Utopian Pastiche

As I re-watched The Island (our final text!) last night, I reminded myself why I chose this film and why I feel it's a good way to bring our discussions to a close.

It's the gripping and in no way repetitive action sequences!

Um, no. But it was directed by Michael Bay, so were you expecting something else?

It's the Dick-and-Jane scene!

Hmm. Still no...

Two Ewan McGregors?

Possibly...

No, seriously now. This movie has been called a pastiche of utopian/dystopian fiction, an assessment that I completely support. But deeming something a pastiche (OED paraphrase: a work that incorporates distinctive elements of a particular style, artist, genre, etc. and/or that takes elements from many different sources and incorporates them into one work) isn't necessarily derogatory. The Island is a pastiche because it manages to take all of the themes that we have been looking at this semester and smooshes them all together. It's a big Utopian mashup.

A good pastiche is in the eye of the beholder. There are many people who think this is a godawful film, and I can see why. The movie takes a clean, sleek, Utopian first half and tries to attach it (like a Barbie head jammed onto the neck of GI Joe figure) onto a big, loud, explosion-riddled, car chase extravaganza. Two films for the price of one!

But the thing that ultimately intrigues me about this film - or any mashup, for that matter - is the way it encourages us to take a look at all of its constituent parts and think about how they fit together. Often, the combinations are predictable, but sometimes they are surprisingly appealing. If you have any doubts about this, see one of my favorite recent mashups at the end of this post.

By now, we are all incredibly familiar with the tropes of Utopia, and this movie tries to squeeze them all in here. But, by the act of cramming so much into a single film, Bay and his production team have issued us an engraved invitation to see which of these elements work together, how they work together, and why they work together - or don't. Whether it intends it or not, this film is a reflection on the whole idea of Utopian fiction and why the idea of Utopia can so easily be used against us if we aren't careful. 

And hey, who doesn't love a good mashup now and then?

(if you don't, DO NOT CLICK THE VIDEO BELOW!)

Plotting Utopia

It's pretty challenging to try and compare one utopia to another, because they all seem to have such different values, priorities, customs, etc. But when we trace all of these texts back to Plato, we can in fact connect most utopian thinking to two key concepts: happiness and justice.

But what do we mean when we use these terms? And how do these two measures of happiness and justice work together?

To explain this in a visual way, my husband came up with this awesome tool and I am excited to share it with you. (click on the pic to enlarge.)

We sat down and started thinking about where different Utopian texts, communities, and experiments fell and plotted many of them out on these two axes. I've included four on the graph above. I'll briefly explain one of my choices that you may not be familiar with:

Dave Bruno is the man behind the "100 Thing Challenge." You can check out his blog, or read this piece from Time Magazine to learn about his quest to own only 100 items. This strikes me as a highly individual sense of happiness (his quest does not include reducing the possessions of even his immediate family, just himself), but also a highly rule-driven one. So he goes in the top-left corner of my graph.

The two axes represent what I see as the two basic ways to quantify a utopia. Sure, the goal of utopia is happiness (represented on the x-axis), but is it an individual's happiness that is at stake, or are we concerned with the happiness of a larger society? 

And if happiness is to be achieved through justice (represented on the y-axis), how do we define that term? Can each person define her or his own ideas of justice? Or is justice codified in laws for the larger community?

So, what do you think about where I have placed Dave and the other three items on my graph? Would you place them elsewhere? Notice that I have purposefully tried to give you what I see as the four extremes; I have other items that I see as falling in between these four endpoints.

I'd love to see (in class, or here) your own versions of this graph. I think it will be quite helpful for you as you move into your SWOT Analysis and Research Essay writing over the next month. So, you can download your own version of this graph and try it out yourself.

Here is a version optimized for the web.

Here's the printer-friendly version.

Happy plotting!

Self-Governance = Utopia?

I have a friend who works at Grinnell College in Iowa, and she recently shared an article on FB about Grinnell's policy of self-governance within the student body.

You can read the story here. It's a quick and easy read, and I'd like for you to check it out when you have a minute.

Self-Governance...and muffins!

The reporter asks, "What in the name of social utopia is in the water over at Grinnell?"

My question for you guys is whether Grinnell's policy should truly be considered utopian - or do we as a society just overuse the idea of utopia to mean anything that is socially commendable?

Read me a story...

Regardless of how we feel about the strict rules of censorship that Socrates proposes for his kallipolis, there can be no doubt that he is a firm believer in the importance of stories.

Big Bird and Friends gather 'round for a good story.
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Read_Me_a_Story

Socrates tells us that the stories we listen to as a young child play a key role in forming our morality. They also teach lessons - whether intentional or not - about the types of behavior that are permitted.

To be honest, I'm not sure that I find Socrates to be that far off the mark. I don't know how many of those good ol' Greek myths I'd want to use as bedtime stories for young children. Those gods and heroes do get up to some wacky hi-jinks, don't they?

But aside from the concerns of the content and form of the stories, something that struck me about Socrates' discussion is how it highlights a group of people that we wouldn't naturally associate with loads of power in this particular utopia. Not just the storytellers, but the "nurses and mothers" (53). They are the first educators, the ones who nurture the guardians when they are their youngest and most vulnerable. (Not the philosophers, who will presumably get their hands on the young men - literally and figuratively - once they are ready for a more formal education.) It's those nurses and mothers who must be "persuaded" to choose good tales for the wee guardians. Is it me, or does Socrates seem a bit insecure about whether or not those nurses and mothers will listen to his persuasion?

So let's hear it for those mothers and nurses. They are the linchpin of the kallipolis, whether in Ancient Greece or the contemporary US. Our stories are still what teach us our morality and guide us in our behavior. And is that is as it should be.

Welcome to Utopia!

If only it were so easy to bring us all into a better world! But alas, there is no magic word that can do this.

One of the problems with discovering Utopia is that no one can seem to agree on what it is. Some people think that Utopia looks like this:

But to others, Utopia looks more like this:

Over the course of this semester, we will be exploring many different visions of Utopia, and adding a few of our own thoughts into the mix. By the end of the semester, will we be any closer to discovering Utopia? Perhaps not. But we will certainly have learned a lot about our society and ourselves along the way.

Allons-y!

Dr MB