Tracking dystopia
Recently, I have been wondering a fair bit about one of my favorite genres in literature and cinema: dystopia. More particularly, I am wondering what exactly can be called a dystopia.Webster defines dystopia as an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives. Classic works in this genre, 1984 and We included, fall right within this definition. A couple of words/phrases in the above definition, I think, are more important than others and are worth a second look.
The first is imaginary. Technical definitions aside, the basic notion of dystopia is something that is “against the grain” of utopia. Now since, utopia itself is an imaginary construction it is easy to see where the “imaginary” of dystopia comes from. But then semantically isn’t real the antonym of imaginary which leads me to wonder why a dystopia has to be necessarily imaginary.
The other interesting phrase is people lead dehumanized and fearful lives. Again the genesis of this phrase comes utopia, where people apparently have no problems in life since in laws, government, and social conditions it is the ideal. I often wondered if there is one size that fits all i.e. if the notion of utopia is an absolute. If it is not then for the beings in the text itself it too cannot be so, however imaginary it might be. Either that or there is exactly one uber-character in the world. But isn’t that what totalitarian societies are all about. Where then is the utopia? Or was it dystopia? Or are they merely the two sides of the same coin?
My contention is the following: a work neither needs to be staged in an imaginary place nor have dehumanized characters to be called a dystopia. The Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22 while not set in imaginary or alternate worlds can be essentially called dystopias while everybody-lives-happily-thereafter texts could be classified as utopias. Life is after-all a two faced liar :).
As an aside an excellent chronology of dystopian (in the traditional sense) fiction and the events that affected it can be found here.
