Dystopia: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic [[Utopia]]s that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.''
|{{spoiler|O'Brien}}, '''''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'''''}}
A '''Dystopia''' (Ancient Greek for "[[Crapsack World|bad place]]"), also called a Negative Utopia, is a [[Speculative Fiction]] setting that comments on our own society and that a majority of us would fear to live in. The trick to creating a Dystopia is to take a social issue and turn it [[Up to Eleven]]. Better yet, do it with several issues, or perhaps all of them.
A dystopia is a social commentary literally in the background, as is a [[utopia]]n setting. The two settings share a problem in sometimes being a little too one-note. The author is thinking "capitalism sucks!", for instance, and everything wrong with the world turns out be clearly the fault of nasty [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]s and their nasty, greedy [[Mega Corp|megacorporations]]. Conversely, it could be "governments suck!" and the corporations are the last line of defense against the evil, totalitarian [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|bureaucrats]]. The author could believe that [[Love Hurts]], and thus there is [[No Sex Allowed]] and [[Emotions vs. Stoicism|feeling Emotions]] is a punishable offense. Whichever, it is just one note - often [[The War on Straw|a straw note]].
While the exact nature of dystopias vary in fiction, the typical Dystopia has the following features, A) a highly militarized police force to keep the citizenry in line, B) a strong restriction on the rights of speech and thougth to fit the agenda of the government, C) regular public shows of force ''from'' the government to enforce their image and quash any thoughts of rebellion before they begin, D) restriction of information given to the populace in an attempt to keep them ignorant, and E) insistence by the government that they are actually a utopia, or at least that they are better than any alternative. Naturally, a lot of dystopias in fiction will model this government on [[Those Wacky Nazis]], whether they truly ''are'' Nazis or [[A Nazi by Any Other Name]]. Most early dystopias were intended to serve as both social commentary and [[An Aesop]] for society as a whole, a warning about how the world could end up under a system that the author found dangerous. Modern works tend more towards fantastic or science-fiction elements.
The better dystopias seem to be about how a multitude of things have gone wrong, and now here we are, surviving with as much grace as possible. It is also a practice in literature to create a dystopia through the [[Deconstruction]] of an earlier creator's [[Utopia]], showing how horrible it is to live in one. Another use is to serve as a [[Big Bad]] for [[The Hero]] and his friends to revolt against; these are more likely to be toppled, or at least escaped from, than others.
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{{examples|suf=s}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Gunnm]]'' (aka ''[[Battle Angel Alita]]'') -- highlights to Scrapyard. {{spoiler|In some ways, Tiphares is even worse. In fact, it pretty much moves up to [[Crapsack World]] . Last Order applies this to the universe. And it's ALL Alita's fault!}}
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* [[Texhnolyze]].
* The ''[[Blame]]'' universe certainly qualifies, with emphasis on [[Abara]] and [[Biomega]]. Blame! itself is more of a terrifyingly vast cyberpunk. Biomega is probably the best example, with a tremendously powerful [[Mega Corp]] trying to spread a virus over the decayed planet while the few survivors try not to get caught up in collateral damage from android fights. And then [[It Gets Worse]]. Much, ''much'' worse.
== Comic Books ==
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* ''[[Sin City]]'' is one of the few non-futuristic versions of a dystopia. Crime is everywhere, the government and the police are corrupt, and you never know when you might become a snack for a cannibal serial killer.
* [[New Gods|Apokolips]] is a hellish Greco-Roman style, technologically advanced alien world ruled with an iron fist by the tyrannical [[God-Emperor]] [[Darkseid]], who is a literal [[God of Evil]] and has placed himself at the centre of a global and compulsory [[Religion of Evil]] that revolves around the perpetual worship of him, mainly in the form of mass forced labour whose sole task is to endlessly build monuments to him the old fashioned way (ie. by hand, with a few basic tools, with whips to keep you in line). As mentioned the planet is technologically advanced, and this system is thus designed not simply for Darkseid to glorify himself but also to completely break the spirits of the populace. [[The Bad Guy Wins|It works]], and even though he treats them horribly nearly everyone on the planet would give their life for him, even if they hate him. [[Up to Eleven|To make matters even worse]], Apokolips is locked in a millenia-old [[Cold War]] with its sister planet New Genesis, because Darkseid is an imperialistic warmongeror with the ultimate ambition of taking over the entire universe and remaking it in his image...and he has the means to do it. His fondest desire is to [[The Evils of Free Will|eradicate free will]] and make every living thing everywhere [[Dystopia Justifies the Means|a mindless, miserable automaton]] who will live and die at his command. [[Serial Escalation|And this is only]] '''beginning''' to describe why Apokolips is perhaps the single most horrible place in the [[DC Universe]].
== Fan Works ==
* Played with in ''[[With Strings Attached]]''. The Baravadans (at least the skahs) feel that they're living in a dystopia and pine for the monster- and combat-filled world of 25+ years ago. They rarely do anything useful, choosing to sit around and wait for something to happen, or to go off chasing the faintest rumors of monsters. Many of them are so bored that they end up killing themselves, and they've long since quit breeding. But Baravada itself is otherwise incredibly pleasant and safe, filled with magic and freedom. The four much prefer Baravada as is.
== Film ==
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* ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II'': Biff Tannen created an alternate version of 1985 when he gave the [[Timeline-Altering MacGuffin|Gray's Sports Almanac]] to his younger self in 1955. As a result, he became "the luckiest man on Earth" by betting on everything from horse racing to boxing and always winning due to the answers in the almanac. He founded Biffco, a company that dealt with toxic waste reclamation. He bought out police departments, and even altered the state of international history, by prolonging the Vietnam War and getting Richard Nixon elected to his fifth term. As a result, Hill Valley, now heavily polluted and known as "Hell Valley", had been reduced to rubble, where biker gangs and criminals made their home.
* ''[[Pleasantville]]''. The main character, David, watched the show on TV and always saw it as a utopia. When he and his sister end up getting sucked into the TV, though, things aren't as great as they appeared. The place starts out as a nostalgic and pretty view of the 1950's, but later on the uglier side of the decade (like sexual repression and racial discrimination) start to rear their ugly heads.
== Literature ==
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** ''[[We]]'' by Yevgeni Zamyatin
** ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'' by Aldous Huxley
** ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]'' by [[George Orwell]], likely the true [[Trope Codifier]].
** ''[[The Jungle]]'' by Upton Sinclair.
*** [[The Jungle]] is a debatable example. Though the story is fictional, the setting and problems with the world were very deliberately based on the real life situation for the working poor in early twentieth-century Chicago. So much so that it inspired the creation of new laws (albeit laws around food safety rather than worker protection).
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* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s "A World Called Maanerek", the Hegemony is out to force all mankind in unity, to hold loyalty only to the Cadre. They choose their mates, who are allowed contact seldom, and all children are raised in creches. Your life position is choosen when you are bred for it, and entails burning out parts of your mind if you are lowly enough. When ships sent out to find more humans to bring them into the fold, they will freely, when problems mount too high, take over part of a planet and let the men run wild with [[Cold-Blooded Torture]] and rape to release their aggressions.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* The first season of ''[[Viper]]'' takes place in a dystopian [[The Future Is Noir|tech noir]] setting. [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|The day after tomorrow]], society benefits from advanced communication technology and medical achievements such as fully artificial heart transplants. However, this comes at the cost of being constantly terrorized by the organized [[Cyberpunk|techno-mafia]] that closely runs the city behind the scenes. The police are often as corrupt as the criminals they're supposedly trying to stop, forcing the lead character to take the vigilante path in the hope of restoring the city to a brighter state. Throw in the fact the local government [[Big Brother Is Watching|may rob you of your own thoughts and memories if they decide they have a better use for you]], and you start to see how bleak it really is.
* ''[[Blake's 7|Blakes Seven]]''. A [[Space Opera]] in which Earth is run by fascists, where the (few) good guys are criminals.
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* ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'' has Diend's World, which is essentially the [[Kamen Rider Blade|Missing Ace]] movie split off from Blade and combined with Decade to make an original story with [[The Rival|Diend]] as the protagonist. On the outside, the world seems to have elements of [[Utopia]] with everyone helping eachother out and being nice, but that is subverted later when it turns out that they ''have'' to be nice or else a monster comes out, grabs them, then [[Brainwashed|brainwashes]] them to be nice. It also sucks for Riders because the brainwashed people will attack any and all riders. Tsukasa even tells the ruler of the world, Jashin 14, that he made a hellhole, not a paradise. {{spoiler|And even when Jashin 14 is destroyed, someone declares that he will be the next Jashin and leaves}}.
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' has the episode The Wish in season three, in which Willow and Xander are vampires. The Master has taken control of Sunnydale and Angel is Willow's (and arguably Xander's) sex slave.
== Music ==
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* "Control" by [[KMFDM|MDFMK]]. And it's not [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]. Not even one.
* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuwW9IVwZ0U Dystopia]" by [[Iced Earth]].
== Tabletop Games ==
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*** Of course, [[Troperiffic|like so many other tropes]], 40k plays with the Dystopia trope: Some worlds are utter shitholes where trillions of people live in perpetual misery and poverty and/or is under perpetual attack from said manifestations of vices and just about every other alien force in the galaxy, while others are fairly pleasant and safe places to live. The big problem is that there's a lot more of the former type of world in 40k than the latter.
* ''[[Paranoia]]'' is an RPG set [[After the End]], in Alpha Complex, an underground city. The Complex is ruled by [[The Computer Is Your Friend|Friend Computer]], a supercomputer whose databases were corrupted following a disaster that wiped out human civilization.
** The Computer is quite insane and utterly paranoid, and rules with an iron fist, society being organized in a hierarchy of security clearances based on the [[Color Coded for Your Convenience|colors of the rainbow]]<ref>Infrared and Ultraviolet are represented by black and white, respectively. Rumors of a Gamma Clearance are treason.</ref> and supported by swarms of robots, omnipresent surveillance and an endless bureaucracy. Players are Red-level Troubleshooters, whose job is to [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|find trouble and shoot it]], and whose main targets are traitors, Communists and other members of secret societies, as well as unregistered mutants and Commie Mutant Traitors.▼
** This is complicated by the fact that every human in Alpha Complex has some kind of mutant power, and is also a member of one of the secret societies, making pretty much ''everyone'' a Commie Mutant Traitor. The game provides you with six backup clones, as you WILL be found out and terminated. Or terminated by accident. Or for the hell of it. Did we mention that the entire thing is [[Played for Laughs]]?▼
▲The Computer is quite insane and utterly paranoid, and rules with an iron fist, society being organized in a hierarchy of security clearances based on the [[Color Coded for Your Convenience|colors of the rainbow]]<ref>Infrared and Ultraviolet are represented by black and white, respectively. Rumors of a Gamma Clearance are treason.</ref> and supported by swarms of robots, omnipresent surveillance and an endless bureaucracy. Players are Red-level Troubleshooters, whose job is to [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|find trouble and shoot it]], and whose main targets are traitors, Communists and other members of secret societies, as well as unregistered mutants and Commie Mutant Traitors.
▲This is complicated by the fact that every human in Alpha Complex has some kind of mutant power, and is also a member of one of the secret societies, making pretty much ''everyone'' a Commie Mutant Traitor. The game provides you with six backup clones, as you WILL be found out and terminated. Or terminated by accident. Or for the hell of it. Did we mention that the entire thing is [[Played for Laughs]]?
* ''[[Feng Shui]]'' : The 2056 juncture of the [[Tabletop Games|Tabletop Game]] is equal parts ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'' and ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''. The Buro government monitors its citizens constantly, same-race relationships are frowned upon at best as "racist" and punished at worst, guns and kung fu are outlawed, it's a crime to be unhappy, all TV (except for advertising) is pay-per-view, you can't get ahead unless you work for the Buro, and the only thing worse than falling into the Public Order (2056's [[Police Brutality|brutal police]]) machine is letting the Bureau of Happiness and Productivity get hold of you -- [[Mind Rape]] is the absolute kindest term for what these guys do to people. And that's not even mentioning the CDCA (the group responsible for arcanowave technology and the Abominations) and the creepifying horrors that ''they'' get up to.
* ''[[Shadowrun]]''. One of the most famous cyberpunk RPGs set in a Dystopia, one that is played to the hilt just as described at the top of the page. Corporations are huge, often quite literally evil, and ''all'' of them employ multiple packs of criminals to do their dirty work. Racism has been given up, but only because [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|people are such assholes]] that they'd rather focus on [[Fantastic Racism]]. Heck, there's even this one bit from the fourth edition core book, talking about the availability of medical treatment, which cites privatized health care as one of the causes of dystopia (oddly enough, using the criticisms usually leveled at socialized/universal healthcare):
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** Tsoka, a dreary, grey empire built from the conceptions of fascism taking over the world. Ironically, it's actually one of the safer Bardos-the Party that runs the place treats Geniuses with the proper papers as foreign dignitaries. Often uses as a recruitment ground for [[The Igor|Beholden]], who are all too happy to become slaves to the Genius if it means ''getting the hell out of there.''
** The Seattle of Tomorrow, a [[Zeerust]] vision of an Atomist utopia. As the game points out repeatedly, [[Straw Vulcan|Atomists]] frequently have absolutely no clue how people work.
== Video Games ==
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* [[Oni]] definitely uses this trope. The first social issue is the environment. The environment is polluted like you would not believe. The government not only does nothing to address it, apart from using Atmospheric Processors to make the cities livable, but it brands anyone who tries to bring it up as enemies of the state and will crush attempts to reveal it. The second social issue is the development of science and technology. The government keeps an eye on scientists and carefully checks to make sure any technology developed is approvable (in other words, will not threaten it). They use the Technological Crimes Task Force as a [[Secret Police]] force to enforce this.
* The [[Crapsack World]] of ''[[BlazBlue]]'' is this thanks to NOL. They're also pretty justified in that, following the [[Dystopia/Playing With|'Playing With' page of this trope straight and justified]].
* The second Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games provide an example of this, when you go to a future where
* Riverford in ''[[Octopath Traveler]]'' went from an idyllic village to a tyrannical hellhole once [[The Caligula|Werner]] took over and murdered its rightful lord. He and his men keep the town's populace in a stranglehold, taxing the citizenry out of the blue and fining them on trumped-up charges while threatening them with imprisonment and a public execution if they don't pay up. And Werner's public executions aren't ''merely'' beheadings or anything quick: he burns criminals alive at the stake, and since [[All Crimes Are Equal]] in Werner's eyes, he's just as willing to burn people to death for looking suspicious or insulting him as he is with murderers and thieves. The eerie sunset and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vMpc-eB7js ominous background music] further set the mood and make it very clear that this is a city best avoided at all costs.
▲== Webcomics ==
* ''[[Remus]]'' is an attempt to imagine what one of these would be like for people who still remember freedom.
== Web Original ==
* ''[[Ad Astra Per Aspera]]'' posits how a successful impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 lead to a galaxy ruled by three [[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]-style dictatorships in the 28th century.
* ''[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53883 Future 1999]'' is a [[Deconstruction]] of dystopia in works. Since no rebellion can challenge the dystopian society, no plot happens.
== Western Animation ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:You Would Not Want to Live In Dex]]
[[Category:Settings]]
[[Category:Trope Names
[[Category:Civil Unrest Tropes]]
[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
▲[[Category:Dystopia]]
[[Category:Depressing Tropes]]
[[Category:The War On Straw]]
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