The Fading Comfort of Dystopian Media

When I was younger, I loved dystopian literature. The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, wherever there was a world falling apart, I was quickly turning the page. There was a weird, yet comforting feeling about being lost in a dystopian world. No matter how daunting or oppressive those societies were, there was a safety in knowing that when I closed the book, my life would never be as grueling or fantastical as the characters on the page. Their lives and stories were intense, but they made my problems feel small and manageable.

The Hunger Games (2012)

My love of dystopian books seamlessly translated to dystopian movies when adaptations of my favorite titles came out. In early elementary school, I read The Hunger Games for the first time, and at the ripe age of seven, my mother took me to the theater to watch the movie, knowing my love for the novel. The experience shifted something in me. It wasn't just about imagining and living with the characters in my head, but my imagination was now projected in full color onto the screen in front of me. The movie took me to a world I haven't seen before and changed my perspective on visual media.

I loved it so much I was Katniss Everdeen for Halloween the same year, and I gave out Hunger Games-themed party favors on my birthday the year following. Looking back at those memories, it is shocking to see how the series has changed the meaning in conversations of pop culture and the movie's relation to real life. In recent years, with the release of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in 2023, there has been a comparison to the Capitol's extravagance to the Met Gala, pointing out how the one percent flaunt their wealth during the ongoing trials and tribulations our world is facing with poverty, political turmoil, and war. The once fictitious and unrealistic story turned strikingly familiar.

It was a similar uncanny feeling when watching the Fahrenheit 451 movie adaptation. I read the book for a middle school English class, and I loved it so much that it was an easy reread. At the time, the concept of banning books to limit education felt surreal. I vividly remember the dialogue in my English class about the absurdity of banning media and how many countries have to face that issue, but the class always reiterated how lucky we are not to have to worry about that in the US. Recently, my friend and I decided to watch the movie to lift our spirits on a stormy night in hopes to ogle at Michael B Jordan, but we quickly had a sour taste in our mouths when we realized the unfortunate similarities in the talks of censorship in literature and social media and the ongoing debates on book bans under the current administration.

As I consumed more media, I found the same strange comfort in dystopian video games like Detroit: Become Human and Cyberpunk 2077. This time, I'm not just experiencing the story by viewing the characters, but I am the character.

Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream 2018)

"Remember this is not just a story, it is our future."

When I first played Detroit: Become Human, this opening disclaimer felt like some sort of joke, a dramatic statement to set the tone. However, after replaying the game recently, the opening statement had me feel genuine unease. For those who don't know, Detroit: Become Human is a game about a future in 2038 where humans are dependent on AI to the point of exploitation. With the dependence on AI, there became the issue of sentience. The game follows three sentient robots, and you play as them and learn their stories and how they gained consciousness. You empathize with the robots in the game because you are them. When the game came out, it was more of an allegory to racial segregation and systemic inequality in America, the game forced you to empathize with something you were not.

When I played the game in 2019, the motifs of discrimination were prominent and still hold true, but in my recent play-throughs, the symbolism became less of a metaphor and more of a literal foreshadowing. The echoing conversations about Artificial Intelligence, digital labor, and what "deserves" humanity made the game feel more real than before.

Somewhere along the line, the comfort that I once found in dystopian worlds had been washed away. The stories that felt like unrealistic nightmares started to feel more like foretold prophecies. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy them to the same extent that I did when I was younger. Now, instead of the usual escape these dystopias gave me, there's a part of me that is always searching for parallels, and the more time goes on, the easier they are to find.

And to some extent, that is the point. Dystopian stories were not meant to just be some improbable fantasy, but a critique of the world and a warning for what’s to come. I just never realized how close we drifted to the futures they feared.

-Shreds