Utopian fiction is a bit rare in the modern day. We’re all too cynical to imagine a perfect world ever actually existing, but dystopian fiction is all too common. The happy worlds that seem to appear on the modern big screen only appear to be perfect until someone looks too close, revealing almost every utopia to be a False Utopia.
The occasionalsci-fi story with a positive outlookreally stands out. Most fictional futures are horrible, most incredible technological innovations come back to bite their users and most sci-fi stories are immensely grim. There is no sci-fi world more horrible than the one that appears perfect.
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A futuristic society could enjoy all the fantastical improvementsprovided by evolving technology. Illness, war, crime, or even death might be rendered a thing of the past. Everyone’s wants and needs could be taken care of without the necessity for labor or suffering. Mankind could have come together to solve every notable problem. Or, the people of the future could just believe that they live in that reality. The False Utopia is a seemingly flawless setting that somehow hides something sinister underneath. Maybe the systems keeping life so perfect for some are only able to function through the pain of others. Maybe there are a wide variety of problems, but the citizens are just too deluded or desensitized to see what’s wrong. It could even be entirely simulated, enforced by some form of illusion. However things go wrong, the main characters usually have to learn what’s wrong withthe seemingly perfect world. More often than not, the illusion goes away, and the former utopia is left imperfect, but real.
When people think of dystopia, they think ofBrave New Worldand1984. Throw inThe GiverandAnimal Farm,and you’ve practically got a genre. This particular type of political allegory was probably radical in its day, but it’s mostly the stuff ofpublic school reading lists. Everyone knows that Oceania from1984and the World State fromBrave New Worldare dystopian nightmare civilizations that no one would ever willfully live in. When lazy politicians and hacky stand-up comedians compare political correctness to1984they’re predicting doom and gloom, often while exaggerating.
The only people who typically don’t see the darkness are those who live in it. The animals ontheAnimal Farmaredeceived until their situation is too bad to escape. The citizens ofBrave New World’sLondon are kept docile with drugs and the protagonist is the only one with a clear vision. The people inThe Giverdon’t get to experience color, but they don’t have to experience war or hunger either, so they’re usually pretty happy with it. The key to these dystopian worlds is that they deceive their citizens into believing that everything is perfect. They offer just enough good to keep all the bad stuff under wraps. These works are the building blocks of the False Utopia trope, and almost every other example takes something from the old masters.
When examined closely, most dystopian fiction includes a False Utopia. In the realm of film, visuallydepicting a hellish nightmareworld communicates certain expectations to the audience. If we see a world that looks too much like1984, we immediately begin predicting revolution. Someone has to overthrow this system, or at least everyone we care about has to escape or die trying. False Utopia is the go-to look in cynical big-screen sci-fi. Movies love showing the audience a place that rules, except for the one huge problem that the protagonist needs to fix. The city fromLogan’s Runlooks pretty nice, but they murder every citizen after they hit 30. The world ofEquilibriumis free from violence and want, but the fragile balance is only maintained by strictly enforced emotion-numbing drugs.The Purgetakes place in a normal world with heavily reduced crime and poverty rates, but the titular yearly crime holiday is a shoddy cover for the government’s campaign of genocide against the poor. And, of course,The Matrixsimulates a normal life, but it’s just a complicated VR experience designed to keep people docile.
Every functioning dystopia is a False Utopia to the people who live in it. If everyone living in the nightmare world knew exactly how bad things were, they wouldn’t be waiting around for a protagonist to lead them in a revolution. Keeping the populace docile through fear doesn’t work for long, butlying to people hasbeen the most effective political strategy since mankind invented language. The False Utopia trope exists for several reasons. It dodges the obvious questions about why anyone would put up with dystopian treatment, it allows the main character to be the special smart one who sees the truth, and it lets the writer pull the rug out from under the audience. The False Utopia forces its observer to consider both what is worth pursuing in civilization and what we’d be willing to put up with to get it.
