English 192 Science Fiction ENGL 192 - Summer (B) 2003, Elizabeth Freudenthal
Mon, 8/25
Week 4: Apocalypse and Dystopia
Discussion Topics for Amnesia Moon:
* Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic Narratives
What is the nature of this dystopia? Who is powerful in the book, and who is powerless? If Chaos is the most powerful dreamer in the book, is he the most powerful person? What qualities make him powerful? How does he use (or learn to use) his power? Can the powerless become powerful in the book? Does it depend on the FSR? How does this relate to power in 1990's U.S.? Are there elements of the book that are actually utopian? * The Mind/Body Split or Connection, (closely connected to the next category)
How do materiality and immateriality appear in the novel? If the dreamers' dreams influence, even create other people's tangible realities, then can there be any separation between thoughts and bodies? Is the tangible ultimately more or less important -- better, morally more correct, more real -- than the intangible? * Dreams, Drugs, Alternate Realities
What exactly is reality in this novel? Is there a difference between material/tangible/physical reality and mental/abstract/intangible reality? How are different realities connected to each other? How do different realities get created? Is any (finite subjective) reality superior to, better than, more real than any other? Is this idea of drug-induced and dream-induced realities utopian or dystopian? * Chaos Theory, Complexity Theory, and Time or, Finite Subjective Realities and Self-Organizing Systems
Chaos theory is closely related to complexity theory, both outgrowths of WWII-era cybernetics. Complexity theory is a science studying self-organizing systems and is defined by the SOS USENET FAQ like this: "Critically interacting components self-organize to form potentially evolving structures exhibiting a hierarchy of emergent system properties." (Check out this USENET FAQ for yourself.) A self-organizing system begins with a set of pre-programmed conditions interacting more or less at random. Through feedback loops, the different initial conditions evolve. That is, different parts of the system interact; the outputs of those interactions are fed back into the system; the system evolves and changes over several iterations/loops. The system can turn chaotic (unpredictable, constant new bits of information) or stable (predictable, no new information), depending on how everything evolves. Moeover, every single thing about the system is caused by itself; no external force affects the system's evolution.
What this means for our class is that Amnesia Moon's emphasis on local systems, plus the protagonist's name, could be interpreted using these new sciences. Think about the book's version of the US as a self-organizing system, with each dreamer's world, each FSR, an element of a self-organizing emergent system.
* Does chaos theory, as you know it so far, apply? What kind of feedback loops are there in Chaos's worlds? How does this mode of time/historical progress apply to the novel's depiction of "the break" and its consequences?
* Chaotic systems challenge old views of cause-and-effect. Chaotic and complex systems, depending as they do on constantly reiterating feedback loops, have no effect separable from causes. Randomness is an additional term here-- chaotic causality is separate from both classical causality and randomness. So is there randomness in Amnesia Moon? If so, what effect does it have? Does it compete with or join with the complex system's union of cause and effect?
General Background on Apocalypse and Dystopia
* Apocalypse as a Christian (and minor early Jewish) concept emphasizing linear history with a beginning and ending, salvation and damnation at the end, and fiery cataclysm as a necessary step towards humanity's salvation.
* Dystopian and utopian writings have almost as long a tradition. "Utopia" comes from Greek for "no-place" (ou-topia) and "good place" (eu-topia); Thomas More coined the term in his 1516 eponeymous nove. "Dystopia" from Greek for "bad place." We're already familiar with the technological dystopia from works as diverse as Metropolis and Terminator. Famous totalitarian dystopias include George Orwell's 1984 (1949) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932).
* WWII and nuclear power meant that linear time could actually be stopped by people instead of a god.
* Remember the post-WWII transformation from national industrial capitalism to multinational capitalism based on information services.
Cordwainer Smith's "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard," 1961
* Post-WWII context of the U.S.'s economic boom, information systems emerging, Cold War, nuclear power, segregation in the U.S., nationhood tensions in Europe, WWI and WWII.
* How does a utopia become a dystopia?
* How does the 1950's and early 1960's presence of segregation show up in this work?
J.G. Ballard's "The Secret History of World War 3," 1988
Ballard is famous for The Empire of the Sun (1984), Crash (1973), The Atrocity Exhibion (1970).
* What about the Reagan era would make so many people nostalgic?
* How does the media work in politics?
* What (if anything) does the president's ailing body have to do with the U.S.'s political situation?
Brazil, dir. Terry Gilliam, 1985. Selected Notes on the film, special thanks to guest lecturer Melissa Stephenson, PhD. candidate, UCSB.
* Gilliam also wrote and directed 12 Monkeys, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Time Bandits. Brazil received mediocre reviews and made little money, jeopardizing Gilliam's next projects.
Beaurocracy and the Banality of Evil
* in 1963, Hannah Arendt published her report on the trial of Nazi war criminal Alfred Eichmann: Eichmann in Jeruselem: a Report on the Banality of Evil. Arendt argued that true evil is not embodied by monsters completely different from everyone else. Instead, evil comes from people like Eichmann, whom she characterized as a petty beaurocrat, a button and paper pusher who just did his job without question, without driving ideology, with neither moral nor immoral compass.
* Compare Michael Palin's Jack with Arendt's characterization of Eichmann.
How to Lie with Words
* Dystopia master George Orwell created "newspeak" for 1984; in newspeak, "bad" doesn't exist and is replaced by "un-good." The goal of newspeak in this novel is to prevent not only criticism of the government, but also critical thought about the government. Orwell was influenced by his contemporary verbal propaganda like the Nazi's "Final Solution" and Stalinist Russia's "Re-Education Camps." Such language obfuscates, disguides, and/or ellides unpalatable truths.
* Note how Buttle is not "dead" to the government. He is "dormanted," "inoperative," "completed," "deleted" and "excised."
* What kinds of disguising phrases float around our contemporary discourse?
We're All In It Together
Archibald "Harry" Tuttle utters this phrase to Sam at the beginning, and a billboard advertises the community's slogan later on. How does this connect to the relationship between the individual and society in this film? What are some connections between this and other images of power and powerlessness in the other dystopic works on our syllabus?
Image and Substance
* Note the advertisements paving the highways, the pictures of food above nearly identical piles of glop at the restaurant, Mrs. Lowry's obsession with plastic surgery.
* Orwell's world of 1984 also featured "doublespeak," words that contained two contradictory concepts.
Romance and Beaurocracy
* Compare Sam's attempts at and dreams about romance-- from the battles with evil warlords to his fantasized seductions of "Jill" -- to his reality. How does he compare to Tuttle? To Tiptree's "Women Men Don't See"?
Dystopia and the Loss of the Body
* How is the body treated in Brazil? How is the human body different from machines? What is the relationship between paperwork and bodies? Are female and male bodies treated differently, and if so, do different characters treat men and women differently? Are mental work, the "mind," abstractions, and thoughts handled or represented as distinct from bodies? i.e. does this film handle the mind/body dichotomy differently from other works we've read so far? From other dystopias?
Happy Endings
Gilliam battled his production company for a long time before the film was released with the ending now common. The film's producer created an edit that ended with Sam and Jill in the country, before that final cut back into the interrogation room. After Gilliam ran a full-page ad in the NY Times about his film, and after the Academy nominated Gilliam's cut of Brazil (which had been circulating in the "underground" of Hollywood") for best screenplay and art direction Oscars, the producer conceded.
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