Dystopic Visions

Intertextual

Interdependent standing of text in relation to other – meaning derived in similar way.

‘Intertextual’ – presence of implied references to or influenced from other text.
‘Content and perspectives in pair of texts’ – develop understanding of conceptual links between genres and
texts.

In their responding and composing, students consider how the treatment of similar content is considered in order
to heighten understanding of the values, significance and context of each.

Content of writer – content of text – content of reader.

Rubric Focus – compositional milieu – historical, cultural, social and political context.
- Effects of context, purpose and audience on textual meaning and audience response.
- Contextual influences on a composer’s textual choice and attitudinal stance.
- Paired study of treatment of similar content stressed values, significance and context of each text.

Contextual influence – broad aesthetic concerns, personal contextual experiences, attitudes and values of
responder. Texts products of their time.

Recurring Dystopic Themes

- Enforced conformity
- End of oppressive government control-power
- Surveillance and erosion of privacy
- Censorship, propaganda and indoctrination
- Protagonist struggles against societal zeitgeist.

Dystopic purpose
- Genre socially didactic – casting contemporary trends – bleak and disturbing credible future scenario.
- Dystopic visions to question, speculate and extrapolate – ‘what if?’

1984 focus
- Protagonist, textual world, state control

Metropolis focus
- German expressionism – cinematic style, technology, dehumanisation, nature and totalitarian regimes.

“My recent novel is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a
supporter), but as a show-up of the perversions… which have already been realised in Communism and
Fascism… The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not
innately better than anyone else, and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.”

Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin

- Different ideologies – similar methods of oppressive government.

- Needs and rights of individual subordinated through coercion and repression.
- Mussolini described new fascist state as “All within the state, none outside the state, none against the
state.”
- WWII – totalitarian became popular – synonymous with absolute and oppressive single-party
government.
- Army contempt for Republic disappeared – unreliability seen through Kapp Putsch.
- Under von Seekt – army operated ‘state within a state’ – free of government control – foreign affairs
secretly dealt with Soviet Red Army.
- Governments still formed after inter-party haggling.
- Always remained potential for misuse of Article 48 by Hindenburg or advice from inner circle.