The Future Ain't What It Used to Be: TV's Dystopia Boom

Kindley, Evan. "The Future Ain't What It Used to Be: TV's Dystopia Boom." The Nation 12 March 2018: 44-45. On line here.[1]

Good essay by an academic (a teacher at Claremont McKenna College), significant for appearing as part of the coverage of culture in the oldest continuing magazine in the US, and an eminently respectable venue specializing in politics from the Left.

"Stretching the criteria a bit," Kindley mentions the "the long-running zombie odyssey The Walking Dead and its spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead (using a fairly recent idea of "zombie," one including some literally ghoulish behaviors);[2] and gives a nod to the "dystopian elements" in situation comedies such as The Good Place and The Last Man on Earth. The shows directly considered include Westworld on HBO, Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, Amazon's The Man in the High Castle, HBO's The Leftovers, Netflix's Altered Carbon. After concluding that "Thus far, the most hospitable TV format for the dystopian impulse has been not the serial drama but the anthology series" — and giving a gracious not to Rod Sterling's The Twilight Zone[3] — Kingley gets to his main topics, the UK Channel 4 series, via Netflix in the US, Black Mirror and Channel 4's Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams on Amazon (p. 45).

The modern inheritor of [... The Twilight Zone] strategy is Black Mirror [...]. [...E]ach episode typically zeroes in on a single technological conceit: What if you could store a replica of a dead loved one’s consciousness on your smartphone? What if a computer-generated cartoon bear ran for public office? What if your likability on social media determined your credit rating and ability to travel?

[...] In “Arkangel,” a nervous mother implants a chip in her daughter’s brain to prevent her from being exposed to disturbing ideas or images. In “Hang the DJ,” a dating algorithm not only matches couples but gives each relationship an expiration date, in order to harvest data about each partner’s emotions and sexual behavior that will lead to a more perfect match. In “U.S.S. Callister,” a socially awkward start-up executive constructs his own private digital fiefdom modeled on a Star Trek–esque TV show—described by one of its inhabitants as “a bubble universe ruled by an asshole god.” (p. 45)

Points out, legitimately, the quality of Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams but, pretty much necessarily, its being dated.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 10-11July19