Final Blog

This post will be analyzing and contributing to a blog post created by Maggie Kaliszak titled “The Thing Power of the Haptic Suit”. The third installment in her blog series, Maggie introduces the reader into the world of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and develops a discussion about thing power behind the haptic suits. In previous posts I have discussed new materialism by Jane Bennett, and Maggie further explores this reading to define the differences between agency, agent, actor and actant. She explored both texts very thoroughly prior to diving into the haptic suit.

The haptic suit serves to immerse a

Wade in Haptic Suit. Source: https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/180330-readyplayerone-630x428.png

 player into the OASIS and functions as a controller that uses your body to navigate the virtual reality. Maggie alludes that the effect of the suit doesn’t serve to immerse yourself into virtual reality, rather it functions to remove yourself from physical reality. It is an assemblage of many smaller pieces (gloves, goggles, electronics, and other body pieces) that furthers the immersion of the OASIS and permits physical sensations. The agency of the haptic suit extended beyond its physical effect on the user. The existence of the suit creates a larger disparity of economic class. Only the extremely wealthy can afford a full suit or an immersion rig like Wade eventually purchases. Not being able to afford a full suit creates a different experience.

Being able to afford a suit implies the ability to interact with the environment within the OASIS at a much more intimate level. Being able to feel objects and to immerse yourself creates an advantage in the OASIS in the Halliday Egg Hunt.

I want to further this discussion of environment on two fronts:

The first front that I want to acknowledge is the idea of virtual objects within this universe. If the wearer of the suit can feel, smell, hear, and see the environment surrounding them, does this virtual environment function just the same as a physical environment like we are adjusted to? Art3mis struggles to accept the love she feels for and from Wade, claiming that there could be no way that Wade could experience love in the OASIS claiming that she could be anyone, even a middle aged dude named Chuck living in their parents basement. However, the reader watches Wade struggle from symptoms of depression and anxiety that stems from his breakup with Art3mis. Every single pixel within the OASIS is not natural and challenges the binary of nature vs thing. To abide by this binary, everything experienced by Wade is merely an object including all touch and interactions with Art3mis. This suggests that these things had the power to allow Wade to feel the emotion of love and to experience loss and depression. If Wade had never met Art3mis, he would have been in love with a thing that reflected and manipulated the image of a person.

The second front is the availability of other physically stimulating gear, such as the sex robot that Wade purchased. Having money granted Wade the power to eradicate his desires sexually as well that ultimately breaks his immersion within the game. Within the OASIS he believes that he is having intimate relations with simulations, but this is broken every time he unplugs and looks at this grotesque sex toy. It deepens his depression and falters the effect of the virtual world to the point that he cares to improve his physical health and appearance.

This implies that there is an effect of physical objects on virtual objects and a complex assemblage of things that affect Wade’s emotional, physical, and social health. This will be important to monitor as society members with this technology under development in our real word. 

Works Cited

Kaliszak, Maggie. “The Thing Power of the Haptic Suit.” Dystopian Fiction Blog, February 28, 2020.                 https://dystopianfictionkaliszak.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-thing-power-of-haptic-suit.html

Blog 5: Creative Project

My interests with dystopian fiction peak when the environment has been overwhelmed with newer technologies. The idea of technology going too far or taking control over humans is a fascinating form of dystopia for me when it challenges the power dynamic of man and machine. In Ready Player One, I enjoyed the environment that surrounded the Oasis. In Black Mirror,  I enjoyed the way that social media changed and influenced humans to restructure their entire lives.

This setup of an environment attracts me because it seems entirely plausible considering the strength and intelligence of AI. Black Mirror sets up several environments resembling this struggle between man and machine, even when the machine has agency but does not function as an agent. Sometimes it does act as an agency and this creates an even scarier dystopia!

My creative project would focus around the effects that technology and machine have on humans and the environments that could stem from this. My visual project would develop an environment which focused on specifically humans subjected to machine control. This could be through virtual reality and intelligent AI and the presence of too much technology in their lives. It would demonstrate the effects of machine as both an agent and as a thing with agency to capture the ideas of Jane Bennett.  It will comment on how the assemblage of technology lead to the demise of humanity or how it would eventually lead to it.

This project would also have an element of nature that reflected how nature allowed for an escape from an oppressive machine laden society and how natural objects affect another group of humans. This would combat the binary of nature and man by showing the effects of objects that negatively impact the low-technology humans in forms of waste. It would generally highlight the relationship between thing and man, both positively and negatively. What does one group miss out on and what does the other endure? The project would have a protagonist highlighted that completely deconstructs the binary by being expose to both environments.

I am not sure whether this would be visual or creative, or some wacky combination of the two. Ultimately it would be focused on the environments themselves and comment on the effects held over the people.  It would narrate a mini story that highlights these characters and make sure that the viewer or player understood the environment. It might also incorporate an element of Panopticism and Docile Bodies to create an element of surveillance and the sinister element of the dystopia.

Something is just so fascinating about man versus machine and seeing the relationship between the two when the power dynamic switches! It would be super fun to explore and create something for the viewer that could submerse them into a world that they know longer have complete power or control in, while reminding them that this world is not as unfamiliar as it should seem. Its both sinister, frightening, and intriguing to see the technologies available for the future! Like look at this video of just glass technology that existed YEARS ago that most people don’t know could exist… Its terrifying to think of what is not disclosed to the public that could exist!

Blog 4: The Effect of New Materialism

New Materialism reflects how everything surrounding humans influences us, with everything being an agent and groups of agents forming an assemblage or environment. Jane Bennett asks her readers to deconstruct the binary of nature and human to understand these relationships. In dystopian fiction most authors write in an environment that will offer an environment that is both familiar and unfamiliar to the reader. Nature serves its own purpose in most of these books, often functioning as a symbol of freedom.

In each of these dystopian books we see or feel the effects of these objects. In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, we see the effects of both nature and the environment upon the man. One object that has a great effect on him is a Coke can that reminds him of how things used to be. It brings him joy and he lets the boy drink it to let him know what once existed, almost as an affirmation for the boy to trust the ways of the past. With nature, we notice a lack of wildlife that leads to a culture of cannibalism as humans turn on themselves for meat.

In Ready Player One, I previously mentioned in the last blog about Wades mirror and how it does nothing, yet it reminds him of his health and breaks his illusion of a false reality. It allows him to reengage himself with reality while otherwise completely escaping reality. We also see the environment he grows up in, the stacks, as an extreme case of poverty and overpopulation. It paints perfectly how society lost sympathy for lower social classes in this society. Stacks fall daily or weekly with people losing their lives and nobody cares. Similarly, in Parable of the Sower, we see gated communities contribute to an environment that isolates the lower social classes. This ultimately builds up angst and forms a revolution.

A non-novel dystopia is Wall-E, a movie by Disney that follows a little robot and his adventure to space. In this we see a world that has been ravaged and eliminated our familiar idea of nature, leaving a trash filled world rid of all forms of life. The presence of one cockroach ultimately shifts the entire narrative of the film, nature has come back. It leads him to a newer robot, one from space sent to find signs of life on Earth for humans to return. Fast forward to the sight of humans themselves: they are morbidly obese and being pampered to death by robots. Every object in this ship ultimately aids in the comforting and pampering of the humans and subdues them. The humans can’t think or move for themselves and rely on additional things to help them live. This assemblage made humans to comfortable and led them to devolve and lose their agency. The captain is alerted that life is back on Earth, and the humans can escape the ship and return to the planet.

https://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/styles/cropped_article_image/public/blogs_2016/09/1.png?itok=d5KciYsf

In many of these dystopias, I mentioned that feeling of familiarity. We have virtual reality from Ready Player One, gated communities from Parable of the Sower, the commercialism from Wall-E, and well a Coke can like The Road. However, each one spins these objects and environments to make them equally foreign to us, a world where each has gone too far forward or been eradicated. This weird nostalgia formed around things present in our modern lives help to create a dystopian environment that feels all too possible and familiar to us.

Reflecting New Materialism

Tracing the Mirror

In every dystopian fiction, the characters will interact with a mirror. This mirror means something as both a symbol and an object. Before diving into the agency of the mirror, let us explore its history and establish its role in the constructing the dystopian environment. Pre-dystopia, in the world familiar to us, the mirror serves as a means of perfecting self appearance and to help pull more light into a room and make it seem larger. Even before this, what effects do mirrors have? Well mirrors are created with glass, silver and copper in a process that consumes gallons of water and tons of energy. This means that mirrors have a profound impact on the environment as commonly understood, requiring the mining of copper and silver and silica. This means that the use of fuel and energy and manpower is required to extract and transport the raw material before conversion. Then it is manufactured into the necessary materials and pieced together into the product of which we are familiar using lots of water to clean the glass as seen in video one.

So, what does this process mean? Well it means that before consumers have laid witness to this object, I has had the profound impact on humans that work as miners and manufacturers to provide them with jobs and a living wage. These humans can provide for their families as a result of this products existence. In the same process, this object contributes to harming the environment through excessive water usage and general energy consumption. In turn the damaged natural environment will begin to harm humans through lack of access to drinkable water and shifts in weather conditions that harm crops. The point of tracking this process is paralleled to Jane Bennett tracking the different stages of effect through the process of the electrical power grid to demonstrate the complexities of these relationships.

Picking it back up modern day, this product allows humans to see themselves and to adjust their appearance into the image they are most satisfied with. It sits still but all moves within its reflections as it allows narcissism to escalate. Humans fall in love with themselves or learn to hate themselves simply by what they see in the mirror. Such a simple product can entirely alter the ego or mood of the viewer from a young age as they track the changes of their physical appearance over the years. In dystopian fiction, mirrors do not exist in abundance. People either wish not to see themselves or are not provided the means to do so. Without access to the mirrors, characters lack individuality and their identity is hindered. If they cannot see themselves, they struggle more to love themselves as it takes a deeper moral and spiritual process to love who they are within. Although in different dystopian fictions, the mirrors presence would serve many purposes.

The Mirror in Texts

In Ready Player One and The Hunger Games, the mirror serves as a tool for reflection and self-growth. Its agency first serves a negative effect on the characters in an assemblage of more bleak objects reflecting either loneliness or poverty. For Katniss, it serves as a tool to remind her of District 12 when she glimpses at he grandness of the Capitol in her fancy dresses and with the well decorated rooms. For Wade Watts, he is reminded of his lack luster appearance and his loneliness in the darkness of his room and the overweight boy that stared back at him. However, the mirror permits reflection to create the identity of the characters that allow them to combat the hegemonic power. For Katniss, she is able to bear witness to her reflection in the Mockingjay outfit that allows her to feel empowered amidst a crowd of rebels that remind her of her drive against the capitol and her growth since the start of her journey. She notes the weakness in her physique as a result of hunger in the games and the ways that the Capitol modifies her appearance. For Wade, he learns to love himself and fix his lifestyle after the mirror connects the symbols of loneliness in his life from the sex robot to the AI friend of his to his food boxes scattered around his room.

The presence of the mirror creates an assemblage to reflect the lives and internal struggles of characters, which without their presence the characters would lack some sort of clarity or direction. Had Wade blacked out his mirror, maybe he would have never created a self-esteem and prepared to combat IOI in force. Without vision of herself throughout the games, Katniss might not have been reminded of her strength and persona to combat President Snow. Removing the mirror removes the individual in a dystopia to create a more benevolent citizen under the control of the authoritative power. One more reflection of this is in the Divergent series where the Abnegation faction is not allowed to view themselves more than once a year to promote selflessness. It prevents the creation of narcissism and acting in self-interest, which perfectly works in favor of a hegemonic power to create a subordinate and selfless culture. Meanwhile too many mirrors creates the feeling of surveillance!

 

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Works Cited

Bennett, Jane, 1957-. Vibrant Matter : a Political Ecology of Things. Durham :Duke University Press, 2010.

Cline, Ernest. Ready Player One. New York: Crown Publishers, 2011. Print.

Collins, Suzanne. Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic, 2008.

Roth, Veronica. Divergent. New York City: Harper Collins, 2011.

The Hunger Games: How Did Snow Pull It Off?

The Hunger Games. How did such a barbaric game become so popular? How did President Snow acquire so much power? These are the questions I hope to answer within this blog by addressing the establishment of popular culture, manipulation of space, and the different ideologies that affect groups of people.

Public Space

To create popular culture, it takes decades of layering events, changes, beliefs, and much more. O’Brien and Szeman outline the beginnings of current culture in terms of entertainment; from the rag beginnings of sports popularity in the form of street games and blood sports of the 19^th century to the lavish music halls and sports arenas that attract tens to hundreds of thousands of eager customers today. Urbanization and privatization of once public land greatly reduced the available space for recreational activities, which allowed for landowners to take some control of what activities were permissible or banned (O’Brien & Szeman). As time goes on, the middle-class begins to form and twice removes the working class from the wealthy. Space becomes property of all but the working class: the government, the upper-class, and the middle-class.

Soon enough, the government began to take control of public spaces. They created parks and community spaces that permitted certain activities and banned recreation in the streets as to not “disrupt more ‘legitimate’ commercial activities”(O’Brien & Szeman). To prohibit these activities, they create measures of surveillance to monitor public spaces and address those that disobey.

Surveillance

Map of Panem: Capitol in Center

Panopticon

Surveillance serves an important role in regulation, discipline, and control. In the Hunger Games, the Capitol functions as a centralized force in absolute control over Panem. The 12 districts are enclosed (no one can leave or contact the others), controlled through a work schedule, and exhaustively put through routines such are important measures of disciplining as introduced by Foucault. Foucault also introduces the ideas of the panopticon, a perfect prison established to control the masses through a central tower (the Capitol) and constant surveillance. The fear of surveillance works to diminish social interactions of workers and to maintain them like mechanisms (Foucault).

The Capitol constantly monitors everything and punishes violators with lashings, death, and avox-ification. In the Hunger Games themselves, Katniss can always feel a camera on her at all times and knows to control her actions and words. This is no different to the rest of Panem who understands that surveillance is a part of their social contract to live within the Capitols control. District 12 is forgotten about, which ultimately helps them to break the enclosure and to remain unseen. This breaks the culture, breaks the disciplining, and forms a distaste of the games among all citizens.

President Snow

So how did the Hunger Games become so popular? Well over the 74 years preceding the Hunger Games that we witness in Suzanne Collins first book, control over the districts led to forced consumption. Perhaps sometimes by force or physical conditioning, but most likely by the lack of other forms of recreation and this elusive sense of sophistication in enjoying them. Years passed as

the Hunger Games continued to gain support in light of the crude and vicious acts that happened on television. People bonded to it, bonded together behind it, and celebrated the victors that brought back food to their districts. After the apocalypse, perhaps it served to unify the people and make them all feel as equals. Enter Snow.

As president, Snow begins to allow more people to face hunger. The games become a necessity as the rich keep winning the Capitol continues to binger themselves and live freely. The districts grow anxious at the lack of resources and attempt to rebel, to which the Capitol bombs the district most responsible to control the others. Snow begins to further this panopticon-esque formation of the Capitol in the center to control the divided districts.

He implements the fore-mentioned surveillance to scare workers into a complacent and docile labor force. People grow scared to rebel, constantly reminded by the agents of fear placed around them: images of District 13, white roses of Snow’s garden, Peacekeepers, and more. Snow also keeps beacons of hope, such as the victors’ houses found in each district. Through his manipulation of thing-power, discipline, surveillance, and space he succeeds in controlling the citizens of Panem.

Works Cited

Bennett, Jane, 1957-. Vibrant Matter : a Political Ecology of Things. Durham :Duke University Press, 2010.

Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984. Discipline And Punish : the Birth of the Prison. New York :Pantheon Books, 1977.

O'Brien, Susie and Szeman, Imre : “The History of Popular Culture .” Popular Culture: A User's Guide, International Edition, by Susie O'Brien and Imre Szeman, Langara College, 2019, pp. 29–56.

Blog 1: Defining Dystopian Fiction and Postulating its Popularity

Utopia is defined as "an elaborate thought experiment, a kind of parlor game for intellectuals who set themselves the task of designing a future society, a perfect society"(Featherstone ,1). The authors present dystopia as "utopia's twentieth-century doppelganger," claiming it represents a total opposite of a utopia. Dystopia "is a utopia that has gone wrong, or a utopia that functions only for a particular segment of society"(Featherstone,1). Both contain similar elements, although dystopia as a genre views utopias as impossible; an attempt to reach a utopia often results in this unfair and unjust oppressive future society. Science fiction is a "literary genre in which a background of science or pseudoscience is an integral part of the story. Although science fiction is a form of fantastic literature, many of the events recounted are within the realm of future possibility, e.g., robots, space travel, interplanetary war, invasions from outer space"(Lagasse). Science fiction often holds stories that occur in a dystopian or utopian society where the technology is unfamiliar to the reader, but often impressive. Post-apocalyptic was harder to find a definition for, but the following definition covers it: "The apocalypse can be thus identified by its radical otherness from anything human beings may have experienced before. This same characteristic, though, makes the apocalypse and its aftermath, if there is any, unimaginable and unrepresentable: it constitutes a representational impasse. According to the definition above, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction should be the writing of alterity, it should depict the end of the world we know, followed by either a new world order or total annihilation"(Cristofaro, 67). This definition was long, but ultimately it states that a post-apocalyptic story follows humans after a significant event (an apocalypse) has devastated earth or society as we currently know it. Dystopian fiction overlaps within all of these genres as a dystopia could result from a collapsed or failed attempt to achieve a utopia or a corrupted utopia, it could hold futuristic technology or encounters in the future that are not possible present day, and it could also occur after society attempts to regather itself from an apocalypse of sorts that has entirely altered things as we know them. 




One example of a dystopia that comes to mind is The Divergent Series by Veronica Roth. Now mind you that quite some time has passed since I have read the books and the movies under-delivered in my unprofessional opinion, so I will be attempting to recall some details. However, there are several elements through out the series that portray this society as a dystopia. The premise of separating citizens into factions based upon their personality types to encourage efficiency and prosperity seems like it could provide a utopia at first glance. Everyone is surrounded with people of similar interests as themselves and the society is prospering with no wars and no issues. However, we then learn that people of diverse thought, known as divergent, are not permitted to exist as the are a threat to the utopia. We also learn that the society is surrounded by a wall, and beyond this wall is the aftermath of  society as we knew it with remnants of buildings and outcasts. This idea that diverse ways of thinking are not allowed mixed with a post apocalyptic world hidden by the shiny lights of a supposed utopia offers significant elements of a dystopia. My final piece of evidence comes from the erudite faction attempting to control the minds of the the dauntless and using them to attempt a genocide of abnegation. The supposed perfect government proves to be oppressive and flawed, challenging and conflicting the painted utopia. This challenged existence of a utopia makes it a dystopian story.



I think that dystopian literature has been gaining popularity as it has become dominant in teen literature. Current teenagers and young adults were likely raised by millennial parents that have been linked to be more anxious and worried about the world changing. These young adults have also been growing up in an age of tremendous social change and technological advancement by means of the internet, social media, surveillance, and more. Personally, I related to the idea of escapism during the Great Depression as we have been subjected to extreme climate change and political extremism. It has been a worrisome decade and escaping into worlds the portray what could happen have been a thought provoking method to pass time. Dystopian literature also often grapples with these ideas of extremism which activates the sense of fear we might all share of seeing the world fall into ruins. The idea of climate change has molded our expectations of the future from the perfect shiny future seen in say "The Jetsons" television show to the trash filled landfill seen in the movie "Wall-e". Dystopian literature portrays what-ifs in an exciting manner that shifts the "potential future" a realistic but unattainable future that is then confirmed through some kind of systematic failure or opression often through technology; technology being another topic we love dearly. Geir Finnsson writes that the writing of The Hunger Games among young adults mixed with the ideas of technology and relate-ability have contributed to this explosion of dystopia literature in popular culture (7). Teenagers and young adults have been a driving force in the demand for the genre, and the main thing that they relate to is the evolution of technology into something fascinating in concept but over bearing in practice. Finnsson relays the idea that The Hunger Games can be compared to high school and social media, as the game of survival serves as a metaphor for the control set in this environment and the pressure of fitting in to the system (7-8). Divergent grasps with technology that the government can monitor dreams and provide truth serums and mind control. It often prays on our fears of the future, and for this I believe it has grown in popularity.

Works Cited:

Cristofaro, Diletta D. "The Representational Impasse of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction: The Pesthouse by Jim Crace." Altre Modernità: Rivista Di Studi Letterari E Culturali, no. 9, 2013, pp. 66-80.


Featherstone, Mark. Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility – Edited by M. D. Gordin, H. Tilley and G. Prakash. vol. 62, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK, 2011, doi:10.1111/j.1468-4446.2011.01389_5.x.

Finnsson, Geir. The Unexpected Popularity of Dystopian Literature. From Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games Trilogy. Diss. 2016.

"science fiction." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Paul Lagasse, and Columbia University, Columbia University Press, 8th edition, 2018. Credo Reference, http://ezproxy.lynchburg.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/columency/science_fiction/0?institutionId=3447. Accessed 24 Jan. 2020.