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
|{{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 [[
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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May have [[Peace and Love Incorporated]] and [[Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul]], and frequently have an [[Ascetic Aesthetic]] towards buildings. Compare with [[Author Tract]], [[After the End]], [[Just Before the End]], [[Villain World]], and [[Cyberpunk]]. Contrast with [[Utopia]] and [[Mary Suetopia]], the latter often an unintentional Dystopia created by the author.
See [[Dystopia Is Hard]] and [[
For more types of [[Dystopia|Dystopias]], see [[You Would Not Want to Live In Dex]]. For the game, click [[Dystopia (video game)|here]].▼
▲For more types of
{{examples}}▼
▲{{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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* Lots of comic book miniseries, many of them set in alternate versions of past history where the presence of superheroes have altered society as we know it, such as ''The Golden Age'' and ''The American Way''.
* Subverted in ''[[Transmetropolitan]]''. The future setting appears at first to be a filthy, crowded, cruel dystopia. As the story progresses, though, it becomes clear that they're dealing with essentially the same issues we deal with today, just with the volume turned up by technology and increased population. Furthermore, some of the modern world's problems have been defeated; pollution has ceased to be an issue for example, though in Spider's childhood it apparently still was a severe threat. The subversion is further driven home by the protagonist's [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold|ultimately optimistic nature]]. There's even a Christmas special where he explicitly states that things tend to be better in the future.
* Mega City One, home of ''[[Judge Dredd]]'', due to being a [[Satire]] on zero-tolerance policing. Actually, all of the mega cities in ''Judge Dredd's'' world qualify. And nearly all of the habitable land outside them is a wasteland, peppered with radioactive areas and populated by
* The world of ''[[Strontium Dog]]'' is not quite so horrible as ''Judge Dredd'', but it's still pretty nasty. In the aftermath of a nuclear war, [[
* Latveria, the country ruled by Doctor Doom, perennial [[Arch Enemy]] to the [[Fantastic Four]]. Latveria is a virtual paradise, with no disease, [[No Poverty]], and almost no crime...and no freedom, since Doctor Doom rules the place as king and tyrant and makes all the decisions. For anyone who steps out of line, the "Disintegration Chamber" is accessible by the throne room, via [[Trap Door]].
** Annoyingly, a lot of forget or ignore that second half when talking about [[Draco in Leather Pants|how great Doctor Doom is.]]
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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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* ''[[Equilibrium]]'' features a future where human emotion has been outlawed in an effort to stop another disastrous war from coming to pass. Emotion is kept in check by a drug called Prozium, anything inducive of emotion is destroyed ([[Culture Police|books, movies, music, art]] and even [[Kick the Dog|cute little dogs]]), and "sense offenders" who refuse to take the drug are terminated with extreme prejudice by the [[Faceless Goons|Sweepers]] and the [[Badass Longcoat|Grammaton Clerics]].
* ''[[Logan's Run]]'': You are killed when you turn thirty.
* ''[[The Matrix]]'': A dystopia brought about by [[Humans Are
* The world of ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]'' is ruled by a corporation that has had murder sanctioned by law, who rose to power on a pile of harvested organs. It is exactly as icky as it sounds.
* ''[[Idiocracy]]'' was presented as a dystopia based on the extreme dumbing down of America. However, it also included extreme cases of mass consumerism and product placement (brought to you by Carl's Jr.). And apparently Mike Judge [[Author Tract|had an axe to grind]] about celebrities being elected into office (Wrestler, turned porn star, turned president).
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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).
* ''[[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]?'' by [[Philip K. Dick]], the novel which inspired ''[[Blade Runner]]''. Nominally, the film is an adaptation.
** ''[[Minority Report]]'', also by Dick, is set in a world where the police can predict your actions, and convict you of murder simply for thinking it, even if involuntarily. The film version goes a step further in that retinal scanners track every movement of every citizen, ads call people by name by reading their identity, and mechanical spiders are used to conduct unwarranted searches, eliminating any semblance of privacy.
* ''Bend Sinister'', a book by Vladimir Nabokov in which a fictitious East European country is [[Day of the Jackboot|taken over]] by the Ekwilist [[Black Shirt|Party of the Average Man]], who want to end conflict by equalizing all personality attributes and making everyone the "average man." In reality, all they succeed in doing is ruining the lives of the country's inhabitants, murdering the family of the country's only internationally renowned figure, the philosopher Adam Krug, and driving him insane.
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* In the world ''[[Uglies]]'' is set in, anyone over sixteen is given an operation that leaves their faces and bodies flawless... and their minds empty.
* The ''[[Hunger Games]]'' trilogy also qualifies with a government that creates a [[Kill'Em All]] reality TV show just to let everyone know that you do not want to mess with them.
* Oddly approached in ''The Cure'' by Sonia Levittin. The near-future society depicted does not allow [[No Sex Allowed|sex]], art, inventiveness, and most forms of emotion, and like ''[[Harrison Bergeron]]'', differences between individuals are stamped out as best as possible. The main character is musically inclined, so the leaders of the society consider having him [[Released to Elsewhere]]
* The late Octavia Butler's books ''Parable of the Sower'' and ''Parable of the Talents'' are this. They are America in the 2020's and 2030's respectively(the books were written in the 90's). People are sold into slavery by the police, given dog collar-like things, and every city is a [[Wretched Hive]].
* Kornbluth's ''The Marching Morons'' has similar themes to the film ''Idiocracy'', above. Subverted in that the super-intelligent aristocracy are the ones slaving away, to keep the vast mentally-challenged majority from killing themselves out of sheer incompetence.
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* ''Utopia For The Devil'' : James Parkes' 2010 novella focuses on a utopia where society is controlled and regulated by a system known as Eden, due to [[The Evils of Free Will]]. The protagonist, Leon, exists outside of Eden and challenges the society.
* ''Matched'': Allie Condie's novel takes place in The Society, where nearly all decisions, some as major as who you marry, where you work and when you die, and others more minor such as what you wear and eat, are decided for you.
* ''Yawning Heights'' by Alexander Zinoviev is an exaggerated picture of the Soviet society with names and key words (like "Khruschev" or "party") replaced with caricature substitutes in [[Bland-Name Product]] style (like "Boar" and "fratry"). [[Black Comedy]] with [[Fictional Document]] fragments containing scientific analysis in very plain words including his view on pop
* The short story ''Sam Hall'' is about a dystopian society where everything about everyone is recorded in a massive national database. One clerk creates a fake file about a fictional dissident named Sam Hall (named after an angry drinking song) into the database as a joke, who escapes all police searches due to the fact that he doesn't actually exist. The nation eventually tears itself apart trying to track down a nonexistent criminal.
* In ''[[The Acts of Caine]]'' it's one half of the setting. The other half is [[Dark Fantasy]].
* ''[[Midnight World]]'' trilogy by Alexander Yang.
* The [[Delirium Series]] by Lauren Oliver is set in a future America where love is considered a disease and every citizen has to be "cured" via brain surgery at eighteen.
* The ''Sisterhood'' series by [[Fern Michaels]]: The world seems similar enough to the world in [[Real Life]], with people going about their lives. However, there are indications that the world in this series is actually a
* [[Divergent]] involves citizens of future Chicago being sorted into factions. Those who fail the initiation or leave are trapped in the slums, and anybody who is considered Divergent is hunted down for threatening the system.
* The online short story ILU-486 takes place in a world where conservative Christian views on birth control and abortion have become law, and follows the women that need medical assistance and the outlaw doctors that provide it. Chillingly, all the oppressive laws (apart from the return of gibbets) are based on actual submitted legislation from American politicians.
* 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 ==
* ''[http://misspentyouthgame.com/ Misspent Youth]'' by Robert Bohl is a game where teenage kids take down a tyrant in a dystopian future world. There's even a step of play called "Dystopia Creation," where you group-create the world that you're playing in.
* The ''[[Warhammer
** Not to mention there's a faction of [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned Extremists]] who are considered to be naive ''because'' of that belief. Given the setting, there's probably a kernel of truth to that.
*** Of course, [[Troperiffic|like so many other tropes]], 40k plays with the
* ''[[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.
**
** 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
{{quote|"Thanks to privatized healthcare, most people are forced to throw themselves and their ailments on the not-so-tender mercies of an overstressed public healthcare system. Spirits help you if you?re seriously sick or hurt and have to deal with a public hospital: most of them mean well, but they?re notoriously understaffed, awash in red tape, and generally a nightmare to navigate."}}
** And that's if you're a ''legal'' citizen with a proper SIN. [[It Gets Worse|For everyone else...]]
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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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* ''[[BioShock (series)]]'' features a Randian utopia [[Gone Horribly Wrong]]. The sequel goes to the opposite extreme, showing a collectivist dystopia.
* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' and its sequel. The United States' economy is failing and is rampant with [[La Résistance]] forces, Europe is under a dictatorship-like rule thanks to MJ12 having enough power to work in the open, the majority of food that you find is either [[Future Food Is Artificial|artificial]] or candy bars that mention they are made from [[Human Resources|"recycled material"]]. All of this is happening while a pandemic is bringing the human race to its knees.
* ''[[Iron Storm]]'' is ''made of this trope''. [[World War
* The ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' series tends to feature a dystopia [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] with each release. In [[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]], the dystopia is driven mainly by the mass appeal of private military services, the use of warfare as a means of economic stimulus and the growth in the application of nano-machine technology (the game's [[Applied Phlebotinum]]).
* ''[[Shaun White Skateboarding]]'', as unlikely as it may sound, is all based around how the 'Minstry' has taken control of the people, forcing them to conform to a bland unemotional state and being constantly monitored. The only way to save the city is to skate around it, as which point colours start to appear and suddenly people no longer want to wear a tie.
* [[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 ''[[
* 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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