Dystopia - What did you say that was? (Revisited)

Over the past couple of days, I have come across several blogs dealing with the issue of Dystopia. In fact, it was one such post that led me to start this blog, and every time I read an article on the topic I start to comment, only to realize that that comment is, in fact, part of a post on Dystopia that I plan to write, so to address this issue, I have decided to jump ahead a bit and write this post way before its time in the scheme of the blog, but it seems the issue can't wait anymore.

The original blog post I came across was "A Short Discussion About Dystopian Lit" and this week I ran across this question: "How do you define Dystopian?". Both of them deal with the question of What is Dystopia, so here goes my attempt at, not defining, but rather characterizing it.

In a purely grammatical sense, Dystopia is the opposite of Utopia. This means that first, we need a definition of Utopia to find what it's opposite is. After reading several dictionary definitions of Utopia, the summary can be that it is an idealized place or state with a perfect social and political system. Therefore a Dystopia is a flawed or imperfect social and/or political system, but since this defines the current state of affairs anywhere in the world, we have to add an adjective to qualify the degree of imperfection, and thus, my proposed explanation of what Dystopia means is: Extremely Imperfect Social and/or Political System.

This approach at a definition of dystopia raises three important issues: first, the need to have a basis on which to define perfection (and therefore, its opposite), second is identifying whether the system is social, political, or both, and third by using the quantitative adjective "Extremely," we are implying that it is a comparative scale. So, let's break these three issues down.

The first issue, that of perfection, can best be analyzed in perspective. Take for example Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth: this story has all the makings of a dystopian novel, the socio-political system is repressive, unjust and unfair, most of the liberties we take for granted today are non-existent, not to mention our creature comforts, but since it takes place in the 11th century AD, the story classifies as historic fiction, which then brings up a new attribute to our definition of Dystopia: it lies somewhere in the author's future (the point of reference has to be the author, or 1984 would no longer be in the future). With this additional element, we can safely assume then that the starting point to define perfection would be an idealized version of a system present, somewhere in the world, at the time of writing.

Also, this time frame issue is crucial for the Dystopia to work, as it provides the basis for the alteration. If an 18th-century woman read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, she would probably not see it with the same fright as we do today, and in fact, some women might have agreed with it; it can even be argued that somewhere in the world there is a group of people for whom any Dystopia is, in fact, a Utopia (radical members of the politburo might have loved a society like Orwell's 1984). Therefore perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

The second issue derived from the initial definition out of which I am working, helps us differentiate post-apocalyptic from dystopian novels. If the focus of the story lies on the survival/action elements derived from catastrophic events, and sometimes the resulting social order, then it is not a Dystopia, just a byproduct of the specific apocalypse (zombie or otherwise), but if the focus is on the relationship between the individual and the state (kingdom, country, dominion, or whatever you may call it), and the socio-political organization is clearly highlighted, then it is definitely a Dystopia. One additional element that may be considered here is whether or not the world being portrayed can be seen as an evolution of the socio-political order present during the author's life.

And finally the issue of it being "Extremely Imperfect," gives us a magnitude. It is not sufficient for the socio-political changes to be superficial, or minor, they have to be extreme; in this post from The League of Extraordinary Writers a case was made for Dystopia to be about the fear (of the reader) of a lack of things we take for granted and love, but as I said in a comment to that post, a true dystopia has to be more than just the lack of "Hot Showers", as was the example used by Elana, it has to be a sum of so many privations, of so many fearful things happening, that the whole experience is not only scary but downright terrifying and something we want to avoid at all costs. additionally, for it to be a true dystopia it is necessary for the privations to be the result of government action and not, as I said above, the result of a simple catastrophic event.

Notice that I am not going into some of the things most people refer to when confronted with the question of defining Dystopia, and that is the specific instances used in the stories we know, like the totalitarian government, and such, for as I have said before it all depends on the idea we have of perfection and while that might be dystopian for us westerners, it is always possible to find societies for whom a non-totalitarian regime would be the Dystopia. Since I'm a democratic kind of guy I can't really think of one from the top of my head, but that does not rule out the possibility of them existing, now or in a not too distant future, and a definition of a literary genre (or sub-genre as I have treated it so far in this blog), must be broad enough to allow the inclusion of new works, without too many constraints, but at the same time specific enough to serve as a tool for categorization.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this issue.