The Dark Side of Cleanliness and Order: Visual Renderings of Oppression in Dystopian Science Fiction Cinema

Concepts of space and displacement are central to utopian/dystopian studies. The very word “utopia” comes from Thomas More’s 1516 eponymous work. More coins the word by combining the Greek ou-topos (no/not place) and eu-topos (good place). Dystopian space can function in a variety of ways: as Samuel R. Delany has stated, the setting or background in “realist” fiction becomes, in science fiction, the foreground, one of the essential elements of the narrative. Across utopian/dystopian film genres, the city is one of the chief embodiments of the superordinate institutions that rule over citizens’ lives. Imbued with this role, it comes to visually and spatially represent the “elsewhere” that lies at the very heart of utopia/dystopia. The way in which urban and domestic spaces are visualized in dystopian movies and TV series substantiates and embodies the conceptualization of an alternate reality at the same time as it contributes to the viewers’ engagement in the story.