The Cold War was a time of extreme conformity, with an equally extreme reaction against forced conformity. Representations of such reactions were not to be omitted in the literature of the time. Throughout the novels, the characters and society itself are repressed into an alternate state of being. This investigation analyzes the role that technology plays in this process in Fahrenheit 451, Sirens of Titan, 1984, Lord of the Flies, and A Clockwork Orange. The novels were all written during the Cold War and follow a dystopian society. Society is controlled and maintained in its respective disarray through the utilization of technology, whether it be pushed down upon them by their governments or by themselves. Through close analysis of the novels themselves and existing discourse related to the topic, it becomes evident that technology is able to manipulate and dictate the lives of people, diminishing their individualism. A dichotomy between creative expression and technology arises in all of the studied novels, pointing to the significance of individualism and its existence through creativity. This investigation concludes that such acts of expression, including creative writing and nonconformist acts, are vital to maintaining a stable societal system. The literature points to the ultimate evil that arises from technology and the power that inevitably comes with it, warning that humanity itself may be lost without the existence of free will and individual thought.

Sarah Hall’s feminist dystopia The Carhullan Army presents a near-future society by using oppositional binaries traditional to the genre of the literary dystopia; Utopia/Dystopia, Male/Female, and Good/Evil. This essay deconstructs these binaries in order to unveil the inherent complexities in power structures that cannot be captured by such binaries. Previous research on the novel has approached it with feminist theory, and different branches of feminism such as ecofeminism. In this essay, I use feminist theory as a starting point to discuss the Authority’s oppression of women in the novel, but I also show the limits to this approach when considering the apparent post-9/11 context in which the novel is situated, which decisively inflects its treatment of power. Michel Foucault’s theories on power and knowledge are used in order to examine the complex power structures in The Carhullan Army, which relate to—and transcend—borders of gender. I find that the subtle political presence of American imperialism in the novel is vital to understand the power struggles that are apparent in both the patriarchal city of Rith and the matriarchal Carhullan farm. This essay examines the novel both as a critique to the political submissiveness that Great Britain showed when it followed America into war against Iraq in 2003 and as a depiction of what this submission might lead to.

This thesis explores and connects two main elements: the utopian studies and the studies of social and political critique. The big quantity and variety and history of utopian texts raises a simple question: why someone writes utopian texts, why one wishes for a better and different life? And how do these factors operate in the large picture of humanity. It has been observed that utopian literature flourish in the times of human despair. In the times of unhappiness people try to search for decisions inside the dominant order in which they often feel hopeless to change. The utopians might say: “We do not want reforms, we want new forms!”. The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the critical side of utopias. How this critique works and how does it unfolds? What reactions does it create and why? This thesis is also concerned about the ambiguous nature of the concept utopia and its possible connections with human desire. If we agree with Deleuze and Guattari concept of desire as production, we can view utopia totally differently – as a immanent process of becoming, as a direction, not a destination. / Šis magistro darbas apžvelgia ir apjungia du pagrindinius šio darbo elementus: utopijų studijos ir socialinė bei politinė kritika. Didelis kiekis įvairiausių utopinių tekstų kelia klausimą: kodėl žmonės rašo utopinius tekstus ir apskritai kodėl svajoja apie geresnį ir kitokį gyvenimą? Istoriškai pastebime, kad utopijų rašymas intensyviausiai atsiskleidžia per negandų ir nelaimių laikus. Neaiškumo ir nelaimės akivaizdoje žmonės ieško būdų radikaliai pakeisti esamą padėtį, bet dažnai susiduria su valstybinio aparato stagnacija. Utopistas sakytų: „Užteks politinių reformų, mes norime naujų formų!”. Pagrindinis šio darbo tikslas orientuojasi į kritinė utopinio mąstymo pusę. Kaip veikia utopinė kritika? kaip ji išsiskleidžia? Kokias reakcijas sukelia utopinis mąstymas ir kodėl? Šis darbas taip pat gilinasi į sąvokos „utopija“ problematiką. Jei mes sutinkame su Deleuze ir Guattari geismo, kaip nepertraukiamos produkcijos sąvoka, mes galime atsakyti daug klausimų dėl utopinio mąstymo įvairoves, taip pat pažiūrėti į ją iš kito kampo – kaip į imanentišką tapsmo procesą, kuris turį krypti, bet ne galutinę atvykimo vietą.

We live in an age of rapid change. The advance of science and technology, throughout history, has culminated in periods of transition when social values have had to adapt to a changed environment. Such times have proved fertile ground for the expansion of the imagination. Utopian literature offers a vast archive of information concerning the relationship between scientific and technological progress and social change. Alterations in the most basic machinery of society inspired utopian authors to write of distant and future worlds which had achieved a state of harmony and plenty. The dilemmas which writers faced were particular to their era, but there also emerged certain universal themes and questions: What is the best organisation of society? What tools would be adequate to the task? What does it mean to be human? The dividing line on these issues revolves around two opposed beliefs. Some perceived the power inherent in technology to effect the greatest improvement in the human condition. Others were convinced that the organisation of the social order must come first so as to create an environment sympathetic to perceived human needs. There are, necessarily, contradictions in such a division. They can be seen plainly in More's Utopia itself. More wanted to see new science and technique developed. But he also condemned the social consequences which inevitably flowed from the process of discovery. These consequences led More to create a utopia based on social reorganisation. In the main, the utopias of Francis Bacon, Edward Bellamy and the later H. G. Wells accepted science, while the work of William Morris, Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut rejected science in preference for a different social order. More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis were written at a time when feudal, agriciTfural society wasbeeing transformed by new discoveries and techniques. In a later age, Bellamy's Looking Backward and Morris's News From Nowhere offer contrary responses to society at the height of the Industrial evolution. These four authors serve as a prelude to the main area of the thesis which centres on the twentieth century. Wells, though his first novel appeared in 1895, produced the vast bulk of his work in the current century. Huxley acts as an appropriate balance to Wells and also exemplifies the shift from utopia to dystopia. The last section of the thesis deals with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and includes an interview with that author. The twentieth century has seen the proliferation of dystopias, portraits of the disastrous consequences of the headlong pursuit of science and technology, unallied to human values. Huxley and Vonnegut crystallised the fears of a modern generation: that we create a soulless, mechanised, urban nightmare. The contemporary fascination with science in literature is merely an extension of a process with a long tradition and underlying theme. The advance of science and technology created the physical and intellectual environment for utopian authors which determined the form and content of their visions.

This study serves as an introduction to three recent narratives in Spanish Science Fiction. While this literary genre has long been read in Spain in translation, it is only recently that Sci-Fi has been successful as a popular literature produced by native authors. Álex de la Iglesia, Gabriela Bustelo and Rafael Reig have worked in realist and genre fiction through their careers but chose to use Science Fiction to speak of the rapidly changing space of Madrid. Their criticism is centered on the changes to the physical, social, economic and political landscape of Madrid post-1992. My analysis is based on the works of the geographer David Harvey, among others, which helps to underline the importance of the urbanization of capital and consciousness that the three narratives disentangle. While being three very different texts - one film and two novels -, they all manipulate concerns of time and space to come to a similar conclusion. Their narratives serve as a warning about how the good intentions of humanist theories like feminism or scientific advancement can easily turn into a nightmare by instead serving the needs of capitalism rather than those of social justice.

This thesis is a study of the gender politics through musical discourse in the Mad Max series. Dystopian narratives are particularly interesting texts for study of gender because they allow for extreme hypothetical situations in worlds that are at once familiar and unfamiliar. Musical discourse in the Mad Max films both supports and complicates dominant readings of gender constructions. I consider the gender politics of the franchise, using Mad Max (1979) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) as case studies, and drawing on scholarship on gender in film music, feminist film theory, and Australian car culture. In analyzing this music, I consider its broader cultural connotations, including film music tropes and operatic character types. After considering these genre associations, I analyze the musical gestures for narrative content and consider how the placement of themes with images and dialogue influences that content, with attention to how these factors contribute to a gendered understanding of the character. As the first deep thematic analysis of music in the Mad Max films, my project extends existing scholarship on both onscreen performance and gender categorizations that include musical forces resistant to strict binary categorization. My analysis of gendered musical discourse emphasizes the power of inquiry about gender in film music to clarify, enrich, and complicate texts.

Emerging out of a tradition of dystopic and apocalyptic cinema, the survivalist film has arisen as a new subgenre owing to a collision of several divergent modes of cinema. While the scholarly discourse has been preoccupied largely with the task of setting up the parameters of this new cinematic line little attention has been paid to unraveling what the new modes of masculine performance within the films mean in the post-9/11 moment in which they have emerged. This paper looks at the ways in which the gendered heroics on the screen are indebted to the slasher and zombie subgenres in offering alternatives to performing and reclaiming masculinity in the modern survivalist film. Looking towards the collapse of society within these films and the historical preoccupation with these film's ancestral sources at moments when masculinity is threatened in new ways, I argue that when society collapses on the screen so too collapses the character's understanding of "proper" gender performance as well as the audiences expectations of appropriate response to this subversion. I find that survivalist films offer a new mode for exploring gender through the ways in which masculinity is performed, received, and reclaimed. Owing largely to the meeting of horror subgenres within these films masculinity can be encountered by the audience in a way that has until now not been possible for the spectator, presenting an opportunity to reevaluate how we recognize and regulate expectations of gender both on and off screen.

We live in an age of rapid change. The advance of science and technology, throughout history, has culminated in periods of transition when social values have had to adapt to a changed environment. Such times have proved fertile ground for the expansion of the imagination. Utopian literature offers a vast archive of information concerning the relationship between scientific and technological progress and social change. Alterations in the most basic machinery of society inspired utopian authors to write of distant and future worlds which had achieved a state of harmony and plenty. The dilemmas which writers faced were particular to their era, but there also emerged certain universal themes and questions: What is the best organisation of society? What tools would be adequate to the task? What does it mean to be human? The dividing line on these issues revolves around two opposed beliefs. Some perceived the power inherent in technology to effect the greatest improvement in the human condition. Others were convinced that the organisation of the social order must come first so as to create an environment sympathetic to perceived human needs. There are, necessarily, contradictions in such a division. They can be seen plainly in More's Utopia itself. More wanted to see new science and technique developed. But he also condemned the social consequences which inevitably flowed from the process of discovery. These consequences led More to create a utopia based on social reorganisation. In the main, the utopias of Francis Bacon, Edward Bellamy and the later H. G. Wells accepted science, while the work of William Morris, Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut rejected science in preference for a different social order. More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis were written at a time when feudal, agriciTfural society wasbeeing transformed by new discoveries and techniques. In a later age, Bellamy's Looking Backward and Morris's News From Nowhere offer contrary responses to society at the height of the Industrial evolution. These four authors serve as a prelude to the main area of the thesis which centres on the twentieth century. Wells, though his first novel appeared in 1895, produced the vast bulk of his work in the current century. Huxley acts as an appropriate balance to Wells and also exemplifies the shift from utopia to dystopia. The last section of the thesis deals with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and includes an interview with that author. The twentieth century has seen the proliferation of dystopias, portraits of the disastrous consequences of the headlong pursuit of science and technology, unallied to human values. Huxley and Vonnegut crystallised the fears of a modern generation: that we create a soulless, mechanised, urban nightmare. The contemporary fascination with science in literature is merely an extension of a process with a long tradition and underlying theme. The advance of science and technology created the physical and intellectual environment for utopian authors which determined the form and content of their visions.

This essay analyzes and tries to untangle the meaning and intention of dystopian literature, by analyzing two novels (Neal Shusterman‟s “Unwind” and Aldous Huxley‟s “Brave New World”). From this analysis, whether or not the futures portrayed in dystopian literature relate to our own future is riddled out, furthermore the importance of the authors‟ intention is debated and a conclusion is reached. As the dystopian future unravels, ethnicity, gender, class and sexual orientation, to mention a few factors, find their own place in the new world; this essay tries to establish their roles in the new society. When discussing the characters in the novels, Bourdieu‟s theories on fields, habitus and social capital are used to figure out what they are competing for and in what ways they struggle for the reward. Furthermore, the development of dystopian imagining is discussed and its function as a reflection of contemporary society and the state of science. Delineating the roles of social classes in dystopias is an important task in figuring out whether social power still reduces minorities depending on class or gender. Our antiquated morals and ethics aren‟t suitable anymore and need to be reformed; this is discussed based on dystopian literature and the image of the future. Furthermore, this essay gets into detail with the reduction of man and by what means we are enslaved and made to believe in the faux utopias. In the end, the conclusion reached is that dystopian literature delivers a hefty and important point that needs to be heeded and used as a rare look into the future.

When critics consider utopian literature, they often claim that the utopian imagination is limited in its ability to provide practical instruction for societal reform. In Archaeologies of the Future, Fredric Jameson extends this critique by arguing that the utopian imagination only exists “to demonstrate and to dramatize our incapacity to imagine the future” (288-289). By returning to an early twentieth century utopian novel, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), we can put pressure on Jameson’s ideas about the ultimate function of the utopian imagination. By analyzing the education system in Herland, we are able to see how Gilman integrated the contemporary educational philosophy of John Dewey and methods of Maria Montessori to provide an intellectual and institutional foundation for her utopian education system. Therefore, Gilman provides a set of ‘instructions’ to suggest how we might reform current methods of education to fit within her utopian vision. Gilman’s Herland allows us to see how a highly imaginative utopian text can promote social change to build a ‘better’ future.