Tag Archives: dystopia

My Dystopia is Better Than Your Dystopia, Part II

Posted on by

Round two of the Handmaid v. Watchmen dystopia smackdown. Round 1 is here.
 

 
Published within two years of each other, Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale both emerged from a similar cultural anxiety regarding the future of society in an increasingly uncertain and ambiguous world. Although these two works are typically classified under the genre of dystopian literature, I will argue they adhere better to John Huntington’s theory of utopian and anti-utopian literary models. Huntington makes an important distinction between dystopian and anti-utopian literature. Where dystopia essentially reifies the consistencies of utopia by simply replacing positive social models with negative ones, anti-utopian forms actually oppose these consistencies by discovering problems and raising questions and doubts. We see this ambiguity in both works particularly through themes of morality and heroism. In Watchmen and The Handmaid’s Tale, morality has different valences. These works effectively destroy the conventional spectrum of morality by refusing to depict characters as entirely good or evil. Thus, a closer look at the thematic structures of both works problematizes their categorization as dystopian literature, and reveals a greater affinity to the more uncertain and inquisitive anti-utopian model.

First it is important to understand Huntington’s model of utopia/dystopia and what he proposes in response to this binary: the anti-utopia. He says that while utopia and dystopia ostensibly represent opposite models of society, they actually share a common structure: “both are exercises in imagining coherent wholes, in making an idea work, either to lure the reader effectively deconstructs the misconception that dystopia is the ideological and structural opposite of utopia. Although they represent different extremes on the same spectrum, utopia and dystopia are actually aligned in the way they function. Both strive to construct a complete and coherent model of society, relying on the “expression of the deep principles of happiness or unhappiness” (142). By theorizing the notion of anti-utopia, Huntington proposes a new model that more fully opposes the consistencies of utopian/dystopian paradigms. He argues, “If the utopian-dystopian form tends to construct single, fool-proof structures which solve social dilemmas, the anti-utopian form discovers problems, raises questions, and doubts” (142). Accepting Huntington’s revision, dystopian models actually reify the consistencies of utopian models by simply replacing positive structures with negative ones. Thus, the anti-utopia subverts the utopia/dystopia binary by complicating the coherent models they attempt to construct. Although Watchmen and The Handmaid’s Tale are typically categorized as dystopian literature, Huntington’s theory of the anti-utopia is actually more representative of the nuanced and complicated morality that characterizes both works.

Utopian and anti-utopian models both work as a form of social criticism. Every utopia is a criticism of the world as it exists in reality; every anti-utopian model serves to oppose some sort of utopian ideal. Thus, both models are inherently satirical, but to opposing ends. However, Huntington expands the satiric function of anti-utopias. He contends:

Anti-utopia, as I am here defining it, is not simply satiric; it is a mode of relentless inquisition, of restless skeptical exploration of the very articles of faith on which utopias themselves are built. Thus, while there is much anti-utopian satire, it is not an attack on reality but a criticism of human desire and expectation. (142)

Where utopia seeks to improve or modify some established reality, anti-utopia illuminates the dangers particular human desires. Watchmen and The Handmaid’s Tale work to express the consequences of particular human desires. Atwood explains that while constructing the story of The Handmaid’s Tale she did not make anything up. Everything is derived from some historical precedent. She says, “I did not wish to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, or of misrepresenting the human potential for deplorable.” She continues that the seemingly dystopian elements of The Handmaid’s Tale such as forced reproduction and childbearing, clothing symbolic of castes and classes, and the control of literacy “all had precedents, and many were to be found not in other cultures and religions, but within western society, and within the ‘Christian’ tradition, itself.” The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen are both rooted in a very real and rational fear regarding the fate of society. While Atwood responds to the radicalization of conservative politics by creating the world of Gilead, Moore actually contextualizes Watchmen in an exaggerated and dramatized version of American society. In his book Considering Watchmen: Poetry, Property, Politics, Andrew Hoberek notes that Watchmen engages with the politics of the Cold War, arguing that that Reagan administration’s “bellicose rhetoric” and “policy of military buildup” had restored a fear of nuclear war to the US public consciousness (119). The doomsday clock serves as a structural backbone of the text by introducing each chapter with the looming reminder of society’s imminent fate. The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen construct anti-utopias that criticize trends in radical human desire that characterize their shared historical context.

Moore and Atwood destabilize the comforting binaries of utopian and dystopian societies by constructing their fictional worlds in complete moral ambiguity. The superhero context of Watchmen deals explicitly with issues of morality and social justice. Prevailing cultural conceptions of the superhero narrative include a Manichean divide between good and evil: a clear distinction is made between the morally superior superheroes and the degenerate villains. In Watchmen, however, Moore deconstructs this generic expectation by depicting his superhero team as morally flawed and even depraved. Take the Comedian, for instance. A satire of Captain America, the Comedian epitomizes the complete reversal of our expectations of morality. A government pawn, the Comedian embodies the ideals of imperialist United States. However, Moore represents this association as a negative and destructive force. As several of the Watchmen attend the Comedian’s funeral service, Nite Owl reminisces about his days of crime fighting with the Comedian. The imagery of the scene is chaotic and violent as the public has begun to turn against the superheroes. The Comedian and Nite Owl hover above the crowd almost menacingly as people hurl rocks at them.

In several panels the Comedian depicted almost entirely in shadow; along with his mask, he seems to embody the physical tropes of a villain better than a superhero. The Comedian even has his gun drawn on a crowd of civilians and seems to welcome a battle with them. He says to Nite Owl, “My government contacts tell me some new act is being herded through. Until then, we’re society’s only protection. We keep it up as long as we have to.” Nite Owl responds in disbelief, “Protection? Who are we protecting them from?” (Moore 2.17). This scene comes just after a flashback from Dr. Manhattan where is it revealed that the Comedian shot a woman he had impregnated while serving in Vietnam. In these moments, Moore is not unclear but extremely decisive in his depiction of the Comedian as a depraved character. He underscores the irony of this characterization in the final panel of the scene where Nite Owl questions who exactly they protecting society from. Considering the violence from the previous panels, the answer seems obvious to the reader; the Comedian and, perhaps, other Watchmen pose a real threat to the safety of humanity. In this universe, the people who are charged with the protection and surveillance of society are not universally equipped to uphold this responsibility.

Atwood builds a similar sense of uncertainty in the power structures of Gilead. Specifically, Atwood complicates the binary of good and evil by establishing both men and women as oppressors within her anti-utopia. In the article “Haunted by the Handmaid’s Tale,” Atwood speaks to interpretations of the novel as a “feminist dystopia.” She says this term is not strictly accurate: “In a feminist dystopia pure and simple, all of the men would have greater rights than all of the women. It would be a two-layered structure: top layer men, bottom layer women.” She contends Gilead is actually structured like a regular dictatorship, with powerful figures of both sexes at the apex, and then descending levels of power for both men and women.

This complicated dynamic is especially felt through the relationships between female characters in the novel. Offred is frequently oppressed by male and female characters. Ironically it is Aunt Lydia, a woman, who seems to represent the most pervasive and unavoidable oppressive force. Not only does Aunt Lydia survey every movement of Offred and the other women beneath her, she frequently delivers woman-hating rhetoric. After showing the handmaids a 1970s porn film where a woman’s body is being mutilated, Aunt Lydia warns them, “Consider the alternatives . . . you see what things used to be like? This was what they thought of women, then. Her voice trembled with indignation” (Atwood 118).

Although it is clear that the Commander stands at the top of the pyramid of power, Atwood avoids a strictly gendered power hierarchy by creating an overt hostility between women of different castes. In the essay, “Margaret Atwood’s dystopian visions,” Coral Ann Howells suggests that through the Commander’s wife and the odious Aunt figures, Atwood presents a critical analysis of the rise of the New Right and Christian Fundamentalism of the 1980s (169). She continues by saying that Atwood “dispels any singular definition of ‘Woman’ as it emphasizes Atwood’s resistance to reifying slogans, whether patriarchal or feminist” (168). Atwood avoids an overtly feminist tone by depicting her female character from different positions of power and even divergent conceptions of womanhood. Even if women such as Aunt Lydia are just instruments of a more powerful authority, it is significant that Atwood does not use gender as a means to achieve a Manichean divide. She muddies the clear divisions of utopia and dystopia by deconstructing any moral consistencies that align with gender.

Turning back to Watchmen, Moore similarly blurs any obvious divide between good and evil by nuancing his characterization of other superheroes. The character Rorschach exemplifies a moral ambiguity that aligns with Huntington’s theory of inconsistency and doubt in his anti-utopian model. At least initially, Rorschach seems to embody the opposite extreme as the Comedian, an unhealthy commitment to the Manichean dichotomy. In one of the first scenes with Rorschach, the reader witnesses him breaking innocent man’s fingers for simply being uncooperative (Moore 1.16). Rorschach ostensibly opposes the Comedian’s nihilistic view of morality as a futile pursuit. However, Moore deepens his characterization of Rorschach in his conversations with a therapist. Here Rorschach delves into his troubled childhood with an emotionally abusive mother. In one scene the therapist presents Rorschach with a Rorschach test, prompting him to describe what he sees in the image. Rorschach then launches into the gruesome story where he describes butchering the dog of child kidnapper.

He concludes his narrative with the harrowing realization of the inherent evil of all humanity:

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after starting at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach. (Moore 5.27)

Here Rorschach mimics a kind of superhero origin story as he reveals the conception of his dangerously rigid moral code. Also embedded within this speech, however, is a moral philosophy that is strikingly similar to Huntington’s argument. Through Rorschach’s perspective, Moore constructs a moral vacuum in the world of the Watchmen, This absence leaves Rorschach to inscribe his own twisted principles onto his surrounding society as he pleases. Rorschach articulates a kind of ambivalence that is integral to Huntington’s model of the anti-utopia. By saying that “existence is random” he implies that there are no moral patterns that drive society; there is “no meaning save what we choose to impose.” Rorschach’s worldview encompasses a sense of discomforting inconsistency. People are not inherently good; they construct their morality according the exigencies of “this morally blank world.” According to Rorschach, morality is always a dubious and contrived design.

The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen further adhere to Huntington’s anti-utopia in their vague and uncertain endings. Huntington notes that unlike utopian and dystopian works, the anti-utopia “does not succumb to the satisfactions of solutions” (142). Committed to questioning and raising doubts, the anti-utopia refuses to provide any clear resolution. For instance, in the final scene The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred is escorted from her home by governments officials who accuse her of the “violation of state secrets” (294). Despite the tension of the scene, Offred offers the strangely ambiguous final reflection: “Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can’t be helped. And so I step up, into darkness within; or else within the light” (295).

Atwood leaves the reader with two conflicting interpretations of the ending of the novel: should we read it as positive or negative? While Offred demonstrates her fear, “I could scream now,” her final words also suggest a sense of relief, she has finally been removed from her position as a handmaid. The ending of Watchmen is equally as ambiguous. Rorschach’s diary had made it into the hands of a newspaper editor and his assistant. The final panel, however, depicts the seemingly incompetent assistance with a ketchup stain on his shirt reaching for the diary. His editor says from outside the panel, “I leave it entirely in your hands” (5.32). Thus, Moore leaves the transmission of Rorschach’s diary in the hands of a very unlikely and even questionable character. The reader cannot be certain that the diary will be published and Veidt’s plan revealed. Both novels refuse to restore balance to society by constructing a coherent and clear solution. Rather, as Dr. Manhattan says, “nothing ever ends” (5.27); Moore and Atwood trap their works within the unending cycle of history and the evolution of society.

Accepting Huntington’s revision of the dystopian/utopian binary, Watchmen and The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrate a closer adherence to his model of the anti-utopia. Both works reject the moral consistencies that characterize dystopian and utopian genres and instead spread their characters across a nuanced spectrum of morality. In Watchmen, Moore inverts the superhero genre by depicting the Watchmen as the real threat to society. Yet he blurs even this distinction by depicting characters such as Rorschach as committed to an overly idealized or rigid code of morality. The hierarchy of morality is similarly deconstructed in The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood rejects the notion of a “feminist dystopia” by creating a hegemonic power that is enacted by both men and women. She does not give the reader the consistency of aligning morality with a particular gender. Furthermore, Atwood and Moore contain their works in the ongoing cycle of inconsistency and doubt by creating ambiguous endings. The anti-utopia epitomizes its commitment to the questioning of utopian models by doubting whether or not society can ever escape the models of its past.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. (New York: Anchor Books, 1998).

Atwood, Margaret. “Haunted by The Haidmaid’s Tale.” The Guardian (January 2012).

Hoberek, Andrew. Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, and Politics. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2014.

Howells, Coral Ann. “Margaret Atwood’s dystopian visions: The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake.” The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 161-175.

Huntington, John. The Logic of Fantasy: H.G. Wells and Science Fiction. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).

Moore, Alan and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. (New York: DC Comics, 1986).

My Dystopia is Better Than Your Dystopia, Part I

Posted on by

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985. The first issue of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen was published in 1986. Despite that closeness, they’re not two novels that are routinely paired. Which is why I was pleased when a pair of students in my Late 20th Century Fiction course decided to combine them as examples of dystopias. And, even more fun, my students disagree about the definition of “dystopia.”

So here’s round one of their literary match-up.

—Chris Gavaler
 

 

Beginning with Thomas Moore’s Utopia, a tradition of idealized societies has existed both in the imaginations of great thinkers and writers as well as in the literary canons of virtually every culture. Yet frequently in these perfect utopian universes, a dark underbelly emerges, characterized by abuses of power, totalitarian regimes, and control of every minutia of a citizens’ lives, usually as an excuse for their protection in the beginning. These types of dystopian universes create environments of fear and isolation, with an evil government and good and innocent citizens. However, what happens in dystopias in which there is no clear oppressor, no direct dichotomy of good and evil? Instead, subtle powers are at work that do not allow for a clear ability to point a finger at the ‘good’ or ‘evil’ power responsible for ‘light’ oppression. In their novels The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen, Margaret Atwood and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons grapple with this question of good and evil and create two dystopian worlds that either reinforce the Manichean dichotomy or blur the line between good and evil. Where The Handmaid’s Tale utilizes total dystopian control of its people to further confine and separate them, creating a Manichean dichotomy between good and evil, Watchmen uses subtle manipulation in order to unite the entire world, blurring the line between good and evil. In showing two radically different uses of dystopia, these authors call into question the assumption that absolute control in a dystopia is necessarily evil.

To formulate my argument, I will begin by exploring two definitions of dystopia. I will then examine how The Handmaid’s Tale fulfills Ketterer’s definition of dystopia. Contrastingly, I will delve into the world of Watchmen, and explore the ways that it fits into Greene’s definition of dystopia. Finally, I will examine the good versus evil dichotomies in each of these novels and their relationship to dystopian literature.

Utopia and dystopia are frequently two sides of the same coin, representing idealized societies that are either perfect or move too far in the direction of creating a perfect world. Greene establishes a simple yet effective definition of utopia as “an ideal society” (Greene 2). Unfortunately, these utopias are rarely idealistic and perfect places in practice, even if their ideals are, in theory. In one of the earliest examples of utopian literature, “Thomas More, in his Utopia (1516), conjures an isolated island to describe a better world but one that in hindsight sounds fascist” (2). By blurring the lines between these two genres, Greene demonstrates that utopia and dystopia are on a continuum and lend themselves to blurring the lines of Manichean dichotomies of good and evil.

Dystopian literature is characterized by a multitude of individual genre characteristics, but is pervaded by a sense of oppression via governmental and totalitarian powers. The opposite of a perfect society, a literary dystopia is an “imaginary society that differs from the author’s own, first, by being significantly worse in important respects, and, second, by being worse because it attempts to reify some utopian ideal” (Beauchamp 11). By Beauchamp’s definition, dystopia perverts positive ideals and the world of the author in order to create a plausible society in which there is no freedom from the government. In order to classify novels and stories as dystopian, Ketterer provides a clear framework of the types of features included in the genre: “lack of freedom, the constant surveillance, the routine, the failed escape attempt” (211). In a different vein, Greene claims that dystopian universes are characterized by a distinct “suffocation of independent thought” (2). Greene’s definition of dystopia may include some of Ketterer’s elements, but focuses its attentions on the atmosphere of control and stifling of non-institutionalized thought amongst its citizens. These two definitions, though not always mutually exclusive, serve as useful categorizations for The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale’s government of Gilead contains every element of Ketterer’s definition of dystopia. Though there are some elements of stifling of independent thought, its most salient dystopian features belong to Ketterer’s definition and classify it solidly in the dystopian genre through four specific features.

Firstly, Gilead eliminates freedom from the lives of its citizens. When the Gilead government began, “newspapers were censored, and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, the Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn’t be too careful” (Atwood 174). The government closed down the freedoms of its citizens one by one, slowly taking every semblance of freedom they had in a subtle way, at first. Ultimately, Gilead obliterates freedom by creating roles relating to fertility, and women’s “real name[s have] been erased in favor of the form of ‘Of’ plus the first name, possibly abbreviated, of her Commander” (Ketterer 210). As Offred herself states, “my name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up”(Atwood 84). This removal of names dehumanizes women and forces them to become their proscribed roles, as Handmaids, or “two-legged wombs” (136), Aunts, Marthas, Wives, Unwomen, or prostitutes. By removing agency and proscribing roles, Gilead destroys freedom.

Routines similarly are present in Gilead, from a daily morning walk for the Handmaids, to the Ceremony. The most salient routine of the society is the Ceremony, a brutal moment when the Commander tries to impregnate his Handmaid. Offred does not describe this scene as rape, however, instead calling it “nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for. There wasn’t a lot of choice but there was some, and this is what I chose” (94). Through this brutal routine and near sacred ritual, Atwood creates the only alternative a young fertile woman could choose, aside from the oblivion of Unwomanhood. This monthly routine of impregnation, in parallel with other more innocuous routines and rituals, demonstrates the ways that Gilead governs through strict control of its citizens’ freedoms, particularly by organizing their daily lives.

Gilead constantly spies and watches its citizens, as is proven by the many golden eyes found in public places and privates ones, such as the doctor’s office (60), Offred’s room, or on the Soul Scrolls (167). In front of the Soul Scrolls store, Greene’s rules of no independent thought are broken, and readers see the surveillance in place in Gilead. Ofglen, Offred’s walking partner, leans over to Offred and says, “’Do you think God listens,’ she says, ‘to these machines?’ […] In the past this would have been a trivial enough remark, a kind of scholarly speculation. Right now it’s treason,” (168) remarks Offred. Thought and spoken original thought is no longer taken for granted. It is stifled and discouraged through constant surveillance and fear of being taken by the Eyes. To think is treason in Gilead; to birth children is of the highest importance. This government fulfills Ketterer’s category of constant surveillance, and uses it to engage in thought suppression, though that is not necessarily its ultimate goal. Surveillance in Gilead is used to incite fear, not to prevent independent thought.

Finally, The Handmaid’s Tale contains varied escape attempts, including the ending of the novel. There are minor ‘escapes’ found throughout the novel, during which the women of Gilead attempt to communicate with one another while escaping detection. For instance, in the Center where the Handmaids are trained, “in the paint of the washroom cubicle someone unknown had scratched: Aunt Lydia sucks” (222). These clandestine messages, though not directly escape attempts, create distinct groups in Gilead of good and evil. These two categories are even further proven in an actual escape attempt at the end of the novel, when the Eyes come to take Offred. Nick assures her, “It’s all right. It’s Mayday. Go with them” (293). Mayday, signifying a day of rebellion for Gilead, shows the final escape attempt. She must choose to trust the only male in the story not in a position of possession over her and go with the Eyes, not knowing whether or not she should believe Nick. This final attempt, in conjunction with smaller escape attempts found throughout the novel fulfill Ketterer’s definition of dystopia, as people want to leave the evil power regime created by Gilead.

Conversely, Watchmen’s universe contains almost no direct elements of Ketterer’s dystopia, and instead only falls into the category of Greene’s definition of dystopia as preventing independent thought. Instead of creating a directly oppressive and tyrannical government, Moore instead forms a world in which corporations and powerful individuals subtly exert control and manipulate the masses in order to gain power and influence. In Watchmen’s “realistic world, governed by power politics” (Paik 27), the most important elements of control are eerily similar to those of the American present: the media. Thus, thought is controlled by advertising and other media and independent thought is stifled, fulfilling Greene’s definition.

Adrian Veidt, the evil mastermind behind the ultimate destruction of the world of Watchmen in order to create a new world order, controls the entirety of the novel and the world inside of it through media influences. Before Moore reveals that Veidt is at the center of the conspiracy to destroy half of New York in order to unite the world, Veidt’s commercial empire permeates almost every page of the graphic novel. Before the attack on New York, Veidt’s ad campaign for his perfume, Nostalgia, is seen in the background of dozens of panels. It is found over boutiques (Moore 3:7), diners (4: 24), on torn posters on walls (5:18). These nostalgic campaigns reflect back to a time when there were superheroes and no threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction: a utopia. By bombarding the citizens of Watchmen’s world with imagery relating to the past, Veidt controls their thoughts and emotions, forcing them to feel anxious about the threat of the Cold War. After resolving these fears he created in the public through the Nostalgia ad campaign by killing millions of people in New York and ending the Cold War because of a new perceived alien common enemy, Veidt continues to exercise influence over the public through his new “Millennium” campaign, that shows figures facing toward the now bright future(12:31). Veidt even talks about the way that he influences the public through advertisement and media in Chapter 10 on page 8, saying that because of the trends of pre-war times, he is going to invest differently “into the major erotic video companies. That’s short term. Also, we should negotiate controlling shares in selected baby food and maternity goods and manufacturers”(10:8), because of the baby boom he predicts. Veidt’s control is subtle, yet absolute, giving Watchmen the qualities of intellectual control instead of direct oppression as in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Finally, Veidt literally destroys independent thought when he threatens to destroy the world. The superheroes of the novel all agree to follow Veidt’s lead because it is the only way to unite the world, and the deed had already been done (11:27). Yet Rorschach, the one dissenter who wishes to return to America and tell the world that Veidt is behind the destruction is obliterated. Because the rest of the superheroes “must protect Veidt’s new utopia, one more body amongst the foundations makes little difference” (12:24). Rorschach is destroyed because of his refusal to follow what Veidt wants him to believe, and so Veidt continues to exercise influence over thought and independent thinking by literally destroying his enemy and Rorschach’s dissenting opinion. Clearly, Watchmen fits perfectly into Greene’s category of dystopia as being a government that stifles any kind of oppressive thought and serves instead to manipulate thought and control its citizens’ minds.

Not only do The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen fulfill two differing definitions of dystopia, but they also represent two different dichotomies between good and evil. The Handmaid’s Tale, which clearly fulfills every feature of Ketterer’s dystopia definition, creates a distinct Manichean dichotomy of good versus evil. Conversely, Watchmen only fulfills Greene’s definition of dystopia, and blurs the lines between good and evil. Though The Handmaid’s Tale contains elements of thought suppression, it is not the most salient dystopian feature of the novel. Instead, Watchmen is distinctly characterized by the repression of independent thinking and in doing so creates a world in which good and evil are on a spectrum and characters and corporations cannot necessarily be placed on one end.

The Handmaid’s Tale grapples with evil in distinct dichotomies that are perceived by not only the reader but also by the citizens of Gilead. This novel’s “Historical Notes” present a perspective from hundreds of years after the Gilead Empire, denouncing the atrocities that were in place at the time. The black and white nature of good and evil is one that is clear because the dystopia was overthrown; it must have been so oppressive and miserable for its citizens because they were controlled by routine, roles, and removal of freedom, that they tried to escape and overthrow the government. The Historical Notes present The Handmaid’s Tale as a true story that was “unearthed on the site of what was once the city of Bangor” (Atwood 301) as “thirty tapes in the collection altogether” (301) having been spoken by the same narrator. Because of this conclusion that the tapes came from someone who escape the Gilead regime, The Handmaid’s Tale’s world is one in which the evil of the Gilead government was overthrown. The novel’s easily identifiable evil characters, such as the Aunts, the Commanders, and some unnamed powers who run the government, create a target that readers are invited to view as evil in nature. Because the novel was told in first person and identifies these characters as evil, readers even further view the women and men forced into their proscribed roles as being good, while those who did the forcing are represented as evil. By fulfilling the necessary components of Ketterer’s dystopia and entrenching herself in the genre, Atwood formulates a world in which the reader’s beliefs about dystopia are reinforced. There is an evil overlord and government who presides over a good citizenry. In order to restore the balance of good over evil, the government must be overthrown. These citizens of the future are able to claim that, “Gileadean society was under a good deal of pressure, demographic and otherwise, and was subject to factors from which we ourselves are happily more free” (302), because of the overthrow of this evil government, further imposing strict categorizations of good and evil.

Watchmen, on the other hand, presents a much grayer view of good and evil, particularly in the form of Adrian Veidt. Veidt reaches the height of his control over the world when he chooses to employ dystopian means in order to attempt to create a utopia. Sending an ‘alien’ monster he created through genetic engineering to New York, Veidt causes a cataclysmic neurological disaster, killing millions, with the intention of uniting the world against a common enemy. Moore places the destruction of Times Square on six full pages at the beginning of Chapter 12, ensuring that the reader must take in the entirety of the carnage. Placed amongst the the bodies, Moore places discarded newspapers that read “WAR?” in large typeface (Moore 12:3-6), indicating that the society was on the brink of destruction before this terrorist event, along with a discarded pamphlet for The Veidt Training Method. This pamphlet falls to the ground amongst the destruction, reading “I Will Give You Bodies Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings” (12:6). This darkly almost comical insertion of Veidt’s presence into the scene demonstrates not only his responsibility for the event, but also signifies that perhaps Veidt could truly have meant two things in what he was communicating; he wanted to help the people of the world by literally helping them to perfect their bodies, yet gives the world dead bodies in order to unite them. Though he has murdered countless people, “we are invited to read this extended scene of death and destruction as the signifiers for the near-miraculous founding of a new and peaceful order, a golden age of international cooperation and solidarity” (Paik 35). Instead of viewing Veidt as an inherently evil character, the reader is asked to instead see that perhaps his evil actions serve a higher and ‘good’ purpose.

Moore confuses the question of good and evil further through his characters Rorschach, who represents an idea of justice and the vindication of good and evil, and The Comedian, who seems amoral but in fact sometimes stands for good. After the heroes find out that Veidt has committed this attack, they almost universally agree to cover up his involvement for the betterment of society. Yet Rorschach disagrees, and leaves to return to America because “evil must be punished” (Moore 12:22). As seen earlier in this examination, however, Doctor Manhattan chooses to kill a crying Rorschach instead of allowing him to reveal what Rorschach believes is Veidt’s evil nature. Though in this moment Rorschach represents good, he is imprisoned as a violent criminal earlier in the novel. Similarly, the Comedian is evil in his love of senseless violence, yet says that “Somebody has to save the world” (2:10), even though this perhaps inspired Veidt’s evil deeds. The Comedian is even killed because he uncovers and opposes Veidt’s plot: “He knew my plan would succeed, though its scale terrified him” (11:25). The Comedian is seen murdering his pregnant Vietnamese girlfriend (2:14), yet in some situations clearly takes a moral standpoint. These two characters muddy the waters between good and evil and cause the reader to seriously question the morality of not only the world of Watchmen, but of dystopias and powerful governments as a whole.

Finally, though Veidt commits an evil action of mass murder, he is perhaps good in his attempts to create a true utopia resulting from a common enemy, but Moore complicates this issue further with the final frames of the novel. On page 32 of Chapter 12, a lowly assistant at a newspaper is seen reaching for Rorschach’s journal that reveals every part of Veidt’s plan, as the symbol of the Comedian’s badge lies on his shirt. Though the story ends here, there is an epigraph on the last page, on which is written “Who watches the watchmen?” (12:33). Here, the reader sees that only two confusingly amoral at times and moral at times characters, Rorschach and the Comedian, are the watchers of the world. They selectively condemn evil, and in others moments perpetrate evil, yet they are both silenced because they condemn Veidt’s actions despite the moral gray area they reside in. Their ideas of certain acts as being concretely good or concretely evil demonstrate just how confused the notions of good and evil are in Watchmen. By stifling their voices, Moore indicates that Greene’s definition of a dystopia is one that creates a more realistic world, in which there is never a true dominance of good over evil in the end.

Through their varying uses of dystopia and dystopian features, Atwood and Moore bring to light a hidden feature of each type of dystopia. In fulfilling each of Ketterer’s strict features of dystopia, Atwood reveals that this definition of dystopia creates a world with strict separation between good and evil. In only fulfilling Greene’s definition of dystopia as destroying independent thought, Moore reveals that these sorts of dystopias, that are much less extreme in their manifestations, create a world in which good and evil are not clearly defined. By calling morality into question or creating a hyper-strict definition of good versus evil, Moore and Atwood grapple with questions of the nature of power in dystopia, and challenge readers to question their understandings of this genre. Power is not always inherently evil, and neither is dystopia.

Works Cited

Beauchamp, Gorman. “The Politics of The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Midwest Quarterly 51.1 (2009): 11–25. Print.

Greene, Vivien. “Utopia/Dystopia.” American Art 25.2 (2011): 2–7. JSTOR. Web.

Ketterer, David. “Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: A Contextual Dystopia (‘La Servante écarlate’ de Margaret Atwood: Une Dystopie Contextuelle).” Science Fiction Studies 16.2 (1989): 209–217. Print.

Paik, Peter. “Utopia Achieved: The Case of Watchmen.” From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. 23–69. Print.

This Is Your Brain on Dystopia

Posted on by

This first appeared in The Comics Journal.
________________

Biomega #1; Tsutomo Nihei; Viz; 220 pp., $12.99; B&W, Softcover; ISBN: 1-4215-3184-4 & Ikigami #4; Motoro Mase; Viz; 240 pp., $12,99; B&W, Softcover; ISBN: 978-1421526812

Futurist apocalyptic dystopic manga! Guns! Out-of-control state power! Evil vaccinations! Morally torn government functionaries! Artificial humans! Intelligent bears! Homicidal schoolteachers! Doesn’t that get the blood pumping?!

Maybe?

Biomega #1 — There’s a guy on a motorcycle and he works for a giant industrial conglomerate, which is good because they can make artificial humans just like him to fight the zombie apocalypse put in place by the evil government agency. You could read nutty John Bircher politics into that if you wanted, but luckily the aforementioned zombie virus has actually settled in and eaten this manga’s brain, so if there was an evil John Bircher about, he/she is now dribbling brain bits out of his dislocated jaw, making a huge-disgusting mess on the inside of his white hood, thank you very much — and ew. Hey, shoot him in the face why don’t you? That’s what we’re here to see. Also — we’ve got a zombie orbiting earth! That’s a new twist, huh? Look at the pretty apocalyptic art showing nothing of any particular consequence. I especially appreciate the sexy zombie ass-crack on the back cover, because apparently part of having your brain eaten when you’re a zombie and a hot woman is that you cease being able to pull your underwear up all the way.
 

 
Ikigami #4 — So that was nonsense John Bircher paranoia; this is serious John Bircher paranoia. The future is not artificial humans killing zombies; it’s the evil government engaged in a vaccination conspiracy, so that one out of every 999 citizens die when they’re 25. Or is it that one out of every 25 citizens die when they’re 999? Anyway, they get 24-hours notice that they’re going to fall over so they can seize the day like Robin Williams … and hey, by coincidence, one of the guys who kicks it in this volume is a conscientious schoolteacher. For a moment there I thought we were going to get a moral about how educators suck and should all be killed, which I would support — but no, the teacher remains compassionate and caring even when he turns into a homicidal loony, and the double-twist ironic moral is that I really do believe that children are our future, teach them well, and let them lead the way. Let them show all the beauty they possess inside, already. Then the next one who gets it is a young mother whose husband cares too much about cars. But he gives up the car when he realizes his wife is going to die. It’s all about learning life-lessons while looking at soulful adequately drawn cartoony close-ups. Eventually I suppose the government functionary who tells people they are going to die will question the morality of his actions, thereby receiving a higher and higher percentage of the book’s aforementioned soulful close-ups. This is good, because soulful close-ups help you grow as a person.
 

 
I learned so much from these manga. Things like, “don’t trust the government.” “Melodrama must have recognizable characters, but straight action is drawn better.” And, most importantly, “The Japanese, too, are capable of derivative, fifth-drawer, dystopic science-fiction.” It really is a small world, after all.

Tyrannosaurus Stalin

Posted on by

Dystopias are always also utopias, just as hell always also implies a heaven. A blighted future is a warning, but it’s also a hope that the wrong-doers (if they do not repent) will finally, finally get theirs. Orwell’s 1984 broods luxuriously on the triumph of totalitarianism over all those who do not see as clearly as he. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games revels in the voyeuristic exploitation bloodshed enabled by scolding us all for our voyeuristic exploitation jones. Disaster porn is — adamently, enthusiastically — porn, a sadistic/masochistic wallow in the end times. Grim visions are what we want to see; the rain of fire that scourges injustice — or, sometimes, that just scourges. Because scourging is fun.

Alun Llewellyn’s 1934 sci-fi dystopia, The Strange Invaders presents a particularly complex apocalypse — and, ergo, a particularly complex set of apocalyptic desires. The story is set in a far future earth, where a combination of nuclear holocaust and oncoming ice age have knocked humanity back to the middle ages. The action is centered in a factory town of the former Soviet Union, now a holy city, inhabited by a people called the Rus. The Rus worship a Trinity — Marx, Lenin, Stalin — who they only vaguely understand. Church Fathers rule over a military class of Swords, who keep the peasants in line scraping out a subsistence existence.

This already-quite-grim-thank-you world is plunged into chaos as nomadic Tartars begin fleeing to the Rus’ holy city from the South, seeking shelter. They claim to be pursued by giant, man-eating lizards. The Church Fathers at first don’t believe it (Marx said nothing about giant man-eating lizards!) and so order the Swords and the peasants to massacre the Tartars before they eat too much of the food supply. Soon after the deed is done, though,the saurians show up and set about killing just about everyone they can get their talons on. Finally, in a War-of-the-Worldsish stroke of luck, winter comes in and for some reason the in-all-other-ways evolutionarily perfect lizards are unable to sense the temperature drop soon enough, and go dormant, allowing the few remaining humans to slaughter them. This isn’t exactly a happy ending, though; humans are now trapped between the lizards to the south and advancing glaciers to the north, and while there may be a respite for our particular band of the Rus, humanity’s long-term outlook seems awfully dicey as the book closes.
 

 
In his book Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, John Rieder reads The Strange Invaders along a number of allegorical lines. First, he notes that it maps and reverses the traditional lines of imperialism; instead of a vigorous northern European invasion of the decadent Southern periphery, Llewellyn presents a vital South launching an attack on the decadent, etiolated north.

I don’t necessarily disagree with Rieder’s take here…but I think it’s important to take into account the fact that this is not just any north we’re talking about here, but Russia in particular. Obviously, the Cold War was not underway in 1934 — but Llewellyn (according to Brian W. Aldiss’ preface) had actually visited the Soviet Union, and appears to have had a better sense of its problems than many of his contemporaries. In any case, there’s no doubt that the northern weakness here is a particularized Russian weakness. The blind obedience to authority, the inflexibility, and the cruelty of the Rus is linked specifically by Llewellyn to Communism.

It was a tale often told, a moral often preached. They had sinned; all mankind had sinned. Marx from whom the world had received the blessing of the Faith had remade the world in a plan of Five years…. The faith had been wronged and the Destruction was the vengeance enacted. Therefore must the faith be honoured strictly by those that survived, and they must to that end give obedience unquestioning, surrender thought and spirit and body to their rulers who were guardians of that faith.

Rieder of course appreciates the satirical fillip (now perhaps rendered into almost a commonplace of anti-communism) of turning the resolutely materialist Marx into a deity. But he never quite links the Russian context to the discussion of peripheries. If one does so, the novel becomes a parable not so much of reversing center and margin, but rather of wars on the margins — of Russia, perhaps, being devoured by its own atavistic, subservient Orientalist weakness.

From this perspective, then, the saurians and the Russ are not in opposition, but are on a continuum. And in fact, there is a fair bit of textual support for the idea that the giant lizards are not the death of the Rus, but their perfection. The ideal of the Rus is unthinking obedience; direction without will. Adun, the protagonist, is caught between his human desires and his society’s demand that he become merely the tool of the Fathers — a kind of machine, like those left in the factory/church and worshiped. “The Fathers and the men they kept to uphold them were not to be questioned,” Adun thinks to himself. “Mind and body they commanded, as the Faith directed. He was nothing. He dared do nothing.” (18)

If Adun has to convince himself to become an object, the giant lizards have no such problems. As Rieder notes, the creatures “hover on the uncanny border between the organic and the mechanical.” In one of the most striking passages of the novel (which Rieder quotes), the creatures are envisioned as a depersonalized collective; a single coherent unity of force.

The plain, where it came down from the river, was alive with inter-weaving movement. They played together in the sun as though its brightness made them glad, running over and under one another, swiftly and in silence, but with an almost fierce alacrity, eager and unhesitating, unceasing. The eye was not quick enough to catch the motion of their rapid, supple bodies that seemed not to move with the effort of muscles but to quiver and leap with an alert life instinct in every part of them. They were brilliant. As he looked, Karasoin saw the play of colour that ran over those great darting bodies, a changing, flashing iridescence like a jewelled mist. Their bodies were green, enamelled in scales like studs of polished jade. But as they writhed and sprang in their playing, points of bronze and gilt winked along their flanks and their throats and bellies as they leaped showed golden and orange, splashed with scarlet. Now and then one would suddenly pause and stand as if turned to a shape of gleaming metal, and then they could see plainly its long, narrow head and slender tail and the smoothly shining body borne on crouching legs that ended in hands like a man’s with long clawed fingers; five.

This is the awesome fulfillment of Ronald Reagan’s “ant heap of totalitarianism.” Stalinism is here embodied not by the proletariat, but by those even below them, the lizards forged into a remorseless, infinitely flexible machine-state. The blind watchmaker forges the revolution, and thus Marxism for Llewellyn will literally, and beautifully, eat itself.

Again, though, just because the lizards are the ultimate totalitarians doesn’t mean that the humans are somehow battling totalitarianism. In 1984, Big Brother is schematically opposed to the human emotions of love, friendship, warmth, and sex. Llewellyn’s vision is less pat. Adun’s love, not to mention his sexual desire, does in fact inspire his resistance to the regime of the Fathers. But that resistance isn’t exactly idyllic. On the contrary, Adun’s passion for the hardly-characterized Erya is almost inseparable from his own pride and desire for power. At one point he threatens (and it is not an idle threat) to kill her if she chooses the captain of the Swords, Karasoin — a murder-lust echoed by his participation in the genocidal slaughter of the Tartars within the city walls. Eventually, Adun does win Erya…by murdering Karasoin after the Sword almost rapes her. Thus, the alternative to mechanized, unfeeling destruction is not love or peace, but rather the cthonic, feeling bloodshed of jealousy, rage, and rape-revenge.

Llewellyn is willing to suggest other possibilities. Erya, for example, has a vision of independence and freedom — though that’s eventually crushed by the ongoing crisis which requires her to get a man for protection or else. Karasoin, before he actually rapes Erya, is ashamed and decides not to attack her — just in time for Adun to hack him apart. And at the book’s end, Adun’s brother Ivan speaks haltingly of the need for men to stop killing each other…and then, of course, he dies of his wounds.

The novel’s flirtations with peace, then, are all cynically inflected; they are raised to be shot down in a frisson of pathos and irony. Both the lizards and the rape-revenge narrative, on the other hand, have a visceral, awful appeal. The beautiful, terrible new force which will inherit the earth; the beautiful, terrible old force that has held the earth: they rush upon each other, soundless or howling, and from their writhing, bloody struggle there rises genre pleasures, old and new — violence, lust, apocalypse, the cleansed earth and the pleasure of watching its filthy cleansing. The Strange Invaders is a bitter reversal of imperialism, a prayer for a more perfectly genocidal imperialism, and — to the extent that its vision is enacted on and powered by Orientalist tropes — arguably an act of imperialism itself.

The final twist of the novel is, perhaps, that, despite its prescient and honorable anti-Stalinism, its apocalyptic vision is ultimately not apocalyptic enough. The saurians, in all their awesome power, and the humans, for all their ugly narrow-mindedness, can neither compare with the power, the ugliness, or the narrow-mindedness of what can’t really compare with the atrocities Stalin was perpetrating while Llewellyn was writing his book. The gigantic force of the state, wielded by a jealous, paranoid madman, was able to generate a holocaust in the Ukraine, and throughout Russia, that makes Llewellyn’s bleak vision — shot through with beauty and with joy at the bleakness — seem positively naive. That’s not Llewellyn’s fault exactly, though. History, indifferent alike to justice and desire, will always be grimmer than dystopia.
 


“Passers-by no longer pay attention to the corpses of starved peasants
on a street in Kharkiv, 1933.”

 

Dystopian Fashion

Posted on by

Hollywood loves dystopias. They’re blockbusters with brains – mass market morsels with box office potential just waiting for grad students and culture writers to dissect, contextualize, and elevate. Regardless of whether the movie is meant to be camp or self-serious, the stories and themes need to be as intricately drawn as the world creation of fantasy films and novels, yet still rooted in some recognizable reality. In the simplest, and perhaps most confusing of terms, a dystopia is the opposite of a utopia. Dystopias aren’t the same as post-apocalyptic anarchy. That might be the origin of the dystopia, but after the chaos comes control. In a dystopia, the miserable structures are institutionalized – whether by a government, a corporation, or technology.

On one level, dystopias are entirely artifice. Everything is manufactured and tightly controlled to support whatever claim the controlling force has given for its power, from language, to information, to material goods. Individuals are dehumanized, and uniformity reigns. But with all the deconstruction of the plots and themes and texts and Cave allegories, it’s easy to overlook how the films are styled to show the audience a new and bleak world. What might seem an afterthought can become one of the most important elements of telling the visual story, exposing informative elements and details of the society that’s been created. Along these lines, I’m most interested in how wardrobe choices can illuminate something crucial about the world of a film.

Or: what will we wear when everything turns to shit? And why does it matter?

Why, for example, do all of the characters in the “real world” of The Matrix have to wear thin, holey, ill-fitting sweaters? What, beyond its blatant gesture to noir, is the meaning or significance of Rick Dekard’s trench coat? Why do all of the clothes in Children of Men just look…normal? In this essay I want to examine the great costumes in Gattaca and The Hunger Games — two examples of films with particularly weird dystopian fashion — to suggest some ways to think about costumes in the broader context of Hollywood’s visions of Dystopia.

Just as there are half a dozen varieties of dystopias in films, the costumes are similarly varied. Broadly speaking costumes in these films tend to fit into three categories: minimalist, over-the-top gaudy and garish, or retro poverty. Even something as straightforward as minimalist clothes can mean different things in different films. In Los Angeles Plays Itself Thom Anderson notes that films like to put the bad guys in modernist homes. Though of course not the point of modernist designs, the starkness of the sleek minimalism can easily be manipulated to signify some sort of deranged obsession with the superficial. Perhaps the ubiquity of high design might make that jump more difficult today, but with the right tone and the introduction of a pre-established villain, the minimalist home itself becomes the opposite of the calm utopia it was intended to be. Instead, the home becomes sinister, vapid and empty, not only of furniture, but of tenderness and humanity too. In other words, the good guys are never as well dressed as the bad guys.

Andrew Niccol’s 1997 film Gattaca presents the audience with a “not-too-distant future” where potential is predetermined by genetics. Employment and educational opportunities and advancement are set from birth, and liberal eugenics are used to manipulate genes to ensure the best possible outcome for people before they are even born. In this world, there are the successful and there are the defective and there is no real in between. Your genes tell the only story that employers need to know. Ethan Hawke’s Vincent is one of the defectives, with a life projection of only 30 years due to a heart condition who uses the black market to assume the identity of a genetically ideal person in order to become an astronaut.

The clothes in the world of the genetically superior are sleek, modern, and minimalist. The men wear impeccably tailored suits, All of the colors are either dark or neutral. Men and women wear their hair slicked back neatly and tightly. At the highest level of genetic perfection, and correspondingly prestigious places of employ, everything is pressed and starched. The white cotton shirts that peek out of the somewhat androgynous suits are flawless. In essence, no individuality needs to be shown through the clothing, because anything that you’d ever need to learn about a person you could learn through a simple gene report. Though we never find out where the mandates for these sorts of clothes originate, it would be reasonable to think that it likely started with the government or a corporation. In Gattaca, individual agency is rare. But the clothes represent an implicit acceptance of the world that they’re in – the shame of their flaws and individuality are so deeply ingrained in all of the characters that a different way of life and dress likely does not even occur to them. Even Jude Law’s crippled Jerome who doesn’t leave his home dresses in bespoke suits and vests.

Those outside of this top echelon still dress in muted colors, but the outfits are ever so slightly more rumpled. The cops and private investigators sport noir like Fedoras and unassuming suits. Those at the lowest level, the janitors, wear uniforms too. Everyone has their place, and every place has its predictable dress. No one would be mistaken as being part of an elevated status. Genetic makeup and class are intertwined.

There’s a brief suggestion of subversion when Uma Thurman’s Irene goes out for the night with her hair down and wavy, in a form fitting gold sequin gown. In this scene she even acknowledges that the pianist that they’re watching couldn’t play as beautifully as he does without his flaw (extra fingers). Perhaps the wild hair and seductive gown represent individuality peeking through outside of the workplace. But the shame permeates the night off too. Work, perfection, and the company define and shackle our characters, and it’s where this otherwise “perfect” society starts to crack. Though it might be beneficial for insurance agencies and companies to know the exact genetic potential of all of its employees, once genetic discrimination becomes institutionalized, leaving no room for individual advancement or self-betterment, the individuals begin to falter. Jude Law’s character commits sucidie after realizing that his life in a wheelchair in this society is no life at all. Afraid of their own humanity and fearful of flaws, the characters resign themselves to the standards of their own society, reinforced by dress and presentation. It’s not an injustice, it’s just the way things are. Ethan Hawke’s character subverts the system only for his individual gain by conforming to its expectations – altering himself to meet their demands and exfoliating away as much of himself as possible.

Gary Ross’s adaptation of The Hunger Games is somewhat more simplistic and ultimately more frustrating. In this post-revolution world, there are the haves and the have nots and material goods are the only determinant. In the movie we get no explanation as to why the society is divided as it is. Why do the people in the Capitol get to be there? Intelligence? Money? Birth? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Much has already been made about the disappointment that some avid fans of the book felt upon seeing some of the film’s representations of the costumes, but for our purposes we’re only going to talk about what we actually saw on screen in light of what the movie tells us about the world.

Those in the Capitol dress in lavish and gaudy clothes, reeking of invasive and discriminating excess that suggests both Marie Antoinette and a 1980s Wall Street Banker. The ladies wear puffy sleeves, full faces of white makeup, 1920s bee-stung lips, and neon shade of hair color. The men wear sparkly suits and facial hair so intricate that it resembles a tattoo. Grooming and appearance are clearly of great importance in the Capitol and everyone who resides there has both the money and the time to execute these looks daily.

In contrast, Katniss’s mining town of District 12 looks straight out of Harding-era West Virginia coal towns, with the earthy colored trousers and suspenders for the men, and modest knee length, short sleeved cotton dresses for the women. Makeup is non-existent, hair color is natural, and faces are smeared with soot. This is supposed to be a desperate people. Putting the citizens of District 12 in frocks that look like they were transported from The Great Depression could be a way to keep morale down. Not only do they have to lead miserable, impoverished lives, but they don’t even get any updated poverty clothes. It’s likely this was just an affectation of the movie, though, trying to make poverty look prettier thanks to the blinding revisionism of a style of clothes almost 100 years old.

Excusing the poverty porn of District 12, the initial division is striking. The contrast between Katniss in her drab blue dress and Effie in her magenta power suit sharing the same stage perfectly conveys the vast wealth disparity. Effie has everything, and Katniss has nothing. But once the film moves forward, and the tributes are transported to the capitol, things become less coherent. After examining the controlled and limited options for dress in Gattaca, The Hunger Games looks like it is verging on potential anarchy already. The varieties of dress are just too great. Everyone in the Capitol is so loudly individualistic, authoritarian control is hard to reconcile. But perhaps this is where The Hunger Games is a bold departure from the Gattaca-like uniformity. The control and the power is so pleasing to folks in the Capitol that they are willing to support the state since it allows them a superficial leniency in dress and decoration.

The makeovers for the tributes, though, seem inconsequential to the society in the movie. It’s all for show and entertainment and essentially looks like little more than fattening the pig before the slaughter, and has little to do with the power structures in place. Perhaps the fire costume was indeed more subversive in the books, but in the filmed adaptation it was more difficult to find the significance.

We could assume that the effeminate clothes and seemingly relaxed gender standards in The Capitol represent the government’s half hearted way of convincing those privileged enough to live there that they are indeed part of a liberal society. But when we step back and look at the evil oppressors in The Capitol as those in the districts might, it seems a strange choice on the part of the author and filmmaker to dress the bad guys effeminately. Is the point to just scoff at the excess and stop there, or is there something inherently dangerous in equating gay identity with the immorality of The Capitol? It becomes even more problematic considering the fact that beyond the suggestive clothes and makeup, we don’t see any sort of realized gay identity on screen – things are aggressively heteronormative. The ambiguity of the purpose of putting the bad guys in effeminate clothing ends up hurting the story, because it shouldn’t be a question that we have to ask, and it is irresponsible to leave it to unclear.

There are many other films to investigate. Sometimes clothes are just clothes, but in these dystopian films, they can be as meaningful and telling as a working knowledge of Huxley and Plato, even when the choices don’t quite seem to work.