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

2014: 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/studie

s-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/rev

iewcomplete.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 8th December 2014

: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 7th December

2014: 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 2014:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=articl

e&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 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 have happened that people

universally view as atrocities.

Steve Erickson, 2012. ‘How 'Battle Royale' Became a Cult Hit and

Capitalized on 'The Hunger Games‘’ The Atlantic, Accessed at

13:32 on 6th Jan 2015.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/h

ow-battle-royale-became-a-cult-hit-and-capitalized-on-the-

hunger-games/254184/

Battle Royal is discussed in this article relating to it’s

affects on countries due to the content. It mentions how in

Japan it has been banned for people under the age of 15 and

mentions how the film appears to have been deliberately

‘badly’ marketed in America although also mentions how

these are merely rumours. This said the potential political

influence of the film remains clear. The article also

mentions how the director’s own experience fighting in

WWII was an inspiration for some of the scenes.

Jasper Sharp and Tom Mes, 2001. ‘Kinji Fukasaku’

Midnight Eye, Accessed at 20:04 on 7th January 2015.

http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/kinji-

fukasaku/

This interview with Kinji Fukasaku talks in detail about age in the film. It talks about how the children are treated awfully due to what is basically adults losing faith in themselves due to the state of society.

It mentions also about how modern children are thrust into a war like situation which caused the Japanese government to this the film was unsuitable for children to see.

The overall message from Fukasaku was that all of his films are questions relating to the political state of Japan at the time, asking ‘will this be the direction we go?’

Strick and Houston, 1972. ‘Interview with Stanley Kubrick

regarding A Clockwork Orange’ Sight & Sound, London: BFI

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0070.html

This interview about A Clockwork Orange with Kubrick

talks about what he has added and left out of the film. He

mentions how although Alex appears more pleasant in the

film during the prison section of the story than in the novel

but this is used to emphasise how happy and accepting he is

of his actions and therefore his truly evil nature.

The torture of Alex was made more extreme because they

needed people to be equally horrified by the actions of the

Government and seriously consider the moral decisions

behind it and put across the message that it is more evil to

take away man’s choice of being good than for a man to be

evil.