Passage to paradise

In recent years, the pervasive presence of new dystopian and especially postapocalyptic narratives in video games, films, television series, comics and literature (especially for children and teenagers) has coincided with a cocktail of social ills: the global crisis and economic recession, outrage at the retrenchment of the welfare state, the resurgence of the far right and rising concern over the environment and climate change.

It is no coincidence that the production of dystopias and periods of change and social tension should converge given that dystopian narratives have historically functioned as parables that reveal the bleak scenarios that await our society in the future (represented in a dramatised and allegorical form) if we continue along certain paths.

However, as the academic Tom Moylan points out, the contemporary dystopia generally includes some kind of utopian enclave, a bastion of hope: a last redoubt that is an imaginative attempt – often fragile and ill-defined yet still perceivable – at new societies, possible ways of transforming the dystopian world or, in any event, models of resistance.

Directed by: Andrés Hispano
Edited by: Toni Curcó

Related to Gameplay

18 December 2019