Metaphorical Imagery:Utopian and Dystopian faces of the everyday.
Two case studies:-
Bladerunner (as dystopian),
and The Truman Show (as utopian).
The context for these PowerPoint slides is provided
by a webpage accompanying this presentation –
both are attached to the module outline. The
webpage gives an introductory account of the
process of representation and also introduces a
simple theory of how metaphor works.
Although Richards’ interactionist theory, as it is
called, was developed in relation to text, its
simplicity allows some initial conclusions about
imagery to be drawn from the two films that are
being viewed today.
The films selected for viewing provide strikingly different
kinds of imagery, but they also present ambiguous
narratives, so that within each you get insight into their
opposites – but couched in relation to their own dominant
forms of representation.
To start with Utopia - the term ‘utopian’ is usually taken to
imply that an idea is unrealistic, but is so because a
particular set of principles have been followed through with
extreme rigour, i.e., the representation is ‘idealistic’. One
therefore anticipates that it will either be dominated by one
set of ‘laws’, or else will be constructed so as to only show
the positive consequences of the chosen course of action.
Utopia is, in general, a world in which everything happens
for the best in the best of all possible worlds, as Voltaire’s
Dr. Pangloss was in the habit of saying.
One of the problems with depicting Utopia is that unless its
representation is sufficiently detailed and imaginative, its
appearance becomes boring. Indeed, few writers have
wanted to sustain the monotony of beneficent outcomes for
very long. Even Sir Thomas More, inventor of the genre,
seems to have intended the whole of the second half of his
book, Utopia, as a witty cover for the explicitly critical
analysis of Tudor England featured in the first half. Similarly
Voltaire, in his Candide, used wit and irony from the start to
undercut Dr. Pangloss’ utopian perception of the way the
world worked so as to poke fun at the authority behind it –
the Catholic Church. And although the Church repeatedly
ordered copies of the book to be seized and burnt, the only
effect was to make the book even more attractive to its
upper-class audience – one hungry for intelligent
entertainment.
These examples suggest that utopian representations gain
their significance by reference to the ‘everyday’, and one
might speculate dystopian ones do as well. The works of H.
G. Wells provide accessible test cases. His scientific
fantasies start in the prosaic, e.g., The First Men on the Moon,
and The War in the Air, devote about a quarter of their length
to the everyday lives of their protagonists before any
adventure begins – and so did Sir Thomas More.
However, most films made in the last thirty years rely on
shorthand: the everyday is sketched in through context shots
– or even ignored completely – the viewer being left to supply
their own sense of this essential reference. And as the
everyday has vanished from these films, the need for contrast
has again asserted itself. Representations of the utopian now
gain their apparent point of reference from explicitly dystopian
representations, and vice versa.
The narrative of The Truman Show progressively
subverts the integrity of its own imagery – lights fall
from the sky, actors make mistakes or try to insert
alternative narratives into Truman’s idealised world,
and Truman himself finally rebels.
As Truman moves from the fixed certainties of
utopian life to the uncertainties of the everyday – he
does so via an experience of his familiar world
becoming dytopian. The show’s director, Christos,
worried by Truman’s increasingly ‘aberrant’
behaviour, becomes a violent deus ex machina,
risking even Truman’s death in order to restore
order to a world built to his own design.
As you looks at the evidence of The Truman Show, ask
yourself if the awfulness of its dystopian imagery gains its
point of reference from the ‘external’ everyday, rather than
through its opposition to Truman’s own utopian conception
of what this is.
In the case of the second example, Bladerunner, the
suggestion would be that the same swing takes place –
only in reverse. Out of the environmental disaster and
‘terminations’ of late 21st. Century Los Angeles comes a
recognisable love affair – despite the fact that it may be
taking place between replicants, only one of which knows
its own ontology. But now ask yourself if the film’s version
of a happy ending is only reached via the final flowering of
utopian ‘humanity’ and vision given by the dying replicant
leader.
In the case of dystopias, the representational
‘environment’ is often populated by a variety of ‘entities’
united in being inimical to human life, and it may also be
articulated by partial narratives of truth which themselves
shift location, form, and expected outcome.
This last feature is a reaction to the same problem of
predictability that bedevil utopian accounts, but in the case
of these narratives the problem is how to avoid the general
awfulness of the depicted world becoming too predictable.
Bearing these introductory remarks in mind, what follows
provides brief commentaries on some of the analytical
headings presented in greater detail in Krishnan Kumar’s
Open University text on this subject.
Kumar, K. (1999) Utopianism Milton Keynes: OUP.
N.B.
Kumar does not directly tackle dystopias, and so
an important aspect of your own work will be to
add your own conclusions about what should be
the anti-commentaries to those given here. A
close study of Bladerunner will help, but of
course there are others films and texts to choose
from.
Secondly, there is some work to do using
Richards’ theory: for each figuration that
particularly impresses you, try to work out the
‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’ that seem to be operating.
The Elements of Utopia:Dream & Reality – note the important reversal provided by
Plato’s notion of reality;
The Golden Age, Arcadia, Paradise – the challenge is to work
out the implied opposite from which these gain their meaning;
The Land of Cockaygne – refer also to the reversal of normality
in carnival – a ‘working class’ notion of paradise on earth;
The Millennium – the coming of the new age, the founding of
the New Jerusalem, and Mr. Mandelson’s Millennium Dome;
The Ideal City – favoured by many Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Century social experimenters, particularly in the United States.
The Boundaries of Utopia:Imaginary Worlds – imagination may ‘knows no bounds’ – except
that it usually does through the incorporation of aspects of the
author’s contemporary world view;
Utopian Theory – although the representation may be partial, there
is usually a principle which dictates the nature of representation –
excluding is often more important than including;
Utopia in Time and Space – reflecting when the text was written:
initially it was an island, then it was some hidden and still to be
discovered part of a continent, and finally only space and the future
could provided a necessary refuge;
Classical accounts – Plato’s Republic – but then what?
The History of Utopia:The utopian tradition – this is extensive – see the resource list
attached to the module outline;
Utopia and Modernity – can Modernity be described in terms of
the application/quest/outpouring/etc. of utopian principles?
Science, history, progress – to what extent can these accounts of
social change (prospective and retrospective) be described as
caused by utopian impulses?
Socialist utopias – a particular feature of the first half of the
Nineteenth Century – but they continue, e.g. H. G. Wells’ A
Modern Utopia.
The Practice of Utopia:Nowhere as Somewhere – the making real of an idea, the filling
in of a gap, the substitution of the negative by the positive;
Thought and practice – here utopia becomes both a promise
and a test-bed – can the utopian be made real, and can aspects
of a current practice be purified?
Utopian communities – again, Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Century America provides many examples that in some cases
survived for many years;
Utopian societies – here the interest is in the persistence of
vision – just how far into detail can utopian principles
penetrate, just how well are the diverse consequences of a
particular utopian impulse integrated?
The location of utopia:An ‘unseemly and subversive’ genre – this is to say, how do
you relate the forms of representation associated with utopia to
other genres and other forms of representation?
Against utopia – there is a respectable body of critical writing
that is very hostile to the consequences of utopian thinking,
e.g. were the National Socialists utopian?
The uses of utopia – is there merit in studying this form of
representation – are there particular aspects of it that are of
greater significance than mere distraction?
The future of utopia – how will the genre develop – is the future
necessarily utopian (or dystopian)?