Much like the phrase we continually hear today, This is the new norm, Margaret Atwood penned, This will become ordinary.”
These chilling words are spoken to a group of young, captive women in the first episode of The Handmaids Tale, a TV adaptation of Margaret Atwoods 1984 dystopian novel. Its set in a future, dystopian America, in which the extreme religious right has imposed a violent dictatorship, and women have been stripped of all their rights.
In this dystopian world environmental disaster has left much of the population sterile, so the few remaining fertile women are captured and given to societys highest-ranking men as ‘handmaids’. Their sole purpose is to bear the children the mens wives cannot.
If the handmaids refuse to cooperate, or fail to produce offspring, theyre shipped off to ‘The Colonies’ to clean up toxic, radioactive waste – and face certain death.
MGM
Much like Le Guin and the ideas used in the Dispossessed, the most appalling part of this terrifyingly plausible world is that its all based on real events. As Atwood herself has said, One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities. God is in the details, they say. So is the Devil. Everything in The Handmaids Tale has occurred in a totalitarian state, military regime or religious order.
Assignment:
For this project, you will be the light in the darkness as Equality 7-2521was in the novel Anthem by Ayn Rand. The driving force for Dystopic Literature has been to identify potential outcomes and to warn its audience that if we do not stay conscious of these Controls then we will be doomed to repeat history and suffer once again under the hand of a totalitarian regime
For the next 4 weeks you will use the Discussion Assignments and 3-2-1 Assignments to develop ways of spotting, countering, and ending potential Dystopic Controls and futures.
Each week will focus on one of the 4 Controls:
- Corporate Control
- Bureaucratic Control
- Technological Control
- Philosophical/Religious Control
Each of these types of Controls uses a variety of the Characteristics found in a Dystopian novel or film.
Characteristics of a Dystopian Society
Propaganda is used to control the citizens of society.
Information, independent thought, and freedom are restricted.
A figurehead or concept is worshipped by the citizens of the society.
Citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance.
Citizens have a fear of the outside world.
Citizens live in a dehumanized state.
The natural world is banished and distrusted.
Citizens conform to uniform expectations. Individuality and dissent are bad.
The society is an illusion of a perfect utopian world.
Presentation:
For your presentation you will choose 2 of the controls and the characteristics you believe most resemble in real life what we have read in the dystopian novels Anthem and V for Vendetta.
- You are required to research these and use real examples from both the past and present as compared to examples of these from our novels.
- You are required to give your own perspective on these 2 Controls, and their potential for a future dystopia in the real world
- You are required to offer a potential solution (Try to be creative. Think outside the cave.)
Try to keep your presentation to around 6-8 minutes long.
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