Crave for Dystopia in the 21st Century

MA-Thesis The Professional Master Film Studies Faculty of Humanities

Jael Ragowan 10186999

With guidance of: Blandine Joret

Word Count: 22.188

June 24 2016

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Abstract:

Dystopia - spectacle – technology - media ecology – spectatorship – psychoanalysis.

Dystopia in film has derived from literature and has existed for many years. However, there have been certain periods in which dystopia arose, disappeared and reappeared. Dystopia has not precisely been defined in film, though dystopian cinema is considered to include films in a futuristic setting with a moral message or critique on society. Since the 2000s there is a reappearance of dystopian films, more than before, and this trend is continuing today. There has been a shift in dystopia in film since the beginning of the twenty-first century compared to dystopia in film before. The films have now become dystopian futuristic tales with different moral critiques, such as critiques on technology, ecology, reality-television and the frequent use of female protagonists and more violence are representable for 21st century dystopian films. Moreover, the new target audience of these dystopian films is young-adults. I state that this shift began with Avatar (Cameron, 2004) representing critiques on contemporary society, showing a dystopia in the narrative while portraying a utopia or WALL-E (Stanton, 2008) critiquing a consumer waste culture. The Hunger Games (Lawrence and Ross, 2012-2015) and Divergent (Burger and Schwentke, 2014-2016) franchises are very much representable for the new look 21st century dystopia has gotten. The shift in dystopian cinema is stimulated by the new possibilities of technological effects to create alternative and plausible worlds. This has made 21st century films more spectacle films and altogether, this has made place for an active spectatorship and 21st century dystopias can be marked successfully.

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Index

Abstract 2

Introduction 4

Chapter 1: A Brave New World or Hopeless Futures? 6 §1.1 The Origins of Dystopia 6 1.1.1 Dystopia’s Roots 6 1.1.2 Twenty-First Century Dystopia 8 §1.2 Dirty Realism 10 1.2.1 Dystopia’s Postmodern Perspective 11 1.2.2 Genre Convergence within Dystopian Cinema 13 1.2.3 Towards Dystopian Complexities 14 1.2.4 The Turn towards the Twenty-First Century 15 §1.3 Imaginary Worlds 16 1.3.1 Creating the Deceit of Dystopia 17 1.3.2 Plausible Spectacles 18 §1.4 Fresh Perspectives and De-Familiarization 20

Chapter 2: Dystopian Critiques and Moralistic Messages 25 §2.1 Big Brother Is Watching You 26 2.1.1 The Entertainment of Reality-Television 26 2.1.2 The Surveillance Culture and Panopticon Gaze 28 §2.2 Violent Warriors 30 2.2.1 “Panemet Circenses” 31 2.2.2 “Tonight, Turn Your Weapons to the Capital” 32 2.2.3 Desensitizing to Pleasurable Violence 33 §2.3 Ecology and Consumerism in Dystopia 36 2.3.1 WALL-E’s Garbage 36 2.3.2 Technology, Media and the Environment 37 2.3.3 Avatar Nexus to Ecology 38 2.3.4 Hollywood’s Gaia 40

Chapter 3: The Mesmerized Spectator 42 §3.1 Overpowering the Passive Spectator 43 3.1.1 Towards an Active Spectator 43 3.1.2 Becoming Part of the Imaginary World 45 3.1.3 Character Engagement 45 3.1.4 Generic Pleasure 46 §3.2 Transforming Heroines 47 3.2.1 Female Action Heroines 48 3.2.2 Girls on Fire 49 3.2.3 The Female Spectator 52 §3.3 Identifiable cultural forces 53 3.3.1 Mirroring Reality through Dystopian Cinema 54 3.3.2 The Ego and Reality 55

Conclusion 58

Bibliography 62

Media List 69

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Introduction Utopian dreams are often just truths before their time. - Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869)

Nowadays there is a shift in contemporary Hollywood cinema, a shift towards the production of more dystopian films. ‘Dystopia’ derives from the utopian theme and it involves a society that is undesirable or frightening. Avatar, for instance, is a combination of the utopian and dystopian theme. James Cameron created a utopian world of nature being destroyed by humans. Not coincidentally, this film falls within the science fiction genre. In the article “Fantasy vs. Science Fiction: James Cameron’s Avatar” (2009), Jon Evans clarifies that “historically, science fiction tends to lean towards dystopia and fantasy towards utopia” (n.pag.). According to Box Office Mojo Avatar had a box-office of over 2.7 billion dollars and, therefore, it is the highest-grossing movie ever made. This proves Avatar was an extremely popular film as it attracted people to massively go to the theaters. Avatar received the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and was nominated for nine categories, testifying the film’s appreciation within film industry. Currently, dystopian film series such as The Hunger Games and Divergent are immensely popular as well. The opening-weekends of the first and second part of The Hunger Games substantiate the popularity of these films. The past decennia the number of dystopian films has only increased. Why is there a crave for more dystopian films, while these films show much anxieties and violence? What makes ‘dystopia’ in contemporary cinema more appealing than before, or has there always been an appeal towards dystopian cinema? Hollywood feeds the appetite of young adult spectators with dystopian films, but what makes these films so successful? This leads me to my main question of this research: ‘In what way is the spectator immersed by dystopian cinema and therefore what makes these films so appealing in the twenty-first century?’ In this research, I will demonstrate dystopian cinema reflecting upon emerging themes in contemporary society. These films are multi-layered and draw attention to real-world issues regarding society, environment, politics, religions and technology. While cinema is known for being an escape for the spectator, especially in line with utopian ideas, dystopia shows a glimpse of reality. Has our socioeconomic structure and modern society made place for the need of alternative societies in cinema? What is the cultural and political meaning of these films in the twenty-first century? Dystopia can refer to many things and it evolved from Greek mythology into literature

4 and then to film. In this research I will define dystopia and contribute to film studies research by explaining the rise of and appeal to dystopian cinema in our twenty-first century. The methodology which will be used in this research is based upon a literature review and is supported by film analyses of Avatar, WALL-E and The Hunger Games- and Divergent series. I will use these analyses and relate this to film theory in order to interpret the meaning of these films through cultural analysis. With a semantic approach, I will show that these films share iconographic elements, such as the use of special effects to represent futuristic and plausible worlds, with desaturated colors and female protagonists. Additionally, I will shortly refer to other disciplines, drawing from political, philosophical, ecological, and cultural and social sciences. I will make a balance between older traditional and more recent sources, which represent the statements made in this research. Dystopia is well-researched in literary studies as the roots of dystopia lie within literature1. Besides this, the rise of dystopia is a recent debate in online newspapers and journals, such as The Wired and The Guardian, deriving from the rise of dystopia within novels. What differentiates this research is the focus on the different layers within dystopian cinema. Thus, I do not discuss dystopia linked to one embedded meaning or genre. In the past, this topic is often linked to other themes, such as critiques on society which are embedded in traditional theories, such as Marxism and social criticism. Similarly, I will discuss the embedded messages of dystopian cinema. However, I will focus on more recent film theory, regarding digital technology, surveillance culture, media ecology. I will highlight dystopia as a cinema of attractions and emphasis its relation to spectatorship. Besides this, I will draw attention to the aspects regarding dystopian cinema of specifically the twenty-first century. This last aspect, connected to spectatorship, is mostly what makes my research innovating and I will add an original contribution to the field on the highly popular, influential representations of contemporary dystopian cinema. I will begin with defining the origin and progression of dystopia in cinema and focus on how dystopia has developed within film genres. In the second chapter, I will stress the embedded critiques within dystopian cinema which are connected to the twenty-first century, ending this chapter with the frequent use of violence in dystopian cinema. Finally, I will emphasize how the spectator is immersed by these films. All-together this will clarify what makes dystopian cinema in the twenty-first century rise and be desired and successful.

1 The main texts explicating the origin of dystopia within literary studies are: Dark Horizons: science fiction and the dystopian imagination (Baccolini and Moylan 2003), Dystopian Literature: a theory and research guide (Booker 1994) and Mediated Utopias: from literature to cinema (Blaim and Gruszewska-Blaim 2015). 5

Chapter 1:

A Brave New World or Hopeless Futures?

In order to understand the crave for dystopia in the contemporary film industry, I will first give a brief history of the emergence and the course of dystopia through cinema. Dystopia in cinema derived from literature, as many novels with the theme ‘dystopia’ were chosen for a film adaptation. Arthur and Ludmila Gruszewska-Blaim clarify that “the broad framework of dystopian reality – the construction of the plot, setting and the characters – is relatively easily- transferable into the language of cinema” (72). Blaim explains that film adaptations of politically engaged utopian or dystopian fictions demonstrate their amplified sensitivity to changing socio-political conditions, but mostly to the radically different demands of the medium cinema itself (12). Blaim elucidates that to make a novel into a film, the film must undergo significant changes to make the film more successful. To grasp these changes, I will firstly explain the origins of dystopia, rooted in dystopian fiction within literary studies, and clarify what dystopia is. Moving on to the second section, I will elaborate on dystopia taking its course within cinema and stress the film genres dystopia belongs to. Next, I will demonstrate the influence of special effects in our digital age and the iconographic elements of the mise-en-scène within dystopian cinema. All-together, this clarifies what dystopian cinema is and what course it has taken towards the twenty-first century.

§1.1 The Origins of Dystopia

1.1.1 Dystopia’s Roots

Firstly, I will focus on the historical background of dystopia, starting in literary fiction. The term ‘dystopia’ positions itself in direct opposition with utopia, originating in Britain around 1516 (Goodwin 89). The word ‘utopia’ was first applied to a literary genre by the English Renaissance humanist Thomas More (1478–1535). He portrayed his imaginary ideal island in his book Utopia (1516). While ‘eutopia’ was known as a place where all is well, More came with the term ‘utopia’, which means ‘no place’, derived from the Greek. By using the word ‘utopia’ instead of ‘eutopia’ for his book, More wanted to accentuate that a eutopian place is too ideal to be true and so he refers to this ideal place which is ‘nowhere’ (Engeman 131). Both the word and the idea caught on well. Utopian literature often shows an ultimate optimism that people have an idealized past or imaginary future with an ideal functioning

6 society (Gerber 5). Utopia had its peak in the nineteenth-century and utopian fiction started with authors such as Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) and William Morris (1834-1896). Morris, for example, wrote The Time Machine in 1895, in which he portrays a utopian future society without class systems or authority, and H.G. Wells started with the idea that scientific advancements would outlaw war and poverty in his novel Men Like Gods (1923). As the twentieth century continued, authors were less and less convinced of scientific and political improvements, which utopian fiction emphasized. This was caused by the First World War, the Great Depression during the 1930s and the Second World War. The author Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) wrote A Brave New World (1932) in which scientific and social advantages created a grim world with a futuristic setting. With this, Huxley established a more dystopian perspective to the utopian novels. In the same way, the English novelist George Orwell (1903-1950) responded to the utopianism in the novels of Wells. He started to write dystopian novels in 1940, with his distinctive novel Nineteen Eighty-Four published in 1949. After the Second World War, the authors were motivated to build upon the political dystopian genre and a more clearly dystopian turn began to emerge. Claeys (2013) clarifies that “dystopia is usually supposed to be an inverted mirrored or negative version of utopia, the imaginary bad place as opposed to the imaginary good” (155). Thus, the dystopian genre evolved as a political critique genre against fascism and communism in the twentieth century (Couto 169). In the 1960s and 1970s dystopia faded, as the power of utopianism became more valuable again. Through the 1960s and mid-1970s the counterculture established as a cultural phenomenon. After the Depression-era, the ‘baby boomers’ created a counterculture, who celebrated sexuality, freedom of speech, universal human- and women’s rights and awareness regarding environmental damage caused by industrialization (Kidner, Bucur, Mathisen, McKee and Weeks 831). Sadly, certain developments, mainly the anti-war demonstrations, that were most prominent in 1967 and ending in 1973, led to the continuous turn towards dystopia during the course of the twentieth century. Hereafter, the pessimistic stories emerged, which affected the cyberpunk movement in the eighties. Through this movement, influenced by the scientific and technological changes, cyberpunk became a subgenre of science fiction, in line with dystopia (Baccolini and Moylan 174).

“In the 1980s, the utopian tendency came to an abrupt end. In the face of economic restructuring, right-wing politics, and a cultural milieu informed by an intensifying fundamentalism and commodification, sf writers revived and reformulated the dystopian genre” (Baccolini and Moylan 2).

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By creating visions of better open futures, utopianism developed a critique of the dominant ideology and gave an opportunity for an oppositional perspective as a way to cope with the changing social reality. Keith Booker (1994) states that dystopian literature “provides fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted or considered natural and inevitable” (The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social Criticism 19). Dystopia was used as a critical narrative form that worked against the grim of the economic, political and cultural climate. After real-time dystopias caused by regimes and wars in the twentieth century, totalitarian governments arose in dystopian fiction film, for example: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968), Planet of the Apes (Schaffner, 1968), A Brave New World (Brinckerhof, 1980) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (Radford, 1984) became extremely popular. Thus, it is clear that dystopia emerged in the twenty-first century, reacting to utopian fiction and contemporary conditions. Instead of critiquing political systems, such as fascism and communism in the twentieth century, dystopia now critiques consumerism, technology and ecology. Moylan indicates: “the critical dystopia will do more than simply depicts the accommodation with or the flight from that world” (157).

1.1.2 Twenty-First Century Dystopia

After the troubles of the late twentieth century, different matters arose in the twenty-first century. In the twentieth-century essential inventions arose, such as airplanes, automobiles, the radio, television, the computer, cellphones and in 1991 The World Wide Web was a fact. In the twenty-first century, Skype (2003), Google’s driverless car (2012), Apple’s iPod (2001), IPhone (2007) and IPad (2010) appeared. Even an AbioCor Artifical heart was used to replace the human heart at the start of this century in 2001. In 2001 the first widely released feature film to use motion capture to create characters emerged2 and in 2004 the first movie with all CGI background and live actors was created3. Furthermore, social media arose, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and search engines such as Wikipedia, Google and even Google Street view influenced society. Manuel Castells (2004) states that the rise of the individual-centered culture, the desire for co-experiencing and sharing through social interaction, has resulted in networked individualism (223). Eugenia Siapera responds to this in her book Understanding New Media (2012) and clarifies this “as the development of sociality

2 Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Sakaguchi, 2001) 3 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Conran, 2004). 8 takes this form we can see its compatibility with other changes within informational capitalism: for instance labour becomes on the one hand more autonomous (individuated) while it relies more and more on ad hoc networks” (200). Next, a global economic downturn and the Financial Crisis of the late 2000s took place. The largest terrorist attack ever occurs in New York on 9/11, taking the lives of more than three thousand citizens. This raised questions concerning terrorism and in the twenty-first century more terrorist attacks occurred, for example the bombings in Madrid in 2004, in Paris 2015 and in Brussels this 2016. Terrorism emerged as a massive concern in our western world and ongoing wars in Afghanistan started after the 9/11 attacks, continuing until 2014. Besides this, the awareness around global warming grew and large environmental disasters increased. The Asian tsunami of 2004 and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 have had a big impact on the earth, and according to Justin Gillis in the New York Times (2016) the year 2015 has been proven to be the hottest year ever. An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim, 2006) tried to create international public awareness of global warming and climate change. I argue that these happenings have influenced our twenty-first century and I would like to state dystopia does not necessarily represent the future, but rather critiques the past and present. The future that people fear is seen through the anxieties within dystopian cinema (156) and this creates a level of reflexivity. The Towering Inferno (Guillermin and Allen, 1974) portrays a severe fire in a skyscraper which was considered nonflammable, responding to people’s fears of the newly build skyscrapers. Besides this, a remarkable example is one of the episodes of the television series The Lone Gunmen (Carter, Gilligan, Shiban and Spotnitz, 2001). This is a thriller-drama series in which the creators draw attention to American conspiracy, such as government-sponsored terrorism or a surveillance society. In the first episode of this television series the members of the government conspire together to take over an airline, after which they fly the airplane into the World Trade Center and blame it on the terrorists in order to start a war. Six months later, the events of 9/11 were a realistic dystopia shown on television screens everywhere in the world. The twenty-first century dystopia is not so much concerning an extreme order or a society that is restrictive, but more a society broken down and one of disorder (Baccolini and Moylan 2). In dystopian tales of order, a totalitarian government or dictatorship has taken over and has imposed certain rules and restrictions on society. This was mostly after the Second World War. Dystopias concerning disorder, I argue, involve a society that has been broken down caused by specific environmental, human or political events. For example, the society in The Hunger Games and Divergent has been broken down and all that is left are the

9 twelve districts in The Hunger Games, or the factions in Chicago in Divergent. Also, WALL-E and Avatar take place on another planet, as humans had depleted Earth’s natural recourses and Earth became unlivable. Dystopian stories were influenced by technological changes and made it even more concerned with politics and power (Scholes 34). Subsequently, the loss of hope, shown in utopianism in the twentieth century, exacerbated and people wanted to abandon the misbeliefs and return to a pessimistic mood (Walsh 78). This worsened as wars and economic crises intensified and a different kind of atmosphere arose, in which fiction became gloomier and more rebellious. Dystopian films of the twenty-first century end with a gleam of hope, while this hope is not necessarily an optimistic end. The protagonist often loses one or more of his or her loved ones or needs to give up a part of his or her life (Spisak 58-9). Dystopian cinema did not have an optimistic ending before, whereas the 21st century dystopian cinema does end with hope (Cadden 307). Overall, in the twenty-first century there have been periods in which utopian and dystopian fiction alternated. I can now argue that there is a pattern of dystopia arising after rough times and war. Utopia was first applied by More and utopianism in literature became customary in the late nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. After the First and Second World War there was a rise of dystopia, while in the sixties and seventies a longing for peace and desire for utopian fiction rose. In the eighties dystopia came back, deriving from a response to the Vietnam War and punk as a counterculture of the hippies. In the 1990s there was a decline of dystopian films as there was an economic growth and increasing trust in the government in 1993, going on until the end of the twentieth century (Pittman 4). The philosopher Paul Virilio (2000) speculates that towards the end of the twentieth century the age of globalization began; people increasingly refuse to understand the physical and political text of the contemporary world (8). He mentions that war and technology drive history and he is deeply against the influence of technology (143). Dystopia noticeably emerged again in the twenty-first century, with dystopias of disorder (Baccolini and Moylan 2) instead of extreme order recognizable for the dystopias of the twentieth century. In dystopian fiction there is a desire for a better place and this desire concerns the critical politics in the film itself. This makes dystopian fiction, in literature and in film, a self-consuming text.

§1.2 Dirty Realism

In this section, I will explore the course of dystopia towards contemporary cinema. The roots of dystopian cinema lie within literature and there is an added value of cinema that makes

10 dystopian literature interesting for adaptations. As I already mentioned, according to Blaim (2015) the structure of the plot, setting and characters is relatively easy to adapt into cinema (72). The demand of the medium film changed towards more adaptations of politically engaged utopian and dystopian fictions. The Hunger Games and Divergent series are good examples of adaptations onto the screen. These franchises have been successful dystopian films in the twenty-first century, targeting a young adult audience. The Hunger Games created a new attraction to dystopian cinema for young adults, with the Divergent series yet to be made. The Hunger Games was quickly followed by the second film of the series: Catching Fire (2013), Mockingjay: Part One (2014) and finally Mockingjay: Part Two (2015). Similarly, the first Divergent film in 2014 was succeeded by Insurgent (2015) and Allegiant (2016). After understanding the course of dystopia deriving from literature, I will now specify what is considered ‘dystopian cinema’ today. From a postmodern perspective, I will look at the multiple genres which belong to dystopia in order to grasp the course of dystopia in cinema nowadays. Dystopia in cinema is mostly known as a theme within the adventure and science- fiction film genre. It generally constitutes a critique of existing social or political systems and reveals their flaws and contradictions (Booker, Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide 3). I state that dystopian cinema belongs to a hodgepodge of multiple genres: adventure, film noir, science-fiction and the mind-game genre all at once. It even shows aspects of horror and the western film genre. Dystopian cinema is considered an overarching theme associated with a dramatic decline in society. In the book Dark Horizons (2003) Thomas Patrick Moylan, academic and cultural critic within utopian and science fiction studies, clarifies that dystopian cinema gives the spectator the ability to register the impact of an ‘undetected’ social system on everyday lives (13). Ruth Levitas, well-known for her book The Concept of Utopia (1990), adds the conception that the role of utopia and dystopia is the education of desire (196), with a clear desire for a better place with a social transformation (181).

1.2.1 Dystopia’s Postmodernism Perspective

As social issues changed, the science fiction genre shifted from a Cold War generation to a postmodern generation. Modernism suggests that social, political and cultural progress is inevitable for society, while postmodernism exploits contradiction, fragmentation and instabilities of society (Hopkins 14-19). The American cultural theorist Frederik Jameson

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(1991) defines postmodernism in conjunction with the notion of late capitalism. According to Jameson, postmodernism represents a fundamental change in the course of economic development and the need to understand the ways in which global capitalism has created new conceptions of architecture, and the construction of culture itself (50). Postmodernism developed in a time of in which media culture established, focusing on the destruction of hierarchies and in fractures of world and time (53). Fractured time is what Jameson designates as ‘schizophrenia’, which can be defined as a loss of reality through the loss of historicity, leading to the past, present and future blending together (28). This can be applied to dystopian cinema as dystopian films belong to several genres, portraying a dystopian future with certain realities of the present or past. After representing totalitarian governments in the twentieth-century, the popularity of the science-fiction genre and further development of technology influenced dystopian cinema. In the mid-1980s cyberpunk, a newly emerged subgenre of science-fiction, was influenced by postmodernism and created more dystopian settings. The Blade Runner (Scott, 1982) is an example of this as it shows futuristic and dark aesthetics, and deals with themes of living beyond the means of technology or what it means to be human. Jameson describes the postmodern ‘dirty realism’ of cyberpunk as an ultimate historicist breakdown in which there is no longer a future to imagine. This is how a former futurological science fiction turns into realism and a representation of our present-day (286). Films that appeared after The Blade Runner were considered as a part of the neo-noir wave in the eighties (Doll and Faller 89- 100). The dark and downbeat neo-noir cinema started in the eighties, as a revived form of the French film noir genre: “the neo-noir films evidence a blurring of the two trends, the social dimension seeping into the policier genre films, while violent crime invades the social films” (Bould, Giltre and Tuck 105). These films reunite filmic visions of the future with everyday realities of metropolitan-life. Film scholar Christopher Sharrett states in his book Crisis Cinema (1993): “the disconnected temporality, the replicates and the pastiche city are all an effect of postmodern, postindustrial condition: wearing out, waste” (239). Postmodern film is open to blending different genres in the same film, using pastiche and being self-reflexive for the spectator. It undermines mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterization, while testing the audience’s suspension of disbelief. By blending different genre conventions into a multi-generic film, exploiting fragmentation and testing the self-reflexive spectator, dystopian cinema can be placed in a postmodern perspective.

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1.2.2 Genre Convergence within Dystopian Cinema

Dystopia is an ideal site for generic blends (Baccolini and Moylan 29) as it creates a different reality in which elements of different genres are bound together. Avatar is a great example; “a love story and shoot-em-up, scifi epic and western sage, hero’s quest and anti-war film, tech- noir” (Grabiner 5). Dystopian cinema collides with the science-fiction genre as it matches the generic aspects of science-fiction films. Dystopian films are set in futuristic settings, use many special effects and “create an imaginatively realized world which is always removed from the world we know or know of” (Neale 101). Science fiction and dystopia let us capture the present as history (Jameson 151). David Desser (1997) highlights that science fiction films are a “particularly valuable tool for cultural analysis – the themes and techniques of such films in any given era may be held as an index of the dominant political and ideological concerns of the culture” (110). In the article “The Glorious Incoherence of Divergent” (2014) Noah Berlatsky draws upon a connection between the Divergent series and science-fiction author Phlip K. Dick, as Dick was able to force the audience to fill in the gaps by creating discontinuous and self- aware universes. After a mature science fiction, ‘science fantasy’ emerged and relies on earlier writings from the 1920s and 1930s that re-emerged in the 1950s.

“The standard practice of these writers was to take an already established adventure story – a crime story, a western, a naval drama about clashing empires, a lost world story – and place it in space or on an alien world. The narrative was already known and readers would recognize it immediately, but it was decorated with trappings of the ‘fantastic’” (Davidson 12).

Avatar shows a convention of genres as Davidson (2010) states this film is a typical western, representing the cowboys and Indians, but also showing the science fantasy (12). The mind- game genre and science fantasy are good examples of films that contain genre convergences and this contributed to the course of dystopian cinema. I am convinced that the convergence of different genre conventions has created more innovative films with many layers, such as The Matrix and Avatar, in which the hero is caught between reality and an imaginary universe. In Hollywood Hybrids (2008) Ira Jaffe discusses how genre, style and generic references have begun to converge in recent films. Jaffe argues that this influences the evolution of narrative film and Richard Allen (1995) states: “any given genre film draws on themes and images from other texts that blur the boundaries of the individual text” (115). Moreover, genre conventions ensure a diminishing effort required by

13 the spectator in order to understand a film and this enhances the ability of the spectator to be immersed by the film’s narrative world (115). Thus, dystopian cinema mostly fits within the body of the science fiction genre. Just as dystopian cinema, science fiction tends to fantasize about a future and putting the society into question. At the same time, dystopias are often a fantasy- or adventure film, and even fit within the emerged mind-game genre. By using different genre conventions and blending this together, dystopian cinema became multi-generic and more enriched.

“Ensured by the speedy development of computer-supported filmmaking technology, the blockbuster movie still maintains its dominance in today’s market. The action cinema, increasingly incorporated with science-fiction and fantasy elements, has achieved remarkable popularity in this new millennium” (Chengting n.pag.).

Dystopian cinema became a mixture, creating a different world by special effects, emphasizing many themes and underlying messages, while portraying a dystopian tale. Through the different genre conventions within dystopian cinema, the audience waits for an ‘upgrade from the conventional’ and a visualized spectacle (Chengting n.pag.). The ability to create visualized spectacles contributed to the appeal to the twenty-first century dystopian cinema, which I will demonstrate in the following section.

1.2.3 Towards Dystopian Complexities

Mixed genres became more attentive to human multiplicity and complex realities (Altman 7). In the twenty-first century, themes influenced by terrorism, technology, global connectedness and disasters contributed to the rise of dystopia. The Matrix trilogy is considered a science- fiction film and I conclude this is a film with the mind-game genre which appeared more and more during the course of the twentieth-century4. Genre blending combined with more complex films arose in the twenty-first century (Poulaki 35) In addition, Thomas Elsaesser writes about the mind-game genre in his book Mind the Screen (2008). He highlights this genre as films including disorders, surveillance societies, memory, scientific experiments, virtual reality, cyborgs and supernatural phenomena (96). Elsaesser believes these films are the result of a problematized fascination in contemporary Western culture with worries about

4 My Bachelor thesis “I Have to Believe in a World Outside My Own Mind” discusses director Christopher Nolan as a film auteur and answers the question how Nolan keeps his spectator maintained during his films, while at the same time there is a lack of emotional involvement. In Chapter 2, I discuss the mind-game genre used in Nolan’s films, this genre contributes to the active role of the spectator continuous thinking what is real or imaginary (25). 14 money and amnesia as result of our digital culture (104). More complex films arose and more importantly, genres started to blend together and this worked in favor of the course of dystopian cinema. According to Edward Branigan (2002) these mind-game films do not have a clear beginning or end and continually work towards an open end (108). This is where dystopian cinema takes its own twist as the films contain certain mind-game-like themes which Elsaesser mentions, but still hold on to a clear beginning and closed end. Altogether, the 21st century dystopian film combines several aspects of different genres, which has contributed to a renewed film-experience of dystopia for the modern spectator.

1.2.4 The Turn towards the Critical Twenty-First Century

In the twentieth-century, developments regarding globalization and technology had a big impact on film. John Hill and Pamela Gibson (1998) clarify: “genres can be studies both in terms of an internal history of forms, themes, and iconography, and in terms of their relationship to broader cultural and social shifts” (329). Technology became both a supporting role to make the film as well as a theme within the film. After The Matrix, V for Vendetta (McTeigue, 2006), set in an autocratic-totalitarian British empire, became a great social commentary of the twenty-first century. WALL-E is seen as a critique on larger societal issues such as consumerism, individualism, waste management and the impact of technology on humans and of humans on the environment (Robin and Heumann 2012). This aims towards the emergence of media ecological critiques within cinema. Ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and their meaning in relation to the environmental crisis (Garrard 3), and in the twenty- first century this is increasingly reflected in film. Avatar appeared one year after WALL-E and is revolutionary in terms of its use of digital technology, such as 3-D technology and performance capture. With this, dystopian cinema emerged with renewed aesthetic, technological and philosophical depth. This depth is caused by creating a possible world in which the imaginary is linked to realism (Elsaesser and Buckland 31). Indeed, the special effects create an immersion that the spectator is in the film, instead of looking at the film, all the while maintaining the connection with reality through its explicit social critique. The films further discussed in this research, entertain the spectator and have an aim to identify contemporary worries that affect the spectator. Each film involves an examination of the social, political and ecological problems found at heart of everyday life in contemporary society. Peter Fitting, specialist in Utopian studies, clarifies the term ‘critical dystopia’ in his chapter “Unmasking the real? Critique and Utopia in Recent SF Films” in Dark Horizons. Not

15 all dystopias are critical dystopias and Fitting states a critical dystopia should be understood as works that combine utopia and dystopia, but mostly “referring to a concept that offers engaged critics” (155). He believes the emergence of the ‘critical’ dystopia is connected to the decline of utopian writings. In each film I will further analyze in this research, there is a longing for a transformed and better place, which was not necessarily the aim in dystopian cinema before the twenty-first century. Besides this, a common aspect is the use of contrast and complications in dystopian films, the more frequent use of violence and female protagonists. Moreover, each of these films were very successful dystopian films in the twenty-first century, according to the box-office numbers. Avatar uses aspects of utopia, while being a critical dystopia. WALL-E is an animation film that comments on our consumeristic culture and similarly to Avatar, it is part of media ecology influenced by the rise of awareness of global warming. The Hunger Games- and Divergent series focus on the contemporary reality-television and surveillance culture. The surveillance culture is a phenomenon of our contemporary world, as inhabitants are constantly monitored through our online information and security cameras in order to fight issues as terrorism, child porn or national security. I will further discuss this in the second chapter: Big Brother Is Watching You. Furthermore, these films are cinematic and visually very enigmatic; as true spectacle films, they are in line with the cinema of attractions. I believe these films are critical dystopias which set the tone for dystopian cinema in the twenty-first century.

§1.3 Imaginary Worlds

Thinking back of this decade, it will be remembered as the era of the digital revolution. Digital technology has transformed the film industry and I state that this has reinforced genre convergence and creating believable worlds, in order for dystopian films to recur in a more immersive way. The visualization of dystopian films is stimulated by the use of special effects and the dystopian films in this research depend on these digital technology effects. Only through this technology, the imaginary worlds can be created. Warren Buckland (2004) sees this possibility as an extension of the actual world, where special effects tend to go beyond spectacle (24). Today’s digital technology has the ability to create an image that makes unrealistic worlds as realistic as possible. Hence, this technology transforms the imaginary world on the screen into a plausible reality for the spectator (Elsaesser and Buckland 21).

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1.3.1 Creating the Deceit of Dystopia Avatar is groundbreaking in creating a new world with visual effects and an immersive 3-D film experience. After the arrival of photography in 1827, stereoscopy emerged as a forerunner of 3-D cinema (Hayes 2). William Friese Greene developed a camera with two lenses, creating an illusion of depth and he became the founder of stereoscopic 3-D film (Zone 61). Ray Zone clarifies that there was a growing desire for an endless band that “prefigured the invention of a continuously moving strip of film, the technological standard that would make possible the establishment of the motion picture industry itself” (33). Stereographic moving images became a visual entertainment and slowly influenced the film industry. With The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903) narrative was adopted in cinema and the use of editing took place at the beginning of the twentieth-century (Zone 96). In the summer of 1952, Hollywood started to use 3-D technology in cinema (Hayes 20). Before this, Hollywood was frightened that 3-D technology would distract the spectator of the content of the story, mostly because the spectator needed to wear 3-D glasses. Besides this, the high costs of the use of this technology were a setback for Hollywood. Therefore, the interest for theatres and so stereoscopic 3-D cinema was put on hold until 1952. In 1952 the first three- dimensional feature film, Bwana Devil (Oboler, 1952), was shown in ordinary theatres. After this, more 3D-films followed, such as It Came from Outer Space (Arnold, 1953) and Dial M for Murder (Hitchcock, 1954). IMAX theatres were developed to enhance the immersion of the spectator’s experience while watching films in the theatre in the mid-1980s. Since then, a rebirth of 3-D cinema took place in 1985, until it became ordinary in 2002, when digital projection was realized in theaters with 3-D cinema in IMAX theatres (Griffiths 96). Noticeable, science-fiction films became more popular and dystopias started to appear, such as A Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. From that point on, more digital technology progressed in order to enhance storytelling and filmmaking. The development of CGI (Computer Generated Imaginary) in the 1990s created greater opportunities for special effects. Motion capture, CGI, performance capture and virtual reality in cinema increased and this has now become customary in film. The new technologies changed cinema in a way of creating any kind of world and making this a believable spectacle to the spectator. That being said, no matter how heavily films rely on digitally generated special effects, the conventional techniques remain essential in making the film. According to Elsaesser and Buckland the need for new technologies in cinema was meant to compete with the emergence of new media (96). Special effects

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“simulate events in the actual world that are too expensive or inconvenient to produce” and visual effects “simulate events that are impossible in the actual world” (Elsaesser and Buckland 210). These visible special and visual effects are still disguised as invisible effects. The futuristic and unrealistic worlds in dystopian cinema are made plausible through these effects as the spectator is immersed by the spectacle on the screen. The French film theorist Christian Metz (1977) describes this is as ‘deceit’ and he explains this as the spectator being manipulated with visual elements; unreality becomes convincing to the audience partaking these plausible images and the special effects become invisible to the spectator (657-675).

1.3.2 Plausible Spectacles The setting of dystopian films motivates the spectacle-experience for the spectator. Buckland (2004) argues that films such as Jurrasic Park (Spielberg, 1993) go “beyond spectacle by employing special effects to articulate a possible world” (24). Buckland mentions there is a possible world presented by “drawing out extreme consequences from a non- fictional state of affairs in the actual world” (26). He states the imaginary world stands side by side to our own world and the imaginary worlds in dystopian cinema depend on our own imaginary. Combining this perception of Buckland with Metz’s notion of ‘deceit’, the spectator is manipulated in believing the plausible dystopian worlds created by special effect and I agree this goes beyond a spectacle-experience. Spectacle film is drawn from the ‘cinema of attractions’, as conceptualized by film scholar Tom Gunning (1999). Gunning uses the word ‘attraction’ to point out the aspect that makes cinema visually attractive for the spectator by creating a visual spectacle. This term was first used for early cinema, but it made its comeback in Hollywood cinema in the 1970s (116). At this time the consumption culture took place and had its success in the 1980s. According to Wanda Strauven (2009) this came along with a new generation filmmakers carrying out visual aggressiveness (311). These newfangled Hollywood filmmakers rediscovered the taste of the spectacular and used visual spectacle as an apparatus. Jaws (Spielberg, 1975) and the first Star Wars (Lucas,1977) launched the return of great narration, together with the desire to visually shock the spectator with new developments. During that time, a connection was made between amusement parks and Hollywood. The 3-D movement was used to recall the excitement of rides of amusement parks (312). Besides this, video gaming revived and in the 1970s and 1980s video gaming became extremely popular to entertain the general public (208). In 1978-1982 the ‘golden age of arcade video games’ took

18 place and this reinforced the drive to create ‘spectacle cinema’. The cinema of attractions attracts the spectator to the spectacle of its technology, while also aiming to convert the attraction of the technology towards the diegesis (315). As Strauven poses, the attraction becomes the subject and suspense of cinema and the spectacular becomes a compound of emotion (314). Filmmakers have the availability of many digital effects, through which they can create an entire new world and so the cinema of attractions is reinforced. ‘Method Studios’ is the visual effects house of Divergent and created complex environments set in a futurist Chicago. The dystopian films of the twenty-first century use much of the new effects, particularly computer-generated graphics (CGI), green screens, performance capture and 3-D technology. Avatar was groundbreaking in this aspect. Postproduction has become essential in creating the visualization of the movie, making the combination between live-action and CGI a seamless blend. Looking at the top ten highest-grossing films of all time, it is determined that computer-generated special effects seem to be an essential aspect of blockbusters. The visual effects of these dystopian films require a seamless effects work:

“The teenage audience becomes more gradually the main target of an entertainment which wants to dazzle the gaze, with an audiovisual inflation as working principle. The audience wants to get his money’s worth. The art of screenwriting loses its right to the advantage of the creation of stunning images” (Strauven 312).

Now the cinema of attraction is a golden rule of blockbusters, which concerns the gaze and the body (312): spectacle and immersion. This shows the focus of blockbuster films relied progressively on the spectacle-experience for the spectator. The cinema of attractions started in early cinema and made its comeback in the 1970s and 1980s to compete with trends of the consumption culture, such as theme parks and videogames. The digital revolution of the twenty-first century enhanced the ability for filmmakers to create any kind of world in order to dazzle the spectator with a visual spectacle. Consequently, dystopian cinema is remarkable in creating an immersion for the spectator. With the deception of what is real or imaginary dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century creates plausible worlds that critique the real world, thereby going beyond the spectacle-experience.

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§1.4 Fresh perspectives and de-familiarization

Evidently, a powerful aspect of dystopian cinema is the creation of plausible worlds and so the mise-en-scène and atmosphere become essential. I am convinced the development of special effects has paved the way for the 21st century dystopian cinema to recur more appealing than ever before. The setting within destroyed and futuristic cityscapes is attractive to create an intriguing and crumbling drama in film. A fascinating aspect of dystopia, which is consistent with the usage of visual effects, is de-familiarization by focusing on the critiques of society in imaginatively distant settings. Dystopian films provide us with fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices (Baccolini and Moylan 5). The mise-en-scene is essential in dystopian cinema as it encourages the credibility of the story in order to create a different world. Blaim (2015) clarifies that generally a monochrome color palette creates the film’s haunting atmosphere (89). The desaturated colors, greyish tones and the futuristic geometric spaces give dystopian cinema an intriguing twist. The sifted films I discuss, demonstrate an unseen world to the spectator and therefore the setting creates a spectacle. The Divergent and The Hunger Games series show many resemblances as both film series are placed in parallel societies in a cityscape, hosting different classes in society. This is made clear by the setting, clothing, colors and make-up. The Hunger Games is set in a post- apocalyptic world in which most of America has been destroyed and the remaining land has been separated into twelve districts and the Capital. Together this is ‘Panem’. The Capital is the part of the society where wealth is provided and this is highlighted by the people’s colorful clothing, excessive make-up and exaggerated hairdo’s. Thus, their extravagant lifestyle is reflected through their high fashion, make-up, food and colors (Figure 1ab).

Figure 1a. Figure 1b.

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High and futuristic buildings and modern cars and trains are shown in the Capital (Figure 2a). On the other side, most of the other districts wear greyish clothes, suggesting a degree of poorness and a monochromatic district. The protagonist is from district Twelve and is dressed in flat shades of blue and grey and everyone surrounding her is wearing equal outfits. The games take place in the ‘Arena’, where there are hues of green and brown (Figure 2b). Fast editing stimulates the feel of chaos.

Figure 2a.

Figure 2b.

The Divergent series similarly use clear differences in clothing and colors to distinguish the five different factions: Amity, Candor, Erudite, Abnegation and Dauntless (Figure 3a). The behavior of the various factions represents the morals and values of each faction. Amity stands for kindness and harmony, the people who belong to this faction wear warm colors, mostly yellow and orange clothing. Members of Amity act kind, happy and friendly. Candor stands for honesty and purity: people wear black and white, which symbolizes cleanliness and their ‘black and white’ judgement of the truth. Erudite represents intelligence and continuously wears blue clothing as blue stimulates the brain according to their leader Jeanine Mattews. Dauntless members signify courage and bravery, wear more dark tones, mostly black and have tattoos and experimental hairstyles. Dauntless is shown loud, energetic and rebellious. Contrastingly, Abnegation is selfless: the inhabitants speak softly, wear limited

21 make-up and grey tones and is not allowed to look in the mirror. The final film of the Divergent series takes a more post-apocalyptic turn as the characters go beyond the wall and find themselves in a deserted place where there is red, bloodlike rain falling from the sky (Figure 3b.)

Figure 3a.

Figure 3b.

WALL-E, which stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class, is a clear urban dystopia. In dystopia, influenced by the subgenre cyberpunk, there are often post-industrial urban cores (Figure 4a), filled with abandoned buildings (Figure 4b), decaying factories and waste products of populations of twentieth-century capitalist culture (Baccolini and Moylan 174). This last part concerning waste products is made clear in WALL-E and I will further explain this in the second chapter regarding WALL-E’s commentary on ecology.

Figure 4a.

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Figure 4b.

Avatar has been a euphoric tale created by performance capture, whereas WALL-E is an animation film, while still showing the grey, depressing cityscapes. The Hunger Games and Divergent series have more obvious common aspects. Interestingly, Avatar has a more exceptional setting compared to the other films I analyze, as it does not involve urban cityscapes. It does not take place in a grey and gloomy city, but a green and natural environment which is called ‘Pandora’. Pandora’s habitants live in harmony with nature and their goddess ‘Eywa’. The habitants are blue-skinned ‘hominids’, called ‘Na’vi’. The atmosphere is poisonous to humans and to explore the biosphere on Pandora, scientists use a ‘Na’vi-human hybrid’ called ‘Avatar’. Avatar has a more utopian than dystopian setting, while being critical upon contemporary society in its narrative, posing a strong critical dystopian film. It shows a combination of utopia and dystopia. With the emergence of performance capture and groundbreaking 3-D technology Cameron created an entire new world and Avatar became a spectacle in which Pandora came to life (Goodyear n.pag.). Cameron comments about Pandora in the article “James Cameron: I want to compete with ‘Star Wars’ and Tolkien” (Boucher 2010): “People want a persistent alternate reality to invest themselves in and they want the detail that makes it rich and worth their time. They want to live somewhere else. Like Pandora” (6). The floating islands and rocks (Figure 5a), and the visualization of blue-skinned ‘aliens’ (Figure 5b) and dinosaur-like creatures are what make Avatar an enjoyment to watch. The film was a revelatory development in Hollywood as the movie does not look like anything the spectator has ever seen before in filmmaking. The visual effects become an attraction in their own right: “not of the human body’s ability to navigate or even overcome the overwhelming urban spaces of postmodernism, but of modern technology’s ability to create such astonishing images” (Hassler-Forest Capitalist Superheroes: Caped Crusaders in the Neoliberal Age 136).

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Figure 5a. Figure 5b.

Each dystopian film discussed here, is set in an extraordinary world, which has never been seen before. Through the special effects believable, but very unknown and characteristic worlds are created and through the visualization, these films are eye-catching and cinematic attractions.

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Chapter 2:

Dystopian Critiques and Moralistic Messages

“Political and emotional events, anchoring its vision of a nightmarish future in contemporary fears of totalitarian ideology and uncontrolled advances in technology and science” (Baker 22).

After understanding the development of dystopian cinema in contemporary Hollywood, I will now specify the underlying themes and critiques within the twenty-first century dystopian cinema. Dystopian cinema depicts oppositions and moral ambiguities. Recurring oppositions are: control and order versus freedom and chaos, and selflessness versus egocentricity. Other frequent themes in dystopian cinema are: oppression, individuality, propaganda, power and mastery over nature. These themes run parallel to each other: where there is power and oppression, there is resistance. Each of these themes, focus on an underlying moralistic message, which forms a critique on our society and is recognizable for the critical dystopia. It is striking, as Moylan argues, that many people seem to be more aware of the idea that they are living in an increasingly threatened world (Baccolini and Moylan 156). In the first section of this chapter, I would like to delimit the themes used in dystopian cinema and focus on the most significant underlying messages of dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century. Firstly, the focus will be on the critique on technology and the influence of the shift towards reality-television. Besides this, I will draw attention to a remarkable and renewed element of dystopian cinema in the twenty-first century which also appears as an underlying message in the films. This is the frequent use of violence in these films, which are also ‘teen films’. I argue this is also a critique on contemporary society, in particular the increase of violence in media and games. Lastly, the ecological aspect in dystopian cinema has become more essential since the rising awareness of global warming and climate change. Raffaella Baccolini clarifies in “Dystopia Matters: On the Use of Dystopia and Utopia” (2006) that people feel the need to imagine better or worse worlds in order to think more critically about the world they are currently living in and in order to change this world (4). Therefore there is a desire for utopia and dystopia.

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§2.1 Big Brother Is Watching You

“They want a good show that’s all they want”. - Peeta in The Hunger Games

In this following section, I will establish the critiques on the contemporary reality-television and surveillance culture through a cultural analysis of The Hunger Games- and Divergent series.

2.1.1 The Entertainment of Reality-Television The Hunger Games series have a significant reference to reality-television. Suzanne Collins, the author of the original book series of The Hunger Games, was inspired by reality-television talent contests and footage of the Iraq War (Bartlett 9). Reality-television began with Endemol’s idea of Big Brother. This show started in 1997 and several contestants were monitored while living in one house together. After Big Brother, around fifty other international versions were produced and countless other reality shows emerged. Reality- television arose to as a strategy to reduce costs and still entertain the audience (Murray and Ouellette 145). According to media scholar Mark Andrejevic (2002) reality-television outlines a form of subjectivity which is in line with the arrival of the online economy: “one which equates submission to comprehensive surveillance with self-expression and self-knowledge” (253). Figure 6 shows that there is a high percentage of youth who watch reality-television shows. Sequentially, subgenres of reality-television arose, for example reality shows concomitant with the music, fashion or cooking industry. There are many resemblances between reality-television and The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is set in a dystopian ruin, divided into twelve districts and the Capital; together this is called Panem. Every year there is one chosen child forced to take part in the annual games, in which eventually twelve children or young adults are killed until one victor is left. The entire Hunger Games are televised and shown in the districts and the Capital. Both The Hunger Games and the reality-television concept follow the contestants or tributes from the beginning until the end. The creators of the Hunger Games and a reality-television show guide and control what is happening with the contestants. The contestants are monitored during the Hunger Games and the spectator can see the tribute eat, sleep, suffer and conquer. Also, the contestants need the viewers to like them in order to gain more sponsors to extend their chance of survival in the Hunger Games. There is a focus on what attracts the audience in the Capital, for example the young love between the main characters: Katniss Everdeen and

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Peeta Mellark. The audience has a favorite, which is discussed in the broadcasted show hosted by the character Caesar Flickerman. Eventually the victor gets to go by every district as a celebrity and live a long life in wealth. According to Annette Hill (2005), as a result of reality-television and its subgenre programs, the distinction between fact and fiction become blurry (41). In the final film of The Hunger Games series Peeta cannot appoint what is fact or fiction, after he was captivated and indoctrinated by the Capital. The Capital tried to turn Peeta against Katniss and make him believe that Katniss is the reason the society is dysfunctional and unequal. The scene in which Peeta keeps asking Katniss ‘real or not real?’ is an essential scene illustrating this social commentary. Peeta mentions that the Capital showed him pictures and he could not tell the difference as the pictures looked real, but were slightly different: “shiny, as if they were glossed over”. This references to the burring line of fiction and reality, and the manipulation of images in general. Dystopian films can be understood as a critique on contemporary reality culture, in which the constant surveillance, through reality-television and surveillance cameras is increasing (Baccolini and Moylan 158). Modern technologies have complicated the distinction between the real and the copied image, which bring us back to Jean Beaudrillard’s ideas on simulacra, or even Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay on the loss of aura in an age of technological reproduction. As Moylan and Baccolini (2003) state: “this loss of aura can be seen in the ever-increasing demand for images of the ‘real’ that can be somehow verified as authentic, because it is ‘live’” (158). This manipulation of images is also demonstrated by the reference to propaganda wars in The Hunger Games and Divergent series. The leaders of Divergent give messages to the people through a projection on buildings. In Mockingjay: Part One and Part Two Katniss is used as a mascot to gather the rebellions and oppose them to the Capital. A camera crew joins Katniss in her journey and films her in a specific way to position her as a leader of the rebellions.

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Figure 6. Percentage of youth who watched these reality-television shows – from “The Appeal of Reality-television For Teen and Pre-Teen Audiences” (Patino, Kaltcheva and Smith 2011).

2.1.2 The Surveillance Culture and Panopticon Gaze Nowadays society is dependent on information- and communication technologies. Ironically, dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century critiques technologies of our contemporary world, while these films could not be made plausible without the digital effects of today. As I pointed out earlier, modern technology and the surveillance society is a recurring theme in dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century. The term ‘surveillance culture’ is first used by sociologist Gart T. Marx and as David Lyon interprets, Marx concern “was that new technologies were helping to create situations in which ‘one of the final barriers’ to total social control is now crumbling” (5). Surveillance contributes to governmentality and is a by- product of the present ‘information society’ (5) and flows of data increased with the usage of digital technologies. After the 9/11 attacks and the attacks in Madrid (2003), London (2005), Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016), the surveillance culture only progressed and questions related to privacy were raised. Kerry Mallan (2014) specifies that surveillance is not simply directed at adults, but “young people are also the object of the electronic gaze and their everyday online activities are recorded and stored by new information technologies” (2). There is a surveillance based economy linked to the Internet which has allowed a need for customization based on consumer data and using this as marketing in the online economy (Andrejevic 256). The Internet is now a tracking device that can track the information of online-users to target online people as consumers. As a result of the shift towards reality-television in media culture and the surveillance society, there is a Panopticon Gaze. The concept of Panopticism is defined by Michel Foucault (1926-1984). He explains in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the

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Prison (1975) that: “the panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheral ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen” (362). The gaze of the spectator of the 21st century dystopian films creates an imagery panopticon. For example, in The Hunger Games there is a feeling of the tributes being trapped in the annual Hunger Games in the arena. Foucault mentions “the gaze is alert everywhere” (195). The panopticon is a prisoner’s model created by philosopher Jeremy Betham (1748-1832) and the prisoner may be observed at any time by possible viewers. Similarly, the spectator may observe the participants in reality-television and in dystopian cinema. In both The Hunger Games and Divergent series there is a panopticon gaze. The participants on the annual Hunger Games are trapped in the arena, but their every move is observed by the citizens in the Capital and the districts, and the actual spectator in front of the screen. According to Peter Dew (1984) there is a panoptic power which isolates and idealizes and this ensures “structuring of relations in modern societies” (85). This is what happens in The Hunger Games and Divergent series: there is less sense of harmony as society is divided into different districts against the Capital in The Hunger Games or different factions against the leaders in Divergent. The people are isolated from each other through the divided society and, as Foucault argues, this shaped into individual segmentation (198). In Space and Place in The Hunger Games: New Readings of the Novels (2014) one of the authors; Deidre Anne Evans Garriott, stresses that Foucault’s theory suggests that “the threat of punishment modifies behavior” (168). The participants are constantly watched by hidden cameras. In Allegiant one of the characters is summoned to monitor what is happening in Chicago, so he observes the events in Chicago and reports back to his superior. Above all, in both film series, screens are a recurring motif which creates a feel of ‘being watched’ and ‘looking at’ (Figure 7). In The Hunger Games, the Gamemakers have screens in front of their faces, controlling everything what happens in the arena. In Divergent the final fear-simulation test to become a Dauntless-member is shown on many screens, for everyone to see how the contestants are overcoming their fears. The person being tested is observed by the fellow contestants and the people higher up (Figure 8). Surely, throughout the twenty-first century there have been shifts within safety, privacy and the entertainment world, which have led to the contemporary surveillance and reality-televised media culture. In addition, this collides with the mind-game genre, including disorders, a surveillance society and a concern about media, producing individuality and agency. The blurring line between what is reality and what is imaginary is a fact in today’s culture, which is resembled in the 21st century dystopian cinema. Also in this sense, with

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Jameson’s idea, dystopia is schizophrenic. In these dystopian films there is always a leader or a person higher up in control. There is a constant feel of being looked at or looking at, which reinforces the trapped feeling of the spectator with its panoptican gaze. The established panoptican gaze, control and surveillance enforce the themes of power and resistance. Altogether, this replicates features of contemporary society and the young adult audience can recognize this as critiques, and therefor feels attracted to the dystopias shown on the screen. Together with this vital critique in the 21st century dystopian cinema, the frequent use of violence is portrayed in today’s dystopias and in the following section I will grasp why today’s filmmakers have chosen to do so.

Figure 7.

Figure 8.

§2.2 Violent Warriors

“May the odds be ever in your favor”.

- The Hunger Games

As made clear in the above section, there have been shifts in contemporary media and besides that, society has changed into a surveillance culture. Through the news on different media streams and television crime series, I believe society has become more aware of violence. Indeed, another characteristic of the twenty-first century is the use of violence in video- and

30 computer games and there have been speculations that this has influenced children and teenagers. Just as the critique on reality-television and the surveillance culture, it is ironic in how dystopian films critique the use of violence, while representing much violence. Instead of representing a euphoric story with no violence, it seems more effective to demonstrate violence in order to critique it. In order to delve deeper into this specific representation of violence in dystopian films, I will use the Divergent and especially The Hunger Games series. Through cultural analysis, I will demonstrate how the use of violence is derived from Ancient Roman mythologies and war, followed by the examples of violence portrayed in the films and finally, the reason why this is shown in contemporary dystopian films.

2.2.1 “Panemet Circenses”

As mentioned before, the author of “The Hunger Games” book series Suzanne Collins was inspired by reality-television talent contests and footage of the Iraq War. Besides this, Collin’s memories of her father as a soldier in the jungle during the Vietnam War were also noted as inspiration (“Suzanne Collins on the Vietnam War Stories behind the Hunger Games and Year of the Jungle”, YouTube Bibliostar TV, 8 October 2012). Some features of The Hunger Games are clearly motivated by Ancient Rome and Roman mythologies. The Roman satirist Juvenal used the Latin phrase: “panemet circenses” or in English “bread and circuses”, which means “the way the ruling class pacified the commoners by diverting them from contemplating their subjugation” (Cunningham n.pag.). In Ancient Rome the gladiators fought each other to death for the entertainment of the citizens in the Colosseum. By threatening and using violence in particular cases, the games between the gladiators were needed to keep the peace. In this sense, the Hunger Games represent a form of control. Katniss says in the first scene of The Hunger Games: “Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how we are at their mercy”. Even in times of peace, there is a need to stimulate an atmosphere of violence. In Rome, the unemployed received free bread and entertainment. It was a way for the leaders to keep them satisfied and on their guard. Similarly, the annual Hunger Games was designed to remind the citizens of Panem of the traumatic event caused by the rebellions which resulted into twelve districts remaining. One of the Gamemakers mentions the Hunger Games have grown from something traditional into something that ‘brings us all together’. At the same time, the Hunger Games entertain the citizens of the Capital and a punishment of society. The tributes fight against each other till one victor survives. These ‘pawns’ of society

31 are seen as a sacrifice, to protect the districts from its own violence. Being a warrior is presented as heroism and the only tribute left will be rewarded as a true victor with lifelong wealth in the Capital. In Hunger Games: Catching Fire the tributes go around in a carriage of the horses for the tribute parade in the Capital, similar to the gladiators in Rome (Figure 9). In a scene of the last film of The Hunger Games series: Mockingjay – Part 2, the execution of President Snow takes place and the spectator hears loud drum ruffles and sees Katniss walking through a square, with superb high-rise grey building in the background, people watching aside and surrounded by high fire torches (Figure 2a). The fire torches are emblematic for the symbolic event and in the Greek and Roman history this is used to symbolize death. Thus, certain features and the use of violence in The Hunger Games firstly reference the ancient past of the Romans.

Figure 9.

2.2.2 “Tonight, Turn Your Weapons to the Capital” During the start of the Hunger Games, held in the arena, there is a strange launching sound and the spectator quickly witnesses the tributes on the screen killing each other one by one. After this, there are images of dead bodies and consecutively there is the recurring low sound to recap these deceased tributes. The Gamemakers try to extend the suffering of the tributes by putting in different obstacles in the arena and representing this as an enjoyable show. It is worth noting that Katniss does not find pleasure in killing the tributes and mostly tries to act intelligent rather than violent5. Another violent and horrific scene is the whipping scene of “Gale” in Catching Fire. The character Gale tried to protect a woman from being killed by a peacekeeper and ends up being tied to a pole in the open square, being whipped many times by the peacekeeper. His

5 For example, the most significant action of Katniss was in Mockingjay – Part One, when she pointed her arrow at the center of the stream of the arena and the Gamemakers have no power anymore. The entire Hunger games are controlled from the Gamemaker’s controlling room and it out of power at that moment. The broadcasting and Hunger Games are over and the good-hearted Gamemaker Plutard got Katniss out of the arena to start a revolution with Katniss as the mocking jay.

32 back is full of blood and he screams out of pain (Figure 10). Besides this, the voting scene in Mockingjay: Part 2 strikes me in its narrative as the interim president Alma Coin states: “thirst for blood is a difficult urge to satisfy”. In order to feed this urge she proposes a symbolic Hunger Games with the children of the Capital. This is significant to her in order to balance the need for revenge and the result of the ‘least loss of human life’. President Coin announces this moment as “more than a mere spectacle – a historic moment of justice”. Similar to the argument of Alma Coin, in the final film of the Divergent series: Insurgent, the successive leader of Jeanine Matthews: Evelyn Johnson-Eaton, feels responsible to feed the urge of revenge. The people, who obeyed the orders of Jeanine, needed to be justified and if they were convicted, death awaits them. This resulted in people acting like savages, bawling people to kill the people on trial. Equally, in both film series there is a depraved individual in power and there is a female protagonist who strikes against this person. As soon as the depraved person: President Snow in The Hunger Games and Jeanine Matthews in Divergent, is taken down, the power is quickly seized by another woman: Alma Coin (The Hunger Games) and Evelyn Johnson- Eaton (Divergent). In The Hunger Games a war between the Capital and the rebellions is presented and Katniss is used as mascot to evoke the rebellions by declaring: “tonight, turn your weapons to the Capital, turn your weapons to Snow”. Instead of learning from the past, they continue to believe “dark times call for dark measures”. It is clear that a recurring message in these films is that the future may not repeat its past and to assess for change when the situation is dreadful. Both The Hunger Games and Divergent series accentuate the question at what point is war justifiable or unavoidable (Margolis n.pag.).

Figure 10.

2.2.3 Desensitizing to Pleasurable Violence In The Hunger Games the spectator sees how the bloodthirsty tributes snap each other’s neck, kill with their arrows or by rocks, or are killed by dogs. According to Bartlett (2012) the film is less violent than the book, and he argues:

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“Similarly, while children are horribly dispatched, these sequences are rendered in quick, silent flashes where even the most eagle-eyed viewer will struggle to snatch a memorable image. Indeed, the handled camera work and rapid-fire editing leaves much to the imagination. What viewers think they see might actually be more horrific than anything on the screen” (14).

There was much critique in reviews on The Hunger Games, calling the film ‘unethical’ and ‘inappropriate’ (17). That being said, it is only more likely for teenagers to want to see this film, which is reviewed as ‘above them’. It appears violence is shown more frequently in the entertainment world (Herthorne 19). Margaret Skinner and Kailyn McCord (2012) discuss this brutality of violence in The Hunger Games. Skinner stresses that “violence to children is pretty common among mainstream media, but violence from children is not” (107). In our contemporary world the constant flow of media has created more awareness of what is going on in our world, but at the same time our fears may have increased as result. McCord mentions she is brought up with violent media everywhere, which is commercialized and this causes her to be desensitized to violence (107). James W. Potter (1999) indicates that the use of violence in films and television is devised by the creators of the films, as they believe violence attracts a bigger audience and especially a younger audience (157). The violence shown in media causes the spectator to have less of a reaction to violence as the spectator is used to some level of brutality shown on screen. Therefore, the level of violence needs to be increased in order to shock the spectator more (Potter 125). This is also mirrored in The Hunger Games as the citizens of the Capital are shown as desensitized to violence and they have lost their moralistic judgement. It seems as if they do not realize that everything happening in the Hunger Games is fact and not fiction and they truly perceive the violence as entertainment. Slocum (2001) suggests there is a new aesthetic form which is a temporary kinetic and visual pleasure rather than a narrative pleasure. This aesthetic form carries on in seeking pleasure in “sensation, voyeurism and violence” (54) and this is in line with the spectacle of contemporary dystopian films.

“Fiction films call upon us to imagine that film violence is real violence, that no barrier separates us from the world on film, and that is one key to the pleasure we receive from them. But they also call upon us to acknowledge that the world on film is separated from us, hence that film violence is not real violence, and this, too, is a key to the pleasures movies provide us” (Slocum 44).

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Conformably, the French Avant-Garde theorist Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) proposes a connection between violence and theatre in his ‘Theatre of Cruelty’. Artaud (1958) states that emotional responses take us back to our primal and animalistic instincts in our unconscious (114). Cruelty was split in four sections: cruelty as essence, cruelty as discipline, cosmic cruelty and finally cruelty as the theatrical presentation. Cruelty is used as a driving force to evoke emotional responses of the spectator and Artaud believed theatre needed to excite the senses and subconscious emotions of the audience as much as possible (92-99). This audience is not considered passive (89). In order to force the audience to intervene with the cruelty on the stage, Artaud aimed at a dramatic, shocking set which results in an induvial response of each spectator. Barber (2008) reflects upon Artaud’s work and he mentions that:

“The body suffers malicious robberies (by society, family and religion) which leave it fixed and futile, smothered to the point of a terminal incoherence and inexpressivity. Throughout his life, he worked through ideas and images which explore the explosion of that useless body into a deliriously dancing, new body, with an infinite capacity for self- transformation” (n.pag).

The violence shown in the 21st century dystopias criticize and at the same time, work in favor of media violence in our contemporary society. In order to provide the familiarized spectator with more adrenaline caused by the violence on the screen, the films need to have a higher level of violence. The films are aesthetically pleasing and this is mitigating the violence for an intrigued audience. This again, is in line with creating a bigger spectacle for the spectator and keeping the spectator entertained. Lastly, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty can be seen in the Avatar, and mostly in The Hunger Games and Divergent series, showing much violence in the films and aiming at shocking the audience, while evoking emotional responses. In the third chapter, I will indicate the relationship between the theatre of cruelty and Sigmund Freud’s writings in psychoanalysis as these are especially applicable to the transforming young adult audience. The dystopian films of the twenty-first century attempt to take the spectator to an immersive level of emotional involvement, compelling the spectator to react and resulting in self-satisfaction through a direct spectacle (Neff 32).

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§2.3 Ecology and Consumerism in Dystopia

We shape our tools and they shape us. - Marshall McLuhan

The final examined critique carried out in the contemporary dystopian cinema, is the critique on human’s behavior towards nature. To realize this, I will concentrate on Avatar and WALL- E, two films with outspoken ecological and media ecological critiques. The films discussed in this research take place in a post-apocalyptic setting caused by environmental or manmade disasters. Prat Brereton (2005) is convinced Hollywood screenwriters are set to develop scripts addressing such dangers as “cautionary allegorical tales across blockbuster disaster movies” (191). I will point this out by exploring WALL-E and its portrayal of consumerism and mistreating earth. This is followed by an analysis of Avatar’s moral message regarding the behavior of humankind towards nature. Together, dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century combines the critiques among culture, technology and media. I will examine the dystopian films WALL-E and Avatar by linking cultural analyses of these films to a study of environmentalism and media ecology. I argue that the dystopian film of the twenty-first century is intermediating with nature and technology and may be understood as environmental cautionary tales to protect earth and fundamentally; to protect humankind.

2.3.1 WALL-E’s Garbage

WALL-E is an animated love story between WALL-E and fellow robot Eve, set in a dystopian future, forming a critique and moralistic message as I will clarify. The film is set in a future in which humankind has abandoned Earth, as Earth has become unlivable and surrounded by dirt and garbage. Paul Wells (2002) argues it is an: “American popular cultural artifact (sic)” that has “become the focus of a significant meta-commentary on American consumer values and social identity” (152). It is WALL-E’s job to collect and stack the piles of garbage and the following narrative is said in the beginning of the film: “Too much garbage in your place? There is plenty of space out in space! BNL StarLiners leaving each day. We'll clean up the mess while you're away”. The protagonist is WALL-E, a robot with a cockroach on his ‘shoulder’, driving over dollar bills, through high buildings which look like piles of garbage. As there is hardly any speaking throughout the film, the images and sound have a significant role. During the film there are sounds used to refer to our daily use of technology and mostly Apple. When WALL-E needs to recharge his solar panels, the starting sound of a Mac book is

36 heard and when he rolls over the piles of dirt there is a sound of the mice of an iPod scurrying (94). There are dual structures in the two characters WALL-E and Eve, but also in the setting of Earth conversely to the spaceship Axiom, where the survivors are living. Namely, Earth is shown with desaturated colors and is clearly a polluted waste-land, with nothing left but dust, dirt and robots. In contrast with the spaceship, where there are extremely bright colors, it is full of people who are highly dependent on technology (Figure 11a). Humans are depicted as utterly overweight and lazy, as they never leave their floating lounges (Figure 11b). Constantly, there is a screen in front of their faces, while they do not speak with one another and having robots fulfilling their every need. The French cultural theorists and political critic Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) describes this consumer culture as a ‘total homogenization’ (1989), concerning products being quickly outdated and always needing to provide convenience (29). In line with Baudrillard, the German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) addresses the concept of ‘pseudo-individualization’, deriving from an ‘illusion of choice’ as every product is the same due to standardization, by contributing to current cultural mass production (94-5). Technology and the growing consumer culture have led to pseudo- individualization and humankind maltreating the Earth. Evidently, WALL-E refers to the use of technology, critiques the capitalistic consumer culture and the social transformation as a result.

Figure 11a. Figure 11b.

2.3.2 Technology, Media and the Environment Subsequently, I will elaborate on the media ecological developments which can be derived from WALL-E. In the twentieth century industrialization has grown tremendously and nowadays technology is continuously progressing in many ways (Sugarman 110). As technology further developed, communication possibilities for humans have enlarged. This is

37 combined with consumerism, capitalism and maltreating the natural world, resulting in environmental vulnerabilities. Dystopian films reflect on social and cultural changes or threats of our contemporary society. Correspondingly, Neil Postman founded the study of media ecology as the study combining culture, environment, technology and communication. Media ecology is critical towards the technological developments and discusses the role of media influencing social change and understandings, which is mirrored together in dystopian films. Postman (1970) discusses the influence of media on each individual as:

“(…) how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival. The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people” (Salas 63).

Postman focuses on media as an environment which affects the individual emotionally through its morals, ethics and intellections. In addition, Marshall McLuhan (1964) focuses on the influence on society caused by information and communication technologies (57). McLuhan connects the information society, discussed in the first section of this chapter, to his notion of a ‘global village’ (93), in which every individual is always connected through media (50-51). According to McLuhan, communication technologies change the senses and behaviors of people and may lead to social transformation due to different ways of perceiving the world (49-50). WALL-E reflects this social change by the representation of the humans on Axiom, for example humans are video chatting with the person next to them. When WALL-E disconnects a screen in front of one of the humans, she sees her surrounding as if this is her first time looking beyond the screen.

2.3.3 Avatar’s Nexus to Ecology

The examination of WALL-E can be considered to be more within the study of media ecology as it combines the technological and media effects on social understandings and the ways in which humans perceive the world. Now I will demonstrate how Avatar is linked to ecology and portrays critiques on human behavior towards the environment. Ecology is correlated to change of environments and the way in which humankind and other living organisms are affected by this change. Scholar Mark Maslin (2008) draws attention to global warming which is known as a vital science issue of the twenty-first century as awareness around climate change and environmentalism increased. The rising temperature is accelerating, polar

38 ice caps are melting and the sea level is decreasing. In his article “Prognosis for a Sick Planet” Maslin hassles: “weather patterns will become less predictable and the occurrence of extreme climate events, such as storms, floods, heat waves and droughts, will increase” (569). Mike Adams discusses Avatar’s meaning concerning Mother Nature. He indicates several themes in the film that refer to today’s modern world:

“(…) issues like corporations destroying nature for profit, the lack of respect for living creatures, and the failed policies of “military diplomacy” that the USA continues to pursue. The themes in Avatar reflect the greatest challenges of our modern world, and the message of Avatar is both deeply moving and highly relevant to the future of human civilization” (n.pag.).

Additionally, I consider Avatar as a film with many significant cultural, social and political moralistic messages. The film refers to war, imperialism, race, civilization and ecology. Conservationist Bron Taylor (2009) formulates the term ‘dark green religion’ throughout his research, in which he draws a parallel between environmentalism and spirituality. Deep ecology centers self-realization and the ecological self from intense experiences in nature (Erb 6-7). This ecological self is developed through the experience of the spectator in nature realized by the digital 3-D world of Avatar (10). He argues that there is a connection between the sacredness of nature and shared beliefs in animism and Gaia (13). Those who believe in the dark green religion are convinced that “humans have no dominion over nature and that nature is not a resource for humans” (Erb 8). The Gaia principle is coined by the environmentalist James Lovelock and Pat Brereton clarifies this notion in his book Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema (2005) as:

“Gaia, the Greek deity who brought forth the earth from chaos (or the void), symbolizes, for both feminists and the environmental movement in particular, a potentially powerful force for progressive evolution. Gaia inspires a sense of the earth as a holistic living organism” (19).

During the film there are many references to how Mother Earth is mistreated by humankind and how Pandora is cherished by the Na’vi. The Na’vi have a spiritual relationship with their environment and are dependent on nature. Their mother goddess is called Eywa, which is the Tree of Souls and sacred to the Na’vi and “a personified female force that binds all living creatures” (Erb 11). A narrative of the character Jake Sully amplifies this:

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“I try to understand this deep connection the people have with the forest. She talks about a network of energy that flows through all living things. She says all energy is only borrowed and one day you have to give it back”.

Colonel Quaritch is the antagonist and chief of the military of the humans on Pandora. In order to gain profitable soil which lie below the Trees of Souls, Quaritch tries to destroy this sacred place of the Na’vi. He does not think diplomatic and does not distinguish the Na’vi as real feelingly beings as he describes organisms of Pandora as hostile and alienating. Similarly, the character Parker Selfridge does not respect the wishes and values of the Na’vi. The aim of Parker is to get as much money as possible out of this mission: “their damn village happens to be resting on the richest Unobtanium deposit within 200 clicks in any direction. I mean, look at all that chatter”. To reflect this upon reality, deforestation to gain resources and money is a fact in our contemporary world. As Lori Pottinger (2011) appoints: “Sadly, the threats to the Amazon are real: more than 100 large dams are planned for the basin, which also faces logging, mining, and clearing for agriculture” (n.pag.). This is forcing the tribes to evict and the biodiversity-rich forest of the Amazons will diminish. Another quote from Jake accentuates humankind maltreating the Earth:

“If Grace is with you, look in her memories. See she can show you the world we come from. There’s no green there. They killed their Mother and they are gonna do the same here”.

In this sense I consider Avatar as an essential part of the dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century. The film portrays a utopia, which is being destroyed, and critiques contemporary society, therefore becoming a dystopia. Besides this, I consider this film a remarkable spectacle which suits dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century. There is a clear message in the film to save the ecosystems through viewer-identification with the protagonists in the film.

2.3.4 Hollywood’s Gaia

As I set out in the first chapter, the film industry is influenced by contemporary social and cultural changes. This is demonstrated in the themes used in these films and in the cycles of the genres which become genre mixtures. David Bordwell and Kirsten Thompson (2004) highlight this:

“It is common to suggest that at different points in history, the stories, themes, values, or imagery of the genre harmonize with public attitudes. The hypothesis is that genre

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conventions, repeated from film to film, reflect the audience’s pervasive doubts or anxieties” (117).

They argue film reflects on the present or past: “such ways of looking at genre are usually called reflections, because they assume that genres reflect social attitudes, as if in a mirror” (118). Helen Kopnina and Eleanor Shoreman-Ouiment (2011) argue: “today, we face some of the greatest environmental challenges in human history” (1). As I established, Avatar and WALL-E both critique the way humankind is affecting and mistreating the Earth. The films show that humankind thinks of profit and to fulfill their needs they damage the environment.

“Consequently there is an inherent danger of endorsing the trend of using therapeutic romantic representations of nature to help audiences overcome the distresses of modern living, which has become prevalent in Hollywood and designed to appeal to audiences across lass, race and ideology” (Brereton 21).

Thus, it is clear that negative events around the world influence the film industry in a way of the films showing fears of the past and for the future to repeat or worsen its past. It all comes down to humankind being its own enemy in preserving the Earth and mankind itself. Unrelated to which film genre, the dystopian films of the twenty-first century offer an ideological message (Hayward 65). As shown in this chapter, dystopian films of the twenty- first century clearly represent moral messages and critiques upon contemporary society. The spectator is addressed as an individual, but also as a member of society, by portraying these contemporary themes linked to the changes of technology. Finally, technology has led to different ways of communication and understandings of society, for example through reality- television and the depiction of violence or living in a surveillance and consumer culture.

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Chapter 3:

The Mesmerized Spectator

“Through the way of editing in Avatar, the spectator can take a position whereby emotion and psychological engagement can be awakened by which a sense of realism is created”. - James Cameron

As I argue in the first chapter, dystopian cinema tends to disappear and reappear over time, depending on specific circumstances in society. Shortly after times of chaos and war, there seems to be a desire for more dystopian stories. The 21st century dystopian film critiques contemporary society and leaves the spectator with a reflecting moral message concerning the spectator’s behavior towards the changing society. Together with the development of special effects, which made dystopian cinema more akin to spectacle, and the seamless genre mixtures, dystopian films have risen stronger than ever before. Overall, this rise of dystopian cinema in the twenty-first century is connected to the position of the spectator during the film- experience. The first and second chapters have led to the clarification regarding the spectatorship within dystopian films which I will explain in this final chapter. Within film studies, the topic of spectatorship is considered to be the relationship between the spectator and this is a constant alternating. In the past, especially linked to classic cinema, the spectator is positioned as ‘passively’ engaged with film6. Mao Chengting (2010) advocates a depthless culture in contemporary society and cinema, producing a superficial audience. He states the spectator’s pleasure should be from “both the narrative and the spectacle” (n.pag.), but the visual pleasure overshadows the narrative pleasure. The audience is indulged in the images shown on the big screen, while not thinking of the meaning or plot. He argues there is an audience which is passively and minimally actively engaged as the audience is waiting for the audience to mesmerize them. I disagree with the above statements regarding a passive spectator and claim today’s spectator is an active spectator rather than passive one. The spectator is able to actively give their own meaning to film (Elsaesser 2009). Spectatorship becomes a conscious activity according to Currie (1999) and Tom Gunning beliefs the spectator is a ‘sophisticated participant existing as a social aggregate’. The spectator of dystopian film of this era adds a significant role to its rise as these films would not be high box-office films if they were not appealing to the spectator. In this

6 For example, Laura Mulvey (2004) argues for a passive spectator through voyeuristic pleasure and she beliefs there is a voyeuristic isolation of the spectator with spectacle film. 42 chapter I will build upon this theory of an active spectator and argue that the spectator is visually and narratively both pleased and engaged with the 21st century dystopian cinema. In the first section I will examine the shift towards a more active spectator, caused by the production of spectacle films. Additionally, I will discuss Murray Smith’s structure of sympathy and the generic pleasures according to Rick Altman. In the final two sections I will focus on the young adult audience: firstly the involvement of the female spectator through the projected transforming heroines and finally Freud’s psychoanalysis to place the thoughts of the young adult spectator during the film.

§3.1 Overpowering the Passive Spectator

In this following section I will address the transformation towards an active spectator. First of all, I will appoint the change towards an active spectator as a result of spectacle film and an embodiment of the senses, followed by a substantiation of the shift in ontology which contributes to an active spectator. To end this section, I will explicate the generic pleasure which creates a bond between the spectator and the dystopian films, leaving the spectator with an urge for more filmic dystopian stories.

3.1.1 Towards an Active Spectator High concept films arose more in the 1980s and 1990s, focusing on more viewers and more advanced special effects, succeeding the cinema of attractions. Adam Roberts (2006) believes there have been masterpieces with an extensive cultural penetration within Hollywood blockbusters (264-66). He claims there have been two essential changes within the science fiction genre between 1960 and the 2000s which helped forge these blockbusters into successes (249). The first change within the genre concerns the influence of ‘visual spectacularism’ which is based on special effects and creating plausible alternate worlds (264). The second change is the power of the imagery of popular culture, as this created an alternation of literary originated ideas of disasters to alter into a combination of these literary ideas and visual pleasurable images (264). “The adding of visual special effects to science fiction narratives has become core to the meaning and value of the form” (Rhodes and Westwood 77). These two changes became highly effective for dystopian cinema as dystopian films adapted literary stories and used special effects to create alternative worlds. Through these changes a more active spectatorship can be derived. James Cameron clarifies the 3-D effect which creates more sense of participation, involvement and immersion: “You feel like

43 you’re bearing witness, and that makes the journey feel more real” (Goodyear n.pag.). As mentioned in the first chapter, Wanda Strauven expounds on spectacle film which belongs to the cinema of attractions. Strauven states there is an emergence of the modern spectator, deriving from “the aesthetic of astonishment” (195). She argues that the cinema of attractions capture the spectator’s attention “to a unique form of display, and thus as special economy of attention and sensory involvement” (207). Strauven highlights Tom Gunning, who described the early cinema of attractions as cinema which provokes the spectator with visual curiosity and pleasure in which the image is more important than the narrative, leading to a visual feast (270). Hollywood’s manipulations of visual pleasure became more refined and satisfying and this influenced the spectator’s experience into a spectator who is familiarized to visual treats and so a ‘sensorial pleasure’ (195). The French film theorist Christian Metz (1931 – 1993) argues that the meaning of film narrative is constructed by an active spectator (92) and narrative and visual pleasure together reinforce each other in cinema. The attraction value constituted a form of spectacle that did not disappear after the emergence of dominating narrative structures, but which went famously underground in genres such as science fiction. Through the emergence of digital special effects and 3-D cinema, new tools were added in the conception of cinematic attraction value and this resulted in a new, more immersive film experience for the spectator. IMAX created a unique engagement with the screen.

“We watch films with our eyes and ears, but we experience films with our minds and bodies. (…) It sets up scenes; we follow them. It plants hints; we remember them. It prompts us to feel emotions” (Bordwell 2012).

The spectator generates a sense of control of the filmic experience and this cinematic image is then embodied by the spectator. The American film theorist David Bordwell appoints that the spectator watches films with their senses and employs film-experience as an experience through the spectator’s mind and body. The film plants hints and actively the spectator remembers the hints in order to follow the story. Crucially, the spectator has been defined as passively engaged with spectacle films, while it is becoming ever clearer there is an active participation of the spectator, caused by the adding cinematic values of today within spectacle film.

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3.1.2 Becoming Part of the Imaginary World

Douglas Trumbull states in the Variety (Cohen n.pag.) that a window is opened onto reality, with the cinematic language beginning to change when one enters the hyper-realistic experience of cinema. This hyper-realistic film involves the spectator’s loss to distinguish what is real and what is not. Thomas Elsaesser argues that the role of the spectator is shifting as the spectator is giving meaning to a film text more critically. In his article “World Cinema: Realism, Evidence, Presence” (2009) he employs a shift in the ontology of film, through which the spectator is challenged and stimulated in a new way. He explicates there is a shift from ‘ontology mark one’ to ‘ontology mark two’ (5-6). ‘Ontology mark one’ is a post- photographic ontology, whereby there is a clear distinction between reality and illusion. Indexicality is essential in this ontology as the spectator is then able to give meaning to an object through cause and effect. ‘Ontology mark two’ is of importance for dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century, because there is no indexicality and mostly a sense of doubt as reality and illusion become inseparable (7). The film is no longer a window towards the actual world, but more a mirror of reality. Because of this mirroring effect the spectator becomes actively involved. During the film-experience the spectator becomes less aware of its own presence and becomes actively challenged. Elsaesser argues the spectator is challenged in the disbelief of the character’s conditions in the film (9) or the spaces the characters find themselves in. The characters are situated in an environment with a different perspective, which leads to the spectator thinking of the world in a different perspective. This ‘ontology mark two’ has become customary in twenty-first century Hollywood films and is related to the mind-game genre (15). Elsaesser points out that the spectator becomes uncertain since there are many questions raised and information withheld, resulting in an “ontological doubt” (10). This is where I argue dystopian cinema part ways with the mind-game genre. Dystopian cinema does not necessarily withhold information from the spectator and there are fewer uncertainties which Elsaesser stresses. However, reality and the imaginary world are difficult to distinguish in dystopian cinema and through its mirroring effect, the spectator will think of the world in a different perspective. Moreover, through the provided information in dystopian films, the spectator can easily engage with the spectator, which adds to the success.

3.1.3 Character Engagement

Smith stresses such emotional engagement in his article “Altered States: Character and Emotional Response in the Cinema” (1994). Through the given information regarding the

45 character’s conditions and emotions, the spectator can relate and identify with the character (42). Smith goes on with his argument concerning two emotional responses: emotions through empathy or sympathy. Empathy is a way of identifying with the character through the spectator’s own perception. By feeling empathy, more profound emotions can be felt through sympathy. Sympathy is clarified by the structure of sympathy with three layers: recognition, alignment and allegiance (39), which is a model for identification. By recognizable features with reality, the spectator can feel recognition and by the given information through narrative the spectator can feel alignment. At that point, the spectator can create allegiance: a relationship with the character as the norms and values of the characters are clear and can be evaluated by the spectator. According to Smith, once one of the three layers is lacking, the spectator cannot feel sympathy or identify with the character. In contemporary dystopian cinema I argue there is not one layer missing. This is why I claim that the spectator can feel more engaged, while being actively involved. As Elsaesser puts it:

“This new spectator clearly responds to the changing viewing habits of our audiovisual culture, where watching a film has become infinitely more varied an activity. (…) correspond different roles as: voyeur, witness, participant, player, user, prosumer; and different stances: placing oneself face to face with an image, (…) or identifying with it” (Elsaesser, “World Cinema: Realism, Evidence, Presence” 8).

This changed spectator-position, called ontology mark two, paves a way for different viewer- positions as the spectator is forced to interpret the film text in a more active and critical way. Interestingly, Buckland’s theory of ‘possible worlds’ is in line with Elsaesser’s notion of the new spectator. Buckland (2002) assigns possible worlds to the spectator, which is dependent on the mind and so the “thought processes and language of humans” (212). A new ontological status of the spectator is shaped by creating imaginary worlds which become inseparable of reality, challenging and including the spectator in an active way. On top of this, the spectator is provided with information regarding the characters and no layer of the structure of sympathy is lacking. This adds up to an actively engaged spectator with the twenty-first century dystopian cinema.

3.1.4 Generic Pleasure

Dystopian cinema belongs to blockbusters; thus, they rely on box office numbers. After a film is proven to be successful, more similar films will appear. Bordwell and Thompson point out

46 that “new genres and subgenres are not, however, recognized after that first successful film, since by definition a genre consists of a group of similar films” (115). Besides this, Richard Allen states that genre conventions in film require less effort by the spectator in order to understand a film (115). As I pointed out in the first chapter, twenty-first century dystopian cinema shows many genre conventions. It mostly belongs to the science-fiction genre, but dystopian cinema also belongs to the adventure, fantasy and mind-game genre. These conventions increase the likelihood of the spectator’s ability to engage with the film’s narrative world (115). Together, the genre conventions create ‘dystopian cinema’ as a recognizable type of film. Altman highlights a ‘counter-cultural pleasure’ (156) as a process between the spectator and film genre. Genre films are based on repetitive standards and cinematic style elements, through which a number of classic film genres and mixed film genres have emerged. By the increasing distance between cultures and opposed cultures, the ‘generic pleasure’ of the spectator has increased (152). Altman clarifies that there is an invisible bond between fans and a specific genre by the counter-cultural undertakings during watching a genre film (156). The spectator sees a certain type of film and wants more of this, which creates a ‘community’ and becomes an essential source of ‘spectator pleasure’. I argue that the spectator is likely to engage with the film’s narrative world by recognizing certain genre conventions in the films. Moreover, dystopian films are now recognized as their own type of film and so a counter-cultural pleasure can be felt between the spectator and dystopian film. In contemporary dystopian cinema this active spectatorship is combined with a young adult targeted audience and in the following section, I will clarify the essential involvement of the active female spectator.

§3.2 Transforming Heroines

“Beatrice was a girl I saw in stolen moments at the mirror, who kept quiet at the dinner table. This is someone whose eyes claim mine and don’t release me; this is Tris”. - Tris Prior in Divergent.

Dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century tends to represent female heroines. A renewed aspect of the dystopian of the twenty-first century is that these films are appointed as teen films. Catherine Driscoll defines teen films as “the youthfulness of central characters; content

47 usually centered on young heterosexuality, frequently with a romance plot, intense age-based peer relationships and conflict either within those relationships or with an older generation” (2). The target audiences of these dystopian films are young adults and before the twenty-first century this was not necessarily the case. Momentously, I will draw attention to this renewed aspect concerning the teen-spectator and how this spectator is being addressed in the following two sections. According to James Pittman (2009) the further we go into the twenty- first century the more our values determine the way we act on certain issues: “Our values, principles, and ethics will not only define who you are as an individual, but will determine your actions, behavior, attitude and how you handle life in general” (58). I argue the dystopian films of the twenty-first century carry out an identification process with the spectator through the character’s transformation from adolescent to a woman on the screen. By doing so, I will first outline the spectator’s appeal to the female protagonist in this section.

3.2.1 Female Action Heroines

Frequently, in action- or adventure movies there is a male protagonist and it is noteworthy that in The Hunger Games and Divergent series the protagonist is female. In Avatar Jake Sully is the protagonist who eventually saves the Na’Vi people in Pandora. However, the character Neytiri is positioned as a strong and wise woman who fights as a warrior and teaches Jake Sully to live and fight like the Na’vi. Nonetheless, I will focus on The Hunger Games and Divergent series in this section. These film series are the most representative for the portrayal of female heroines in dystopian cinema. The female protagonists show characteristics such as independence, leadership and both mental as physical strength. The appearance of a female action heroine as protagonist in films emerged as a response to feminism back in the late nineties. Mark O’Day (2004) clarifies that this development took place at the end of nineties and beginning of the twenty-first century. He formulates the term ‘action babes’ and establishes this as a wave of action-adventure films representing alluring and strong women (201). The female heroines take on male-oriented roles, showing masculinity and at the same time femininity (203). O’Day comments on the gendered binary oppositions of the action heroine and mentions these oppositions “structure common-sense understanding of gender in patriarchal consumer culture” (202). Philip Kirby (2015) draws upon the interchangeable gender roles. Kirby debates that the protagonist of The Hunger Games: Katniss, is a progressive heroine and this is shown “by the fact that Katniss is rarely defined by her gender and that, in the main, it places no restriction upon her thoughts or

48 actions” (462). In the seventies, blockbusters and action movies became more popular, facing competition from home entertainment and television. Before the 2000s it was uncommon for the protagonist, and especially the action hero, to be a woman. After the twentieth-century, Hollywood produced several blockbusters with female action heroines7. The female scholars Sara Day, Miranda Green-Barteet and Amy Montz clarify that the female figures represented in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century were often “passive, subordinate, self-sacrificing and submissive” (2). It is worth noting that a combination of masculinity and the female body differentiates the female heroines of the twenty-first century from before. Besides this, the female figures of modern cinema are moved by higher purposes. Mao Chenting stresses that these female protagonists represent individuals, who do not seduce others, like the femme fatale, but fight for their own survival. Chengting also identifies the use of female heroines in contemporary cinema as a part of creating a spectacle. The image of the protagonist is, as he points out, part of a ‘consumer image’ or ‘extra bonus’ in order to entertain the audience (n.pag.). The women show masculinity and femininity through which these female figures are pleasurable to look at and become a discussed theme in film studies8. Thus, by showing masculine power and feminine characteristics, the female heroines in these dystopian films are transgressing. I will now demonstrate this through an analysis of the protagonists of The Hunger Games and Divergent series.

3.2.2 Girls on Fire

The protagonist of The Hunger Games is Katniss Everdeen, who is born and raised in district Twelve. Katniss is marked as courageous and brave. Her younger sister Prim was summoned for the annual Hunger Games and Katniss instantly volunteered as a tribute to replace her sister. Katniss is eager to survive the 74th Hunger Games, in order to come back home to her sister, and eventually she succeeds. In the first film of The Hunger Games series Katniss is

7 Looking at Angelina Jolie portraying Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (West, 2001), an assassin in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Liman, 2005), a spy in Salt (Noyce, 2010) or a killer in Wanted (Bekmambetov, 2008). Besides this, to name a few: Terminator II (Cameron, 1991), Looper (Johnson, 2012), Kill Bill (Tarrantino, 2003), Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014), Mad Max: Fury Road and The Fourth Kind (Miller, 2015) embodied action heroines from the twenty-first century on. 8 Feminist film theory arose in the 1970s as a combination of film and feminist theory in which representation, spectatorship and the gaze are key topics. “Cinema is taken by feminists to be a cultural practice representing myths about women and femininity, as well as about men and masculinity” (Smelk 491). Laura Mulvey is well- known for her essays on the passive role of women in cinema that provides visual pleasure and coined the notion ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’. Mulvey (2004) states: “(…) from the perspective of the twenty-first century, the first phase of feminism, identified with the women’s movement, seems more closely tied to, and located within, the culture and politics of its age than, perhaps, feminists acknowledged at the time” (1286). 49 known as ‘the girl on fire’. During the Hunger Games, the audience sees the soft and caring, more feminine side, but also the physical strength and decisiveness of Katniss. Her caring side is significant in the scene of Rue’s death; Katniss shows her emotions, sings for Rue and covers her in white flowers. Her decisive masculine side is represented, for instance, in the scene in which she gains attention from the sponsors by shooting her arrow through the window. Besides this, Katniss demonstrates her fighting and killing skills in the arena. This indicates the change and transgression of gendered binary oppositions, “which structure common-sense understanding of gender in patriarchal consumer culture” (O’Day 202). Moreover, Katniss transforms from a more ordinary girl into someone who knows how to kill. In the end of the Hunger Games, only Katniss and her male tribute companion of district Twelve, Peeta, are left. Katniss provoked the Gamemakers by getting the ‘night lock berries’ and threatens to commit suicide together with Peeta. At that point the Gamemakers decided to change the rules of the Hunger Games and that two tributes of the same district may win together. Thus, Katniss changes history and the regulations of the Hunger Games. In the second film Catching Fire Peeta and Katniss tour together through all districts and they realize President Snow understood their survival of the Games as an act of rebellion. Towards the third and fourth film, which represent Mockingjay: Part One and Two, Katniss becomes the leader of the rebellions opposing the Capital. These actions throughout the films clearly demonstrate that Katniss represents a courageous, independent and strong woman, changing history. Similarly, the protagonist of Divergent represents a strong woman: ‘Tris Prior’. In the first film, she is a teenager who is uncertain about her choices, for example she had difficulties choosing Dauntless as her faction, because she did not want to disappoint her parents. However, in the last film she is a strong-willed woman who does not want to show weaknesses. She is raised within the faction ‘Abnegation’ and choses to find her future in ‘Dauntless’. The factions classify the young adult citizens based on their abilities, skills and values. Tris needed to hide the fact that she does not fit in one of the five factions, since she is ‘Divergent’. Becoming a worthy Dauntless member, Tris is the first one to jump from a high building and her transformation starts. She started as one of the weakest members of Dauntless, but through her persistence and hard training she becomes one of the strongest members. She changes into nothing but black clothes and gets tattoos. It is clear Tris uses her intelligence and seems fearless in her acts. In the second film; Insurgent, Tris cuts her hair short, allowing a continuous transformation being visible. During Insurgent, it is revealed that Tris is the ‘chosen one’, she is the only one who can open the mysterious box by overcoming

50 five simulations. During the final, more science-fiction- like film Allegiant, Tris is the only human of Chicago who is ‘pure’, being a hundred percent divergent. She wears a white, more feminine outfit: a pencil skirt and appears more as a woman (Figure 12). Eventually, she goes back to her roots: Chicago, to save the city. In both film series the protagonist transforms by making certain decisions and overcoming many obstacles. The teenage girl transforms into a powerful woman, significant in changing history. The female protagonists fight for their values and people, fall in love and become a leader. Feminists Day, Green-Barteet and Montz (2014) highlight the influential female appearances in contemporary dystopian settings. They argue that Katniss and Tris are heroines that “contradict the common perception that girls are too (…) powerless to question the limitations placed upon them, much less to rebel and, in turn, fuel larger rebellions” (4). As these authors argue, there is a transformation from girlhood to womanhood, whereas girlhood is positioned at “the crossroads of vulnerability and power” (5). Dystopian girlhood represents the adolescence of leading female figures. During the childhood, the characters become more aware of what is wrong with their society and struggle in order to find their own place or identity within this society. This adolescence is characterized by their “physical changes and numerous rites of passage that indicate the end of childhood” (48). Formerly, the end of adolescence mostly meant marriage. Now, this means the protagonists are embedded into the society (48). Womanhood is shown as a progressive representation of the woman; the powerful agency and a celebration of ‘personal empowerment’ (Chengting n.pag.). Miranda Green-Barteet’s chapter “Rebellious Subjectivities” (2014) identifies dystopian societies as a platform for larger iterations of adolescent selfhood:

“Female protagonists of contemporary young adult dystopias occupy liminal spaces as they seek to understand their places in the world, to claim their identities and to live their lives on their own terms (3).

The transformation of the female protagonists carries out the theme ‘identity’ and ‘transformation’. The female audience can identify with the transformation of themselves as an individual: from adolescent to a woman. Besides this, the changes in society have led to females finding their place in society, beyond the more conventional parting in become a wife after marriage. The young adult female audience can strongly identify with this process as they are a part of this process in contemporary society:

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“(…) tangling with the risks and rewards of female rebellions, these girls (and their authors) illustrate the ongoing challenges of redefining what it means to be a young woman” (Day, Green-Barteet and Montz 4).

In Divergent, then, the female protagonist represents a critical analysis of gender and the redefining transformation of women in contemporary society, which creates an identification process with the young adult female spectator.

Figure 12. This figure shows the visible transformation of Tris throughout the Divergent series.

3.2.3 The Female Spectator

According to Laura Mulvey (1975) these female protagonists serve the male spectator. However, in her article “Afterthoughts on “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1981) Mulvey draws attention to a female gaze as the gaze of women identifying with masculinity, which reactivates identification. This phantasy of action “can only find expression, (…) through the metaphor of masculinity” (15). The female protagonist is then a woman unable to achieve a stable sexual identity “torn between the deep, blue sea of passive femininity and the devil of regressive masculinity” (12). The masculinization of the spectacle position of women in cinema may be revised by the female spectator according to Mulvey. The image of the masculine women on the screen implies a certain pleasure for the female audience in a rediscovery of a lost aspect of their sexual identity (37). Considering the transforming female protagonist, with both female and male characteristics, this conception of Mulvey can be applied to the female spectator. In contrast to Mulvey’s male voyeuristic pleasure, which involves a distance between the spectator and the image, Mary Ann Doane (1991) claims the female spectator does not feel this distance, as she is the image. There is a narcissistic visual pleasure produced by self-identification with the character. The female spectator can seize emotional closeness with the female protagonist and “the narcissism entailed in becoming one's own object of desire” (31-32).

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In the early twenty-first century, young women are embodied in dystopian fiction as: “straddling the lined of childhood and adulthood, of individuality and conformity” (Day, Green-Barteet, Montz 4). It is clear that the female protagonists undergo a transformation idem to the audience of teen girls towards young adult women. The female spectator finds comfort in the narrative and image of the female protagonists with an active identification. Besides this, since the twenty-first century, dystopian cinema has belonged more to ‘women’s films’ than before as it centers a woman in the bull's eye of the story and society, transcending the limitations of their sexual identity. Woman’s films address a female audience and evolve around a female protagonist, while combining different genres in one film. However, the dystopian films do not deal with very obvious female themes, such as motherhood or domestic life, but they do deal with self-sacrifice and romance (Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s 152). Besides this, the female audience is not considered as a sappy audience, but more active as dystopian films are among the adventure- and action film genre as well. The role of women has changed into empowered women in contemporary consumer culture and 21st century dystopian films have become socially progressive. Above all, the female protagonists make way for an active identification process of the female spectator. This female gaze, going beyond a gaze and becoming a more extensive form of identification, is significant for the success of the dystopian films of the twenty-first century.

§3.3 Identifiable Forces

In this final and essential section, I will establish the role of the spectator of dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century through a psychoanalytic evaluation. Caused by the spectacle films, the embodiment and the new ontology, there is an active spectatorship with films of the twenty-first century. Through the layers of the structure of sympathy the spectator can engage with the characters. By the narrative the spectator is given the information regarding the story and with no withheld information, the spectator can comprehend and master the narrative and this evolves in allegiance as the spectator is evaluating the morals and values of the characters. In the second section of this chapter I explicated the identification process of young female adults with dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century. I argue the spectator can relate to the image through the references to reality, concerning the moral issues and critiques I clarified in the second chapter. Through the new ontology and the missing indexicality, the spectator cannot distinguish reality and illusion and become more actively

53 involved with the image.

3.3.1 Mirroring Reality through Dystopian Cinema

Spectators cannot engage with cinematic images any more than they can absorb reality: the spectator is an active participant in understanding the text and realizing their wishes in reality (Allen and Smith 4). In accordance, Joseph Anderson (1996) clarifies the process of making sense of film is equivalent to making sense of the real world (159). It is proven dystopian cinema is interrelated with social, cultural, political and environmental issues and critiques regarding the changes in contemporary society. The cognitivist Edward Branigan (1992) states the fictional world references a world existing in the human mind and this thought is able to shape the image and make it believable. He explains that the spectator can believe in “a narrative ‘truth’ and find a value in it” and in this sense the spectator links the film to their world (192). The emotions arise from watching the film and underpin the realism of the imaginary world connected to the real world. The more links made with the contemporary world, the easier the spectator can link the imaginary possible world to our world (Branigan 82). The worlds created in the dystopian films are able “to replicate the realism and illusionism of the photographic image by conferring a perfect photographic credibility upon objects that do not exist in the actual world” (28). These imaginary worlds in dystopian cinema depend on our own imaginary, “they cannot be located in nature, only in the thought processes and language of humans” (Elsaesser and Buckland 212). Dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century has evidently become part of the cinema of attraction and Strauven mentions spectacle films concern “reflexivity and self-reference, display and performativity” (211). Michele Aaron (2007) claims: “self-reflexivity questions the spectator’s mythic distance and safety, the irresponsibility or neutrality of looking on” (97) and she explicates how this is linked to spectatorship:

“Self-reflexivity appears a major strategy of implication, a deep fault line in the reassurances of spectatorship, and as it becomes all the more frequent and psycho- dynamically charged, so the viewer’s implication becomes that much more apparent” (Aaron 98).

Self-reflexivity has become a strategy in cinema in order to maintain the spectator and the spectator contributes to actively, constructing the narrative. Emotions are awakened through the imaginary in film. The first chapter elucidated that after times

54 of chaos there is a desire for more dystopian stories and together with the themes portrayed reflecting upon reality, the spectator becomes self-reflexive and an active participant in realizing their wishes.

3.3.2 The Ego and Reality The creation of plausible alternative worlds in dystopian cinema generates a sense of realism for the spectator. A different view on individuality is created through anxiety, moral discontent and the crisis of agency. Drawing upon postmodernism, Dan Hassler-Forest argues this results in a loss of identity, thus a crisis of agency: “feeling displaced within a mechanized, increasingly fast paced social sphere, the individual in postmodernity experiences a more fundamental loss of any sense of identity” (42). This loss identity and restructuring it, is a crucial aspect in contemporary dystopias. Today’s dystopian cinema offers conflicting views on the individual and a fantasy in overcoming this crisis of agency and moral dissatisfaction. By targeting a young adult audience, contemporary dystopian cinema became great box office successes. There is a complex relation between youth in the audience and youth on screen as Síegfried Kracauer (1995) designates. Driscoll (2011) quotes Kracauer, who believes a film never reflects life accurately, “but dominant ideals – ideologies and fantasies that are nevertheless real in their effects” (n.pag.). Slavoj Zizek (1991) speculates that fantasy organizes how the spectator sees the world and understands reality. Fantasy can be seen as ‘glasses’ through which we can see the world and create certain feelings. The female protagonists, highlighted in the second section of this chapter, transform from adolescents to mature leaders, whereas the character Jake Sully in Avatar transforms into an everlastingly avatar. This transformation paves the way to identification of the targeted young adult audience. Through the given information in the films, the spectator can feel sympathy through all levels of engagement. Besides this, the audience can actively give meaning to the reality checks within dystopian cinema. This is all heavily related to psychodynamic perspectives of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. I argue that through Freud’s process of Id, Ego and Super-Ego, dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century adds an extra layer to the identification process of the spectator. According to Freud (1975) our mental life is constantly disturbed by conflicts and psychoanalysis establishes what it means to be human. Freud forms a model and divides this into three modes of the human: the Id, Ego and Super-Ego. The Id deals with basic needs and animalistic desires, the Super-Ego adds

55 morality to actions, creating moral judgement and the Ego deals with reality and becomes a mediator between the Id and Super-Ego. The Id creates drives in order to perceive satisfaction and represents the pleasure principle (363). Contemporary dystopian cinema sheds light on this animalistic desire of human beings. For example, The Hunger Games demonstrates this through the animalistic need to kill others in order to win the Hunger Games and the pleasure of the citizens of the Capital in watching this. In Divergent this is displayed in the antagonists, after one leader is defeated, another person has the desire to seize power. In Avatar this is clearly shown through the actions of the characters Colonel Miles Quarith and Parker Selfridge, who feel the need to earn loads of money or gain military power, without carrying about the consequences for the Na’Vi. In all dystopian films, a strong desire for power is recurring theme. The Super-Ego or ‘the moral guardian’ is carried out by the protagonists, always doing the right thing and reminding the spectator to fight for moral values and a following socialization. The Super-Ego is influenced by authority figures, such as parents. However, I argue that this is unbalanced as the protagonists of the dystopian films have lost their loved ones and represent themselves as transforming individuals, learning from themselves and finding their own identity. Therefore, I strongly believe the Ego is overpowering the Super-Ego, while the protagonists want to make the perfect decisions, they constantly find themselves facing choices. Nonetheless, the protagonists eventually end up as a hero, without striving for power and fighting for morals. The Super-Ego relates to the transformation of the protagonists. The Ego forms a reality-principle and finds itself between the Id and the Ego, constantly mediating between the two. I claim the young adult spectator of the twenty- first century dystopian cinema becomes a mediating force, judging upon the actions shown on the screen. The spectator is actively mediating and becomes an active participant. Freud argues that it is underneath what we see, that controls our behavior and desires, and our unconsciousness creates our drives. Through dystopian cinema the spectator gets to reflect, identify and actively mediate with what is on the screen and guiding new ways of behavior, creating personal desires. Freud’s theory of the Id, Ego and Super-Ego mediates with former discussed theories in this research, such as media ecology and the theatre of cruelty. As McLuhan argues communication technologies of today change the senses and behaviors of people, which may lead to social transformation due to different ways of

56 perceiving the world. Artaud clarified emotional responses deduced from primal instincts, and so the Id. These instincts are presented in dystopia and can be linked to audience, acting a specific way and this being repressed and so they become more addressed with dystopian cinema. This results in teenagers finding themselves in the conscious Ego, mediating between the Id and Super-Ego. Hence, the spectator can be considered a creative agent behind their own experiences and dystopian cinema tends to embody the sense of alienation felt by young adults and their perilous uncertainties towards adult life.

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Conclusion

A New Dark Age

In this research I have explored the ways in which dystopian cinema has occurred and how it has developed into a different form in the twenty-first century. As a result of a different formula of dystopian cinema, I argue there is a strong appeal causing dystopian cinema to continuously appear in the twenty-first century. The guiding question for this research is: ‘In what way is the spectator immersed by dystopian cinema and therefore what makes these films so appealing in the twenty-first century?’ This research has resulted in a different approach to the spectator’s involvement and I hereby suggest an alternative position for the involvement of the spectator. I concluded three main elements that have contributed to the crave for dystopia in the twenty-first century. By using Avatar, WALL-E and The Hunger Games and Divergent series, I was able to demonstrate these elements which I will now narrow down in my conclusion:

1. Desire for Dystopia After Times of Chaos 2. A New Formula 3. A New Targeted Audience

1. Desire for Dystopia after Times of Chaos Due to certain events, there is an alternation of the appearance and disappearance of dystopia. After certain events, such as the First and Second World War and the great depression, authors were less optimistic and utopianism had its day. As the twentieth century continued, a more dystopian perspective arose and the dystopian genre evolved more as a political critique. Caused by the desire for peace and equality, countercultures emerged in 1960s and 1970s and dystopia faded as utopianism took its turn again. In the 1980s sadness affected by the Vietnam War rose and writers revived and reformulated the dystopian genre (Baccolini and Moylan 2). Dystopian stories were easily adapted as the plot, setting and characters were good to transfer into cinema (Blaim 72) and so dystopian films quickly emerged. A decline of dystopian films took place in the 1990s as there was an economic growth and increasing trust in the government in 1993, going on until the end of the twentieth century (Pittman 4). In the twenty-first century many technological inventions and social media arose, creating different matters. The Financial Crisis of the 2000s and large terrorist attacks and environmental disasters increased this concern. Thus, after these real-time dystopias and concerns of

58 disorder, a desire for dystopia rose again in the twenty-first century.

2. A New Formula After the emergence of technological effects and contemporary themes portrayed in dystopian cinema, a new formula of dystopian cinema appeared in the twenty-first century. This is mostly caused by the creation of a spectacle and unseen imaginary worlds generated by special effects, but also the moral themes mirroring today’s reality. The plausible alternative worlds create a sense of realism for the spectator and through the themes regarding contemporary society, it is easy for the spectator to link the imaginary world to the real world. Dystopian film used to undermine mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterization, while testing the audience’s disbelief. However, contemporary dystopian cinema has become part of Hollywood’s blockbusters, becoming a more mainstream film. The special effects of the twenty-first century manipulate the spectator as the imaginary worlds of dystopian films become plausible (Metz 675) and this reinforces Gunning’s cinema of attractions. Besides this, a seamless blend of genre conventions could appear and the engagement with the film’s narrative world has become easier for the spectator. Dystopia as a recognizable type of film has produced a ‘counter-cultural pleasure’, asking for more similar films. Moreover, today’s dystopian cinema is targeting young adults, differing itself from dystopian cinema before. I explored the moral themes faced in the twenty-first century dystopian cinema, which focus on disorders rather than extreme orders of previous dystopias. The society has been broken down and fractured, caused by environmental, technological or political events. Through cultural analysis, I demonstrated references in The Hunger Games and Divergent series regarding the shift towards reality-television in contemporary media culture. This caused the distinction between fact and fiction to become blurry (Hill 41), which is seen in our contemporary culture influenced by media and modern technology (Moylan and Baccolini 158). As a result of the consumer based- and the information society, a surveillance culture has emerged and this too has become a recurring theme in modern dystopian cinema. The dystopian films concerning the surveillance- and reality culture have created a Panopticon gaze; the spectator observes the participants trapped in dystopian worlds. The second discussed theme of the twenty-first century is the use of violence shown in the present dystopias. Importantly, The Hunger Games and Divergent series show exceptionally much violence for a teen film. This is done to critique the more frequently

59 shown violence in the entertainment world (Herthorne 19), but also to shock the spectators as they are desensitized by violence (Potter 125). Aligned with Antonin Artaud’s ‘theatre of cruelty’, violence is used as a driving force to excite subconscious emotional responses from the spectator. The final critique upon society and recurring theme in contemporary dystopian cinema is human behavior towards nature. WALL-E mirrors the relation between culture, environment and technology as it represents a consumer-culture and a maltreated Earth. WALL-E is linked to media ecology by referring to the role of media and technology; influencing social changes and the understandings of human behavior. Marshall McLuhan states this leads to social transformation due to different ways of perceiving the world. Through ecology Avatar is examined and self-realization and the ecological self (Erb 6-7) is deduced. This causes the spectator to develop through the experience of nature realized by the plausible imaginary worlds in dystopian cinema. Avatar draws a parallel between environmentalism and spirituality and by its references to Gaia it aims at a progressive evolution and a ‘dark green religion’.

3. A New Targeted Audience A renewed characteristic of dystopian cinema is the targeted young adult audience. By using several approaches regarding spectatorship, such as Murray Smith’s structure of sympathy and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, I came to the conclusion that there is a deeper relation between the spectator and the screen, blending several spectatorship-theories. A narrative and visual pleasure are reinforced together in current dystopian cinema. It has paved a way for a visual feast, by creating unseen worlds and stimulating the spectator’s senses. In addition, there is a philosophical and psychological depth for the spectator. The distinction between reality and the imaginary is fading caused by the plausible worlds. This stimulated Elsaesser’s ‘ontology mark two’ and film is no longer a window towards the actual world, but more a mirror of reality. This emphasizes the active and critical role of the spectator. Besides this, no layer of the structure of sympathy is lacking and the spectator is able to identify with the characters. However, I argue contemporary dystopian cinema goes beyond this character- engagement structured by Smith. The active spectator is embodied by the spectacle experience and through the representation of the transforming heroines and the Ego- identification; I argue there is a more immersed spectator with a self-reflexive identification process.

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I position the spectator into Freud’s Ego; constantly mediating between moral values and primary instincts. The Ego is in the consciousness of the spectator and so it is not difficult for the spectator to reach this position and become self-reflexive. The loss of identity felt by the young adult spectator is fulfilled by the Ego-position while seeing a dystopian film. There is a fantasy felt by spectator in overcoming this crisis of agency, and moral dissatisfaction. Dystopian cinema becomes a mirror for transforming young adults and especially female young adults. Contemporary dystopia’s frequently represent female protagonists, causing the female spectator to identify more. The protagonists represent a transformation from an adolescent to a woman, overcoming obstacles and redefining their identity in a changing society to become greater. According to Laura Mulvey, the portrayal of a masculine female heroine signifies a pleasure for the female spectator in a rediscovery of a lost aspect of their sexual identity. Besides this, there is no distance between the female spectator and the protagonist as she becomes the image. A narcissistic visual pleasure is produced by self- identification with an emotional closeness. Contemporary dystopian cinema can be grasped as a representation of philosophical and societal exploration of the mind and the body. Altogether, the three elements have led to a new emerged spectator-position, going beyond the current theories regarding spectatorship as they combine the theories together and individually are deficient. Self-reflexivity has become a strategy of implication in contemporary dystopian cinema. Consequently, the identification process goes beyond Smith’s character engagement; there is a spectacle embodiment, combined with a psycho-dynamically charged involvement, leading the spectator to identify in more immersive ways. With the female spectator, this is even more vivacious as they feel an emotional closeness with the protagonist on the screen, becoming the screen. Dystopian cinema of the twenty-first century reaches a higher meaning and leaves the spectator in the Ego, discovering the spectator’s own identity and exploring the capacity of social transformation. The active involvement of the spectator is constantly challenged and the young adult spectator has a significant role the big box office successes.

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Media List

Films

A Brave New World. Burt Brinckerhof. Universal Television. 1980.

The Great Train Robbery. Dir. Edwin Porter. Edision Manufacturing Company. 1903.

Allegiant. Dir. Robert Scwentke. Summit Entertainment. 2016.

An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Guggenheim. Paramount Classics. 2006.

Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. 20th Century Fox. 2009.

Bwana Devil. Dir. Arch Oboler. Arch Oboler Productions and United Artists. 1952.

Dial M for Murder. Alfred Hitchcock. 1954.

Divergent. Dir. Neil Burger. Lionsgate. 2014.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Dir. Hironobu Sakaguchi. Columbia Pictures. 2001.

Guardians of the Galaxy. Dir. James Gunn. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 2014.

Insurgent. Dir. Robert Schwentke. Lionsgate. 2015.

It Came From Outer Space. Dir. Jack Arnold. Universal-International. 1953.

Kill Bill. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax Films. 2003.

Jaws. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures. 1975.

Jurrasic Park. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures. 1993.

Looper. Dir. Rian Johnson. TriStar Pictures. 2012.

Mad Max: Fury Road. Dir. George Miller. Warner Bros Pictures and Roadshow Films. 2015.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Dir. Doug Liman. 20th Century Fox and Summit Entertainment. 2005.

Nineteen Eighty-Four. Dir. Michael Radford. 1984.

Planet of the Apes. Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner. 20th Century Fox. 1968.

Salt. Dir. Phillip Noyce. Columbia Pictures. 2010.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Dir Kerry Conran. Paramount Pictures. 2004.

Star Wars. Dir. George Lucas. 20th Century Fox. 1977.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Dir. James Cameron. TriStar Pictures. 1991.

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The Blade Runner. Dir. Ridley Scott. Warner Bros. 1982.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Dir. Francis Lawrence. Lionsgate Films. StudioCanal and Universal Studios. 2013.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1. Dir. Francis Lawrence. Lionsgate Films. 2014.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2. Dir. Francis Lawrence. Lionsgate Films. 2015.

The Lone Gunmen. Fox. March 4 - June 1 2001.

The Matrix. Dir. The Wachowski Brothers. Warner Bros (United States) and Roadshow Entertainment (Australia). 1999.

The Towering Inferno. Dir. John Guillermin. 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. 1974.

Tomb Raider. Dir. Simon West. Paramount Pictures. 2001.

V for Vendetta. Dir. James McTeigue. Warner Bros. Pictures. 2006.

WALL-E. Dir. Andrew Stanton. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 2008.

Wanted. Dir. Timur Bekmanbetov. Universal Pictures. 2008.

Other Media

YouTube: Bibliostar.TV. “Suzanne Collins on the Vietnam War Stories Behind The Hunger Games and Year of the Jungle”. YouTube. 8 October 2012. April 9 2016.

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