As humans, we have
always wondered what the future holds for us. As a child, I often imagined
futures with advanced technologies like flying cars, and teleportation, but as
I grew older I have been exposed to various forms of media and the inner
workings of our society. Suddenly, the perfect, utopian future I dreamed of was
accompanied by the possibility of oppressive governments, abuse of advanced
technologies, and nuclear war. This dystopian future is constantly picked over
its utopian counterpart when it comes portraying it in media and can affect how
we see our own world. Further analysis of science-fiction media, specifically
in video games and television, in the light of Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man and the Cold War will highlight why future
dystopian societies are so prevalent as opposed to utopias and what effects
they have on today’s society moving forward.
An obvious aspect
of dystopian bias is the fact that there is going to be much more conflict and
action to entertain the viewer or player. Playing a game such as Fallout 3 where you fight in a
post-apocalyptic world dominated by insane thugs and mutated creatures with
your trusty plasma rifle after a nuclear war is most likely going to be much
more entertaining than living out the ideal life with robot maids and
made-to-order food. However, The Sims
series seems to thrive off of this exact kind of gameplay. I’m guilty of
putting countless hours micromanaging my digital household; from making sure I
get enough sleep for work or doing the laundry, I enjoy doing these seemingly
meaningless tasks. Of course, the game throws in some chaos to mix it up a
little bit, but for the most part I try to make my life in The Sims as utopian as possible. Utopian media is less common, but,
as evidenced by The Sims, is
completely viable in its own right just in a different way. Examining the
comparison further will reveal why dystopian is still more prevalent regardless
of either’s entertainment value.
Our species’
history provides us with valuable information we can use for future decisions.
Looking back on World War II and the Nazi regime, it is extremely reasonable to
say that the Holocaust was a terrible, terrible moment for the entire human
population. But the context the world see’s this event is decided by the
context in which we live in today. If the Germans won and we lived in a Nazi
dominated world, would I be okay with the Holocaust? Possibly; history is
written by the victors. Science fiction takes full advantage of this contextual
characteristic of history. “Science fiction allows us to apprehend the present as history.” (Moylan 26) In other words,
as we play science fiction games or watch futuristic television shows, we
contextualize it with the world we live in now. Fallout 3 takes place after a massive nuclear war between China and
the United States over oil. That level of conflict is not going to happen in
the anytime soon (hopefully), but its not hard to imagine the two major
superpowers in the world going at it for the world’s last supply of oil. It is
realistic to think that Fallout 3’s
World War III can happen while keeping in mind today’s tensions between China
and the United States, and their consumption of oil. This is opposed to
wishfully thinking that everyone is going to get along and switch to cleaner
energy sources. Society clings to the more realistic future. Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man was written in 1964,
the height of tensions during the Cold War. As a result his philosophies reflect
the industrial society that existed at the time and is still mostly relevant to
what is actually happening today. Marcuse elaborates on the pseudo-freedom the
democratic and capitalistic society provides. “Today political power asserts
itself through its power over the machine process and over the technical organization
of the apparatus.” (Marcuse Ch. 1) What Marcuse is alluding to is that people
in positions of power are obsessed with efficiency, making profit, and getting
ahead of there competitors by controlling the methods and by extension the
people that contribute to their success. For example in the 1960’s, the United States government was doing
everything possible to advance its technology to eclipse the Soviet Union
militarily while stifling the Soviets progress. This included interrogating
their own people in a wave of investigations known as the Red Scare that sought
to weed out spies, but was mostly just rhetoric (Miller). Today, it also makes sense
when applied to a big business controlling where they produce their product.
Abusing the cheap manual labor and questionable working conditions overseas
only benefits that company. Looking onward, we can utilize past and present
day’s context to contribute to our outlook on our future. It is ingrained in
our minds from the Cold War that a grim future is more realistic, which makes
it more sensible and enjoyable to theorize about.
False
needs are “those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular
social interests in his repression.” (Marcuse Ch. 1) The impression that I need
to purchase the newest and fastest iPhone to replace my current one that still
works perfectly fine, or that I think Obama is not doing a good job just
because his approval rating sits at thirty-eight percent are false needs. These
kind of predispositions have been embedded into my subconscious by Apple and by
Obama’s opponents. True needs, when fulfilled, cause true satisfaction in an
individual. The Cold War was full of false needs that were superimposed onto
Americans by the United States government. Propaganda was used to portray the
Soviets as evil and totalitarian while portraying the United States as the
beacon of hope and freedom in the world (Chisem). Citizens blindly believed
this propaganda because of the fear induced by the possibility of a nuclear
war, or as Marcuse writes, “the
prevalence of repressive needs is an accomplished fact, accepted in ignorance
and defeat.” With the collapse of the Soviet Union these false needs
that blinded them disappeared. Heading into the 21st century, it
started to become clearer that the United States is and was not the protector
of capitalism and civil liberties. The true needs that include protecting our
privacy from espionage and not getting involved in morally questionable wars
were coming to a head in the 1990’s and this is reflected in the shift of how
future societies were being portrayed. For example, The Jetsons first premiered in 1962 and is all about the lives of
the Jetson family living in a utopian society. Besides the antics present in
any cartoon, the Jetsons live life carefree with every convenience at the tip
of their fingers. Its popularity was perpetuated by the false needs that were
present at the time; the United States is and always will be the center of
technological advancement and a carefree lifestyle. Today, shows such as Revolution are more popular. Revolution chronicles the hardships of
living in a bleak, post-apocalyptic future following a worldwide blackout.
Americans are realizing their true needs of stopping corruption or else it can
lead to the realistic dystopian futures that we all love to watch but never
want to happen.
If
things are going well in a country, generally it makes everyone a little
happier, or incites positive thinking.
According to Marcuse, positive thinking is the general acceptance of the
status quo (Marcuse Ch. 7). When something strays from the norm, this incites
negative thinking. According to Marcuse, negative thinking, “is the principle
which governs the development of concepts, and contradiction becomes the
distinguishing quality of Reason.” (Marcuse Ch. 7) Negative thinking raises
concerns and causes questioning when something is off the status quo. Marcuse
also says that negative thinking is an aspect of Reason, or science, which means
that questioning the norm (a.k.a. the scientific method) is good for furthering
reasoning and science. Positive thinking is not inherently good nor is negative
thinking bad. Accepting the status quo is not in the best interest of society
if it is full of superimposed false needs. For example, Reagan toted that the
United States would become a new “utopia” with the fall of the Soviet Union
when in reality he was taking advantage of the situation to pursue his own
goals and start a new era of conservative hegemony. (Moylan 184) People were
thinking positively about losing their longtime foe and were so blinded by
it they didn’t see the covert operations
occurring in Nicaragua, or “the fiscal write-off of entire geographical regions
and masses of humanity that were regarded as no longer, or not yet, worthy of
preservation or protection by the leaner and meaner economic machine.” (Moylan
184) However, time passed and the hegemony continued to exploit the public for
their own gain by going into more wars in Iraq and Kosovo, “ignoring the
non-white populations”, and the domestic redistribution of wealth. (Moylan
185).Americans began to see the strays from the status quo of battling against
the evil Soviets and being all about freedom. Negative thinking took hold and people
began to realize the true needs of the country. This negative thinking is
reflected in the depiction of our future and is why people gravitate towards dystopian
types of science fiction. The people of the world are embracing negative
thinking by showing what our future could actually become. There are times when positive thinking arises
again, notably the patriotism and unity following September 11th,
2001 and its subsequent use to exploit the country by passing the Patriot Act
and engaging in two wars; but for the most part the 21st century has
been defined by negative thinking.
A
combination of context, true needs, negative thinking, and the end of the Cold
War have all cumulated in our fascination with a desolate future. Knowing this,
it is still a question of why is it relevant and why we should care whether we
foresee a bleak society or a flawless one. Questioning the man in charge is of
upmost importance in order to keep him in check. When we sacrifice all of our
reservations and logic about a ruling hegemony then the “therapeutic task of
philosophy would be a political task, since the established universe of
ordinary language tends to coagulate into a tota1ly manipulated and
indoctrinated universe.” (Marcuse Ch. 7) That is, by giving in and
carelessly taking what our leaders tell us as the truth we are giving them all
they need to “manipulate and indoctrinate” the world we live in. By thinking
and viewing dystopian, we are implanting in our minds the worst-case scenario
of our future. No one wants to live in the radiation filled wasteland of Fallout 3, so what can we do about it
now? Keep an eye on the Congressmen who side with big oil companies and
lobbyists and vote them out if they keep advocating against greener, renewable
alternatives. Sticking with oil would keep the U.S. locked into using fossil
fuels and lead to inevitable conflict when those resources dwindle in the
future. If governments and/or big corporations had complete control over the public,
they would superimpose false needs as much as they please. They could make us
think that we’re going to live in a utopian world where the biggest issue is
what kind of robot maid am I going to buy because I’m tired of pushing buttons
(Hanna). Along with surrendering our free will, it is important we notice the
way dystopian and utopian media is presented to us so we don’t tumble down the
slippery slope to totalitarianism. In the beginning of the game Portal, you are given no backstory to your character, no plot, and
no sense of who you are or where you are. Your only source of instruction is
coming from the seemingly helpful robot named GLaDOS. She is your mass media.
Marcuse writes that media, “shape(s) the universe of communication in which the
one-dimensional behavior expresses itself.” (Marcuse Ch. 4) In Marcuse’s view,
media shapes what society expresses and finds important. It imposes its views,
which come from a higher echelon of officials, onto its people. GLaDOS works in
this way, as she shows us what is important to learn to play the game. We have
no other knowledge so who are we to question her and the apparent utopian
environment around us. If society starts just accepting whatever the media
spews out as the truth, there would be no true satisfaction in the world.
Although Chell eventually overcomes GLaDOS through her skepticism and quick thinking,
a counter example of people accepting what is told to them regardless of the
source can be seen in Fallout 3.
Before the nuclear war, people would buy spots in giant vaults so they could
wait out the nuclear war and the terrors that would follow. Commercials were
made displaying how perfect vault life would be (see link), but in reality the
vaults were actually psychology experiments and each vault had unique
alterations to test its tenants (e.g. containing massive amounts of weapons, a cloning machine, or all females). These
people took the commercial at face value as a utopia away from the inevitable
dystopia and it led to their ultimate demise.
It is
unfortunate that society often has a dreary view of the future. A future where
a “big brother” is always watching you or one that’s been devastated by an
apocalypse. Who doesn’t want to live in a utopia? Realistically this is not the
case and knowing this, we express and view science fiction that mainly depicts
the dystopian side. Society hasn’t always been like this with the utopian view
being somewhat more popular during the Cold War when American culture was
entrenched in false needs and positive thinking. These two factors drove people
to realistically believe that the human race could advance enough to live in a
utopia as portrayed by The Jetsons.
With emergence of more true needs and negative thinking, dystopia has dominated
recent science fiction. People know that the government and big business isn’t
all out to help you and in fact they spy on their own people. This results in science
fiction being more dystopian based as that is what we realistically see as being
our future. The importance of this cultural shift cannot be overstated as it is
correlated to us keeping our freedom from oppression. The government has the
ability to spread propaganda and continue to spy on us to create the same Cold
War sentiments shared by Americans of that time period. If we don’t keep questioning
those in charge, there is no one to stop them from stomping all over us. Dystopia
should not be our future, as long as we keep talking about it.
Bibliography
Portal. October 9th , 2007. Valve Corporation. Nov.
19th, 2013. Video Game.
Fallout 3. October 28th, 2008. Bethesda Softworks. Bethesda
Game Studios. Nov. 19th , 2013. Video Game.
Hanna,
William, dir. "Rosie the Robot." Dir. Joseph Barbera. The
Jetsons. ABC: 23 Sep 1962. Television.
Kripke,
Eric, dir. Revolution. NBC: 17 Sep 2012. Television.
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man.
Boston: Beacon, 1964. Web.http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odmcontents.html
Moylan, Tom. Scraps of the Untainted Sky:
Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia . Boulder: Westview Press, 2000.
eBook.
<http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=acls&cc=acls&idno=heb07710.0001.001&node=heb07710.0001.001:4.1&view=image&seq=4&size=100>.
Miller,
Arthur. "McCarthyism." American Masters. PBS, 23 Aug
2006. Web. 4 Oct 2013. <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/arthur-miller/mccarthyism/484/>.
Chisem,
James. "U.S. Propaganda and the Cultural Cold War." e-International
Relations. N.p., 16 Aug 2012. Web. 13 Dec 2013.
<http://www.e-ir.info/2012/08/16/u-s-propaganda-and-the-cultural-cold-war/>.
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