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langernameohnebedeutung · 3 years ago

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I feel like part of the reason why all these new YA-"dystopias" are Like That and create discourse Like That is because they pursue their entirely own goal and have an audience and a following for entirely different reasons from the cLaSsICs(TM) of the dystopia-genre.

We joke about the cliché YA-dystopia protagonist (special girl oppressed for Random Trait who basically takes down the Evil Overlords single-handedly) while we also know the popular counter argument (Luke Skypotter gets to do it why not Katboss Everdeen??)

And honestly, the counter-argument is right, there is nothing inherently wrong a character like that. (although we should engage critically with the way marginalisation and oppression are portrayed in these stories)

But when it comes to conveying a larger-than-the-story message, every kind of protagonist has specific strengths and weaknesses. That's normal - every character has their own point of view that they're inviting the reader to share in. This type of protagonist generally really has limitations when it comes to engaging with the psychology and self-sustaining mechanisms of the systems portrayed in these dystopian settings.

It is very difficult to discuss compliance and internalisation and normalisation if from the very first page, your character is like: "These are our evil overlords, these are the horrible things they do to us, everyone in this District/Town/Zone hates them!"

- because

a) once you do that, you have to come up with a more functional explanation for why this system is still in place like ... they have all the military power or they have super-powers or something like that and

b) your reader immediately sees the world from that perspective. They identify with the one hero who sees through their environment as if its glass and immediately knows who the enemy is and is entirely separate from that force. But if a story actually tries to comment on such structures in the real world, we also have to make room for the fact that 1) the average person is the leader of the resistence and 2) one person isn't going to dismantle the system and 3) one rousing speech is not going to start a rebellion.

This kind of narrative comes from a very different perspective than a story where your protagonist is fully integrated into a fucked-up system and is so deep in the labyrinth, they don't remember getting lost to begin with - here, you, the reader, are fully aware that this entire system is fucked-up. You're horrified. But you accompany your point-of-view character while they only yet slowly, very slowly are beginning to realise that they're not happy. That maybe some things they're told aren't true - and then, eventually, that they are also part of that same system.

If you compare a character like Guy Montag to a character like Mare Barrow from Red Queen, you notice that they send their readers on entirely different journeys of discovery (journey of discovery is btw a thing I'm trying to make happen in book talks so spread the contagion):

Mare Barrow is unhappy with the dystopia she lives in. She makes that pretty clear pretty early on. She is basically our tour guide, completely aware of the 2020ies western mindset of her audience when she tells us all about her world - because she is someone we're supposed to identify with. And not in the Bella Swan way where she becomes a canvas to project on by being as bland and passive as possible - but by being relatable to a 2020ies audience not native to her red-vs-silver world.

She thinks a lot like us and has a very similar concept of justice - and even comes from a comparable background to the point that her family interactions often read as if a normal middle-class family fell through some dimensional crack and fell into that world.

Guy Montag, asshole he is, is unhappy - but he still has to find out why he is unhappy and how his dissatisfaction relates to the world he lives in. In fact, you might argue - if we start regarding these specific types of YA-dystopias as its own genre - there, Clarisse would be the protagonist, not Guy just like making Guy's wife the protagonist would again make it an entirely different genre.

And I'm not trying to be judgemental here and rule either as inherently (!) better than the other (although, if you want know my personal opinion: nuance is the best way to convey a complex message). Plenty of rubbish has been produced with either goal in mind.

I'm also not saying that this format cannot be used to convey critical messages about society (for example, when I discussed Hunger Games with my students I did feel like the novel got them thinking critically about how media twists things and what shape an unfree press might take in our times).

But I do think that it might be time to just own up to the fact that these types of dystopias do not aim to accomplish the same things that for example George Orwell when he was very specifically mirroring the Soviet Union in his criticism. And that the people reading them are not looking for the same thing they'd crack open Animal Farm for.

Many of these stories are just the author coming up with a fucked-up scenario that fits neither sci-fi nor cyberpunk nor fantasy to a T. And some special girl defeating it while choosing between two extremely bland boyfriends, one of whomst is kinda rude sometimes and might even have at tattoo. And sure, the individual stories should be subject to criticsm and genre tendencies should be - but I just feel like we save ourselves a lot of time by assuming they're not trying to accomplish the same thing as Brave New World - but are actually loaning from that tradition - and engage with them under that premise.

#what I'm really trying to say is that storytel gave me too much power #nonfandom #literature

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