Back to the Future

As we can see from the readings for this unit, the obsession with the future is not a new fad.  While most people like to think of their own future as happy and tranquil, many of the futuristic texts that we obsess over depict a less than desirable world.

Why is this such an obsession?

The YouTube clip titled “Why Do We Love Zombies?” poses an interesting theory to this obsession with monsters and zombies.   He suggests that monsters can symbolize the scary part of good things; more specifically, he believes zombies represent technology.  I had never made the connection between zombies and technology, but the blogger does make some interesting and valid points.  He does not believe that technology or zombies are evil, they are merely taking over and threatening the livelihood of humanity.  There seems to be an unspoken fear that threatens our future, but it is never directly addressed.  This underlying fear seemed to be a common theme in all of the texts: fear of technology/zombies in the YouTube clip; fear of unfair advantages in “Harrison Bergeron”; fear of zombies and monsters in Night of the Living Dead; fear of unknown objects, events, and people in Welcome to Night Vale; and fear of many threats in the “Dystopian Timeline to The Hunger Games.”

            In many of the texts, the fear also seems to be controlled or suppressed by the government.  IN the story about Harrison Bergeron, the government uses sounds, masks, weights, and other distractions to prevent the people from having unfair advantages over others.  This idea that an oppressive government will control everybody in the future is one that has been around for a while.  As the “Guide to Dystopian Literature” reveals, novels about oppressive governments and a lack of freedom have been very popular and present since the 1930s.  Today, The Huger Games series is extremely popular.  It also depicts a world in which the government, or “The Capitol”, controls the lives of the residents.  In the pilot episode of Welcome to Night Vale, there are mentions of government agencies and helicopters, city councils, and business associations.  There seem to be very strange and unknown events, sightings, and occurrences in Night Vale, but the public is not given much information about any of these things.  It seems that the podcast is only supposed to provide limited amounts of information to its ‘public’ because the government does not want the residents to be privy to certain information.  Even at the end of Night of the Living Dead, the police and either a detective or government worker investigate the house and end up shooting the man.  A sense that the government is looking over your shoulder is present throughout the texts in this unit.  I think that the creator of the YouTube clip was definitely onto something by believing that zombies, monsters, or dystopian futures can be symbolic of present fears.  So, do we obsess over these dystopian and scary futures because we believe they will never happen to us?  Or do we obsess over them because we are trying to indirectly release our fears and let them be known?