The Creation of Dystopian Society and Horror

 Sonnet Xu 

Mrs. Liamini 

12 AP English 

04 January 2023

The Creation of Dystopian Society and Horror

Shark attacks are more terrifying than falling coconuts, yet the former always seems like a bigger threat when by the coasts. From Jaws to Sharknado, shark films have latched onto our warped perception of reality to scare us, creating thrilling experiences that leave us on the edge of our seats in the theater. The reason that shark attacks seem so much more threatening is because of the familiarity that we have with them. News stations blow up shark attacks (Midway, 2019), while coconut deaths go unnoticed and unreported. Shark movies frequently plague the theater, while not a single production team has tried to capture coconut mortality. Sharks fascinate and capture our attention and dominate our minds when we think of  “scary”. The explanation for this phenomenon lies in the availability heuristic. Designed as a mental shortcut, the availability heuristic relies on immediate conjurings of examples to evaluate the legitimacy of a scenario. The more that we can envision it, the more its prevalence is overestimated. When the information fed to us is skewed, so are our beliefs. A list of the top 10 most dangerous animals featured many surprising contenders, from dogs to mosquitoes. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), sharks didn’t even make the list (Hall, 2022).

The availability heuristic’s ability to change our perception lies in its ability to leverage connections to real life. To create horror, authors and producers rely on similar tactics. Scary monsters and aliens are often a thing of the past. New horror is dominated by dolls and clowns, incarnations of weird beings eerily similar to humans. By integrating elements of everyday life into their stories, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and director Susan Bier’s 2018 film, Bird Box, use realism to portray dystopian worlds that are believable and explore how human character is changed in extreme situations. 

Realism is portrayed through the way that the characters deal with trauma in the post-apocalyptic society, specifically through the mental health issues that they face and the way that this augments their behavior. The characters exhibit post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to varying degrees, which is reflected in the way the stories are narrated and the disjointed thought processes that are there. The father in The Road struggles with dealing with the loss of his wife and the decay of civilization as he knows it, where starving humans turn to cannibalism and violence (Laguarta Bueno, 72). Everyday, he asks the question of when death will arrive and how long he can protect his son from the end, whatever that may be: physical death, moral decay, or exposure to the gruesome and selfish nature of people. McCarthy reflects the distress and fragmented premise of the story through the structure of the book (Semeiks, 2007). Instead of chapters, the book is broken into paragraphs, forming a disjointed, yet successive continuum of experiences. On top of this, McCarthy’s narrative style is extremely simplistic and direct. The lack of inhibition and high diction makes a chaotic environment that parallels the traumatized mind, with not enough coherence to eloquently express itself. A constant barrage of emotion brings readers closer to the dire state of the protagonists. Very much like a survival environment, communication, rather than eloquence, dominate the writing of the book. Birdbox narrates this trauma in a different way. Advancing two parallel storylines, the movie has rapid, abrupt switches between the “before” period and the present. While the characters are advancing through their dangerous journey, fragments of how everything came to be are inserted. Similar to the constant flashbacks that occur in The Road, the disjointed memories show that the characters are still struggling to accept the reality that they live in. Malorie, the main character, has recurrent thoughts about the past. In both stories, they are constantly pulled back to the past and are hyper-fixated on how the current, terrible conditions came to be. They think of the people they lost and the sacrifices they’ve made to continue to live. Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive memories of past trauma as well as dissociative reactions (such as flashbacks) are common symptoms of PTSD (“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” 996). Beyond that, the tone of the stories, negative, fearful, oppressive, and repressed, exhibit the constantly negative state that survivors often deal with (“PTSD” 1579).

To further connect the audience to the dystopian societies they try to create, both stories draw on the idea of sacrifice for the next generation to show that even in times when it seems everything is ending, there is still hope for the future. The experiences that the adults have gone through make them want to protect the children. They constantly shield the children from the harsh realities of what is going on. They want to limit exposure to the dark and selfish side of human nature that seems to have been magnified in this dark time, preserving the little “innocence” and purity that remains. While the children make poor survival decisions, are unable to protect themselves and need constant supervision, and often serve as drains of resources, the adults don’t even think about abandoning them. In their state of constant selflessness and putting others before themselves, the authors show that they still have faith in humanity. This fundamental belief in resilience connects to an intrinsic positivity that shows while terrible times bring out the worst, there is still goodness that remains and can be hoped for. Thus through this exploration of dystopian times, both authors argue that people have merits that justify not giving up and letting go.

Despite all of this, the children remain unnamed. Initially, this seems to serve as an emotional barrier that protects the adults from over attachment. As the adults are commonly exposed to loss and death, they want to create emotional shields that minimize the pain associated with the potential loss of the children. Just being “boy” or “girl” reduces the children to the recognition that a stranger would receive and release the personal connection that a name would provide. Although this seems selfish on the side of the adults, who have neglected to gift the children a word that serves as a centerpiece of most people’s identity, their action actually has protective implications for the children as well. Relationships are two-sided. Going nameless hinders the adults from the intimate addressal of the children, but also hinders the children from truly close connection to the adults as well. They recognize the adults as their protector above all else and see themselves in terms of simple survival.

Realism is further enhanced by a momentary sharing of food from the past. From the pop tarts in Birdbox to the soda in The Road, rare moments of joy punctuate an otherwise hard and long story of survival. Incorporating everyday items that modern life takes for granted, particularly food, which used to be simple sustenance, but is now a fun and engaging form of enjoyment and expression, the authors show how as distant as these terrifying worlds may seem, they are not that far from the present. Even more than this, they reveal the severe regression that our society can take when ushered into extreme conditions that push humans back to their basic survival instincts. However, as moments of joy, these times do not last. The authors tear the viewers back to the dystopia. Momentary relief coming from the “old world” to their harsh reality creates the realism that makes the audience connect, and shows that remnants of happy times are crucial to rejuvenating the soul.

Through various techniques such as fractured narraration, mental trauma, selfless sacrifice, and snapshots of happiness, The Road and Birdbox create complex characters that are memorable and relatable, despite the seemingly far-fetched society that they live in. In survival circumstances that push and test human morals, they portray decay but also resilience, showing hope exists for humans despite how dire everything may seem.

Works Cited

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