Dystopian Film and Radical Political Change

The Odds May Never Be in Our Favor: Dystopian Film and Radical Political Change

Yet again, dystopian film is all the rage. This is certainly not the only time in which dystopias have held sway. But never before has the genre been so lucrative. The Maze Runner, The Divergent Series, and The Hunger Games have all soared at the box office, attracting legions of viewers from across the world.

Precisely because it has become so popular, dystopian film begs further critical reflection. Why have dystopias been making a comeback? What are these films selling us, and why are so many of us buying?

Dystopian film is an exceptionally imaginative genre. It can provide a perspective into social, political, and economic settings that are quite distinct from our own. Or, conversely, it can inspire us to consider the darker sides of our own context and what it could turn into in a hypothetical, not-too-distant future (think, e.g., of environmental disaster movies). But does dystopia close off our imagination about ourselves, in the present?

Within these films, revolution and social transformation are often the dramatic conclusion of an epic battle between good and evil, the repressed and the tyrannical. A common trope is the heroes triumphing, against all odds, over the seeming impossibility of an uprising to build a more liberal-democratic order. But what about outside these films? Do dystopias have the opposite effect?

Of course, the answers to these questions are not uniform across time and space. They depend, in large part, on the context in which the films are viewed—especially whether the dystopian discourse resonates with the experience of the audience, or if it is seen as something Other, something fantastical, imaginary.

In totalitarian settings, where the prevailing context is regularly identified in these films as the dystopia that must be negated, this discourse can be a powerful catalyst for rebellion. It gives viewers a critical symbolic language to distance themselves from the existing structures of power, government, and economic management, so they can engage in practices to bring about a more liberal-democratic alternative. It’s no wonder, then, that dystopias, in both literature and film, have historically been subject to censorship and have even been banned altogether.

Yet the same may not hold elsewhere. In liberal democracies, dystopia may be a force for maintaining the status quo. In a recent Jacobin article, for instance, Marlon Lieber and Daniel Zamora argue that while The Hunger Games series seems poised to inspire anti-capitalist revolution, it in fact promotes a neoliberal capitalist ethos. More generally, dystopian film defines traditional liberal ideals and representative democracy as a utopian end, and in so doing, mollifies viewers, slaking their thirst for something radically different. After all, why would we want something different, when we already have utopia?