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LITR 4368 Literature of the Future  |
Sample answers
for Essay 2:
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Cynthia Perkins
What We Should Have Learned From Mad Max
I was
born at the tail end of the Cold War.
Movies like Mad Max were extremely popular and offered a dystopic future
that was a result of human failings combined with dangerous technology.
Ironically, after so much fear of a nuclear holocaust being pumped into the
population for so long, I think my generation was born immune to the
hyper-political scare tactics. In fact, I think some of us secretly wanted it.
Like a kid waiting in his bedroom for a parent to spank them, we just wanted it
to be over already so we could shave our heads and turn our father’s truck into
a four-wheel drive death machine.
Mad
Max was a fun and safe way to think about our future, but it seems many of us
didn’t learn from it. We most likely love these sorts of dystopic, apocalyptic
and post-apocalyptic stories because they follow so closely the romance
narrative in which the hero overcomes all odds and saves the day. We probably
should, however, see these texts as a warning about mankind’s greed for material
wealth and lust for power that causes us to create technology that far outpaces
our ability to make rational decisions in using it. Though I will always been
drawn to stories such as Mad Max, I have discovered another possible future
scenario in which we do learn, grow and create a more fair, natural and healthy
world.
In my
midterm essay, Literature of the Future
Might Just Save the World, I addressed some of the elements I learned about
the different narratives of the future. I found myself especially fascinated
with the evolutionary narrative. After reading about utopias and ecotopias I
have learned that the evolutionary narrative applies to many of the future
visions we read in the latter part of the class. Kim Stanley Robinson is one of
my favorite writers, but oddly I never thought of him as an environmental writer
with utopic or ecotopic tendencies. In the
Introduction to
Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias
he mentions that science-fiction can be used as a way to ask questions about our
actions and what the outcomes might be. He states that rather than imagining an
unsustainable existence in a fantastical future modeled on the industrial age,
we must try to remember where we come from and use that as a blueprint instead.
Adapting to and working with the
environment has allowed Humans to survive for thousands of years. If we want to
continue surviving we must look back on our primitive past and learn from it.
Science and technology should be seen as tools we can use to ensure our
survival. This is of course a rather positive view. While many science-fiction
texts seems to portray our species as hopelessly spiraling toward oblivion,
these utopic and ecotopic texts offer a more optimistic view of the world we
live in. This is new for me as I often tend toward action-packed, violent and
sublime tales of the future.
I
already referred to Chocco in my
first essay, but I really think it is an important and enlightening story. Like
the Mad Max films, it takes place in a world after an apocalyptic event. Unlike
in the world of Mad Max, however, the humans in
Chocco are portrayed as working
vigilantly to keep the lessons of the past alive so that they are not doomed to
repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. To some this story may have been boring
because of the Socratic dialogue. There was no tough, anti-social hero who came
riding in to shake up the system and release people from the drudgery of living
in peace. There was only an intellectual debate about what happened in the past
to lead them to where they are now and how they can learn from it.
The
people of Chocco seem to realize that
they can have a utopic society, not by oppressing the individualism of the
citizens, but through cooperation and collective governing. They recognize that
they are not masters of nature, but are children of nature. They do use some
technology, but it is for community health and not solely for entertainment. As
I read this, I became alarmed at how the Machine People were described as if
someone were talking about our own society. I also felt a sense of hope though.
People are at least discussing these serious issues and offering possible
solutions to these problems.
I
enjoyed House of Bones tremendously
which takes us in to the distant past. It follows very closely the utopic
fiction formula. The stranger is stranded in the far past us and is at first
abhorred at the idea of having to live out the rest of his life amongst
Cro-Magnon men. Like many of us, he probably can’t imagine their primitive
society being anything other than dirty, violent and chaotic. Instead we learn,
just as the traveler does, to appreciate the traits of our ancestors that
allowed them to survive so much longer than modern man has yet or maybe ever
will.
As
the assumptions of the stranger fall away, he is becoming part of the community.
He finds himself falling in love, making friends, experiencing honest fulfilling
work and admiring their art and poetry. He, like us, begins to see that in some
ways they could be considered superior to modern man. They live in harmony with
nature, simply and happily. They even test him to see if he is violent. This is
a trait that we believe separates civilized men from each other and yet even the
stranger, a modern man, jumps to the conclusion that they want to kill the
outsider.
Interestingly, he wants to bring them inventions like alcohol which is simply a
false high or a diversion from everyday life. We in the twenty-first century
often use it, as well as both prescription and illegal drugs to escape our
increasingly stressful lives. If Cro-Magnons have lived so long without this and
are in harmony with their neighbors and nature, why would they need to this to
escape? The stranger feels like he is doing them a favor, but ironically his
gift of modern technology will cause more hardship and strife than it could ever
counter. This story could symbolize how we could eventually become accustomed to
and learn to enjoy simpler modes of living. It may not be that bad to spend the
day building a house, or hunting or creating art while breathing unpolluted air
and enjoying the sunshine without having to apply and reapply sunscreen.
Both
Chocco and
House of Bones as well as the Kim
Stanley Robinson’s introduction ask us to think of ourselves as organic
lifeforms that depend upon the earth for survival. This is not really not a
crazy idea. If we can find a way to learn from our past and adapt to the present
our species may be able to survive into the future. In Mad Max, most of the
humans didn’t learn from the past. They still coveted useless machines and
continued to exploit natural resources in order to oppress and kill each other.
Most did not try to adapt to the new world, but rather just barely survive while
striving to hold onto the semblance of the lost world they used to live in. We
should learn from these dystopic post-apocalyptic tales rather than just submit
to the inevitability that we will destroy ourselves. We should be thinking of
how we can create a future ecotopia that will allow us to live in harmony with
each other and nature as well as enjoy the benefits of technology. We must
adapt, change, and evolve or else we might be selected for extinction. This I
have learned and so much more.
