Saving the Next Guy from a Dystopian Nightmare

The word “dystopia” is defined by Meriam-Webster as “an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives,” and “dystopian” as “of, relating to, or being” such an imagined world or society.  Oxford Languages defines “dystopia” as “an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic,” and “dystopian” as “relating to or denoting” such a state or society.  Two venerable sources, same grim idea.  The consensus is that neither the adjective, nor its root word noun, mean sunny skies and smooth sailing.  You get the picture, and it’s not a pretty one.

But, like I told you, it’s not the miserably evocative definition of this word in either form – noun or adjective – that pisses me off.  It’s the ridiculous, sickeningly pervasive, and increasingly incorrect and inappropriate use of the sonofabitch.  In any of its forms.  Nope, “dystopia” doesn’t suck for me because of the horrifying, pathetic images it conjures up of the suffering, oppressed, dehumanized masses living in some made-up world.  It sucks because the non-suffering, un-oppressed, fully-actualized humans living in this world are overusing it to way past the point of triteness, and sticking it in places it has no business being.  Dystopia isn’t just getting beaten to death, it’s getting the living shit kicked out of it, and it’s getting whipped cream and a goddamned cherry stuck right on top of it.  Jesus, I really hate dystopia.

When I tell you that the word has become hackneyed to the point of fatuity, you’ll first need to consider the realization of its definition to start to catch my drift.  For a society to be considered truly dystopian, it would need two parties, or groups of parties: the oppressor(s), and the oppressee(s).  Its creation would imply a methodical, systemic implementation of truly evil, overarching ambition and/or malevolent greed on the part of the oppressor(s).  That any individual, or any group of individuals, would endeavor to exploit and ultimately oppress other human beings to such a degree as to create a dystopia in the first place is both terrifying and tragic almost beyond the point of rational comprehension.  The powerful exercising absolute, merciless dominion over the piteous weak: the dynamic that would exist between the two parties might be characterized as a blackened gulf of hopelessness and despair, interspersed with scarlett ribbons of violence and ruthlessness, and flashes of bright, gleaming terror.  Considering the actual mechanics behind the establishment of a dystopian society, and the full-blown realization of all of their associated horrors along the way, is a mind-warping, heart-hurting experience.

Keeping all of this in mind for purposes of juxtaposition, you’re not going to get any better example of the irresponsible overuse/misuse of the word “dystopia” than the steaming plates of misguided verbosity served up by the sub-world of film reviewing.  I’m not kidding here.  There really are actual dystopian Top 50 lists floating around.  Movies that are garbage, but take place in the future, land on these lists.  If a given film’s kinda creepy, and there are some bad guys in it, plus a ragtag group of beleaguered good guys, and it makes way less than a half-assed attempt at approximating the thematic and cinematographic greatness of a film like Metropolis, it’s on the list.  I honestly can’t decide which transgression is worse, the labeling of some shitty film with the term “dystopian” by some blowhard film critic, or the cavalier bundling of the term – along with all of its inherent connotations of tragedy, horror, and despair, as well as the cinematic genre of vision and insight that it’s intended to reflect – into some insipid Top 50 list, contrived by some other blowhard film critic.  Why not just call a pulled chest muscle a heart attack, and then lump the false alarm into the “Top 50 Heart Attacks of All Time” list?  I’m telling you, slapping the word “dystopian” (along with all of its fearsome conceptual underpinnings) on an undeserving film, and then shoehorning the whole thing – the word, the concept, and the film – into a Top 50 list, marginalizes it to a point somewhere far beyond absolute banality.  You might as well stick your “The Top 50 Dystopian Films of All Time” list in the slot between “The Top 50 Candy Bars of All Time” list and “The Top 50 Pecan Pie Recipes of All Time” list on the “The Top 50 ‘Top 50 Lists of All Time'” list.   It’s that bad.  I mean it.  For me, it’s that bad.

And it’s getting worse.  

I was at a Starbucks one day, a couple weeks back, drinking a big black coffee, when I overheard two guys, who evidently hosted a film review podcast, talking about – I swear to you – dystopian werewolf and vampire films.  Then a guy and a girl at the next table, from out of town, chimed in with their own opinions of not only the artistic value of such dystopian cinematic masterpieces, but also of the dystopian state of affairs in their own hometown arising as a result of its increasing commercialization.  And together, the four lamented the ills of the generally dystopian conditions to which all of their lives were coincidentally subject.  Honest to God, I could not make this stuff up.  East Bumblefuck USA becoming a dystopian society because a fast food chain opens a new joint on Mainstreet?  A dystopian reality in the making as a result of what’s evidently burgeoning oppression disguised as an Arby’s?  Dystopian movies about werewolves and vampires?  I mean seriously, wtf?  WTF?!?!  This is wrong – all of it – on almost every level that I could ever possibly dream up (even in my very own worst dystopian nightmare).  But you can forget noisome little details like the fact that imaginary creatures like werewolves and vampires today generally exist cinematically as grizzly bear-sized menaces that do not even remotely resemble wolves, humans, undead humans, or anything else, except maybe grizzly bears.  (I’m not sure what “undead” humans are supposed to look like exactly, but I’m guessing not grizzly bears.)  You can let this one go because bad werewolf/vampire movies, in and of themselves, are not at the heart of this issue.  The real problem, as I see it, is the fact that “dystopia” (and the once simultaneously time-honored and terrifyingly abhorrent concept at the dark heart of its definition) seems to be the mot du jour among the aspiring smart crowd.  The word has evidently been diluted to the point of thinness that allows any genius-wannabe of the movie-reviewing ilk to splash it all over any kind of movie that any visionary-wannabe of the movie-making ilk has the gall to actually record on film and subsequently set loose upon an innocent, unsuspecting public.  “Dystopia” is becoming the fitted sheet of the social and intellectual whirls of neo-intelligentsia everywhere (reports are coming in from the East Village – I’ve got friends who live there – of rampant and potentially dangerous dystopia-hurling among the coffee house set), stretching to grammatically cover any kind of made-up or real-life situation that might potentially be deemed personally disagreeable.