REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Literary works about dystopia usually evinces a strong theme common in much science fiction

and fantasy fiction: the creation of a future time (usually), when the conditions of human life are exaggeratedly bad due to distress, oppression or terror. This created society or dystopia frequently constructs apocalyptic views of a future using crime, immorality or corrupt government to create or sustain the bad quality of peoples lives, often conditioning the masses to believe their society is proper and just, and sometimes perfect. Dystopian stories reflect a societys fears of the future, and are often based on the events occurring in the world at a specific time period. Furthermore, these stories significantly serve as a warnings or as satires, showing current trends extrapolated to nightmarish conclusions. Some say that these are warnings of the impending future if we are blind to what is currently occurring. In this chapter, we will look into some literary works (music, novels, films) that are showing dystopian societies. We will also try to enumerate how dystopia was presented in each. Soylent Green (1973) Soylent Green is an American film that was released in 1973 directed by Richard Fleischer. It was based on the 1966 Harrison novel Make Room! Make Room! This novel has a similar theme of overpopulation and over consumption of resources, leading to social disorder and maximum poverty. Soylent Green takes place in 2022. The world is massively overpopulated. Forty million people crowd into New York City alone. Overpopulation has caused the world to crumple as people now live in overcrowded dilapidated apartments. The homeless crowd into churches. The government has no control and cant even begin to stop crime. Making this all the worse, pollution has destroyed the land and food is scarce. Humanity now depends on processed plankton for food. The worlds food company called the Soylent Corporation processes that plankton. The situation predicted in the movie Soylent Green is unlikely to happen anytime soon, although we are experiencing an array of environmental issues. Currently one of the most pressing environmental concerns is the rising sea level caused by global warming. It seems in recent years, extreme flooding is becoming increasingly worse especially in our country. Modern apocalyptic films, such as the movie 2012 have thus incorporated flooding into their films as they realize it will spark fear in modern audiences. Furthermore, in Soylent Green, the world is experiencing extreme overpopulation. Although world population has been increasing, we have somehow improved our quality of life. The social implications to the environmental problems presented in the film are also very realistic. In the film, extreme overpopulation and weather changes cause a great deal of social and environmental disorder. The majority of the population was unable to fulfill their basic human survival requirements. Water, food, shelter and sanitation are at an all time low. As a result,

people must wait in endless lines to buy food and collect water. In the film, a riot breaks out due to a shortage of food. This scene is highly realistic. As a society we take necessities such as food, water and shelter for granted. Thus, as a viewer, we can easily relate to the anger and frustration expressed by the characters in the film. V for Vendetta (2005) V for Vendetta is the tale of a terrorist who is trying to take down the authoritarian Great Britain. After being experimented on at Lark Hill, a camp where people were sent to endure biological testing so that the government could find new ways of biological warfare, V spent twenty years of his life trying to devise a plan to take down the fascist government. V is a very bold and vigorous character who may or may not deserve the title of terrorist. He is an anarchist, a man who think highly of freedom of thought, expression, and love and a man of vigilante justice. This dystopian movie wanted its viewers to know that everyone must not live a life in fear and every person must value their integrity. When Evey was held prisoner she came to the revelation that when she was stripped down mentally and physically and the only thing she had left was her life, she still found herself not giving in to torture because she still had her integrity and the choice to not give her captors information. The experience of torture and accepting shed rather die than give in freed her from her fear. Alan Moore has said before that when youre talking about the future, youre actually talking about the present - that is exactly what V for Vendetta did. There are plenty of motifs about how the government should be afraid of its people, not the other way round. And there are a few deep-seated moments of artists use lies to tell people the truth while politicians use lies to cover the truth up. We can see in the movie that fear was created out of the horrible society they live in. Their fear led them to elect a government that promised to make them safe and it led to their horrible circumstances. Our nation has been in the same situation and current events show the theme of this movie is somehow applicable to the current situation of our nation. Nowadays, most people are aware of the current situation our country is dealing with, and with this awareness most members of the society choose to speak up and participate in rallies and protests against the government. Through these protests and rallies, they express their dismay and skepticism towards the current administration.

A Clockwork Orange (1971) A Clockwork Orange was set in the future Britain wherein the government is run by a totalitarian super-state. Individual rights are not protected. The youth of society have formed a culture of violence and percolate through the streets at night committing extremely horrifying and terrible crimes. The government in this dystopian work attempts to hide the truth from its people, filling their minds with fictitious information. In A Clockwork Orange, the

Government seeks to suppress individuals and individual choice in favor of the stability of the State, largely to ensure its own survival. Towards the end, the Government is prepared to do anything necessary, including distributing propaganda and censorship, employing morally questionable scientific techniques to "reform" criminals, and employing criminals as state patrol to threaten other citizens. The government in A Clockwork Orange purposely manipulates the information they release to society in order to keep their citizens under their complete control. The way our government is responding to the political plight transpiring today is not too different from what can be seen in the movie A Clockwork Orange. Despite mounting problems (pork barrel, bribery in the senate) that the current administration is facing, it seems that government is still able to withstand criticism and attack with no apparent effect. The current administration has been facing a lot of protests from different sectors due to price hike of basic utilities, tuition fees and food and the fear that justice will not be served in the pork barrel issue. Throughout the term of our current President, he has however secured us that the Philippines is doing well and fine by presenting us statistics during his SONAs. We must remember the words of Stephen Jay Gould, "When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown." Furthermore, the manipulation presented in the film does not only mirror the current situation of our government but we can also identify to this kind of manipulation. In our current day, one of the most important questions that we have to ask ourselves deals with the ways in which we are manipulated. Of course advertisements, news and social networking attempt to influence and change our opinions on a daily basis, but when we talk about truly being manipulated, so much that our entire way of life can change, it is possible? We can be motivated by many things in life, sympathy can inspire us to help a stranger, political correctness can motivate us to hold our tongues when someone says something we do not agree with, and even our own values can sometimes stop us from doing the things that we might, if we were not to think. While all of these things can motivate us or perhaps inspire a singular action, it is also possible that we can easily become manipulated by these elements in our life. Often we do not fully anticipate the long reaching effects of our actions, what we may do out of sympathy one day can have entirely different effects the next. Even in A Clockwork Orange, the protagonist initially gains entrance to several homes by manipulating their sense of sympathy or good will. It is surprisingly easy to fall prey to the manipulations that can come even from within us.

Blade Runner (1982) A blend of science fiction and noir detective fiction, Blade Runner was a box office and critical bust upon its initial exhibition, but its unique postmodern production design became hugely influential within the sci-fi genre, and the film gained a significant cult following that increased its stature. The story of Blade Runner is based on a science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick

entitled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film focuses on the relation between capitalism and technology, and between androids and human beings. The story follows a retired blade runner named Decker. He is forced out of his retirement when four androids are discovered to be scoundrels, killing various individuals on earth after escaping a lunar colony. Throughout the film, Decker kills each of these four androids threats while at the same time learning what is means to be an android. He meets an android that is imprinted with false memories of a life she never had and believing she is human. By the end of the film after Decker terminates all four of the rogue androids he begins to question if he, himself is an android, feeling that all his dreams and memories are not his own; forcing to leave the city for answers. Blade Runner is an example of dystopian fiction, which shows how a society with no moral or ethical boundaries can create things that can be harmful to individuals. The setting of Blade Runner shows a period in which society allows technology to push forward into creating machines indistinguishable to humans. In this society the individuals identity is at stake all time, the question is presented in what it means to be human and how one can separate themselves from a machine. The film seems to be warning society against the uncontrolled reign of technology and society and how it will make world a corrupt and an unethical place. This horrific image of the future serves as a manifestation of the fears of people about the increasing role of technology in everyday life. Nowadays, unemployment is still a problem that needs to be addressed. Technological advancement has been accounted for unemployment in some countries. In most developing countries, unemployment is a huge problem. Also, these days most people are getting addicted in using social networking sites, games and they also are becoming victims of the advancement of technology. For example, most people, especially young ones are getting more involved in using Facebook and online games and some of them are not at all aware about current issues. This is somehow leading them away from reality and it sometimes creates social problems. We can also say in a way that we are dehumanized because of our dependency to technology. The Matrix (1999) The Matrix is a science fiction film set in a futuristic society where humans are controlled by machines and live in an artificial reality known as the Matrix. The main character of the film, a man named Thomas Anderson lives two lives. By day he is employed as an average computer programmer and at night he is a hacker who works under the alias Neo. He is determined to find out what the Matrix is, and in doing so he encounters agents who lead him to a group led by the infamous Morpheus. Neo is offered a chance to learn the truth about the Matrix and he takes the opportunity. He learns that all life on Earth is nothing more than an elaborate pretense created by a malicious cyber-intelligence. The fear associated with The Matrix is not whether technology will become an indispensable part of our lives, as by 1999 this had already become the case. Digital

technology including cellular phones, video games, the internet and personal computers had become an integrated part of our daily lives. The newfound fear expressed in the matrix was of a completely different nature. Anthony Giddens discusses this in his novel, Runaway World, With the further development of science and technology, the world should be more stable and ordered [but] The world we find ourselves today, however doesnt look or feel much like was predicted. Rather than being more and more under our control, it seems out of our control a runaway world. While the intended purpose of these technological advancements appears to make our lives more enjoyable and simpler, these technologies have somehow brought inadvertent consequences. The advances of technology are assumed to have caused destruction in the environment that it can potentially cause catastrophic events. Thus a more subtle fear exists that while these technologies may seem on the onset to enhance our lives that they may just make them more complex and less enjoyable. Much of our world depends on computer technology to function. The financial markets would crumble if the integrated global system somehow failed. The unknown fear was that too much faith was placed in a technology that we could not always control. The fear of the Y2K bug is the best example. It was believed that our world would be thrown into chaos because of this bug. The fear while embodied by the living moving artificially intelligent robots and androids of the Matrix was in fact a much deeper concern. Technology around this time moved to the ever-advancing paradigm of Moores law, that core clock speeds would double every 18 months, and the common fear as to where all this advancement would lead. Many believed that it would lead to the advent of Artificial Intelligence systems, which would become more and more complex. The fear was that at some point we would no longer be able to control these complex beings that we had created and that such an event could lead to the destruction of humanity itself. In the Matrix it is seen that the reason for the war with the machines and the enslavement of man was caused by the very creations of man, which they failed to control. References: Soylent Green. (n.d.). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green Dystopia. (n.d.). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia Dystopia. (n.d.). In The Free Dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dystopia%E2%80%8E V for Vendetta. (n.d.). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film) A Clockwork Orange. (n.d.). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film) Balde Runner. (n.d.). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner The Matrix (n.d.). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix Highlights of President Aquinos 4th State of the Nation Address. (2013) In Inquirer News. Retrieved from http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/450935/highlights-ofpresident-aquinos-4th-state-of-the-nation-address Stephen Jay Gould. (n.d.). In Goodreads. Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/19109.Stephen_Jay_Gould Attached to Technology and Paying a Price. (2010). In The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html? pagewanted=all&_r=0