Worlds End Introduction Notes
In todays lecture we focused on ” what makes up dystopian?” Going over things like world building, personal freedoms, oppressive structures, and the hierarchy of need. Looking at the clips from Fantastic Planet, Metropia, and Love, Death, and Robots was good insight into what goes into a dystopian story. Going into the next few weeks, I want to remind myself of the questions: ‘what am I asking?’, ‘why do I care?’, ‘why is it relevant?’
Making Babies: Women in Dystopia Notes
Todays lecture was on the involvement of and the oppressive systems of women in dystopian media. Also the way in which these oppressive structures tend to be all encompassing, often intertwining with themes of colonisation, sexual repression, and general human rights violations. I was interested in the contrast between stories that either used women as a tool to show strength vs the stories that used women as a weak thing to be saved by a man or as a sexual object, only existing to be gazed upon by the male protagonist. In these next few weeks I want to think about how different the themes of women in dystopia were 100 years ago versus now. If times have truly progressed or if women are still facing the same oppression they have been throughout history.
Mutate Britain
In this lecture we discussed utopias among groups like hippies and punks, focusing on groups that have had excessive intervention from the police. I couldn’t help to ask myself: who were these “utopias” for? and what may have happened if these groups of people decided to put their efforts towards stopping the many other human rights violations going on from the 1960s-1980s in Britain. I was, though, interested in the art being made during those times. These pieces of art were not commercial, being used to make anyone famous or get put in a museum. That art was made for the community. We also spoke briefly about the way in which AI is moving towards having a big place in our society and whether or not that should be accepted. I think that whether or not we want to accept it, the reality is that it is growing. To me this was just a reminder that corporations will always choose the option that hurts the people, and that AI will grow because the rich want it to. What we watched in class was truly a display of massive amounts of white privilege and the segregation and violence that those groups spread.