During this lesson we got a start on and ended up finishing our essays so that they are ready to hand in for the deadline, I came in having done around 600 words already for my essay and managed to finish it by the end of the day with only 1% of my essay that happened to be plagiarized.
Within Dystopian films there tend to be four main types of control in which society suffers, in order for the situation to be prevalent. The first of these controls is technological control, this idea is very straight forward and a great example is the terminator series, the whole idea behind this is humans being overtaken by a form of technology whether that be a program that slowly kills us off or to be overrun by robots the whole concept is about technology taking over. After this we have corporate control which in most cases depicts a large company using their power to control the masses whether that be through advertising and subliminal messages or through force and power. Another type of control is religious and or philosophical, this type of controls more than often relies on the masses being under a form of psychological control through a religious or philosophical leader much like a dictator.For this type of control people can be restricted from certain things due to beliefs or will be forced to oblige by certain rules for the same reasons. Finally the last reason which tends to come up frequently is bureaucratic control, this is when a large non elected government tends to have control over people somewhat like a dictatorship with the intention of control and to prevent people from speaking out and breaking rules.
The pre 90s film I have decided to discuss is blade runner which was released in 1982 and made by Ridley Scott. The basic plot of the film is that Rick Deckard, a blade runner, is tasked by the police force to track down and retire (kill) a group of four replicants which are beings that resemble humans but are physically superior. The film then follows Deckard on his journey to retire the replicants that had returned to earth whilst the replicants try and find ways to lengthen there four year lifespan.The controls shown within this film are technology due to the design of replicants and how they are robotic and it is also somewhat corporative due to the fact that it was a large corporation that created the replicants and are as a result responsible for their rogue activities. The fear of technology was very much alive at the time and has a lot of ground behind it, as blade runner was made in 1982 all fears would’ve been prevalent a year or two before. Upon doing some research in this area I managed to find that throughout the 1970s the Japanese company known as WABOT was producing and advancing robotics up to the point where they had machines that were able to “communicate-with a person in Japanese and to measure distances and directions to the objects using external receptors, artificial ears and eyes, and an artificial mouth” (University, 1985) as well as this the robots “walked with his lower limbs and was able to grip and transport objects with hands that used tactile-sensors.” (University, 1985) This shows that at the time robotics was thoroughly advancing and the future idea of robots fighting humans seemed completely plausible. Despite the robots being described as being less intelligent than humans the fear that they could in the future have power over us was sure to be looming over people at the time.
The post 90s dystopian film I have chosen to talk about is Maze runner, a brief rundown of the story is that a group of young boys and men are trapped behind stone walls surrounded by a maze type structure in which it is extremely difficult to attempt to escape. They later find that they have been placed here for reasons unknown and have been given the only message “WCKD” is good. The hints and exposition we are given clearly tell us that Maze runner is set within a world that has the clear concept of a used world meaning that the worlds resources have been used up and the last people alive are left with the remains, in this case however the cause of this used world is the fact that the sun caused extreme drought and even killed many people within society and afterwards a deadly virus was spread throughout. The obvious category that this film falls into is the fear of corporate control but that wasn't an overwhelming fear at the time. However the extreme heat and drought is a clear reference to global warming and the affects it may have within the future if nothing is done. This idea is supported by the release time of the film and book as IMDB says the film began filming within 2013 only 2 years after one of the hottest years since 2005 excluding the previous year of 2010. As well as this the original book was released in 2009 which means it would've been written sometime before so. As a result of this I managed to find an environmental report from the website Emergency Management which states "The South-eastern U.S. was seized in a multiple-year drought. It was anticipated that Atlanta and other areas of the Southeast would eventually run out of water. Although we are prepared for electrical power outages, the impact of no water for a metropolitan area of the nation was a daunting hazard to contemplate."(Holdeman, 2010) We can see from this report that the fear of extreme weather was an understandable idea at the time, from this I believe that maze runner explores not the fear of government control but how corporations lack of care and control at this current time could lead to catastrophes and even a time in the future where the same scenario that we see in the film could arise.
The film I have chosen to write about for my final point is terminator one. In this film we follow Sarah Conner an average woman in the 80s when she is met by a man called Kyle Reese who claims to be from the future, this of course she isn't a big believer of until she is attacked by a t-800 terminator which threatens to kill her as in the future it is her son that will lead the rebellion against these raging machines. The real threat behind these robots is a computer program known as Sky net a program that causes the uprising of these robots and almost costs the fall of man. Due to this synopsis it is clear to see that this film would fall into the category of fear of technology. At the time of production this film was well placed as things such as the home computer were being perfected more and more by the day and with this something known as computer phobia was soon to become a more popular phrase. There are known symptoms of computer phobia and an article on the Atlantic quotes. "These can take such forms as fear of physically touching the computer or of damaging it and what's inside it, a reluctance to read or talk about computers, feeling threatened by those who do know something about them, feeling that you can be replaced by a machine, become a slave to it, or feeling aggressive towards computers."(Lafrance, 2015) This tells us that the fear of computer was definitely real at the time and something such as Skynet would cause extreme fear within the people at the time. As well as this on the same article there was research conducted via "google tracks" which shows us through a graph how much the word has been used in books throughout the years and how it slowly rises up to its upmost peak at around 1985 which would you know is the exact release year as terminator 1.Which happens to show how the growing fear of the computer, the exact reason why the terminators took control in the first film, was a growing concern at the time and not only that but managed to peak interest the exact time of the release of the first film.
These films show overall how topics of dystopian films can be highly influenced by the fears of the time based off the type of societal control such as how terminator and Blade runner were released around similar times and both have a technological control towards them based off the events at the time. This idea is also shown in maze runner although being based in the future it also addresses the fears that would be around at the time as one of the most recent fears in human history is the challenge we face with global warming and the massive repercussions it could have on our world as well as how it could lead to a world where the government has control of what we are allowed to do in order to keep the world under control. I believe this essay explores the different types of control within dystopian films and also manages to explain how they reflect on the time of production and release.
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