I got freaked out about my little stories sounding bad, or becoming repetitive. In the end, I became that student, the one who needs to post something like ten blog posts before the end of the week or else her grade will be really poor.
So, we're doing a new thing. If I've got the story pre-written, I'm gonna post it as is. Otherwise, I'm going to take my big file of half-written blog posts and put them together in a standard format. And you will love it. I promise you.
So, let's talk Bioshock.
I'm playing Bioshock again for work on my last paper for this class. Among the things I'm discussing within the Utopian setting of Rapture is the isolation involved in Rapture's underwater world. For those of you who haven't played Bioshock, here's a trailer for the game.
Rapture is an isolated fallen Utopia (not a dystopia, per se, but a world that had been a Utopia at one point but had fallen to ruin.) The world was created in the mindset of Andrew Ryan (the narrator of the trailer), who wanted a Libertarian-esque world where no outside forces could come in and screw things up.
This sense of isolation is something I've noticed before in other works. In Herland, the female world is set aside from the rest of the population, the same with More's Utopia, and our recent viewing of The Island. Other Utopian stories we've discussed, such as 1984, Minority Report, Gattaca, and Brave New World have the whole world changed rather than just an isolated segment. For places like Twin Oaks in Virginia, isolation makes this system work, but I still see the "whole world change" as significantly more realistic. A slow, gradual change over the world can change everything just a little bit at a time, rather than isolating and completely altering everything at once.
What do you guys think?
I agree, the whole isolation part is the aspect of these societies that made them successful as a utopia. I thought about this when Dr. MB told us to come up with our next big utopia idea. I said to myself, how am I going to make this work with outside influences...then I said, perhaps a large bubble that kept all the bad influences out of my new utopia. But you are right. They either need to be isolated or world wide. The question is, how long would it take.
ReplyDeleteSide note: I don't know why, but the Bioshock trailer made me think of Disney's Atlantis and how they had a good life under the sea (life is better, down where it's wetter...under the sea)until humans started invading their territory.
I think the "slow and steady" approach is the only way a society can develope. No community can change on a dime.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure which would work better. It would seem the natural way is to change everything by degrees over time.
ReplyDeleteIronically, we were just talking about something like this in my Shakespeare class. We're reading *The Tempest,* and Gonzalo, one of the shipwrecked characters, temporarily desires to build an utopia on (ironically) an island.
While Gonzalo's instantaneous plan is fun - and in my mind, more philosophical - it just seems less realistic than taking a slower approach.
Well, this made me think!
(Also, I think you should get bonus points for referencing a game with a steampunk-esque genre.)
We also see isolationism in the Rule of St. Benedict. The Rule commands that the monks "should be different from the world’s ways” (Chapter 4, command 20). If you looked at pictures of Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert, you'd see that there is literally sand and desert surrounding them. They're not in the middle of a city.
ReplyDeleteI personally think isolationism (at least for the Benedictines) is a positive, because it offers a sort of "constant" in today's changing world. We're speeding through things so fast, what was popular ten years ago is now obsolete. But, because the Benedictines are cloistered, they are not dependent on today's fads.
I disagree that the whole world change idea is more realistic. Governments change very slowly over time, and it's the gradual change that people don't become opposed to. It's when a government tries to change the order of society rapidly that people get up in arms. Changing the world one small community at a time would face little opposition.
ReplyDeleteI think isolation works better in the short term while a gradual change over time works better for a stronger society. While isolation and quick change can make an effective society, it is weakened by this isolation and usually I feel depends on it. If the isolation is broken it can fall very easily. Further isolation usually limits the resources it has so in unanticipated situations it will have a hard time coping.
ReplyDeleteA longer slower change is more realistic and I think creates the stronger society overall but this change is less controlled and more random and can end up with flaws built into the system that cannot be changed without destroying the whole system