Research Catalogue

Dystopia

McTeigue, James, 2005. V for Vendetta, Warner Bros

Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a mild-mannered young woman named Evey who discovers a masked vigilante known only as "V.“ She follows him as he brings down the people who caused the atrocities which lead to Britain to being in the state that it is in. The dystopian element is the clear oppression of minorities and the totalitarianism of the state. People in this society have no freedom and the government is corrupt; taking out people who defy them and neutralising minorities who appear to go against the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Fukasaku, Kinji, 2000. Battle Royale , AM Associates

In a dystopian society a random class of Japanese ninth-grade students are randomly selected by a fascist government lottery. They are kidnapped and forced onto an isolated island, where they are equipped with food, water, a map, and a random weapon. On the island, they have to compete in a violent death-match game till only one victor remains. The dystopian element of the film is clear due to the fact the government are setting children on each other. Children a supposed symbol of innocence and peace in an attempt to control their people.

Kubrick, Stanley, 1971. A Clockwork Orange, Warner Bros

Alex DeLarge, a violent juvenile delinquent in the near future, is caught after a number of brutal rapes and murders. While imprisoned, he submits to a controversial experiment to make criminals sick at the mildest suggestion of violence or conflict. Then Alex's victims want to welcome him back into society with the same enthusiasm he has always exhibited when performing his crimes. He then regains his freedom in the end.

The dystopian theme is explored through the willingness of the state to remove free will from it’s subject in their hope to stop violence and the happily violent acts seen committed throughout by rebellious youths. The society lacks difference and individuality while the government is corrupt and totalitarian.

Booker, M.Keith, 1994. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social Criticism, London: Greenwood Press

While literary utopias depict an ideal society and reflect an optimistic belief in the triumph of humanity and government, dystopias present a society marked by suffering caused by human and political evils. This book offers a detailed study of several literary dystopias and analyses them as social criticism. The volume begins with a discussion of utopias, dystopias, and social criticism. By drawing upon the theories of Freud, Nietzsche, and others, Booker sets a firm theoretical foundation for the literary explorations that follow. The chapters that come next discuss Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World, and Orwell's 1984 as social criticism of totalitarianism, Stalinism, the dangers of capitalism, and fascism. Later chapters consider dystopias after World War II, contemporary communist dystopias, and postmodernist dystopias in the West.

White, John, 2008. Fifty Key British Films, London: Routledge

A Clockwork Orange is one of the films mentioned in this book. The chapter discusses how the film was removed from circulation in Britain due to the increase in copycat crime soon after the film’s release. The film was only removed from Britain due to the fact it seemed to ‘speak to the youth of Britain,’ which seemed to comment on the state of British society at the time. It describes how Kubrick enjoyed using ‘supposedly low culture to underdress high culture,’ as the genre of the film is usually seen as quite low brow and ‘trashy’ by the literary elite and is used to ‘dissect both British culture and the class-fixated school of social realism,’. The book describes how the film challenges the meaning of the word ‘civilized’, as Kubrick made a list of all things seen as being ‘civilized’ in Britain such as Beethoven and associates them with erotic fantasies of juveniles. Mainly the analysis describes the rebellion of youth as Alex and his droogs willfully discard all aspirations of appealing to a certain class or social group and create their own existence away from the powers of the elite.

Fitzgerald, John, 2010,Studying British Cinema: 1999-2009, London: Auteur

‘Dystopian Britiain’ V for Vendetta

The piece describes how the novel was made originally as a protest to Thatcher’s government and the heavy hand of the conservative government. An example being Thatcher’s oppression of different sexual orientation. The film aimed to be as close to the original story. This book discusses how V has been interpreted as a terrorist rather than a hero by some critics. This is especially due to the Islamic bombings that happened around the time of the film. The actual film’s release was meant to be on the 5’th November 2005 but had to be postponed due to the London underground bombings. This added to the controversy as it was explicitly related to the ending of the film.

To add to the difficulty of liking the protagonist, V, the book describes how the audience also seemed to have trouble relating to a hero with no facial expressions.

Meredith Borders, 2013. ‘Book vs. Film: A Clockwork Orange’ Lit Reactor, Accessed at 17:34 on 7th December: http://litreactor.com/columns/book-vs-film-a-clockwork-orange

The article talks about how both the film and the book of A Clockwork Orange were misinterpreted and taken as a narrative that glorifies sex and violence. The director talks about how he deliberately left in many of the violent scenes to keep the shocking effect of the book.

The film left out the sort of ‘good’ ending where Alex realises he’s not wanting to do horrible acts anymore but instead chooses to settle down. Burgess reacted by saying they should have left it in because he thought there should have at least been a little moral progress, in the film there is none.

‘katalinawatt’, 2010. ‘Studies in Dystopia: Battle Royale’ on I’ve seen the Future. Accessed at 12:09 on 9th December 2014: http://seenthefuture.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/studies-in-dystopia-battle-royale.html

The article mentions how the film adaptation of the book is full of the same shocking gore seen throughout the novel. The adaptation keeps that gore in to convey the shocking environment that these children are thrust into by their government. The film is compared to the recent film The Hunger Games (2012, Gary Ross) and described as a more ‘amped-up version.

Dan Jolin, 2013. ‘V for Vendetta’ on Empire, Accessed at 12:14 on 9th December 2014: http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?DVDID=117300

The review of V for Vendetta mentions how the film was marketed so that many people thought it would be a teen action thriller, when in fact it turned out to be a deliberate political thriller with less than five minutes of action scenes in the film’s entirety. The article mentions how many would have been offended by the bombs traveling in the tube but won’t or shouldn’t be due to the nature of the totalitarian government. A post-apocalyptic presentation of Thatcher’s Britain.

The film is described as ‘proudly post-911’ in the sense that after that there was a lot of fear of different religious minorities circulating through the media creating a frenzy and the film demonstrates the fear in a deliberately over compensatory way.

Quentez D. Hodge, 2013. ‘V For Vendetta: The Unraveling of a New Beginning’ Quentez D. Hodge, Accessed at 11:30 on December 8th:http://quentezhodge.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/v-for-vendetta-final.pdf

The essay talks about how people today, although they don’t agree with all the government say, we have learned to deal with it because we think there is no other way. It mentions how V and Guy Fawkes both represent people who have tried to change that view. Hence the Guy Fawkes masks that V wears and encourages others to wear. The essay explains how many of the acts in the play such as the torture of Evey and the child being shot for wearing the mask were added to convey to the public the extent the government were willing to go to keep their people under strict jurisdiction.

Michael Clement, ‘Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange’ Visual Memory, Accessed at 17:50 on December 7th: http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.aco.html

In the interview they discuss how the protagonist have reacted to the society in the way that a dystopia is in a way their utopia. At the end of the narrative the corrupt government come together with the violent youths in the form of them (Alex’s old droogs) becoming police men.

Jonah Weiland, 2006. ‘V FOR VENDETTA: Talking With Director James McTiegue’ Comic Book Resources, Accessed at 16:40 on 7th December: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&old=1&id=6685

The interview mentioned how they were able to film the entire scene in front of the actual houses of parliament due to the fact it’s a public building. In that sense the filming itself was a protest to the Government. They also say how it was difficult to film some of the concentration camp scenes due to the historical connotations, it made the process more real as it’s actually seeing things that have happened that people universally view as atrocities.