Dystopia

About: Dystopia is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2146 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15163 citations. The topic is also known as: cacotopia.

9. Solomon Nikritin: The Old and the New

Abstract: This chapter focuses on a single work, i.e. the painting, The Old and the New. A Group Portrait , by Solomon Borisovich Nikritin (1898-1965). Nikritin is one of the most original and mysterious artists of Russia's second avant-garde. On one level, the theme is simple, conventional, and entirely consonant with the code of opposites that was motivating and molding Soviet culture, especially during the pre-war period, Capitalism versus Communism, the West versus the USSR, the individual versus the collective, degeneracy versus health, utopia versus dystopia. The particular response of the Vsekokhudozhnik Art Commission to The Old and the New should be regarded as part of the general, monolithic reaction to any aesthetic system that deviated from the norms of Socialist Realism, including Nikritin's Polyrealism which, of course, was too fluid to fit the ideological canon. Keywords: Communism; dystopia; Socialist Realism; Solomon Borisovich Nikritin; Soviet culture; The Old and the New ; utopia

Orgy of Looking: The Construction of the L.A. Rebellion in the British Press

Abstract: This analysis is about the reporting of the L.A. Rebellion of 1992 in Great Britain and in particular one photograph of it that was widely circulated in the European press. I have never been to Los Angeles, but I feel as though I know it. From its future, glimpsed in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), to its present on T.V. in the series L.A. Law, to its past in detective stories, from Dashiell Hammett's novels to Starsky and Hutch in the '70s--Los Angeles is a place that I know, but do not know at all. L.A. is a repetitive multiplicity of overlapping, conflicting, and contradictory representations that each contribute to a conglomerate image. As Mike Davis succinctly describes it: "The ultimate world-historical significance and oddity of Los Angeles is that it has come to play the double role of utopia and dystopia for advanced capitalism."(1) Across the wealth of images, stories, and legends Los Angeles is a representation that is over-determined. By over-determined I mean--in the psychoanalytic sense--that a representation is always a compromise, a result of a layering of meaning that cannot be reduced to a single content. Thus the analysis of any image ought to open up that sedimented and congealed layering of overdetermined cultural meanings. In the same way, no doubt, the L.A. Rebellion--the instigation of which was attributed to the unjust acquittal of four white police officers on trial for the beating of Rodney King in 1992--was an over-determined event. On the afternoon of April 30, 1992 the image of L.A. erupted on the media highways of Britain's TV., radio, and regional evening newspapers as a dystopia. London's regional newspaper, the Evening Standard featured a front-page headline, "TORCHING OF LOS ANGELES," with a half-page color photograph below it. The photograph, "wired" from L.A. through Reuters to the newspaper's London office, showed a row of five police officers standing in front of several burning buildings. That same evening the national daily newspapers were busy preparing their issues for the following early morning editions. The next morning, May 1, their front pages were dominated by news of the "riots." The image that was preferred by most of these newspapers was the same photograph used the previous night by the Evening Standard. Significantly all but one of the "Tory papers" (those more or less politically affiliated with the governing Conservative Party) chose to use this image on the front page. Inside the newspapers further coverage was given, with The Sun even abandoning its "page three" habit of showing naked-breasted "pin-up" photos of women for three subsequent issues to make way for more photos of the L.A. riots. Interestingly, the two liberal newspapers (non-party affiliated) The Independent and The Guardian both used the same rather indistinct black and white photograph, while the "labour" tabloid The Mirror, in isolation, considered an incident about Princess Di to be noteworthy front page news. But it was the picture of a row of police standing firm in front of burning buildings that confronted most newspaper shop and kiosk customers that morning with the usual row of (Tory) newspapers, The Star, The Sun, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express and The Times announcing the same event using the same photograph. From the plethora of representations available of L.A., this one photograph demands an analysis as the picture that gave the U.K.'s newspaper readers their first impression of the riots. More than seven million people bought newspapers that morning with that photograph staring back at them, and the actual readership of newspapers is estimated at double or triple the circulation figures. Here, the common assertion that newspapers compete with one another in the content of their pages to maximize profitability and circulation figures is given a practical test. On May 1, 1992 the front page editorial stance among the Tory papers was virtually unanimous. …

Eutopia, Dystopia and Climate Change

Abstract: This chapter develops a Weberian ideal typology of climate fictions built around five measures of formal utopianism and six measures of substantive response to climate change. The five formal variants of utopian fiction are the classical eutopia; the critical eutopia; the classical dystopia; the critical dystopia; and the fiction set in a reality neither significantly better nor significantly worse than our own, the non-utopia we can term the base reality text. The six variants of climate response are denial; mitigation (including climate engineering); positive adaptation; negative adaptation; deep ecological anti-humanism; and pessimistic fatalism. This typology will be applied to the analysis of a range of “literary” and “genre” climate fictions drawn from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, the United States and South Africa.