Metaphorical Imagery:- Utopian and Dystopian frames of the everyday.

1. Metaphorical Imagery:- Utopian and Dystopian frames of the everyday. Two case studies:- Blade Runner (as dystopian), and The Truman Show (as utopian).

2. 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 identified for viewing today.

3. The films selected for this week’s viewing provide strikingly different kinds of imagery, but they also present ambiguous narratives. Within each you gain an insight into their opposites – but couched in terms of their own dominant forms of representation, i.e., their framing rules. To start with Utopia - the label ‘utopian’ is usually taken to imply that an idea is unrealistic, but is so because a particular principle or set of principles are followed through with extreme rigour, i.e., the representation is ‘idealistic’. So the utopian principles create a frame, and everything represented within it becomes symptomatic of the principle (or principles) in action. And, to be both specific and general about Utopia, this is 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.

4. One of the problems with depicting Utopia is that even if its representation is detailed and imaginative, its appearance soon becomes boring. Indeed, few writers manage to sustain the monotony of beneficent outcomes for long. 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 critical analysis of Tudor England he featured in the first half. Similarly, Voltaire, in his Candide, used wit and irony to undercut Dr. Pangloss’ utopian perception of the way the world worked to poke fun at the authority behind Catholic orthodoxy. Although the Church repeatedly seized and burnt copies of the book, this only made it even more attractive to its intended upper-class audience – one hungry for intelligent entertainment.

5. These examples suggest that utopian representations gain significance by making contact with a version of the ‘everyday’, the same holding true for dystopias. The works of H. G. Wells provide accessible test cases. His scientific fantasies always start prosaically, e.g., The First Men on the Moon, The War in the Air, and devote about a quarter of their length to the everyday lives of their protagonists before any adventure begins. But this is an everyday contained within the total representation; or if you prefer, the narrative works to suggest that the everyday is part of a larger scheme of things that has previously not been recognised.

6. A few films made in the last thirty years sketch in the everyday through initial context shots, such as Sphere, Contact, The Abyss, and Close Encounters, but more typically our everyday is apparently ignored completely, e.g. Blade Runner, GATACCA, The Day after Tomorrow, A. I., and Avatar. But the need for contrast within the frame remains, and so these utopian or dystopian representations gain their apparent points of reference by offering explicit ‘internal’ glimpses of a relative normality, i.e., an everyday.

7. In this respect, the narrative of The Truman Show is interesting. It progressively subverts the integrity of its own utopian imagery – lights fall from the sky, adverts become the focus for inexplicable actions, actors make mistakes or try to insert alternative narratives into the Director’s idealised world, and Truman, of course, finally rebels. As Truman moves from the fixed certainties of his utopian life to the uncertainties of the film’s depiction of its own everyday – the world of the show’s spectators and its director – Truman does so via the experience of his familiar world becoming dytopian. The show’s director, Christos, worried by the financial implications of lost corporate sponsorship if Truman’s behaviour becomes ‘aberrant’, turns into a violent deus ex machina, even risking Truman’s death so his original design for a ‘point-of-sale’ world can survive.

8. As you look at the evidence of The Truman Show, ask yourself if the awfulness of its dystopian imagery gains its point of reference from Truman’s own utopian conception of what reality might be, or from some other source of reference – and then, just who or what is he escaping from? In the case Blade Runner, the same swing takes place – only in reverse. Out of the environmental disaster and ‘terminations’ of late 21st. Century Los Angeles there emerges a recognisable love affair – even though this takes place between two ‘replicants’, only one of which recognises its own ontology. And now ask yourself if the film’s version of a happy ending gains its meaning by tacit reference to what humanity might become – given by the dying replicant leader’s last speech – or does the ‘real’ source of ultimate meaning remain with this world’s controlling humans – the police agents?

9. The represented ‘environment’ of dystopias are often populated by a variety of ‘entities’, united in being inimical to human life, but they may also be the source of partially truthful mini-narratives which shift the representation’s location, form, and expected outcome, i.e., they are a reaction to the same problem of predictability. In the case of the dystopic, the problem is how to avoid a general awfulness from becoming too predictable, e.g. The Road. Bearing these remarks in mind, what follows are 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.

10. Note, Kumar does not directly tackle dystopias, and so an important aspect of your own work this week will be to draw conclusions about what should be the anti-commentaries to those summarised here. A close study of Blade Runner will help, but of course there are other media texts to choose from. Secondly, use Richards’ theory. For each figuration that particularly impresses you, try to work out the ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’ that seem to influence its specific form(s) of representation – just how do these two terms relate to what we have been calling the frame and its rules?

11. 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 which gives meaning; The Land of Cockaygne – 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, Mr. Mandelson’s Millennium Dome and the many Olympic stadia and international trade fairs; The Ideal City – favoured by many Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century social experimenters, particularly in the United States.

12. The Boundaries of Utopia:- Imaginary Worlds – imagination ‘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 – and 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?

13. The History of Utopia:- The utopian tradition – this is extensive – see the resource list attached to the module outline; Utopia and Modernity – can Modernity itself be described in terms of the application/quest/outpouring/etc. of utopian principles? Science, history, progress – to what extent can these aaspects of society (prospective and retrospective) be described as being caused or driven by utopian impulses? Socialist utopias – a particular feature of the first half of the Nineteenth Century – but then they continued, e.g. H. G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia.

14. 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 everyday, current practice be purified? Utopian communities – again, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century America provides many examples that in some cases survived for years; Utopian societies – here the interest is in the persistence of vision – just how far into detail can utopian principles penetrate, just how well can the diverse consequences of a particular utopian impulse be integrated?

15. The location of utopia:- An ‘unseemly and subversive’ genre – that 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 Germany’s National Socialists utopian? The uses of utopia – is there merit in studying this form of representation – are there aspects of it that have any greater significance than mere distraction? The future of utopia – how will the genre develop – is the future necessarily utopian (or dystopian)?