-20211101-19-1gnlv9u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429530/original/file-20211101-19-1gnlv9u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429530/original/file-20211101-19-1gnlv9u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Olivia Thirlby as Hero Brown in Y: The Last Man, which tells the apocalyptic narrative of a world after the sudden death of all mammals with a Y chromosome.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMdB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In early episodes the former Congresswoman and newly minted President Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane) struggles to govern. The United States’ critical infrastructure, which was staffed almost entirely by men, has collapsed.</p>
<p>Without water, power or food, people are beginning to riot, but there aren’t enough police or military personnel to keep the peace. Because men still dominate decision-making roles, a skeleton crew of female politicians and civil servants is left to salvage civil society. </p>
<p>In a moving scene, Brown tries to persuade one of the only remaining female nuclear engineers to help restore the power grid. Brown reminds her how hard it has been to always be the only woman in the room – and the burden that she now bears because of this. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429488/original/file-20211101-36908-oxxr9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429488/original/file-20211101-36908-oxxr9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429488/original/file-20211101-36908-oxxr9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429488/original/file-20211101-36908-oxxr9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429488/original/file-20211101-36908-oxxr9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429488/original/file-20211101-36908-oxxr9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429488/original/file-20211101-36908-oxxr9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429488/original/file-20211101-36908-oxxr9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of an issue of graphic novel version Y: The Last Man, created by Brian K. Vaughan and published by Vertigo, later DC Comics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>But power struggles swiftly emerge. The overnight erasure of gender privilege only exacerbates other sources of inequity, such as race and class. There is also an ideological clash between Brown and more politically conservative women, notably the Machiavellian former First Daughter Kimberley, played by Amber Tamblyn. </p>
<p>Their insidious emphasis upon the importance of traditional gender roles and so-called “family values” sits uncomfortably against scenes, pre- and post-disaster, where women struggle to deal with their domestic and professional roles. We are reminded that social inequity is deeply tied to child-bearing and rearing. </p>
<p>Far from critiquing women’s professional ambitions and reproductive choices, the series’ domestic scenes illustrate powerfully the damaging “double shift”: the large amount of invisible, underappreciated and unpaid domestic labour undertaken by women. </p>
<p>This is a problem not just for women, but society at large – made worse when the survival of the species relies on sperm banks and willing mothers. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-we-living-in-a-dystopia-136908">Are we living in a dystopia?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A feminist utopia</h2>
<p>Reproduction is also central to Creamerie’s satirical project. Eight years after the emergence of the virus – illustrated through a gory, slo-mo montage set ironically to a dreamy cover of What A Wonderful World – we seem to be in a feminist utopia. </p>
<p>The new society is overseen by blonde, charismatic Lane (Tandi Wright), leader of a hyperfeminine, <a href="https://goop.com/">Goop-like organisation</a>. Education and healthcare are free, and menstruation leave is mandatory. Thanks to the survival of sperm banks, women enter a lottery to be artificially inseminated so they may re-populate the world with their daughters. </p>
<p>Rebel Alex (Ally Xue), grieving mother Jamie (JJ Fong), and perky rule-follower Pip (Perlina Lau) live together on an organic dairy farm. Crisis hits when Pip accidentally runs over a man – potentially the last man alive. He believes there are other survivors, which would upend this new way of life. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429532/original/file-20211101-15-2hr86b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429532/original/file-20211101-15-2hr86b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429532/original/file-20211101-15-2hr86b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429532/original/file-20211101-15-2hr86b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429532/original/file-20211101-15-2hr86b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429532/original/file-20211101-15-2hr86b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429532/original/file-20211101-15-2hr86b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429532/original/file-20211101-15-2hr86b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In New Zealand comedy Creamerie, the new world sans men is run by the leader of a hyperfeminine, goop-like organisation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS on Demand</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>The premise inverts many of the tropes laid bare in the reproductive horrors of The Handmaid’s Tale and its many imitators, which similarly foreground natalist policies.</p>
<p>Instead, Creamerie is wickedly funny and playful. Its bougie wellness cult operates with silken voices, performative kindness, and what appears to be the veneration of female collectivity. </p>
<p>However, we soon witness the classist, racist, heteronormative, and individualistic tendencies at the heart of this new society, which satirises the predatory nature of the wellness industry. </p>
<p>We are also faced with difficult questions about the fate of those men who might remain – how they too might be objectified and commodified for their reproductive potential. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-handmaids-tale-no-wonder-weve-got-a-sequel-in-this-age-of-affronts-on-womens-rights-123394">The Handmaid's Tale: no wonder we've got a sequel in this age of affronts on women's rights</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A world grappling with cataclysm</h2>
<p>Although they differ considerably in tone, both shows are united in their exploration of loss and trauma. This reflects the rising number of recent series, films, books and games that feature inexplicable mass casualty events and ecological cataclysm. </p>
<p>In a world grappling with a climate disaster, and now a brutal pandemic, it is natural to turn to art to explore how we might live when our lives are braided with inconsolable grief. </p>
<p>Ultimately Creamerie and Y: The Last Man ask us how we suffer losses that are too great for words, and whether we cope with tears, connection, or gallows humour.</p>
<p><em>Creamerie is available to stream on SBS on Demand, and Y: The Last Man is currently streaming on Binge.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169944/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erin Harrington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two TV show have hit our screens coincidentally during the pandemic: dystopian thriller Y: The Last Man and black comedy Creamerie — both theorising a world entirely without men.Erin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of CanterburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1532632021-01-18T15:05:30Z2021-01-18T15:05:30ZEmpty cities have long been a post-apocalyptic trope – now, they are a reality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379226/original/file-20210118-21-o4xmrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aerial-view-looking-straight-down-on-1495413731">Matt Gush/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Carry out a Google image search of the phrase “28 Days Later” and among the many stills and publicity images for the 2002 <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/">horror film</a>, one will find a scattering of photographs of London taken during the first COVID-19 lockdown in late March and early April 2020.</p>
<p>At that time, some Londoners described the emptiness of the city as feeling “like the apocalypse or a scene from 28 Days Later”. The comparison of life to art, it seemed, was obvious, exerting an eerie, uncanny effect.</p>
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</figure>
<p>Dead cities are enduring images in post-apocalyptic literature and cinema. They are rooted in the straightforward power of contrast – between the normally bustling city and its empty double – a city which is only buildings, both strangely familiar and also alien.</p>
<p>Dating back at least to Edward Gibbon’s claim to have conceived of his monumental <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/04/100-best-nonfiction-books-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-edward-gibbon">History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</a> in 1764 while he “sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol”, the image of the solitary (always male) ruin gazer of the future became popular in the 19th century, usually as a way of questioning imperial hubris. </p>
<h2>London ruined</h2>
<p>One of the earliest images of London as a dead city was French engraver Gustave Doré’s final plate in the 1872 book <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/dec/28/london-pilgrimage-gustave-dore-historic-visions-capital-city">London: A Pilgrimage</a>, where a New World visitor from the far future (the New Zealander) comes to gaze upon the ruins of imperial London, just as Gibbon had done so a century earlier in Rome.</p>
<p>This image, as well as seminal science fiction texts like John Wyndham’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/sep/02/johnwyndham">The Day of the Triffids</a> (1951), is filtered through the lenses of newly available HD digital cameras in the famous four minute sequence in 28 Days Later, when motorcycle courier Jim wanders through an empty London. This sequence completely subverts the clichéd tourist itinerary (from the Palace of Westminster to Piccadilly Circus) in its uncanny sequence of images of emptiness. </p>
<p>When director Danny Boyle shot these sequences in 2001, it was still possible to experience this kind of emptiness for real – for just a few minutes around dawn in the summer months. Since then, though, 24/7 culture had enveloped capital cities like London, swallowing up any remaining moments of silence and emptiness. That is, until the unprecedented lockdowns imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic – a microscopic agent wielding enough destructive power to shut down entire cities for weeks on end.</p>
<p>The point made in 28 Days Later is that the empty city resonates with us on both an imaginative and historical level. As photographer Chris Dorley-Brown has <a href="https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/chris-dorley-brown-london-during-lockdown-photography-170620">argued</a>, in relation to his own images of London in lockdown, he felt that like Jim in 28 Days Later, he was “the last person left alive”. An uncanny experience became familiar to many: walking empty city streets fused the very real material world with a long history of imaginative visions of dead cities. </p>
<h2>The camera accuses</h2>
<p>In one panning aerial shot from the heart of the city in that sequence in 28 Days Later, a CGI-insertion appears very briefly: a supplicating statue that does not exist in the real London. This, I argue in my book <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-dead-city-9781784537166/">The Dead City</a>, is a direct visual reference to the statue in the iconic photograph of the ruins of central Dresden in the immediate aftermath of the Allied fire bombings of February 1945 taken by Richard Peter.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378862/original/file-20210114-21-12o9djd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378862/original/file-20210114-21-12o9djd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378862/original/file-20210114-21-12o9djd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378862/original/file-20210114-21-12o9djd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378862/original/file-20210114-21-12o9djd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378862/original/file-20210114-21-12o9djd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378862/original/file-20210114-21-12o9djd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Peter, the ruins of Dresden, 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fotothek_df_ps_0000010_Blick_vom_Rathausturm.jpg">Deutsche Fotothek</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is imagination invading reality. There is, I think, a sense that we (the film’s viewers) are <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-dead-city-9781784537166/">being accused</a> by this spectre of history. The statue serves to remind us that, just like the presence of this image in the film, the bombing of Dresden was not some accident, but a deliberately planned assault on a city designed to cause the maximum amount of damage and loss of life. It reminds us that all historical monuments, when contemplated in a sustained way, point equally to tragedy and defeat (usually someone else’s) as they do to celebration and victory. </p>
<p>What all this shows is that when the appearances we take for granted are eviscerated, when all manner of human occupations are suddenly forced into shutdown, when buildings are in space but out of time, there may be opportunities for richer meanings to emerge – meanings that are normally kept at bay in the bustling city. Locked down cities may seem like a negative image of the places people value but, notwithstanding the very obvious suffering signified by such emptiness, there’s an opportunity to mine their uncanny nature for insights.</p>
<p>One useful lockdown exercise, then, might be to pay attention to things in the city that we would either generally ignore or which seem to posses only negative connotations: the countless memorials and landmarks that are all but invisible to us because they’re so familiar; closed retail units inviting a different kind of window shopping; hoardings and other advertisements signifying absence rather than presence; empty streets hinting at some other city that came before the cars. Here, history returns as something that hasn’t yet been settled, asking for our attention, our participation even. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man walking in front of deserted Eiffel Tower." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379230/original/file-20210118-21-huw45y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379230/original/file-20210118-21-huw45y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379230/original/file-20210118-21-huw45y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379230/original/file-20210118-21-huw45y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379230/original/file-20210118-21-huw45y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379230/original/file-20210118-21-huw45y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379230/original/file-20210118-21-huw45y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Empty cities provide a chance to look at the familiar with a different eye.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/jSKjkV4Oc5Q">Fran Boloni/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I would argue that this kind of awareness of history is much closer to how we actually experience it than any history book would lead us to believe. In the empty city, there’s no arrow of time – no A to B. Rather, time present, past and future slide across each other like trains at a railway junction. In certain images we find in dead cities – whether real or imaginary – we can discover openings to this kind of time, in all its complex unfolding and intertwining.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Dobraszczyk received funding from the Independent Social Research Foundation in 2016 for his research on dead cites and the imagination.</span></em></p>Dead cities are enduring images in post-apocalyptic literature and cinema.Paul Dobraszczyk, Lecturer in Architecture, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1527332021-01-11T16:57:24Z2021-01-11T16:57:24ZHow an obscure 1909 novella that foretold the internet can guide us through the latest lockdown<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377998/original/file-20210111-13-1ufkout.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=506%2C0%2C7166%2C5003&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-daughter-home-having-video-conference-1709286283">Jacob Lund/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For most people the latest national lockdown means uncertainty: precarious jobs and incomes, concerns about the safety of loved ones, and – for many parents – the difficulty of combining work with childcare. It also sends us back to a peculiarly confined world unimaginable one year ago – one in which we have come to rely heavily on the internet for work, shopping, leisure and communication with our family and friends. A world where contact with others could have lethal consequences and where venturing outside our homes has become, in some cases, against the law and subject to serious penalties. </p>
<p>How can literature guide us in this strange new world? E.M. Forster’s short story <a href="http://self.gutenberg.org/wplbn0000627598-the-machine-stops-by-forster-e-m-.aspx">The Machine Stops</a> (1909) presents an uncannily similar world to our own.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Cover of paperback novel The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378093/original/file-20210111-13-p4do9n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378093/original/file-20210111-13-p4do9n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378093/original/file-20210111-13-p4do9n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378093/original/file-20210111-13-p4do9n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378093/original/file-20210111-13-p4do9n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378093/original/file-20210111-13-p4do9n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378093/original/file-20210111-13-p4do9n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dystopian fantasy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">WLM</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is set in an unspecified future, where Earth has become inhospitable. Human beings live deep beneath the surface in cramped hexagonal chambers. Each person lives alone, yet on the face of it few are unhappy. </p>
<p>A vast, global Machine connects everyone through video communication – a little like Zoom or WhatsApp which have become so important during lockdown. Each day passes from one virtual meeting or lecture to another, the passage of time indicated only by the dimming of artificial light. People can also mute themselves if they wish (they seem to be untroubled by the “you’re still muted” problem).</p>
<p>An Alexa-like monitor supplies everything they might require at the push of a button: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There were buttons and switches everywhere – buttons to call for food, for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button … (t)here was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature, and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The narrative follows the encounter of Vashti and Kuno, a mother and son who live on opposite sides of the world, and their uncomfortable attempt to meet in person at Kuno’s request. Kuno is worried about their helpless reliance on this machine. Some have even come to worship it, lovingly poring the pages of the one book still in circulation, the Book of the Machine, which provides an instantaneous answer to any question (sound familiar?) </p>
<p>For many, like Vashti, leaving home is a terrifying experience. Compared to the Machine’s soothing comforts, sunlight appals. Nature is misshapen. Skin-to-skin contact is shocking and sinister. Vashti swallows mood-numbing medication, (a “tabloid”) to cope with the stress of direct experience. Then one day, Kuno asks: what if the Machine stops?</p>
<h2>Venturing outside</h2>
<p>Bored and disenchanted, Kuno decides to find an exit. In a gesture of romantic if doomed defiance – anticipating that of Bernard Marx and Winston Smith in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four – he briefly makes it outside to the surface of the Earth, with its still-beautiful forests, mountains, sunsets, seas - and people. This direct encounter with nature electrifies him.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Large green field with path running through it in Glastonbury, UK" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377999/original/file-20210111-19-1u7a15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377999/original/file-20210111-19-1u7a15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377999/original/file-20210111-19-1u7a15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377999/original/file-20210111-19-1u7a15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377999/original/file-20210111-19-1u7a15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377999/original/file-20210111-19-1u7a15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377999/original/file-20210111-19-1u7a15y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Machine Stops is a reminder of the value of finding a point of escape and enjoyment of the natural world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/glastonbury-uk-december-30-2019-tourists-1661253727">Marco Fine/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is not easy. In a move not unlike dragging yourself out of the house to start a new lockdown exercise regime, he first clambers out of his cosy room but is soon overcome with exhaustion. But he keeps going. Slowly, he climbs up level after level of identical pods, never encountering another person nor meeting any opposition from the Machine (for who would want to leave?) </p>
<p>Finally, he reaches a disused lift shaft to the surface. Outside, he collapses into a grassy hollow, blinded by sunlight for the first time. He discovers there are others out there, the “Homeless”, people who want to think, feel and find meaning in their lives by their own design, without surrendering their freedom to the Machine. </p>
<p>Sensing an escapee, the tentacles of the Machine grab Kuno and pull him back under. But he is transformed. He persuades Vashti to leave her pod and travel around the world to meet him, in person at last, to tell her all about it. Later, when the Machine unexpectedly breaks down, plunging the world into chaos, Kuno and Vashti reunite one last time. If there is hope, Kuno says, it lies in leaving the Machine behind.</p>
<p>The Machine Stops is a reminder of the value of finding a point of escape and enjoyment of the natural world during the tough months ahead. For Kuno, life under the Machine has “robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation”. </p>
<p>As we look ahead to a time after COVID-19, The Machine Stops asks us to think about how we recover the qualities that make us human. It also asks us to think about the political consequences of long-term reliance on a handful of unaccountable internet platforms, without leaving our homes or interacting with people who might differ in their outlooks to us. </p>
<p>When we cede control in exchange for convenience, cosy echo chambers and comfortingly familiar illusions, bad things follow.</p>
<h2>After the pandemic</h2>
<p>Let’s not overstate all the similarities. Forster’s is a world without work, whereas our machines seem to have us working all hours. Everyone has adequate shelter and food. The problem lies less with the Machine than the masses, willingly distracted by an artificial shadowplay of disinformation and instant gratification. </p>
<p>But these strange and unsettling visions ask of us one thing: what kind of world might we want to live in after the COVID-19 era?</p>
<p>How might we eventually overcome the (understandable) fear of touch? How might we cherish and protect our endangered natural world? How, despite the growing ubiquity of AI and automation, might we bring under control the internet monopolies that attempt to meet our every need and desire and restore the civic, communal and embodied life that preceded it? </p>
<p>One thing is clear: only us human beings, with our messy emotions and complexity, can do that dreaming and that rebuilding together, democratically.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Taylor is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>With the third national lockdown under way, how can E.M. Forster’s neglected masterpiece help us survive the next few months?Dan Taylor, Lecturer in Social and Political Thought, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1485762020-11-02T13:27:13Z2020-11-02T13:27:13ZFeeling disoriented by the election, pandemic and everything else? It’s called ‘zozobra,’ and Mexican philosophers have some advice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366797/original/file-20201030-13-ybuza7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C3190%2C2160&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is it a lovely autumn day, or is America burning to the ground?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/counter-protester-drops-to-his-knees-after-setting-an-news-photo/1229169216?adppopup=true">Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ever had the feeling that you can’t make sense of what’s happening? One moment everything seems normal, then suddenly the frame shifts to reveal a <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is-central-to-californias-wildfires/">world on fire</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/30/world/covid-19-coronavirus-updates">struggling with pandemic</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/03/upshot/pandemic-economy-recession.html">recession</a>, <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2258169-arctic-sea-ice-loss-could-trigger-huge-levels-of-extra-global-warming/">climate change</a> and <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Bay-Area-cities-restaurants-boarding-up-15689465.php">political upheaval</a>. </p>
<p>That’s “zozobra,” the peculiar form of anxiety that comes from being unable to settle into a single point of view, leaving you with questions like: Is it a lovely autumn day, or an alarming moment of converging historical catastrophes? </p>
<p>On the eve of a general election in which the outcome – and aftermath – is unknown, it is a condition that many Americans may be experiencing.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.sjsu.edu/people/carlos.sanchez/">scholars of</a> <a href="https://philpeople.org/profiles/francisco-gallegos">this phenomenon</a>, we have noted how <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6928-the-disintegration-of-community.aspx">zozobra has spread in U.S. society</a> in recent years, and we believe the insight of Mexican philosophers can be helpful to Americans during these tumultuous times. </p>
<p>Ever since the conquest and <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/hernan-cortes">colonization of the valley of Mexico by Hernán Cortés</a>, Mexicans have had to cope with wave after wave of profound social and spiritual disruption – wars, rebellions, revolution, corruption, dictatorship and now the <a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/6h440v48j">threat of becoming a narco-state</a>. Mexican philosophers have had more than 500 years of uncertainty to reflect on, and they have important lessons to share. </p>
<h2>Zozobra and the wobbling of the world</h2>
<p>The word “zozobra” is an ordinary Spanish term for “anxiety” but with connotations that call to mind the wobbling of a ship about to capsize. The term emerged as a key concept among Mexican intellectuals in the early 20th century to describe the sense of having no stable ground and feeling out of place in the world. </p>
<p>This feeling of zozobra is commonly experienced by people who visit or immigrate to a foreign country: the rhythms of life, the way people interact, everything just seems “off” – unfamiliar, disorienting and vaguely alienating. </p>
<p>According to the philosopher <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american-philosophical-association/article/philosophy-of-accidentality/ACEB9ACFC66AE1A940D0943E5715CEFC/core-reader">Emilio Uranga</a> (1921-1988), the telltale sign of zozobra is wobbling and toggling between perspectives, being unable to relax into a single framework to make sense of things. As Uranga describes it in his 1952 book <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/emilio-urangas-analysis-of-mexican-being-9781350145269/">“Analysis of Mexican Being</a>”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Zozobra refers to a mode of being that incessantly oscillates between two possibilities, between two affects, without knowing which one of those to depend on … indiscriminately dismissing one extreme in favor of the other. In this to and fro the soul suffers, it feels torn and wounded.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>What makes zozobra so difficult to address is that its source is intangible. It is a soul-sickness not caused by any personal failing, nor by any of the particular events that we can point to. </p>
<p>Instead, it comes from cracks in the frameworks of meaning that we rely on to make sense of our world – the shared understanding of what is real and who is trustworthy, what risks we face and how to meet them, what basic decency requires of us and what ideals our nation aspires to. </p>
<p>In the past, many people in the U.S. took these frameworks for granted – but no longer. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-a-turbulent-world-stop-stressing-and-adapt-92632">gnawing sense of distress</a> and disorientation many Americans are feeling is a sign that at some level, they now recognize just how <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674244627">necessary and fragile these structures are</a>.</p>
<h2>The need for community</h2>
<p>Another Mexican philosopher, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mexico/">Jorge Portilla</a> (1918-1963), reminds us that these frameworks of meaning that hold our world together cannot be maintained by individuals alone. While each of us may find our own meaning in life, we do so against the backdrop of what Portilla described as a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pF0vDwAAQBAJ&q=horizon#v=snippet&q=horizon&f=false">“horizon of understanding</a>” that is maintained by our community. In everything we do, from making small talk to making big life choices, we depend on others to share a basic set of assumptions about the world. It’s a fact that becomes painfully obvious when we suddenly find ourselves among people with very different assumptions.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6928-the-disintegration-of-community.aspx">In our book</a> on the contemporary relevance of Portilla’s philosophy, we point out that in the U.S., people increasingly have the sense that their neighbors and countrymen <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land">inhabit a different world</a>. As social circles become smaller and more restricted, zozobra deepens. </p>
<p>In his 1949 essay, “<a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190601294.001.0001/oso-9780190601294-chapter-14">Community, Greatness, and Misery in Mexican Life</a>,” Portilla identifies four signs that indicate when the feedback loop between zozobra and social disintegration has reached critical levels. </p>
<p>First, people in a disintegrating society become prone to self-doubt and reluctance to take action, despite how urgently action may be needed. Second, they become prone to cynicism and even corruption – not because they are immoral but because they genuinely do not experience a common good for which to sacrifice their personal interests. Third, they become prone to nostalgia, fantasizing about returning to a time when things made sense. In the case of America, this applies not only to those given to wearing MAGA caps; everyone can fall into this sense of longing for a previous age. </p>
<p>And finally, people become prone to a sense of profound vulnerability that gives rise to apocalyptic thinking. Portilla puts it this way: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We live always simultaneously entrenched in a human world and in a natural world, and if the human world denies us its accommodations to any extent, the natural world emerges with a force equal to the level of insecurity that textures our human connections.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, when a society is disintegrating, fires, floods and tornadoes seem like harbingers of apocalypse.</p>
<h2>Coping with the crisis</h2>
<p>Naming the present crisis is a first step toward dealing with it. But then what is to be done? </p>
<p>Portilla suggests that national leaders can exacerbate or alleviate zozobra. When there is a coherent <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203960899">horizon of understanding at the national level</a> – that is to say, when there is a shared sense of what is real and what matters – individuals have a stronger feeling of connection to the people around them and a sense that their society is in a better position to deal with the most pressing issues. With this solace, it is easier to return attention to one’s own small circle of influence. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Uranga, for his part, suggests that zozobra actually unifies people in a common human condition. Many prefer to hide their suffering <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/25/trump-covid-campaign-final-days-432354">behind a happy facade</a> or channel it into <a href="https://theconversation.com/angry-americans-how-political-rage-helps-campaigns-but-hurts-democracy-145819">anger and blame</a>. But Uranga insists that honest conversation about shared suffering is an opportunity to come together. Talking about zozobra provides something to commune over, something on which to base a love for one another, or at least sympathy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mexican philosophers have a word for the peculiar anxiety you may be feeling: ‘zozobra,’ a dizziness that arises from social disintegration.Francisco Gallegos, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest UniversityCarlos Alberto Sánchez, Professor of Philosophy, San José State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1460602020-09-16T11:20:45Z2020-09-16T11:20:45ZWhy San Francisco felt like the set of a sci-fi flick<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358184/original/file-20200915-20-19fcg73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=642%2C0%2C2353%2C1419&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On the morning of Sept. 9, San Franciscans woke up to a transformed cityscape.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Wildfires-Smoky-Skies/37b2b6fb5f384f4e8c1f48ac09f05171/36/0">AP Photo/Eric Risberg</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Sept. 9, many West Coast residents looked out their windows and witnessed a post-apocalyptic landscape: silhouetted cars, buildings and people bathed in an overpowering orange light that looked like a jacked-up sunset.</p>
<p>The scientific explanation for what people were seeing was pretty straightforward. On a clear day, the sky owes its blue color to smaller atmospheric particles scattering the relatively short wavelengths of blue light waves from the sun. An atmosphere filled with larger particles, like woodsmoke, scatters even more of the color spectrum, but not as uniformly, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2020/09/10/the-science-behind-mysterious-orange-skies-in-california/#52bc361f6cab">leaving orangish-red colors for the eye to see</a>.</p>
<p>But most city dwellers weren’t seeing the science. Instead, the burnt orange world they were witnessing was eerily reminiscent of scenes from sci-fi films like “<a href="https://twitter.com/Klee_FilmReview/status/1303748616507531264">Blade Runner: 2049</a>” and “<a href="https://twitter.com/Prince_Kropotkn/status/1303761059887550464">Dune</a>.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1303748616507531264"}"></div></p>
<p>The uncanny images evoked sci-fi movies for a reason. Over the past decade, filmmakers have increasingly adopting a palette rich with hues of two colors, orange and teal, which complement one another in ways that can have a powerful effect on viewers.</p>
<h2>Writing color into the script</h2>
<p>When we dissect movies in my design classes, I remind my students that everything on the screen is there for a reason. Sound, light, wardrobe, people – and, yes, the colors.</p>
<p>Actor, writer and director Jon Fusco <a href="https://nofilmschool.com/2016/06/watch-psychology-color-film">has suggested</a> “writing color as an entire character in your script,” since colors can subtly change the way a scene can “resonate emotionally.”</p>
<p>Set and costume designers can influence color palettes by sticking to certain palettes. But art directors can also imbue scenes with certain hues via “color grading,” in which they use software to shift colors around in the frame.</p>
<p>In her short film “Color Psychology,” video editor Lilly Mtz-Seara <a href="https://vimeo.com/169046276">assembles a montage</a> from more than 50 films to show the emotional impact intentional color grading can lend to movies. She explains how different palettes are used to emphasize different sentiments, whether it’s pale pink to reflect innocence, red to capture passion or a sickly yellow to denote madness.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Frames from Lilly Mtz-Sear's 'Color Psychology' that highlight emotional effects of different palettes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=256&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=256&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=256&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Different color palettes are used to evoke different emotional responses in viewers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://vimeo.com/169046276">LidiaSeara/Vimeo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The most powerful complement of them all</h2>
<p>So why orange and teal? </p>
<p>In the 17th century, Isaac Newton created his “<a href="http://web.mit.edu/22.51/www/Extras/color_theory/color.html">color wheel</a>.” The circle of colors represents the full visible light spectrum, and people who work in color will use it to assemble palettes, or color schemes.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.canva.com/learn/monochromatic-colors/">A monochromatic palette</a> involves tints from a single hue – <a href="https://www.schemecolor.com/monochromatic-blues-color-scheme.php">lighter and darker shades of blue</a>, for example. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_color">A tertiary palette</a> divides the wheel with three evenly spaced spokes: bright reds, greens and blues. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The color wheel." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A version of the color wheel created by Isaac Newton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-color-circle-to-symbolize-the-human-mind-and-soul-life-news-photo/917742598?adppopup=true">Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among the most striking combinations are two hues 180 degrees apart on the color wheel. Due to a phenomenon called “<a href="https://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2006/bridges2006-517.pdf">simultaneous contrast</a>,” the presence of a single color is intensified when paired with its complement. Green and purple complement one another, as do yellow and blue. But, according to German scientist, poet and philosopher <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/09/goethes-theory-of-colors-and-kandinsky.html">Johann Wolfgang von Goethe</a>, the strongest of the complementary pairings exist in the ranges of – you guessed it – orange and teal.</p>
<p>For movie makers, this color palette can be a powerful tool. Human skin matches a relatively narrow swath of the orange section of the color wheel, <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7e/3b/2f/7e3b2fbcfa0baae19047f54d8f97dd40.jpg">from very light to very dark</a>. A filmmaker who wants to make a human within a scene “<a href="https://cdn.onebauer.media/one/empire-tmdb/films/76341/images/tbhdm8UJAb4ViCTsulYFL3lxMCd.jpg?quality=50&width=1800&ratio=16-9&resizeStyle=aspectfill&format=jpg">pop</a>” can easily do so by setting the “orange-ish” human against a teal background.</p>
<p>Filmmakers can also switch between the two depending on the emotional needs of the scene, with the oscillation adding drama. Orange evokes heat and creates tension while teal connotes its opposite, coolness and languid moodiness. For example, the orange and pink people in many of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGTkgB62754">the chase scenes</a> in “Mad Max: Fury Road” stand out against the complementary sky-blue background. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The chase scene from ‘Mad Max: Fury Road.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oranges and teals are not the sole province of sci-fi movies. David Fincher’s thriller “Zodiac” <a href="https://youtu.be/tnFSymJ3Qgg">is tinged with blues</a>, while <a href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTlhNmVkZGUtNjdjOC00YWY3LTljZWQtMTY1YWFhNGYwNDQwXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjc1NTYyMjg@._V1_UY1200_CR85,0,630,1200_AL_.jpg">countless</a> <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/horrormovies/images/c/cf/1002004000000704.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190314174712">horror</a> <a href="https://dyn1.heritagestatic.com/lf?set=path%5B6%2F7%2F2%2F0%2F6720372%5D&call=url%5Bfile%3Aproduct.chain%5D">movies</a> deploy a reddish-orange palette. There’s even been some backlash to orange and teal, with one filmmaker, Todd Miro, <a href="http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html">calling their overuse</a> “madness” and “a virus.”</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Nonetheless, given the frequency with which sci-fi films wish to subtly unsettle viewers, the palette continues to find frequent application in the genre.</p>
<p>As for West Coast residents unnerved by the murky air and bizarre landscapes, they’re probably wishing their lives felt a lot less like a movie.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146060/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johndan Johnson-Eilola does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The eerie San Francisco skyline evoked sci-fi movies for a reason. Filmmakers are increasingly using color grading to tinge their films with two hues, orange and teal, to unsettle viewers.Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Professor of Communication and Media, Clarkson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1410732020-06-23T10:57:51Z2020-06-23T10:57:51ZVirtual reality has been boosted by coronavirus – here’s how to avoid it leading us to dystopia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342959/original/file-20200619-43191-19tw4ne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One for the heads (sets). </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wavexr.com/press/">Wave</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>American R&B star John Legend <a href="https://www.roadtovr.com/john-legend-wave-concert-june/">is doing</a> a major live show on Thursday June 25 to promote his new album, Bigger Love. But can he expect much of a crowd, given that many pandemic restrictions are still in place? More than likely, since the whole performance is taking place in virtual reality. </p>
<p>Legend will not be appearing in person but as an avatar via the social VR platform Wave. The show is part of an experimental live concerts series that has been taking place on the platform during the pandemic. </p>
<p>With other artists in the series <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/john-legend-tinashe-vr-concerts-990783/">including Tinashe</a>, the whole idea is that they perform live in an immersive and fantastical virtual world that offers a new experience for audiences. Rapper Travis Scott did something similar <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/4/24/21235196/travis-scott-fortnite-concert-livestream-the-scotts-music-video">inside the</a> Fortnite video game in April and attracted over 12 million viewers. </p>
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<p>Glastonbury, the UK’s leading music festival, is also getting in on the act, planning a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/08/glastonbury-to-create-virtual-shangri-la-with-fatboy-slim-and-more">virtual festival</a> for July 3 and 4 with a VR option as a replacement for the real thing. It will feature over 50 music acts playing over several virtual stages, including Fatboy Slim and Carl Cox. </p>
<p>There appears to have been a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/apr/08/art-virtual-reality-coronavirus-vr">significant rise</a> in such VR offerings this year, aiming to deliver safe, accessible experiences during the pandemic. A number of visitor attractions have <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/mwJiZHf_Y7FfLg">started to offer</a> immersive VR experiences and access to online collections via the Google Arts & Culture app. You can go on a walking tour of the ancient temples of Sicily’s Valle dei Templi, for example. Or how about visiting a New York street art exhibition based around giant water tanks, or Hong Kong’s renowned Blue House building?</p>
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<p>Beyond entertainment and culture, businesses have been experimenting with the likes of <a href="https://www.chargedretail.co.uk/2019/08/12/obsess-launches-virtual-reality-shopping-centre-with-19-stores/">virtual shopping malls</a> and estate agent <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2017/06/13/the-rise-of-virtual-reality-in-real-estate/">property viewings</a> in recent years. The technology was seen as a <a href="https://www.revfine.com/virtual-reality-travel-industry/">great way</a> for helping travel agents to sell holidays, at least until coronavirus put tourism largely on hold. More immediately compelling, on the back of this year’s explosion in online meetings, is <a href="https://spatial.io/">various new</a> products <a href="https://www.engadget.com/htc-vive-xr-suite-sync-sessions-campus-social-museum-022453495.html">to facilitate</a> VR meetings and lectures. </p>
<h2>Dystopia, here we come?</h2>
<p>Enthusiasts for this technology often frame the benefits of adding a VR dimension to an existing service in terms of the democratising potential – making something accessible (for free) to a lot more people. Yet for any VR experience to take place, there are financial and practical constraints. Users need a fast internet connection, a headset and some kind of computer or mobile device. </p>
<p>This hefty outlay – along with problems with the previous generation of headsets, such as seasickness – has meant that the market for VR is still relatively small. It is <a href="https://www.viar360.com/virtual-reality-market-size-2018/">estimated that</a> there are now around 170 million VR users worldwide, with <a href="https://www.abiresearch.com/press/standalone-vr-commercial-and-enterprise-spur-vr-market-growth-us245-billion-2024/">one report saying</a> that the industry “had not lived up to its earlier expectations”. </p>
<p>Headset sales <a href="https://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/superdata-xr-update">have fallen</a> in 2020 due to supply issues caused by the pandemic, though many analysts view this as temporary. According to one forecast, hardware sales for VR and augmented reality <a href="https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS46143720">will increase</a> tenfold in the next three years. Then again, there may need to be a drop in the prices of equipment such as Oculus Quest, HTC Vive, and Playstation VR, which respectively start at around £400, £500 and £300.</p>
<p>There is also the issue of whether VR experiences can substitute real-life offerings. On the one hand, in the context of digital gaming and virtual worlds, VR technologies arguably empower individuals and often provide a much needed escape from the constraints of everyday life. During COVID-19, the resurgence of virtual worlds like <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/03/26/second-life-enjoys-surprising-renaissance-social-distancers/">Second Life</a> shows how they can enable a sense of community and various social interactions, from dancing in a club to walking through a busy city. </p>
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<p>On the other hand, VR technologies perhaps only offer a pale imitation of the multi-sensory experiences of life. VR risks removing the authenticity from cultural offerings; of turning them into little more than another commodity delivered in bundles online. It might also compound the problems with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook">privacy and surveillance</a> that exist with search engines and social media.</p>
<p>In a post-COVID-19 society, there is a real chance that we will be increasingly using VR in our daily lives. The organisations building these virtual offerings, and those who oversee these industries, have a duty to ensure it doesn’t lead us into some kind of dystopia. We could end up experiencing much of life alone at home, with no privacy, forgetting the importance of the touch and smell of cultural experiences. </p>
<p>So this shift will need to be handled very carefully. For VR to realise its full potential, we will need to be mindful of the dangers while also making sure that the entry barriers don’t exclude those who can’t afford it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141073/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandros Skandalis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From VR music festivals to immersive meeting spaces, headsets are go.Alexandros Skandalis, Lecturer in Marketing and Consumer Culture, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1402682020-06-10T17:28:09Z2020-06-10T17:28:09ZDebate: Smile, you’re under surveillance!<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340272/original/file-20200608-176542-hvq05.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=116%2C76%2C1246%2C637&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The icon of Houseparty, a "user-friendly" application that rose in popularity during the Covid-19 lockdown.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Will history remember the Covid-19 pandemic as a moment during which citizens gave up their civil rights for health reasons?</p>
<p>Two elements can be used together to exert pressure on citizens: the first is fear, as used by Big Brother. The second is entertainment, as used by Big Mother. This draws from the field of psychoanalytical theory in which the father or big brother enforce the law, while the mother nurtures in the large sense of the term (food) and also entertains.</p>
<h2>Toward generalised surveillance</h2>
<p>In a way, data surveillance is already omnipresent. Who can still believe that our conversations remain private, no matter the medium or the proclaimed protections?</p>
<p>Police in Morocco <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-morocco-idUSKBN2162DI">arrested a dozen people</a> who posted Covid-19-related information on social media which the authorities considered to be “fake news”. In Hungary, at least <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/hungary-critics-silenced-in-social-media-arrests-as-eu-debates-orbans-powers/ar-BB144qYc">three people were arrested</a> for having criticised on social media the handling of the pandemic by Victor Orban. This action could cost them five years in prison thanks to an emergency measure adopted on March 30 to deal with the pandemic. In Turkey, one can be punished with three years in prison for spreading what are portrayed as falsehoods. The Ministries of Truth have a plethora of candidates: any questioning of the state’s version of the situation is already considered to be conspirational.</p>
<p>The lockdown pushed what had previously been considered a niche category of technology, conferencing software, into the mainstream. While Zoom had just 10 million users in 2019, it’s currently one of the most downloaded applications on the planet, with <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-zoom-idUSKBN21K1C7">200 million users in March 2020</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337573/original/file-20200526-106853-1eeju5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337573/original/file-20200526-106853-1eeju5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337573/original/file-20200526-106853-1eeju5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337573/original/file-20200526-106853-1eeju5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337573/original/file-20200526-106853-1eeju5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337573/original/file-20200526-106853-1eeju5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337573/original/file-20200526-106853-1eeju5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Video conferencing on Zoom, the most downloaded application for work meetings during containment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The application is everywhere, including use by numerous universities for classes and meetings. At the end of March 2020, however, we learned that <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/03/31/lawsuit-claims-zoom-illegally-shared-user-data-with-facebook/">Zoom sent users’ data to Facebook without their consent</a>, even if they were not on Facebook themselves.</p>
<p>In its <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200331221522/https:/www.houseparty.com/privacy/">privacy policy statement published on March 25</a>, the application Houseparty declared that it was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“free to use the content of any communications submitted by you via the Services, including any ideas, inventions, concepts, techniques, or know-how disclosed therein, for any purpose including developing, manufacturing, and/or marketing goods or Services.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Suzanne Vergnolle, a law doctoral student specialising in the protection of personal data, called our attention to an <a href="https://www.francetvinfo.fr/internet/securite-sur-internet/donnees-personnelles-pourquoi-faut-il-se-mefier-des-applications-de-visioconference-zoom-et-houseparty_3896389.html">article that noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If you are a company, for example, and you wish to share secret information, you should know that Houseparty and Zoom have access to your conversations.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Worse, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/03/zoom-privacy-law-enforcement-technology-yuan">Zoom does not encrypt free calls</a> and Houseparty conversations are <a href="https://www.web24.news/u/2020/03/why-you-should-use-the-houseparty-app-with-care.html">not encrypted at all</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, we all know the role of geolocalisation used to keep tabs on the virus in many countries. The Chinese government monitored individual smartphones and uses <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/02/china-brings-in-mandatory-facial-recognition-for-mobile-phone-users">facial recognition tools on a massive scale</a>. Mobile applications, used everywhere around the world, let users know who may be infected in their circle of acquaintances.</p>
<h2>Applying “sub-veillance”</h2>
<p>How is it possible to get entire populations to accept these measures? The secret is to convince people to submit freely.</p>
<p>Rather than speaking of sur-veillance, one invokes the principle of <a href="https://www.multitudes.net/de-la-sousveillance/">“sub-veillance”</a> in which the individual is not actively watched but followed by digital traces, in a discreet way – it’s both immaterial and omnipresent. In George Orwell’s classic novel, <em>1984</em>, published in 1949, he did not explain how Big Brother came to power or how that society came about, although he described it in great detail. In many ways we have already gone far beyond some surveillance characteristics described by Orwell.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337571/original/file-20200526-106823-n8wons.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=90%2C120%2C3935%2C2897&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337571/original/file-20200526-106823-n8wons.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337571/original/file-20200526-106823-n8wons.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337571/original/file-20200526-106823-n8wons.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337571/original/file-20200526-106823-n8wons.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337571/original/file-20200526-106823-n8wons.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337571/original/file-20200526-106823-n8wons.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Statue of George Orwell in front of BBC House, London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Statue_of_George_Orwell_%282018%29.jpg">Ben Sutherland/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, Orwell did not predict the portable screen, or freely consented submission, although he did invoke the idea of a video surveillance device, called a “telescreen”, which is very similar to our connected screens. Nor did he predict that each individual would consent to general surveillance through a small mobile screen for which, on top of everything, they would have to pay.</p>
<h2>Big Mother: Distract into servitude</h2>
<p>What Orwell did not anticipate was that today’s equivalent of the telescreen, the smartphone, has become widespread because has been designed to be fun to use. Users are pleased, distracted and let down their guards.</p>
<p>In another famous dystopia, Aldous Huxley’s <em>Brave New World</em>, citizens take the drug “soma”, which weakens their resistance. In the novel, soma is portrayed to be a simple medicine, but is in fact a synthetic drug that plunges users into a paradisiac slumber.</p>
<p>Digital devices today seem to combine the soma of <em>Brave New World</em> and the telescreen of <em>1984</em>. A modern-day adolescent spends nearly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/03/teens-spend-nearly-nine-hours-every-day-consuming-media/">nine hours every day playing with a screen</a>, with no serious or educational benefit. The digital device has become an extension of oneself, an artificial limb. To continue using its functions, which are practical – and above all fun – people must give up a little bit of freedom, and the payoff between benefit and risk is that using applications compensate for the intrusions into one’s private life.</p>
<p>Digital devices also do provide real entertainment while taking away from classroom knowledge and difficulties. A <a href="https://www.placedeslibraires.fr/livre/9782376872924-la-nouvelle-religion-du-numerique-le-numerique-est-il-ecologique-florence-rodhain/">five-year study</a> we conducted among post-secondary school students in France indicated that they spend 61 out of 90 classroom minutes having fun with the tablets distributed to them by their universities. Only 20% of their time on these devices had any relationship with class material.</p>
<p>On social networks, each “like” that a user’s posts receive releases an immediate <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-wise/201209/why-were-all-addicted-texts-twitter-and-google">dose of dopamine</a>, as can be clearly seen with users hooked up to an MRI. Huxley saw it coming.</p>
<h2>Big Brother: Scare them into obedience</h2>
<p>World powers have used the language of war to fight against Covid-19, including <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/france-paris-emmanuel-macron-coronavirus-covid19/608200/">French president Emmanuel Macron</a>. Wartime is a time for exceptional unilateral decisions, and lets authorities behave in ways that would be unthinkable during peacetime. Every war is also a war on civil liberties. </p>
<p>When it comes to digital surveillance, however, the exception becomes the rule. The video surveillance market received a gift on September 11, 2001, when it was given an official boost in the name of the “war on terror” even before it became the norm and was globally adopted.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.vie-publique.fr/rapport/32126-livre-blanc-sur-la-securite-publique">2011 white paper on public safety</a> published by France’s Interior Ministry, popular resistance to new technologies that could be considered intrusive was specifically evoked:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[The] use of nanotechnologies combined notably with geolocalisation can raise fears as to the protection of individual freedoms.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How could the Interior Ministry overcome resistance against electronic surveillance? The answer can be found in the same white paper:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[There] is no doubt that a significant feeling of ‘threat’ (be it terrorist or economic) contributes to a more favourable perception of the use of new technologies within society.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One cannot ignore the fact that this method works, as we have seen since 2001. When governments use technology under the cover of war, citizens more easily accept it.</p>
<h2>Voluntary servitude</h2>
<p>Fear of terrorism, fear of illness: this feeling is maintained using doubt and a continual barrage of well-chosen information.</p>
<p>Entertainment, like fear, leads to a form of voluntary servitude that also uses the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674504578">narcissistic pleasure offered by social media</a>.</p>
<p>An often-cited line attributed to Benjamin Franklin states “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”. While often used when discussing questions of technology and surveillance, the subject was in actuality a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century">tax dispute concerning defence spending</a>. In the current context, however, that many of us are willing to exchange our liberty for a little entertainment seems foolish indeed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Florence Rodhain ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>In the current health crisis, authorities use our need for security and private firms our desire for entertainment to encourage us to give up our civil rights.Florence Rodhain, Maître de Conférences HDR en Systèmes d'Information, Université de MontpellierLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1359442020-04-30T11:24:10Z2020-04-30T11:24:10ZAfter the plague: Lauren Beukes’ new book is about a world without men<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331116/original/file-20200428-110748-yxdhrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tabitha Guy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Based in 2023, South African writer <a href="https://laurenbeukes.com/about/">Lauren Beukes</a>’ novel <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/afterland/9781415210598">Afterland</a></em> captures the devastating effects of a global pandemic. </p>
<p>A highly contagious virus, called HCV, has killed around four billion men. Society is in disrepair and, with no cure in sight, women are barred from procreation. The few males who have proven immune have become hot commodities for various agendas. And the odds are stacked against the protagonist Cole in her bid to return home to Johannesburg from America with her young son Miles – who possesses the HCV-resistant gene.</p>
<p>Cole has lost her husband and been forced into a quarantine facility so that the government can conduct experiments on Miles. She is relieved when her sister, Billie, shows up to help them break out. Yet, ever duplicitous, Billie has been enticed by the price of black market sperm. </p>
<p>Nedine Moonsamy interviewed Beukes about the book.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Nedine Moonsamy:</strong> How does it feel to have written this novel now that <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=COVID-19">COVID-19</a> is here?</p>
<p><strong>Lauren Beukes:</strong> The book isn’t about the pandemic, but the aftermath, and how Cole and Miles navigate this radically changed world in which boys are suddenly precious commodities. But it’s not a <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-dystopian-fiction-learn-about-the-5-characteristics-of-dystopian-fiction-with-examples#what-is-the-significance-of-dystopian-fiction">dystopia</a>, it’s not a total apocalypse. I did want to model a society that still functions. </p>
<p>In the world of <em>Afterland</em>, most of the male population has died, leaving only 35-50 million men and boys on the whole planet. It was challenging and hella fun to explore what sectors would be hardest hit, especially in what the novel calls PMdI (Previously Male-dominated Industries), such as satellite technicians, undersea cable maintenance divers, truckers and pilots and engineers and mine workers and mechanics; and what measures the women in charge would have taken to manage that. </p>
<p>It mainly comes down to a whole lot of upskilling, but there are also some political shenanigans in the book: the US, for example, offers lucrative immigration deals to citizens from Egypt and Qatar and India where they have more women software engineers. The president of Colombia shuts down coffee exports until America legalises drugs because women don’t want to lose another single person to the violent narco trade. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331118/original/file-20200428-110779-2kx6ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331118/original/file-20200428-110779-2kx6ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331118/original/file-20200428-110779-2kx6ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331118/original/file-20200428-110779-2kx6ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331118/original/file-20200428-110779-2kx6ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331118/original/file-20200428-110779-2kx6ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331118/original/file-20200428-110779-2kx6ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331118/original/file-20200428-110779-2kx6ok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lauren Beukes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tabitha Guy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are religious groups that believe this is God’s punishment, and terrorist groups setting oil fields alight to bring about the true end times. But that’s all mostly background. </p>
<p>Cole and Miles do run into an anarchist community in Salt Lake City who are mobilising – hacking hotel cards to give people access to housing, for example. It’s been fascinating, and inspiring, to see South Africa’s own <a href="https://www.groundup.org.za/article/how-cape-town-group-helping-neighbourhoods-fight-covid-19/">Community Action Networks</a> reaching out across our huge divides to partner with under-resourced neighbourhoods. </p>
<p><strong>Nedine Moonsamy:</strong> How did you approach the research for the book?</p>
<p><strong>Lauren Beukes:</strong> I interviewed a lot of experts: I spoke to my friend <a href="https://www.hanselman.com">Scott Hanselman</a> about female coders, economist <a href="https://www.journalismfestival.com/speaker/hannes-grassegger">Hannes Grassegger</a> about what this new imagined economy might look like, and scientist friends like <a href="https://www.csir.co.za/dr-janine-scholefield">Janine Scholefield</a> explained viruses and keyholes and x-linked genetic variances to me. I asked Cape Town metro police officers on the ride-alongs I did, what would happen to the drugs and gangs if all the men disappeared: would they grind to a halt? “Are you kidding?” they said. They maintain it would continue in much the same way, maybe worse: “The most ruthless leader of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/21/only-we-can-change-things-life-in-gang-ridden-other-side-cape-town">the Americans</a> was Mama American because she had more to prove.”</p>
<p>As Billie says in the novel, “Power is a fickle slut” – and yeah, absolutely, many of the old power structures are going to hold. Even in a world where 99% of the male population is dead, patriarchy is still a very comfortable pair of shoes and very easy to slip into. </p>
<p>It’s inspiring to see people talking about how we’re all going to reinvent the world post-COVID, go full socialism, bring in universal basic income, healthcare for all, proper minimum wage, income protection, continued bonds of support and care between wealthy neighbourhoods and disadvantaged ones. But capitalism is an old god, and it’s going to be very difficult to overthrow completely. </p>
<p>And of course there will be backlashes; epidemics are often terrible for women’s rights. Look at where women are the primary caregivers at cost to their careers, and vulnerable to violent partners. Plus they don’t go back to work and girls don’t go back to school in nearly the same numbers as men and boys. </p>
<p>I hope this has already been such a system shock that we will have no choice but to make significant changes to the way the world works now. But I’m afraid of what the cost to us is going to be. </p>
<p><strong>Nedine Moonsamy:</strong> I can see that you steered away from a radical feminist novel in order to tell a story about the best version of familial love. From this angle, the novel seems to converse with Cormac McCarthy’s <em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/nov/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview4">The Road</a></em> where father and son travel through post-apocalyptic America to get to the coast. In <em>Afterland</em> the journey has a more optimistic spin. Were you attempting to rework this “great American novel” in some way? </p>
<p><strong>Lauren Beukes:</strong> It depends on what you mean by radical. I didn’t want to tell a story that was all about the world, or the characters changing it, à la <a href="https://www.jkrowling.com/writing/">Harry Potter</a> or <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/86535/the-children-of-men-by-pd-james/">Children of Men</a></em>, but rather about the ordinary people caught up in that world. <em>The Road</em> was definitely a reference point, and again, something I was writing in conversation with (like <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6125/the-handmaids-tale-by-margaret-atwood/">The Handmaid’s Tale</a></em>). I hated the ending of <em>The Road</em>. (Spoilers!) As a parent, I would never, ever let my kid go out into a world full of cannibals and rapists on their own. What kind of hope is that? It was blind luck that the next people he stumbled across were good. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331068/original/file-20200428-110752-zofpca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331068/original/file-20200428-110752-zofpca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331068/original/file-20200428-110752-zofpca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331068/original/file-20200428-110752-zofpca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331068/original/file-20200428-110752-zofpca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331068/original/file-20200428-110752-zofpca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331068/original/file-20200428-110752-zofpca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331068/original/file-20200428-110752-zofpca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From the feminist perspective, there were two ideas I wanted to play with: flipping the narrative, where suddenly Miles’s bodily autonomy and agency are under threat because people are treating him as a commodity, a reproductive resource, a sex object, a matter of “future security”. And exploring the idea of how a world of women is not necessarily going to be a kinder, gentler, friendship-bracelet-and-communal-gardens kinda place, where we can all go walking at night on our own and the country’s national women’s football team <a href="https://www.safa.net/banyana-banyana/">Banyana Banyana</a> gets to play the huge stadiums. </p>
<p>I’m not big on the binary idea of masculine versus feminine, and I wanted to interrogate that. A world of women is a world of people, still, with full human capacity for good or evil. Because women are just as capable of being power-hungry, violent, self-interested, abusive and evil as men can be, especially when we’re still living through the same society, but maybe in different ways. </p>
<p>Likewise, men are just as capable of being compassionate, nurturing, primary caregivers – and making friendship bracelets. </p>
<p><em>To buy a copy of Afterland visit Penguin Random House over <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/afterland/9781415210598">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135944/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nedine Moonsamy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even in a world where 99% of the male population is dead, patriarchy is still a very comfortable pair of shoes and very easy to slip into.Nedine Moonsamy, Senior Lecturer, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1369082020-04-29T12:11:14Z2020-04-29T12:11:14ZAre we living in a dystopia?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330857/original/file-20200427-145503-so76k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">State police officers during a "Reopen Virginia" rally around Capitol Square in Richmond on April 22, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/state-police-officers-monitor-activity-during-a-reopen-news-photo/1210663121?adppopup=true">Getty/Ryan M. Kelly / AFP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dystopian fiction is hot. Sales of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/326569/1984-by-george-orwell-with-a-foreword-by-thomas-pynchon/">George Orwell’s “1984”</a> and Margaret <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6125/the-handmaids-tale-by-margaret-atwood/">Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”</a> have <a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/02/dystopian-fiction-why-we-read/">skyrocketed</a> since 2016. Young adult dystopias – for example, <a href="https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/books/hunger-games-the-by-suzanne-collins/">Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,”</a> <a href="https://veronicarothbooks.com/books/divergent/">Veronica Roth’s “Divergent,”</a> <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/The-Giver/9780547345901">Lois Lowry’s classic, “The Giver”</a> – were best-sellers even before. </p>
<p>And with COVID-19, dystopias featuring diseases have taken on new life. Netflix reports <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/outbreak-movie-top-10-netflix-titles-movies-pandemic-tv-series-coronavirus/">a spike in popularity</a> for “Outbreak,” “12 Monkeys” and <a href="http://blog.dvd.netflix.com/new-dvd-releases/4-virus-related-films-to-watch-in-the-time-of-covid-19">others</a>. </p>
<p>Does this popularity signal that people think they live in a dystopia now? Haunting images of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/23/world/coronavirus-great-empty.html">empty city squares</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/coronavirus-wild-animals-wales-goats-barcelona-boars-brazil-turtles/2020/04/14/30057b2c-7a71-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html">wild animals roaming streets</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/economy/coronavirus-food-banks.html">miles-long food pantry lines</a> certainly suggest this. </p>
<p>We want to offer another view. “Dystopia” is a powerful but overused term. It is not a synonym for a terrible time. </p>
<p>The question for us as <a href="http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jnBSYuwAAAAJ&hl=en">political</a> <a href="http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LWLkiYMAAAAJ&hl=en">scientists</a> is not whether things are bad (they are), but how governments act. A government’s poor handling of a crisis, while maddening and sometimes disastrous, does not constitute dystopia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330876/original/file-20200427-145566-jkjxke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Today’s empty city streets capture the feeling of a dystopian time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/empty-city-coronavirus?agreements=pa:77130&family=editorial&locations=61907&phrase=empty%20city%20coronavirus&sort=newest#license">Getty/Roy Rochlin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Legitimate coercion</h2>
<p>As we argue in our book, “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/survive-and-resist/9780231188913">Survive and Resist: the Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics</a>,” the definition of dystopia is political.</p>
<p>Dystopia is not a real place; it is a warning, usually about something bad the government is doing or something good it is failing to do. Actual dystopias are fictional, but real-life governments can be “dystopian” – as in, looking a lot like the fiction. </p>
<p>Defining a dystopia starts with establishing the characteristics of good governance. A good government protects its citizens in a noncoercive way. It is the body best positioned to prepare for and guard against <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2018/4/17/17244978/lucy-jones-book-earthquake-flood">natural</a> and human-made horrors. </p>
<p>Good governments use what’s called “<a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a228/d1aceec6ea2cadf1c41d2319793dd0ca9d30.pdf">legitimate coercion</a>,” legal force to <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy/">which citizens agree</a> to keep order and <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174556/read-my-lips">provide services</a> like roads, schools and national security. Think of legitimate coercion as your willingness to stop at a red light, knowing it’s better for you and others in the long run. </p>
<p>No government is perfect, but there are ways of judging the imperfection. Good governments (those least imperfect) include a strong core of <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Methodology_Proof1.pdf">democratic elements</a> to check the powerful and create <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Development_as_Freedom/Qm8HtpFHYecC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=amartya%20sen%20development%20as%20freedom&pg=PR4&printsec=frontcover">accountability.</a> They also include constitutional and judicial measures to check the power of the majority. This setup acknowledges the need for government but evidences <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Federalist-Anti-Federalist-Papers/dp/1495446697">healthy skepticism</a> of giving too much power to any one person or body. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=EWbOLZcXugsC&lpg=PA1&ots=G0KJZqipPn&dq=federalism%20democracy%20devolution&lr&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q&f=false">Federalism</a>, the division of power between national and subnational governments, is a further check. It has proved useful lately, with <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/13/politics/states-band-together-reopening-plans/index.html">state governors and mayors</a> emerging as strong political players during COVID-19.</p>
<h2>Three kinds of dystopias</h2>
<p>Bad governments lack checks and balances, and rule in the interest of the rulers rather than the people. <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0058%3Abook%3D3">Citizens</a> can’t participate in their own governance. But dystopian governments are a special kind of bad; they use illegitimate coercion like force, threats and the “disappearing” of dissidents to stay in power. </p>
<p>Our book catalogs three major dystopia types, based on the presence – or absence – of a functioning state and how much power it has. </p>
<p>There are, as in Orwell’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell-ebook/dp/B003JTHWKU/ref=sr_1_1?crid=6FALM24842SX&dchild=1&keywords=orwell+1984&qid=1586894038&s=books&sprefix=orwell+%2Cstripbooks%2C142&sr=1-1">“1984,”</a> overly powerful governments that infringe on individual lives and liberties. These are authoritarian states, run by dictators or powerful groups, like a single party or corporate-governance entity. Examples of these governments abound, including <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/20/syria-torture-opposition-regime-defector/">Assad’s murderously repressive regime in Syria</a> and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm5pE_BDtCc">silencing of dissent</a> and <a href="https://cpj.org/data/killed/europe/russia/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&cc_fips%5B%5D=RS&start_year=1992&end_year=2020&group_by=location">journalism</a> in Russia. </p>
<p>The great danger of these is, as our country’s Founding Fathers knew quite well, too much power on the part of any one person or group limits the options and autonomy of the masses. </p>
<p>Then there are dystopic states that seem nonauthoritarian but still take away basic human rights through market forces; we call these “capitocracies.” Individual workers and consumers are often exploited by the political-industrial complex, and the environment and other public goods suffer. A great fictional example is <a href="https://www.pixar.com/feature-films/walle">Wall-E</a> by Pixar (2008), in which the U.S. president is also CEO of “Buy ‘N Large,” a multinational corporation controlling the economy. </p>
<p>There are not perfect real-life examples of this, but elements are visible in the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/republic-samsung">chaebol</a> – <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/south-koreas-chaebol-challenge">family business</a> – power in South Korea, and in various manifestations of corporate political power in the U.S, including <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/12/05/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trump-era/">deregulation</a>, corporate <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575125/corporations-are-not-people-by-jeffrey-d-clements/">personhood</a> status and big-company <a href="https://time.com/5814076/coronavirus-stimulus-bill-corporate-bailout/">bailouts</a>.</p>
<p>Lastly there are state-of-nature dystopias, usually resulting from the collapse of a failed government. The resulting territory reverts to a primitive feudalism, ungoverned except for small tribal-held fiefdoms where individual dictators rule with impunity. The Citadel versus Gastown in the stunning 2015 movie <a href="https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/mad-max-fury-road/">“Mad Max: Fury Road”</a> is a good fictional depiction. A real-life example was seen in the once barely governed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/23/somalia-no-longer-a-failed-state-just-a-fragile-one-says-un">Somalia</a>, where, for almost 20 years until 2012, as a U.N. official described it, “armed warlords (were) fighting each other on a clan basis.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330874/original/file-20200427-145503-3vslgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fiction best describes dystopia – as in this reference to the landmark dystopian novel, ‘1984,’ by George Orwell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/graffiti-1984-is-now-titel-of-the-novel-1984-by-george-news-photo/545003371?adppopup=true">Getty/Schöning/ullstein bild</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fiction and real life</h2>
<p>Indeed, political dystopia is often easier to see using the lens of fiction, which exaggerates behaviors, trends and patterns to make them more visible. </p>
<p>But behind the fiction there is always a real-world correlate. Orwell had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/books/review/dorian-lynskey-ministry-of-truth-1984.html">Stalin, Franco and Hitler</a> very much in mind when writing “1984.” </p>
<p>Atwood, whom literary critics call the “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/margaret-atwood-the-prophet-of-dystopia">prophet of dystopia</a>,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/15/margaret-atwood-interview-english-pen-pinter-prize">recently defined dystopia</a> as when “[W]arlords and demagogues take over, some people forget that all people are people, enemies are created, vilified and dehumanized, minorities are persecuted, and human rights as such are shoved to the wall.” </p>
<p>Some of this may be, as Atwood <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/15/margaret-atwood-interview-english-pen-pinter-prize">added</a>, the “cusp of where we are living now.” </p>
<p>But the U.S. is not a dystopia. It still has functioning democratic institutions. Many in the U.S. fight against dehumanization and persecution of minorities. Courts are adjudicating cases. Legislatures are passing bills. Congress has not <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-nominations/trump-threatens-to-adjourn-u-s-congress-idUSKCN21X3GI">adjourned</a>, nor has the fundamental right of habeas corpus – the protection against illegal detention by the state – (yet) been <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/21/doj-coronavirus-emergency-powers-140023">suspended</a>. </p>
<h2>Crisis as opportunity</h2>
<p>And still. One frequent warning is that a major crisis can cover for the rolling back of democracy and curtailing of freedoms. In Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a medical crisis is the pretext for suspending the Constitution. </p>
<p>In real life, too, crises facilitate authoritarian backsliding. In Hungary the pandemic has sped democracy’s unraveling. The legislature gave strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban the power to <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/understanding-hungarys-authoritarian-response-pandemic">rule by sole decree indefinitely</a>, the lower courts are suspended and free speech is restricted. </p>
<p>Similar dangers exist in any number of countries where democratic institutions are frayed or fragile; leaders with authoritarian tendencies may be tempted to leverage the crisis to consolidate power.</p>
<p>But there are also positive signs for democracy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330860/original/file-20200427-145544-nfvkhi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sign ‘We are in this together’ is written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of NYU Langone Medical Center during the coronavirus pandemic on April 22, 2020 in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-we-are-in-this-together-is-written-in-chalk-on-the-news-photo/1220487757?adppopup=true">Getty/John Lamparski</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/30/21199785/homemade-coronavirus-masks-n95-ppe">People are coming together</a> in ways that didn’t seem possible just a few months ago. This <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-vu-face-shields-st-0416-20200413-zyreuxfwqfajhirqlql2khhpj4-story.html">social capital</a> is an <a href="http://robertdputnam.com/bowling-alone/social-capital-primer/">important element</a> in a democracy. </p>
<p>Ordinary people are performing incredible acts of kindness and generosity – from <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/us/coronavirus-student-volunteers-grocery-shop-elderly-iyw-trnd/index.html">shopping for neighbors</a> to <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2020/03/17/son-serenades-mom-during-coronavirus-lockdown-harmony-brentwood-tennessee-nursing-home/5065211002/">serenading residents at a nursing home</a> to a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/30/21199785/homemade-coronavirus-masks-n95-ppe">mass movement to sew facemasks</a>. </p>
<p>In politics, Wisconsin primary voters risked their lives to exercise their right to vote during the height of the pandemic. <a href="https://wisconsinexaminer.com/brief/voters-sue-legislature-leaders-and-wec-demanding-april-7-revote/">Citizens</a> and <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/14/time-essence-after-wisconsin-fiasco-150-civil-rights-groups-urge-congress-protect">civil society</a> are pushing federal and state governments to ensure election safety and integrity in the remaining primaries and the November election.</p>
<p>Despite the eerie silence in public spaces, despite the preventable deaths that should weigh heavily on the consciences of public officials, even despite the authoritarian tendencies of too many leaders, the U.S. is not a dystopia – yet. </p>
<p>Overuse clouds the word’s meaning. Fictional dystopias warn of preventable futures; those warnings can help avert the actual demise of democracy.</p>
<p>[<em>Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-facts">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136908/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>‘Dystopia’ is a term that’s gained popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. But it’s not a synonym for ‘a bad time,’ and a government’s poor handling of a crisis does not constitute dystopia.Shauna Shames, Associate Professor, Rutgers UniversityAmy Atchison, Associate Professor of Political Science & International Relations, Valparaiso UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1363282020-04-23T16:03:44Z2020-04-23T16:03:44ZDystopian story ‘Ready Player One’ has tips for life after coronavirus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328864/original/file-20200419-152581-103htgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C649%2C1387%2C861&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wade Watts becomes a better global citizen when he reconnects to the real world in Ernest Cline's novel 'Ready Player One.' Tye Sheridan stars as Watts in Steven Spielberg's film adaptation. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(2018 edition of 'Ready Player One'/Penguin Random House)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dystopian fiction seems so alluring during the coronavirus pandemic. As we eagerly await a return to normalcy, many say <a href="https://twitter.com/theJagmeetSingh/status/1251219595689672704">we can aspire to do better</a> — whether we are talking about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/business/economy/coronavirus-economy-survey.html">wealth distribution</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/15/scientists-confirm-dramatic-melting-greenland-ice-sheet">global warming</a>. What <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/15/books-to-read-while-quarantined-coronavirus">dystopian fiction</a> does especially well is to show how we can do more than simply repeat. </p>
<p>Steven Spielberg’s <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1677720/">Ready Player One</a></em> (2018), an adaptation of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/209887/ready-player-one-movie-tie-in-by-ernest-cline/">Ernest Cline’s bestselling novel</a> of the same title (2011), is a case in point. Set in 2045 in the city of Columbus, Ohio, it speaks of a world that has weathered corn syrup droughts and bandit riots. </p>
<p>People have now resorted to outliving rather than fixing the world’s problems. Accordingly, a virtual reality game known as the OASIS has become a refuge for many, including the central protagonist Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan).</p>
<p>Small wonder that the OASIS is so appealing. Within its walls, Spielberg pays homage to many aspects of popular culture. The video game Minecraft (2009) is a possible setting, and throughout the film, viewers watch <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094862/">Chucky</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129167/">the Iron Giant</a> and <a href="https://www.criterion.com/films/29348-godzilla-vs-mechagodzilla">Mechagodzilla</a> in battle.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328868/original/file-20200419-152571-5t78hl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328868/original/file-20200419-152571-5t78hl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328868/original/file-20200419-152571-5t78hl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328868/original/file-20200419-152571-5t78hl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328868/original/file-20200419-152571-5t78hl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328868/original/file-20200419-152571-5t78hl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328868/original/file-20200419-152571-5t78hl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Iron Giant goes to battle in ‘Ready Player One.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros.)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Refuge of virtual reality</h2>
<p>Entire plot sequences incorporate existing popular characters, music and stories. In a nod to Superman, Watts dons Clark Kent glasses to conceal his identity. And in a sequence worthy of the film’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d-BPKxwbls">2019 Academy Award nomination for Achievement in Visual Effects</a>, Watts and his romantic interest Samantha Cook (Olivia Cooke) dance to the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” (1977). </p>
<p>The central conflict in <em>Ready Player One</em> arises when James Halliday (Mark Rylance), one of the OASIS’s creators, dies and leaves behind a seemingly impossible quest. The prize is his extensive fortune and total control over the OASIS. Watts’ competitors include the Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a loyalty centre that seeks to take over the OASIS.</p>
<p>The IOI is shown to be exploitative. Samantha’s father, we learn, borrowed gaming gear, built up debt and moved into the IOI in hopes to repay it, only to fall ill and die. Samantha stands to follow his example and her debt has already exceeded 23,000 credits.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EempLMvh_EQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Wade and Samantha dance to the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’ in ‘Ready Player One.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Inequalities</h2>
<p>What distinguishes the film — and its source material — is its exploration of how we negotiate with a social order rife with inequalities. This theme is particularly timely: COVID-19 has made apparent, for instance, the links between <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-makes-inequality-a-public-health-issue/">inequality and public health</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/fm/2018/00000009/00000003/art00013;jsessionid=1fe2iahwms6o9.x-ic-live-02">In the novel</a>, the IOI’s corporate police arrest Wade, and he is marshalled out of his apartment complex and into a transport truck. As the vehicle moves, he peers out of its window and absorbs the changes that have befallen the world:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=J8ahqXjUhAAC&pg=PA276&lpg=PA276&dq=A+thick+film+of+neglect+still+covered+everything+in+sight.+The+streets,+the+buildings,+the+people.+Even+the+snow+seemed+dirty.+It+drifted+down+in+gray+flakes,+like+ash+after+a+volcanic+eruption&source=bl&ots=UTSjORO025&sig=ACfU3U2I0rXtBQcyzuYrc-Q2qeMulvFqrA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjw37ydu_XoAhWRbc0KHVWEBnwQ6AEwAHoECBAQKA#v=onepage&q&f=false">A thick film of neglect</a> still covered everything in sight …. The number of homeless people seemed to have increased drastically. Tents and cardboard shelters lined the streets, and the public parks I saw seemed to have been converted into refugee camps.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The key term here is neglect. Wade is not alone in having forsaken the world. The virtual universe of the OASIS may have provided a convenient refuge. But choosing to escape the world’s realities has contributed to a dramatic rise in social and economic inequalities.</p>
<h2>Taking constructive steps</h2>
<p>Both Cline’s novel and Spielberg’s film trace Watts’ growth into a better global citizen and his reconnection to the real world, so that his triumph can entail more than the regeneration of a flawed system. Spielberg expands on the novel by exploring what Watts does with his new-found wealth and power.</p>
<p>Watts shares his gains with his friends and together they take constructive steps towards improving both the OASIS and the wider world: they employ Halliday’s friend Ogden (Simon Pegg) as a non-exclusive consultant. They also ban loyalty centres from accessing the OASIS and switch off the virtual world on Tuesdays and Thursdays to encourage people to spend more time in the real world.</p>
<p>All of these actions seem commendable and they reveal how different Watts and his friends are to Halliday. Yet the film also exposes paradoxes inherent in fixing a broken system with its very tools. </p>
<p>In a recent article on the novel that I wrote with James Munday, a mathematics and statistics undergraduate student, we argue that any major <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2019.1667745">change Wade makes to the OASIS, such as closing it for extended periods, demands that he and his fellow shareholders take on a substantial loss</a>: their power is contingent upon the OASIS after all. But Wade seeks a more selfless and heroic win: creating a system that answers the needs of the many. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329773/original/file-20200422-47832-1pzxuvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329773/original/file-20200422-47832-1pzxuvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329773/original/file-20200422-47832-1pzxuvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329773/original/file-20200422-47832-1pzxuvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329773/original/file-20200422-47832-1pzxuvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329773/original/file-20200422-47832-1pzxuvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329773/original/file-20200422-47832-1pzxuvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Steven Spielberg and Ernest Cline at the Warner Bros. ‘Ready Player One’ panel at Comic-Con International in July 2017, in San Diego, Calif.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Imagining new worlds</h2>
<p>What Spielberg does especially well is to show the importance of imagining the world in new ways — and the temptation and problems with rebuilding a broken one in its own image. </p>
<p>In this, Spielberg harks back to a long genealogy of dystopian fiction, a genre invested in world building. The problems that Watts faces are anticipated, for instance, in George Orwell’s <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/124976/animal-farm-by-george-orwell/">Animal Farm</a></em> (1945), where we find an exploitative social system replaced by one even more so because it is more efficient. </p>
<p>Recently, Gregory Claeys provided us with an interdisciplinary map of the genre in his illuminating study <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dystopia-9780198785682?cc=ca&lang=en&"><em>Dystopia: A Natural History</em></a>. In a <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2016/12/dystopian-times-brexit-trump/">short essay</a>, he draws connections between the fears that we feel in these times of uncertainty to the genre’s central concerns.</p>
<p>As we collectively meditate on the world’s problems, why not imagine better worlds?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Ue has held the prestigious Frederick Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship.</span></em></p>The bestselling novel turned film exposes paradoxes of fixing a broken system with its own tools. As we collectively meditate on the world’s problems, why not imagine better worlds?Tom Ue, Adjunct Professor, Department of English, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1276642020-01-28T17:52:18Z2020-01-28T17:52:18ZHow Darwin’s sexual selection theory co-stars in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311680/original/file-20200123-162194-13sgd8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C119%2C4962%2C3128&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The role of women in futuristic drama TV series 'The Handmaid's Tale' makes references to Darwin's writings on evolution.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> is a TV series based on the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6125/the-handmaids-tale-by-margaret-atwood/">1985 novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood</a> that presents a dystopian vision of a male-dominated society known as Gilead.</p>
<p>Widespread infertility means that the few fertile women who remain have been enslaved as handmaids and assigned to Gilead’s leaders to produce their future offspring. The series follows the struggles of June, who was separated from her family and forced to become a handmaid.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RcTvQx1Wot0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A trailer for the third season of The Handmaid’s Tale.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But just what is a reference to the evolutionist Charles Darwin doing in an episode of <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em>?</p>
<p>As a historian of science currently writing a book on the Darwinian Revolution, I am intrigued by Darwin’s connection with this fictional society. </p>
<p>The reference may have something to do with Darwin’s chief evolutionary mechanism: <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-selection/">natural selection or the survival of the fittest</a>. But we’ll see that Darwin’s inclusion in <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> actually relates to his less well-known and secondary evolutionary mechanism, <a href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/commentary/evolution/sexual-selection">sexual selection</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Women can be useful’</h2>
<p>The third episode of season 3, titled “Useful,” finds June assigned to Joseph Lawrence, a high-ranking commander in Gilead. As Lawrence hosts a meeting of Gilead’s leaders in his drawing room, the men discuss what to do about recently captured female insurgents. </p>
<p>Should they be forced into hard labour in the Colonies or be publicly executed? Commander Lawrence, however, finds neither of these options appealing. The realities of the widespread infertility that spurred the regime’s existence suggests that some of the intransigent women might be useful after all.</p>
<p>Lawrence then tells June to get a book from his bookcase that will help the leadership group better understand “an individual’s value in the world as it pertains to gender.” The book in question is Charles Darwin’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-descent-of-man-by-darwin"><em>Descent of Man</em></a>, which Lawrence calls “an oldie but a goodie.” </p>
<p>After June hands the book to Lawrence, he then exclaims to his powerful guests: “See? Women can be useful.”</p>
<h2>Darwin’s theory of sexual selection</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311676/original/file-20200123-162185-1a7i68b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311676/original/file-20200123-162185-1a7i68b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311676/original/file-20200123-162185-1a7i68b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311676/original/file-20200123-162185-1a7i68b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311676/original/file-20200123-162185-1a7i68b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311676/original/file-20200123-162185-1a7i68b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1242&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311676/original/file-20200123-162185-1a7i68b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1242&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311676/original/file-20200123-162185-1a7i68b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1242&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Title page of ‘The Descent of Man’ by Charles Darwin (London, John Murray, 1875).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Collection</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Far from being a throwaway remark, the reference to Darwin’s <em>Descent of Man</em> in this scene is highly suggestive. While Darwin’s 1859 <a href="http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_OntheOriginofSpecies.html"><em>On the Origin of Species</em></a> is much more widely read and appreciated as establishing evolution as a science, Darwin did not write specifically about human evolution until 1871 when <a href="http://darwin-online.org.uk/contents.html#descent"><em>The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex</em></a> was published. In this book, Darwin put forward his theory of sexual selection.</p>
<p>Today, Darwin’s theory of sexual selection is often used to explain the bright and brilliant plumage typical of male birds of paradise, along with their often bizarre mating rituals meant to entice females. While Darwin spent several chapters discussing the esthetic senses of birds that led to such interesting evolutionary adaptations, he did not limit his application of sexual selection to birds alone.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311678/original/file-20200123-162216-luienz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311678/original/file-20200123-162216-luienz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311678/original/file-20200123-162216-luienz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311678/original/file-20200123-162216-luienz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311678/original/file-20200123-162216-luienz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311678/original/file-20200123-162216-luienz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311678/original/file-20200123-162216-luienz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311678/original/file-20200123-162216-luienz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Darwin explained the ostentatious displays of male birds - like this lesser bird-of-paradise - as a way to attract females and ensure genetic continuation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Science historian Evelleen Richards explains that Darwin believed that his theory of sexual selection could <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo25338514.html">account for important aspects of human evolution as well, such as the physical and mental distinctions between men and women</a>. </p>
<p>As Richards shows, when it came to issues of gender (and race for that matter), Darwin was very much a man of his time, and this fact shaped his evolutionary views. He argued that <a href="https://www.icr.org/article/darwins-teaching-womens-inferiority/">there was a vast distinction between the intellectual capabilities of men and women, believing that men were ultimately superior</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain — whether requiring deep thought, reason or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This distinction could be explained, according to Darwin, by the fact that men had to struggle against one another in the contest for mates, whereas women were largely passive. Through this struggle, men acquired certain intellectual capabilities late in their development, capabilities that were then only passed on to male offspring. </p>
<p>Because of this, the mental state of women was arrested in time and “characteristic,” as Darwin put it, “of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization.”</p>
<h2>Embracing maternity</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311940/original/file-20200126-81341-1u66mvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311940/original/file-20200126-81341-1u66mvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311940/original/file-20200126-81341-1u66mvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311940/original/file-20200126-81341-1u66mvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311940/original/file-20200126-81341-1u66mvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311940/original/file-20200126-81341-1u66mvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311940/original/file-20200126-81341-1u66mvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311940/original/file-20200126-81341-1u66mvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Commander Joseph Lawrence is played by the actor Bradley Whitford; in the show, Commander Lawrence is a high-ranking official.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.hulu.com/press/actor/bradley-whitford/?show_id=1132">(Hulu Press)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It followed for Darwin that it would be a waste of resources to bring women up to the intellectual level of men. Women should, therefore, fully embrace their maternal instincts, raise children and establish happy homes. </p>
<p>Darwin’s wife Emma did exactly that, creating a comfortable home for Darwin to pursue his scientific endeavours while giving birth to 10 children, <a href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/emma-darwin">with the last one born when she was 48 years old</a>.</p>
<p>In many ways, <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> presents a society that is reduced to the gender stereotypes that were inscribed in Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Women are useful only in so far as they can reproduce. And those who can, like June, are essentially made sexual slaves to the powerful. Men, meanwhile, are physically and intellectually in control of the levers of power. </p>
<p>When Commander Lawrence tells June to get <em>Descent of Man</em> from the bookshelf, he is reminding her that she can be useful, but only from within the narrow sphere defined by her biology. <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em>, of course, is ultimately critical of such gender determinism, as the development of June herself makes clear. </p>
<p>But the politics of biology is not just a relic of the 19th century or the product of science fiction. Philosopher Cordelia Fine shows that <a href="https://www.wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393082081-testosterone-rex">there are still many evolutionary scientists who hold that the inequality between the sexes is natural, not cultural</a>. </p>
<p>On the surface, therefore, Gilead may look like an unrealistic society that chose to embrace its most extreme views about gender in order to survive. But the brilliance of <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> is in showing that many of those views, in certain contexts, are actually not so radical, and can even be found in classic biology texts. </p>
<p>This all suggests that the reference to Darwin’s <em>Descent of Man</em> in <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> is not only relevant but even necessary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127664/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Hesketh holds an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship grant FT170100194, entitled "The Place of History in Science: Reassessing the Darwinian Revolution."</span></em></p>In the television show ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ Charles Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’ makes a cameo — and its appearance makes a comment on how Gilead functions.Ian Hesketh, ARC Future Fellow, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1260142019-11-04T19:51:40Z2019-11-04T19:51:40ZCalifornia is living America’s dystopian future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300143/original/file-20191104-88368-1gbyizk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Maria Fire billows above Santa Paula, California on Oct. 31.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/California-Wildfires/3f3efad7c19c41848e9513101aaab035/7/0">AP/Noah Berger</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Golden State is on fire, which means that an idea of American utopia is on fire, too. </p>
<p>Utopias are the good places of our imagination, while dystopias are the places where everything goes terribly wrong, where evil triumphs and nature destroys her own. Frequently utopias and dystopias are the same place, because perfection may not be possible without someone suffering. </p>
<p>Ursula LeGuin writes about this paradox in “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062470973/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas/">The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas</a>,” a story about the moral dilemma of living in a city called Omelas whose prosperity is made possible by one child’s pain. As the story’s title makes clear, most people don’t walk away from the beautiful place, even when its secret is known. </p>
<p>California often finds itself the Omelas of the American imagination. For some, it’s the beautiful place where having it all means shafting someone else, as in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/">Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown,”</a> about Los Angeles’ theft of water from the Owens Valley. Or as in the magical theme park, Disneyland, which substantially <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/28/589456403/some-disneyland-employees-struggle-to-pay-for-food-shelter-survey-finds">underpays some of its workers</a>.</p>
<p>The novelists <a href="https://octaviabutler.org/">Octavia Butler</a>, <a href="https://www.edanlepucki.com/">Edan Lepucki</a>, <a href="http://www.karltarogreenfeld.com/karltarogreenfeld/home.html">Karl Taro Greenfeld</a>, <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/51699-q-a-with-paolo-bacigalupi.html">Paolo Bacigalupi</a> and <a href="https://lannan.org/bios/claire-watkins">Claire Vaye Watkins</a> are among the many who have imagined the Golden State as a dystopian novel. In their novels, California is either on fire, in extreme drought or both. They all picture California’s descent as a combination of climate crisis and social unrest.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/silicon-valley-from-hearts-delight-to-toxic-wasteland-86983">Silicon Valley, from 'heart’s delight' to toxic wasteland</a>
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</em>
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<p>For these authors, climate change hints at the dark secret of the perfect place, of bad decisions that all America shares. Their novels suggest that if California looks like a dystopia before other American places, that’s because it’s often in the lead. </p>
<p>“California is America fast-forward,” sociologist <a href="https://stateofresistancebook.com/about">Manuel Pastor says</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300145/original/file-20191104-88409-u7lyde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300145/original/file-20191104-88409-u7lyde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300145/original/file-20191104-88409-u7lyde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300145/original/file-20191104-88409-u7lyde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300145/original/file-20191104-88409-u7lyde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300145/original/file-20191104-88409-u7lyde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300145/original/file-20191104-88409-u7lyde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300145/original/file-20191104-88409-u7lyde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Building next to – and in – wildlands increases the risks of a fire. Here, smoke engulfs the Ronald Reagan Library during the Easy Fire, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019, in Simi Valley, California.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/CORRECTION-APTOPIX-California-Wildfires-Blackout/bef60c3f6e3c4652b0dd6a0130788440/3/0">AP/Christian Monterossa</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Ecology of fear’</h2>
<p>The wildfires that ravage California light up America’s screens with terror. Suburban homes are stripped to their foundations; Samaritans lead horses from burning barns. </p>
<p>The historian Mike Davis reminds us that California has long seemed an <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Ecology_of_Fear.html?id=_WhrAKFa5aEC">“ecology of fear” for Euro-Americans</a>. Settlers from Northern Europe and the East Coast did not understand Southern California’s climate, which is prone to unpredictability and drought. </p>
<p>“It is Walden Pond on LSD,” Davis writes, meaning that it is a psychedelic version of American nature spots like Walden Pond, in New England.</p>
<p>The unfamiliarity of California’s climate led to poor decisions about where to build from the start. Now Californians, like most western Americans, <a href="https://apnews.com/c0b921678a4447a695b3e396d960f33f">live too close to their wildlands</a>, which are drying into tinderboxes. </p>
<p>“In the United States, there are now more than 46 million single family homes, several hundred thousand businesses, and 120 million people living and working in and around the country’s forests,” <a href="https://islandpress.org/books/firestorm">writes the journalist Edward Struzik</a>, in “Firestorm,” his book about “how wildfire will shape our future.” </p>
<p>America has created the combustible environment called intermix, where residential and commercial uses spill into wildlands. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-climatechange/americans-demand-climate-action-reuters-poll-idUSKCN1TR15W">America craves inexpensive electricity</a>, too, which means that overhead power lines run through forests and chaparral. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2019/10/28/pge-says-faulty-power-lines-may-have-sparked-2-california-wildfires/#6f2e9ec82584">Overhead lines have sparked</a> some of the worst recent fires in California and other American places like New Mexico and Tennessee.</p>
<p>California utility company PG&E estimates the cost for converting overhead to underground lines <a href="https://www.pgecurrents.com/2017/10/31/facts-about-undergrounding-electric-lines/">at US$3 million per mile</a>. While cost estimates vary, such a project surely will be expensive and might take a century to complete. </p>
<p>Overhead infrastructure wasn’t made for extreme weather, like the estimated 80 mph winds that inspired a rare “extreme red flag” <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-29/getty-fire-punishing-santa-ana-winds-the-strongest-of-the-season-build-as-blaze-grows">warning in Southern California</a>. </p>
<h2>Pleasure in the state’s demise</h2>
<p>On fire, California is a dystopian novel that the rest of America reads avidly, and at times with <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-it-feel-good-to-see-someone-fail-107349">schadenfreude</a>, that feeling of joy that a person may take in another’s suffering. </p>
<p>California ranks as one of the happiest states in the U.S., <a href="http://info.healthways.com/hubfs/Gallup-Healthways%20State%20of%20American%20Well-Being_2016%20State%20Rankings%20vFINAL.pdf?">at number 13</a>. But California came in last in a 2012 poll <a href="https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/PPP_Release_US_022112.pdf">on which states Americans like</a>. </p>
<p>Maybe it’s the happiness that annoys others, which some perceive as phony (“tofu,” “silicone” and “dyed hair,” <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ted-cruz-warns-democrats-want-bring-tofu-and-dyed-hair-texas-1112834">said Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, about what is wrong with California)</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1061168803218948096"}"></div></p>
<p>When California was on fire in 2018, with thousands missing and dozens dead, <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1061168803218948096?lang=en">President Donald Trump tweeted that the state mismanaged its forests</a>. He tweeted the same thing during the recent fires, <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1190995034163892226">with more force.</a> Schadenfreude? Arguably, the nation is struggling to address the fire challenges of the intermix, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-wildfires-are-not-alike-but-the-us-is-fighting-them-that-way-99251">California is ahead of the rest</a>.</p>
<p>California supposedly is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/upshot/political-migration-a-new-business-of-moving-out-to-fit-in.html">most hated by conservatives</a>. But it nurtured the careers of conservative icons <a href="https://governors.library.ca.gov/33-Reagan.html">Ronald Reagan</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rush-Limbaugh">Rush Limbaugh</a>, plus a pair of conservative ballot measures, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-14/california-proposition-13-business-taxes-split-roll">Prop 13</a> and <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-29/proposition-187-california-pete-wilson-essay">Prop 187</a>, that cut taxes as well as services to immigrants. </p>
<p>It is also the birthplace of modern progressive movements, from the <a href="http://nfwm.org/campaigns/ufw/">United Farm Workers</a> to <a href="https://www.ocregister.com/2017/04/21/how-california-became-the-first-environmental-battleground/">environmentalism</a>. California has been a <a href="https://medium.com/s/state-of-the-future/americas-paralyzed-politics-today-is-california-s-15-years-ago-5fc9c50eebc3">seedbed of American political passions</a>, to the Right and Left. Perhaps that’s why it arouses passion – and envy.</p>
<h2>Confronting the secret</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20718544?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Dystopian thought criticizes what it loves</a> in an attempt to make it better.</p>
<p>If California is living a dystopian novel, it is also a first responder to <a href="https://theconversation.com/california-wildfires-signal-the-arrival-of-a-planetary-fire-age-125972">the fires of a changing planet</a>. </p>
<p>Some of the state’s utility companies are getting smarter about <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-edison-wildfire-mitigation-plan-20190206-story.html">infrastructure fixes</a>. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/28/fires-rage-california-refines-an-important-skill-evacuating/">Evacuations are going better</a> in the places where evacuations happened before. Californians voted in a <a href="https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/ab32/ab32.htm">landmark cap-and-trade bill</a> to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12072017/california-cap-trade-climate-legislation-AB32-carbon-trading-rewrite">now they are trying to improve on it</a>. </p>
<p>The state’s climate policy and <a href="https://capitolweekly.net/for-california-schools-2020-could-prove-historic/">renewed support for investment in public education</a> signal that it is getting past the nation’s racial generation gap, where older white voters don’t see themselves in a demographically browner youth <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-the-next-generation-looks-racially-different-from-the-last-political-tensions-rise-90209">and resist funding them</a>.</p>
<p>Living in Omelas means either compromising with injustice or learning how to make the world better before others even know that it’s broken. </p>
<p>Stay tuned. </p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend.</a> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126014/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie LeMenager does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>‘California is America fast-forward,’ writes one scholar. Does that mean that the dystopian infernos that have consumed parts of the state are simply a picture of what awaits the rest of America?Stephanie LeMenager, Professor of English Literature, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1259782019-10-30T10:05:54Z2019-10-30T10:05:54ZThe Fall: unsettling short film captures our fears about Brexit, Trump and an uncertain future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298966/original/file-20191028-113944-oo6tl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from Jonathan Glazer's new short film, The Fall.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>This article contains spoilers about The Fall</strong></p>
<p>Something <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/27/jonathan-glazer-the-fall-nazism">very strange</a> – and more than a little scary – happened at around 10pm on Sunday, October 27. <a href="https://www.screendaily.com/news/bbc-hosts-surprise-launch-for-jonathan-glazer-short-the-fall/5144146.article">Out of the blue</a>, viewers of BBC2 found themselves watching the latest film by British director Jonathan Glazer, perhaps best-known for the unsettling <a href="https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/opinion/scottish-horror-wicker-man-dog-soldiers-under-the-skin">Scottish-set</a> science fiction horror <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441395/">Under the Skin</a>.</p>
<p>The five-minute film, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p07rq86b/the-fall">The Fall</a> (available on BBC iPlayer), follows a masked gang as they capture and then attempt to execute a lone man. In one particularly disturbing scene, the mob pose with their victim in a blurry snapshot, as if with an animal they have killed on a hunting expedition.</p>
<p>But was the film just a Halloween horror? Or does it have profound things to say about the current state of the world? </p>
<p>The film actually owes much to <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/338473">The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters</a>, an etching by Spanish Romantic artist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/nyregion/goyas-etchings-of-a-dark-and-complicated-past.html">Francisco José Goya y Lucientes</a>. Goya’s work is the image of a nightmare. Eerie owls, bats, cats and ghouls descend upon a sleeping artist, omens that represent foolishness, ignorance and the persistence of superstition. It is grotesque and demonic, containing imagery found throughout The Caprices, the 80-piece <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/aquatint">collection</a> of the artist’s work published in 1799.</p>
<p>The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters has inspired and been reworked by several <a href="https://artinprint.org/article/the-recurrence-of-caprice-chagoyas-goyas/">contemporary artists</a> – and most recently by Glazer.</p>
<figure class="align- ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298967/original/file-20191028-113980-19qaldx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Francisco Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Francisco_Jos%C3%A9_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_The_sleep_of_reason_produces_monsters_%28No._43%29%2C_from_Los_Caprichos_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The BBC’s accompanying <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2019/the-fall-jonathan-glazer">press release</a> for The Fall is quick to point out the inspiration drawn from Goya’s work. The creators expect that viewers will “project their [own] preoccupations and interpretations” onto this purposefully vague and evocative short film. The Fall is an artistic vignette about the current political moment, an intervention intended to spark discussion and highlight the audience’s fears – and, perhaps, hopes – for the future.</p>
<h2>The death of reason?</h2>
<p>Like The Fall, Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters is openly ambiguous in its sketched, dark and nightmarish style – and visualises the sense of foreboding that comes during moments of great uncertainty.</p>
<p>Goya’s work often questioned the role of the individual during periods of change that seem beyond their control. And while Goya <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/goya/hd_goya.htm">critiqued the Roman Catholic clergy</a> and those who facilitated their actions (either through support or inaction) during the horrors of the Inquisition, later artists have seen his works’ contemporary relevance and how they highlight the individual’s tendency to ignore or metaphorically sleep through crises. </p>
<p>A further foray into the contemporary Gothic aesthetic that Glazer established in <a href="http://www.diegesismagazine.com/under-the-skin-2014.html">Under the Skin</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/movies/a-visitor-from-betwixt-shows-up-in-between.html">Birth</a>, The Fall draws on Goya – and shifts between crisp digital images and fuzzy footage.</p>
<p>At times, it is as if the footage has been filmed on a phone, replicating the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/11/dangerous-cycle-that-keeps-conspiracy-theories-news-trumps-tweets/">viral</a> images we now see so often posted online and rapidly shared without any knowledge of their origin. And, like Goya, Glazer uses this ethereal dystopian imagery to critique contemporary politics and the “us versus them” mob mentality that haunts issues such as Brexit, Trump’s rise to power and the migrant crisis.</p>
<p>In the film, the group of masked men and women shake the lone victim from a tree – perhaps a reference to the lone activist or marginalised person speaking out against the status quo (a literal <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/04/being-a-black-tree-hugger-has-taught-me-that-we-must-engage-all-citizens-to-fight-climate-crisis">tree-hugger</a>). Meanwhile, other members of the anonymous mob <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker">lurk</a> in the darkness and watch the victimisation in real time. Like their online equivalents, their masks allow them to act with the intoxicating <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anonymity-is-the-mask-that-licenses-hatred-hvzxql6r9">power of anonymity</a>. </p>
<p>The victim is then hanged, dropping into a hole for a tense 86 seconds to what we assume will be his death. The scene strongly echoes the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/26/lynchings-memorial-us-south-montgomery-alabama">hanging trees</a> associated with the Jim Crow-era US or the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/aug/31/national-justice-museum-nottingham-britain-last-working-gallows">gallows</a> that once provided public entertainment in the UK. As Glazer told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/27/jonathan-glazer-the-fall-nazism">The Guardian</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A mob encourages an abdication of personal responsibility. The rise of National Socialism in Germany for instance was like a fever that took hold of people. We can see that happening again.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The imagery is particularly poignant in the light of US president Donald Trump repeatedly using terms such as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-compares-impeachment-probe-to-lynching-draws-widespread-condemnation/2019/10/22/2fa24af2-f4d4-11e9-ad8b-85e2aa00b5ce_story.html">lynching</a>” and “<a href="https://www.themarysue.com/trump-stop-the-witch-hunt-merchandise/">witch hunt</a>”, language he appropriates to rile up his base and the opposition.</p>
<h2>Dropping into political satire</h2>
<p>Brexit still looms large for the British public. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/26/from-a-great-deal-to-a-halloween-nightmare-how-johnsons-brexit-tactics-fell-apart">promise of a Halloween exit</a> was just another knot in the unravelling rope of the UK’s seemingly endless fall out of the EU.</p>
<p>The lack of a clear end point for this current situation produces <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/04/anger-and-frustration-how-brexit-is-affecting-our-mental-health">feelings of discomfort, anxiety and unease</a>. It is also this feeling that Glazer purposely attempts to replicate, noting that “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/27/jonathan-glazer-the-fall-nazism">fear is ever-present</a>”. The fear of the unknown and the divisive nature of the decision to leave the EU has created a state riven by political and cultural tribalism. </p>
<p>In the week for <a href="https://cailleachs-herbarium.com/2016/10/samhuinn-halloween-winters-start-guising-divination-and-fires/">guising</a> and in the run-up to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mischief-night-2018-when-is-what-date-uk-liverpool-bonfire-gunpower-plot-guy-fawkes-a8612086.html">mischief night</a> and the autumn fire festivals, The Fall aptly recalls the masks and morbidness of the season while commenting on our present <a href="https://medium.com/the-politicalists/america-and-britain-two-different-kinds-of-dystopia-ddbeccb5bb27">dystopian moment</a>.</p>
<p>But at its end, The Fall offers a moment of hope. The lynching victim has reached out to the sides of the hole he has been dropped down and stopped his lethal fall. And as the film draws to a close, he begins climbing slowly back up towards the light.</p>
<p>Maybe, just maybe, we can also stop, or at least slow down, the present political free fall. But we do need to start by reaching out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Chambers has previously received funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Art and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).</span></em></p>Can we stop our current political free-fall? Perhaps this dystopian short offers a way out.Amy C. Chambers, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1230292019-09-19T10:39:01Z2019-09-19T10:39:01ZImagining both utopian and dystopian climate futures is crucial – which is why cli-fi is so important<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292636/original/file-20190916-19049-1ha4b65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/dqXiw7nCb9Q">贝莉儿 NG/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are headed towards a future that is hard to contemplate. At present, global emissions are reaching <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-iea-emissions/global-carbon-emissions-hit-record-high-in-2018-iea-idUKKCN1R7005">record levels</a>, the past four years have been the four <a href="https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-confirms-past-4-years-were-warmest-record">hottest on record</a>, coral reefs are <a href="https://theconversation.com/coral-reefs-breakdown-in-iconic-spawning-puts-species-at-risk-of-extinction-new-research-123045">dying</a>, sea levels are <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-sea-level-rise-could-displace-millions-of-people-within-two-generations-116753">rising</a> and winter temperatures in the Arctic have risen by <a href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/articles/2019-03-15/the-climate-emergency-and-the-next-generation">3°C</a> since 1990. Climate change is the defining issue of our time and now is the moment to do something about it. But what?</p>
<p>Society often looks to culture to try and make some sense of the world’s problems. Climate change challenges us to look ahead, past our own lives, to consider how the future might look for generations to come – and our part in this. This responsibility requires imagination.</p>
<p>So, it is no surprise that a literary phenomenon has grown over the past decade or two which seeks to help us imagine the impacts of climate change in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrF1THd4bUM&feature=youtu.be">clear language</a>. This literary trend – generally known by the name “<a href="https://theconversation.com/cli-fi-novels-humanise-the-science-of-climate-change-and-leading-authors-are-getting-in-on-the-act-51270">cli-fi</a>” – has now been established as a distinctive form of science fiction, with a host of works produced from authors such as Margaret Atwood and Paolo Bacigalupi to a series of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JDKHG2Q/144-3807197-0322361?ie=UTF8&ref_=apubna_nr_na_10063_ul_1_1_1810">Amazon shorts</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292630/original/file-20190916-19076-6b447m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292630/original/file-20190916-19076-6b447m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292630/original/file-20190916-19076-6b447m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292630/original/file-20190916-19076-6b447m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292630/original/file-20190916-19076-6b447m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1185&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292630/original/file-20190916-19076-6b447m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1185&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292630/original/file-20190916-19076-6b447m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1185&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Often these stories deal with climate science and seek to engage the reader in a way that the statistics of scientists cannot. Barbara Kingsolver’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/11/flight-behaviour-barbara-kingsolver-review">Flight Behaviour</a> (2012), for example, creates emotional resonance with the reader through a novel about the effects of global warming on the monarch butterflies, set amid familiar family tensions. Lauren Groff’s short story collection <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/books/review/florida-lauren-groff.html">Florida</a> (2018) also brings climate change together with the personal set amid storms, snakes and sinkholes.</p>
<h2>The end to come</h2>
<p>Cli-fi is probably better known for those novels that are set in the future, depicting a world where advanced climate change has wreaked irreversible damage upon our planet. They conjure up terrible futures: drowned cities, uncontainable diseases, burning worlds – all scenarios scientists have long tried to warn us about. These imagined worlds tend to be dystopian, serving as a warning to readers: look at what might happen if we don’t act now.</p>
<p>Atwood’s dystopian trilogy of MaddAddam books, for example, imagines post-apocalyptic futurist scenarios where a toxic combination of narcissism and technology have led to our great undoing. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/10/bookerprize2003.bookerprize">Oryx and Crake</a> (2003), the protagonist is left contemplating a devastated world in which he struggles to survive as potentially the last human left on earth. Set in a world ravaged by sea level rise and tornadoes, Atwood revisits the character’s previous life to examine the greedy capitalist world fuelled by genetic modification that led to this apocalyptic moment. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cli-fi-novels-humanise-the-science-of-climate-change-and-leading-authors-are-getting-in-on-the-act-51270">'Cli-fi' novels humanise the science of climate change – and leading authors are getting in on the act</a>
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<p>Other dystopian cli-fi works include Paolo Bacigalupi’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/05/28/408295800/the-water-knife-cuts-deep">The Water Knife</a> (2015), and the film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319262/">The Day After Tomorrow</a> (2004), both of which feature sudden global weather changes which plunge the planet into chaos.</p>
<p>Dystopian fiction certainly serves a purpose as a bleak reminder not to act lightly in the face of environmental disaster, often highlighting how climate change could in fact compound disparities across race and class further. Take Rita Indiana’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/02/tentacle-by-rita-indiana-review">Tentacle</a> (2015), a story of environmental disaster with a focus on gender and race relations – “illegal” Haitian refugees are bulldozed on the spot. A. Sayeeda Clarke’s short film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHcVAPV3xxA">White</a> (2011), meanwhile, tells the story of one black man’s desperate search for money in a world where global warming has turned race into a commodity and circumstances lead him to donate his melanin.</p>
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<h2>The future reimagined</h2>
<p>It is this primacy of the imagination that makes fictional dealings with climate change so valuable. Cli-fi author Nathaniel Rich, who wrote <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/books/review/odds-against-tomorrow-by-nathaniel-rich.html">Odds Against Tomorrow</a> (2013) – a novel in which a gifted mathematician is hired to predict worst-case environmental scenarios – <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/04/20/176713022/so-hot-right-now-has-climate-change-created-a-new-literary-genre">has said</a>:</p>
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<p>I think we need a new type of novel to address a new type of reality, which is that we’re headed toward something terrifying and large and transformative. And it’s the novelist’s job to try to understand, what is that doing to us?</p>
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<p>As the UN 2019 <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/un-climate-summit-2019.shtml">Climate Action Summit</a> attempts to bring the 2015 Paris Agreement up to speed, we need fiction that not only offers us new ways to look forward, but which also renders the inequalities of climate change explicit. It is also key that culturally we at least try to imagine a fairer world for all, rather than only visions of doom.</p>
<p>When now is the time that we need to act, the rarer utopian form of cli-fi is perhaps more useful. These works imagine future worlds where humanity has responded to climate change in a more timely and resourceful manner. They conjure up futures where human and non-human lives have been adapted, where ways of living have been reimagined in the face of environmental disaster. Scientists, and policy makers – and indeed the public – can look to these works as a source of hope and inspiration.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292828/original/file-20190917-19059-ibhzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292828/original/file-20190917-19059-ibhzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292828/original/file-20190917-19059-ibhzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292828/original/file-20190917-19059-ibhzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292828/original/file-20190917-19059-ibhzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292828/original/file-20190917-19059-ibhzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292828/original/file-20190917-19059-ibhzu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Futures are built out of our collective imaginaries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/fantastic-city-future-concept-art-illustration-553727335?src=oHQEQEF7iRccGKJ88N257Q-1-86">RomanYa/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>Utopian novels implore us to use our human ingenuity to adapt to troubled times. Kim Stanley Robinson is a very good example of this type of thinking. His works were inspired by Ursula Le Guin, in particular her novel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/mar/29/hugo-award-ursula-le-guin">The Dispossessed</a> (1974), which led the way for the utopian novel form. It depicts a planet with a vision of universal access to food, shelter and community as well as gender and racial equality, despite being set on a parched desert moon.</p>
<p>Robinson’s utopian <a href="https://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/content/science-capital-trilogy">Science in the Capital</a> trilogy centres on transformative politics and imagines a shift in the behaviour of human society as a solution to the climate crisis. His later novel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/03/new-york-2140-by-kim-stanley-robinson-review">New York 2140</a> (2017), set in a partly submerged New York which has successfully adapted to climate change, imagines solutions to more recent climate change concerns. This is a future that is mapped out in painstaking detail, from reimagined subways to mortgages for submarines, and we are encouraged to see how new communities could rise against capitalism. </p>
<p>This is inspirational – and useful – but it is also is crucial that utopian cli-fi novels make it clear that for every utopian vision an alternative dystopia could be just around the corner. (It’s worth remembering that in Le Guin’s foundational utopian novel The Dispossessed, the moon’s society have escaped from a dystopian planet.) This is a key flaw in the case of Robinson’s vision, which fails to feature the wars, famines and disasters outside of his new “Super Venice”: the main focus of the book is on the advances of western technology and economics.</p>
<p>Forward-thinking cli-fi, then, needs to imagine sustainable futures while recognising the disparities of climate change and honouring the struggles of the most vulnerable human and non-humans. Imagining positive futures is key – but a race where no one is left behind should be at the centre of the story we aspire to.</p>
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of <a href="https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/covering-climate-partnerships.php/">The Covering Climate Now</a> series</em></strong>
<br><em>This is a concerted effort among news organisations to put the climate crisis at the forefront of our coverage. This article is published under a Creative Commons license and can be reproduced for free – just hit the “Republish this article” button on the page to copy the full HTML coding. The Conversation also runs Imagine, a newsletter in which academics explore how the world can rise to the challenge of climate change. <a href="https://theconversation.com/imagine-newsletter-researchers-think-of-a-world-with-climate-action-113443?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=CoveringClimateNow">Sign up here</a></em>.</p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bernadette McBride does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our responsibility to consider how the future might look for generations to come requires imagination.Bernadette McBride, PhD Candidate in Creative Writing, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1234652019-09-12T19:14:46Z2019-09-12T19:14:46ZReview: The Testaments – Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292186/original/file-20190912-190026-1avs57h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C3000%2C1994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Janine, a Handmaid, in series three of The Handmaid's Tale.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sophie Giraud/Channel 4</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>SPOILER ALERT: This review contains plotlines and details from Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Testaments</strong></p>
<p>When Margaret Atwood was writing The Handmaid’s Tale in 1984, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/books/review/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-age-of-trump.html">she felt</a> that the main premise seemed “fairly outrageous”. She wondered: “Would I be able to persuade readers that the United States had suffered a coup that had transformed an erstwhile liberal democracy into a literal-minded theocratic dictatorship?”</p>
<p>How times have changed. The connection the novel makes between totalitarianism, reproduction and control of women is now legible to most of us. The image of the red-and-white-clad handmaid has become a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-women-are-dressing-up-as-margaret-atwoods-handmaids-80433">symbol in the wider culture of resistance</a> to the restriction of women’s reproductive rights and to their sexual exploitation.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-women-are-dressing-up-as-margaret-atwoods-handmaids-80433">Why women are dressing up as Margaret Atwood's Handmaids</a>
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<p>Partly this is a consequence of the immensely successful TV series, the third series of which has just concluded. Series one was directly based on Atwood’s novel and subsequent episodes over two years have continued the story of Offred beyond the ambivalent ending Atwood imagined for her, in which her fate is uncertain. Now, in her eagerly awaited sequel, The Testaments, Atwood makes a series of dizzying creative decisions which move away from, but also develop out of, both novel and TV series.</p>
<h2>Next generation</h2>
<p>The action of The Testaments takes place 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. The claustrophobic first-person narration of Offred is widened out to incorporate the stories of three narrators. These narrators are Aunt Lydia – the most senior of the Aunts in the first novel, who trains and manages the handmaids on behalf of the Gilead regime – and two young women. </p>
<p>It is in the identity of these young women that Atwood incorporates elements of the TV series. We discover that both are Offred’s daughters. One, Agnes, is the daughter she was forced to give up when she became a handmaid. The other, Nicole, is the baby she is pregnant with at the end of the novel and gives birth to in the second series of the TV programme. </p>
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<p>Agnes has been brought up as a privileged daughter of the Gilead regime; Nicole – and the name choice here, as well as aspects of the story, draw on the TV series – has been smuggled out of Gilead by the May Day organisation and raised in Canada.</p>
<p>The inventiveness of this choice of narrators, plus the time shift, allows Atwood to do all sorts of exciting things. She explores what it actually means to be a mother. The Gilead regime has to keep records of bloodlines to avoid the genetic conditions attendant on incestuous couplings. Genealogical information is kept by the Aunts in folders organised by the male head of the family, but paternity will always be more uncertain than maternity. We never find out for sure who Nicole’s father is, although there are hints. </p>
<p>More broadly, though, can the same uncertainty be attached to the mother figure too? As one of the Marthas (the domestic servant class in Gilead) says to Agnes when she finds out that the person she believed to be her mother was not her birth mother: “It depends what you mean by a mother … Is your mother the one who gives birth to you or the one who loves you the most?” How do we define a mother when conventional family structures have been upended?</p>
<h2>Making a difference</h2>
<p>The interplay between the three women’s stories also allows us to compare how individuals make decisions about what constitutes ethical behaviour in a totalitarian regime. In the world of The Testaments, unlike in The Handmaid’s Tale, later period Gilead is on its uppers. It struggles to control its leaky borders and there is internecine in-fighting and betrayal within the upper echelons of the Commanders.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292187/original/file-20190912-190065-h4npnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292187/original/file-20190912-190065-h4npnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292187/original/file-20190912-190065-h4npnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292187/original/file-20190912-190065-h4npnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292187/original/file-20190912-190065-h4npnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292187/original/file-20190912-190065-h4npnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292187/original/file-20190912-190065-h4npnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Change of heart: Aunt Lydia is now working for the downfall of Gilead.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sophie Giraud/Channel 4</span></span>
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<p>Unbabies – defective births – continue to be born and the resistance is growing. Lydia begins to plot Gilead’s downfall, but in retrospect we also get her account of her earlier collaboration as the regime was established. Do her attempts to destroy Gilead cancel out her previous decision to collaborate? If she had not survived, she would not have been alive to work to bring down the regime, but can the master’s tools ever dismantle the master’s house?</p>
<p>Casualties of the resistance efforts abound. Becka – a friend of Agnes and a survivor of child sexual abuse – sacrifices herself for the greater good of what she believes to be the purification and renewal (rather than the destruction) of Gilead. Nicole (who engages in an undercover operation in Gilead vital to the resistance) remarks that she “somehow agreed to go to Gilead without ever definitely agreeing”. The novel asks readers to think about the extent to which exploitation of idealism and naivety are appropriate as means that justify the end of Gilead’s potential destruction.</p>
<h2>Judgement of history</h2>
<p>The Testaments ends with the Thirteenth Symposium of Gilead Studies – an academic conference taking place many years after the regime’s destruction. This is the same framing that concludes The Handmaid’s Tale, although the emphasis here is different. In her book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/205858/in-other-worlds-by-margaret-atwood/9780307741769/">In Other Worlds</a>, Atwood claims that the afterword to the first novel was intended to provide “a little utopia concealed in the dystopic Handmaid’s Tale”.</p>
<p>But, for most readers of the original novel, the effect of encountering the afterword is the opposite of optimistic. Reading it diminishes and undermines our emotional investment in Offred’s narrative, as historians debate whether or not her story is “authentic” and a professor warns us that “we must be cautious about passing moral judgement on the Gileadeans”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292198/original/file-20190912-190016-gbaocg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292198/original/file-20190912-190016-gbaocg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292198/original/file-20190912-190016-gbaocg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292198/original/file-20190912-190016-gbaocg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292198/original/file-20190912-190016-gbaocg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292198/original/file-20190912-190016-gbaocg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292198/original/file-20190912-190016-gbaocg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Dystopian vision of everyday oppression of women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jasper Savage/Channel 4</span></span>
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<p>The same historians make similar comments in the Thirteenth Symposium that ends The Testaments, but here they are fundamentally convinced of the witness transcripts’ authenticity. The postmodern uncertainty about the status of Offred’s narrative in The Handmaid’s Tale could be seen as characteristic of the mid-1980s (with its suspicion of narrative authenticity and reliability), as characterised by Jean-Francois Lyotard’s “incredulity towards metanarratives”. </p>
<p>Now, in 2019, Atwood replaces that incredulity with a much clearer sense of the validity of women’s stories. I believe we can relate this change of emphasis to the different times we find ourselves in – where the notion of the equal status of all versions of the past and indeed the present has been abused explicitly by Trump and others who make accusations of “fake news”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-handmaids-tale-is-being-transformed-from-fantasy-into-fact-77837">How The Handmaid's Tale is being transformed from fantasy into fact</a>
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<p>In Gilead, women are not allowed to read or write – unless they are Aunts. Agnes therefore struggles to become literate as a young woman. The description of her slow and painful acquisition of literacy reminds us of the vital connection between words and power and how important it is to validate women’s words in particular. A testament is a witness after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Watkins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The author has returned to Gilead, 35 years after the original novel was published.Susan Watkins, Professor in the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities and Director of the Centre for Culture and the Arts., Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1181472019-08-27T17:03:06Z2019-08-27T17:03:06ZVisions of the future: five dark warnings from the world of classic science fiction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289657/original/file-20190827-184207-508u9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=223%2C42%2C1260%2C686&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Blade Runner 2049: dystopian vision, now even more terrifying.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Science fiction is brimming with visions of the future and the many wondrous things the human race can achieve. But it is full of warnings too – and we should be careful to take heed of some of the big messages that are more relevant now than they ever were before.</p>
<h2>Robots and AI</h2>
<p>Ever since the word <a href="https://io9.gizmodo.com/31-essential-science-fiction-terms-and-where-they-came-1594794250">“robot” first appeared</a> in the English language in the early 1920s (although it was invented by a Czech writer), science fiction writers have warned about the blurring of the distinction between human and machine. </p>
<p>Robots <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-turing-test-for-androids-will-judge-how-lifelike-humanoid-robots-can-be-120696">are becoming more and more like humans</a>, such that it may one day become difficult to tell the two apart. But were they ever really so different? Philip K. Dick suggests possibly not, and his vision of replicants in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) – which was to become a classic movie, Blade Runner – certainly poses a lot of important questions.</p>
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<p>It’s not just robots we have to worry about these days. AI is now perhaps an even bigger threat than its robot cousins. From the ominous HAL 9000 in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), to the “benevolent” AI character Mike in Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966), we’ve been warned that the power of AI to infiltrate every aspect of our daily lives might one day prove our undoing – and we will have no one to blame but ourselves.</p>
<h2>Threats from the great beyond</h2>
<p>Science fiction is brimming with invasion narratives, the most famous of which is probably H.G. Wells’ classic The War of the Worlds. Wells’ novel, which first appeared in 1898, has since been adapted into numerous films, TV shows and even a <a href="http://www.thewaroftheworlds.com/">musical</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, many of these narratives tie in with fears about invasions of one kind of another closer to home, with swarming insects or “bugs” used in place of the alien “other”, such as in Heinlein’s classic novel Starship Troopers (1959) and its film adaptation (1997).</p>
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<p>But while the invaders of Starship Troopers may stir visions of the Cold War (a common theme – see Invasion of the Body Snatchers as well), perhaps the biggest threat raised by the likes of Wells, Heinlein and the rest is the threat of the enemy not yet known. It may be comforting to think of enemy invaders as mindless hordes, or ravenous beasts, but these depictions are far too simplistic and are designed to appeal to our base emotions. </p>
<h2>The human condition</h2>
<p>Of all the threats confronting the human race, the biggest challenge is by far and a way posed by ourselves. From short-termism and mistaken priorities, to evil corporations shaping the way we think (see: The Space Merchants [1952]), so many science fiction authors draw attention to the many varied failings of the human condition and our often misguided attempts to “do good”.</p>
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<p>Expanding to the stars may well solve some of our nearer-term issues such as climate change, overpopulation and a scarcity of resources, but a bigger threat is posed by the fact we are all too likely to take our problems with us and that we will repeat the same mistakes time and time again. </p>
<h2>Science vs nature</h2>
<p>Despite its name, science fiction has, for many years now, been much closer to science fact. While science fiction writers such as Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl dreamed of instant communications and a world of knowledge at our fingertips, the future has now well and truly crashed in on the present and we live in a time now where it’s harder than ever to tell truth and fiction apart.</p>
<p>But while some readers might think this a positive thing on the whole (you are, after all, reading this online), science fiction has much to say about overconfidence and the misplaced faith we have in our ability to harness science and use our powers for good.</p>
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<p>In Flowers for Algernon (1966), a man of low intelligence is transformed into a genius, only to discover a flaw in the experiment that will see him regress to a far worse situation that he started out in. While the story focuses on the rise and fall of a genius, it also reveals a lack of human compassion in the scientists and a lack of understanding for just where their actions may lead. </p>
<p>If we want to use science to conquer nature, we need to be circumspect in how we go about it. Progress for the sake of progress is not always a good thing – and we need to be wary of short-termism and guard against complacency in all we do.</p>
<h2>Distorted reality</h2>
<p>Of course, one of the most chilling aspects of science fiction working its way into our modern-day world is the way reality is becoming distorted, and it becomes increasingly hard to tell truth from fiction.</p>
<p>In this age of consumer culture, social media and fake news, the work of Philip K. Dick is more relevant than ever before, and we should take heed of his warning in books such as Ubik (1969) and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), about the dangers of getting sucked into fake realities – many of which we create ourselves (see: social media). Such is the timeliness and relevance of Dick’s work, that his novels continue to provide much material for screenwriters, from the recent TV series The Man in the High Castle (2015) to the critically-acclaimed Blade Runner: 2049 (2017).</p>
<p>All of these musings lead us to wonder, what do we mean by “real” anyway? Dick may not come to any solid conclusions, but he does show us how we are shaped by the world around us. Unless we come to understand our relationship with the world – and our place in it – there is little hope left to be had.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118147/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Ryder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Science fiction is fast becoming science fact, which should be cause for concern.Mike Ryder, Associate Lecturer in Literature & Philosophy and Marketing, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1194862019-06-27T11:00:36Z2019-06-27T11:00:36ZYears and Years: Russell T Davies drama gazes into near future with unmissable dread<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281579/original/file-20190627-76734-1k73e5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Emma Thompson is populist demoagogue Vivienne Rook.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Warning: contains spoilers</em></p>
<p>Time flies, as they say, but sometimes not in the direction we would wish. That is very much the premise of Years and Years, Russell T Davies’ dystopian TV drama which has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/what-to-watch-on-tv-tonight-years-and-years-premieres-on-hbo-etc/2019/06/21/c703ea52-92a7-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html?utm_term=.5bad8924d6e6">just debuted</a> in the US after ending its <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m000539g/years-and-years">six-part run</a> on BBC One in the UK. </p>
<p>For those who haven’t seen it, the drama follows the ups and downs of the Lyons family: gran (Anne Reid) presides over a brood of four grown-up grandchildren, their partners and assorted offspring. We start in 2019 and chart these people’s lives over the next 15 years – while glimpsing our own futures, too. </p>
<p>Births, marriages and deaths; couplings and break-ups; triumphs and tragedies – the indomitable “British Lyons” experience them all, always against the backdrop of a UK and wider world spiralling into ever greater turmoil. </p>
<h2>Futures past</h2>
<p>Years and Years squarely fits the truism that the best science fiction is an indirect meditation upon our own present and past. The Lyons live through a heightened national mood of anti-immigration that is making life hostile for refugees; a banking crisis that presages economic austerity and enforced impoverishment for millions; technology that is stealing everyone’s children away from them; and a climate crisis in which sections of the UK are consistently flooding. </p>
<p>Alongside this is the irresistible rise of Vivienne Rook, a populist politician of the far right, played to unsettling effect by Emma Thompson. The drama skilfully charts how she rises to “national character” status by baiting controversy on programmes like <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b006t1q9/question-time">BBC Question Time</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b006mkw3/have-i-got-news-for-you">Have I Got News For You?</a>, before gaining election to parliament on a wave of anti-establishment fury. She exploits and exacerbates each successive crisis before finally capturing Number 10, and ushering in a new era of authoritarian rule. </p>
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<p>That the final broadcast episode of Years and Years in the UK was immediately preceded by an impromptu BBC Conservative leadership election debate called Our Next Prime Minister must have had Davies and his production team cackling with glee – not least given the prominence in the race of Boris Johnson, one of the new breed of media-made politicians upon which Rook was clearly modelled. </p>
<p>Years and Years belongs to the same great warning tradition as works by George Orwell (<a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180507-why-orwells-1984-could-be-about-now">Nineteen Eighty-Four</a>, <a href="https://observer.com/2017/05/donald-trump-george-orwell-animal-farm/">Animal Farm</a>) and Sinclair Lewis (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/shortcuts/2016/oct/09/it-cant-happen-here-1935-novel-sinclair-lewis-predicted-rise-donald-trump">It Can’t Happen Here</a>). Davies is saying that it very much “can happen here”; that far from being immune by virtue of geography or national temperament, the breeding conditions for fascism exist in the UK here and now. The chaotic conditions of the 1930s, which led to the rise of Hitler, have a 21st century mirror. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281454/original/file-20190626-76697-hfyd66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281454/original/file-20190626-76697-hfyd66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281454/original/file-20190626-76697-hfyd66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281454/original/file-20190626-76697-hfyd66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281454/original/file-20190626-76697-hfyd66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281454/original/file-20190626-76697-hfyd66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281454/original/file-20190626-76697-hfyd66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281454/original/file-20190626-76697-hfyd66.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Lyons in 2034.</span>
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<p>The elder Lyons brother, Stephen (Rory Kinnear), becomes the mouthpiece for those like Davies who were born into the more stable post-war era and are unsettled about the current direction: </p>
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<p>We were lucky for a bit … We had, like, for the first 30 years of our lives, we had a nice time … Turns out, we were born in a pause.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Standing on shoulders</h2>
<p>Davies is also a product of growing up with post-war British television, and Years and Years is steeped in references to old programme classics. Like the 1950s sitcom, it is quite literally <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048881/">Life with the Lyons</a>. Its depiction of civil breakdown nods to the great early dystopian TV science fiction of writer Nigel Kneale and director Rudolph Cartier with their <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/438573/index.html">Quatermass</a> BBC serials of the 1950s and famous 1954 BBC adaptation of Orwell’s <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/438460/index.html">Nineteen Eighty-Four</a>. </p>
<p>I can see why members of the Years and Years cast have <a href="https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/years-and-years-russell-t-davies-black-mirror-our-friends-in-the-north/">described</a> the drama as “Our Friends in the North meets Black Mirror”. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115305/">Our Friends in the North</a>, the nine-part 1996 epic by Peter Flannery, traced a group of Newcastle friends against the backdrop of successive national and political crises from 1964 to 1995. Years and Years achieves something similar but using the future rather than the past, while echoing Black Mirror’s hit exploration of dystopian fears surrounding digital technology. </p>
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<p>Then there is the Bomb, which drops at the end of Years and Years’ first episode. The scenes of the Lyons panicking as sirens wail and the four-minute warning broadcasts across all channels must have come as a profound shock to many viewers. We are no longer used to seeing such contemporary dramatisations of nuclear warfare on TV, but we should be: the <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/">Doomsday Clock</a>, scientists’ prediction of the likelihood of global catastrophe, is now only two minutes to midnight, the closest yet to apocalypse. </p>
<p>Davies depicts Donald Trump casually loosing off a nuclear weapon against China on the eve of stepping down as US president in 2024. This is strongly reminiscent of Peter Watkins’ famous 1965 film, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-war-game-how-i-showed-that-bbc-bowed-to-government-over-nuclear-attack-film-42640">The War Game</a>, which imagined a devastating nuclear strike on the UK after US President Lyndon Johnson used such missiles as payback for Chinese aggression in South Vietnam.</p>
<p>Watkins’ naming of a sitting US president in his own futuristic scenario was a key reason The War Game was <a href="https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/jbctv.2017.0351">notoriously banned</a> by the BBC from television screens in 1965 in active consultation with the government. It is a measure of our wearier, more cynical times that Davies and his production team have managed to evoke Trump in this context with almost no protest. </p>
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<p>Davies has himself <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-05-21/russell-t-davies-writer-discusses-losing-his-husband-years-and-years-tv-screenwriter-interview/">cited</a> The War Game in relation to Years and Years, and indeed there is a little nod to this in episode one: the school which some of the Lyons kids attend is called Heber Watkins Lower School. <em>Heber</em> is a word sometimes used in Islam to denote “prophet”, which seems to be implying that Watkins was far ahead of his time. </p>
<p>Years and Years did not do well in the UK ratings on initial broadcast, <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-06-19/russell-t-davies-explains-why-hell-never-do-a-years-and-years-series-2/">consistently beaten</a> by Brian Cox’s astronomy series The Planets – despite the latter being on the more niche BBC Two. With our own world going through such troubled times, perhaps many of us prefer to look to the stars for our entertainment rather than ponder depressing depictions of where we might be heading down here on Earth. </p>
<p>But Davies’ drama certainly deserves to be viewed. It looks forwards to deliver a bleak critique on where we have just been. And who knows, if that <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/31/politics/trump-tv-viewing-analysis/index.html">renowned television watcher</a> in the White House were to catch an episode or two during its current US broadcast, there is even maybe an outside chance that it might have a positive impact on history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119486/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Cook has received past funding from AHRC.</span></em></p>Tune in, Donald Trump: it might just save a lot of lives.John Cook, Professor in Media, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.