Why do we love dystopia? Seriously, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’m really trying to understand it. In the last few weeks I’ve listened to the audiobooks of The Handmaid’s Tale and the first two books in the Maze Runner series (The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials)–commutes are great for getting through audiobooks! The Bearded One and I also watched the whole first season of Squid Game last week (I know, there isn’t officially a second season in the works yet, but if they don’t do a second season I’ll be more surprised than a kid who can get an umbrella shape out of a piece of honeycomb).
I’ve watched things like The Matrix and The Walking Dead, and I’ve read books like The Hunger Games and 1984. And I’m always willing to jump into the world of the story, and embrace the discomfort it brings. But I never stopped to really think about why I, and many others, are drawn to these kinds of stories. Is it because we see ourselves in the characters and how they’re struggling? Or because we know our lives aren’t as bad as those characters’ lives are, so it makes us feel better about the struggles we do face? I’m going to be honest: I tried rereading The Handmaid’s Tale a few years ago because the tv show had come out and I wanted to revisit the book before watching the show. But at that time, in 2018 or so, the idea of the U.S. descending into a society like Gilead felt too plausible for me to be able to stomach the book again. I know–we still seem to be sliding down a slope in that direction, but at least now I have some hope that we can reverse our direction, so I was finally about to get through it.
Anyway, I’m sure someone, somewhere, has done a study on the reasons we like to imagine and entertain ourselves with dystopian stories, but I don’t have the time or energy to go looking for those studies now. I suspect, though, that it’s a combination of factors, not least of which is the comparison of the characters’ issues to our own. I mean, sure, our phones and computers are always keeping track of everything from our physical locations to our browsing histories, but hey–at least women can still have bank accounts and no one is forced to kill each other to entertain the elites…for the time being, at least.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just started listening to a new audiobook: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Because I haven’t read a book about Artificial Intelligence yet, and it’s probably another worry I should add to the running list in my head. Happy reading!
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