British TV dystopias

[kindkit]

I'm intrigued by the fact that series with the premise "in the future, our country is a quasi-fascist dystopia" are common enough on British TV, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, that you could call them a sub-genre. (I've just started watching one such show, The Guardians, which so far is excellent.) By contrast, I can't think of single example of this premise on US television, from that period or in fact ever.

Cultural difference? Or am I just not remembering US examples?

Comments

[shadowvalkyrie]

I'd say it's a cultural difference. British TV tends to be a lot darker and more socially pessimistic in general. (Take the also typically British Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist, compared to the US comedy protagonist, who is normally a lovable loser. TV tropes has a list of examples on that one.)

Add to that the US obsession with patriotism that practically forbids painting a dark future for that oh-so-perfect country... voilá, no dystopias.

Plus, you could argue that the US is stricken by a general lack of public awareness about civil liberties being eroded or straight-out taken away, e.g. the "anti-terror" laws of the Bush administration, Arizona's anti-immigrant laws, the whole ongoing religious-rights-before-women's-rights debate, and so on. If no one sees it as a problem and fears subsequent developments, no one is going to write TV shows about it.

[kindkit]

Well, yes, I didn't mean to imply that I couldn't fathom why this difference should exist. But I wanted to make sure that I wasn't just forgetting US examples, since I think at this point I have watched more British TV than US TV.

I'm not sure I'd argue that civil liberties in the UK before 2001 were all that much healthier than in the US (the Prevention of Terrorism Act and Section 28 spring immediately to mind), nor that people were as aware of and opposed to such laws as one might hope. US political culture has made an enormous and terrifying lurch towards right-wing authoritarianism since then, though. But I agree that the dominant US culture has at least since WWII been shaped by an uncritical patriotism, in fact a nearly messianic sense of national specialness and mission.

[oursin]

I'd guess that this is riffing off a longer-standing literary trope, going back at least to the 1930s (i.e Before Orwell and 1984), through the 50s and 60s (losing the war, or collaborationist government takes over). Would there be the same kind of subgenre in the USA?

[kindkit]

Not that I can think of--certainly nothing as prominent as mainstream as it was in Britain. The US has the "aliens take over" genre (wherein the aliens are either Evil Commies or Evil Commies allegorized as monsters from outer space) but that's a very different trope from "we slid into dystopia all by ourselves." Especially as in the US, the "aliens take over" stories are usually about the noble, ultimately successful resistance.

On the whole, I'd say that futuristic stories in the mass media in the US tend to be optimistic, even self-congratulatory. Where the Brits had The Guardians and 1990 and Blake's 7, we had Star Trek.

[kangeiko]

well... I guess you could argue that the UK was a bit closer to experiencing these dystopias, and people were therefore thinking about it a bit more. You have the very real impact of WWII - not just the impact on the populace, but the exposure of what had been going on 'just down the road' - and then you had the aftermath, which, unlike the US, was not a boom. The austerity years then followed for a very long time, and a whole generation grew up with that. Then there were the 70s, and things really did seem like they were falling apart - massive unemployment, strikes, power cuts, riots, etc - stretching into the 80s. So there was only a brief flicker of optimism vs many many years of things being rather grim. That is bound to have an impact. And I do think that the literature and TV of the era is emlblematic of that - a gradual surrender to totalitarianism, starvation and shortages, complex and remote wars, etc. Where as at the same time the US was generating its own nightmare TV and literature, focused on the fear of the loss of national identity, e.g. MASH (& there are others, I'm just not up on my 70s US tv). Susan Faludi's Stripped: The Betrayal of the Modern Man talks about the fears and nightmares of the US psyche at that time.

So (tl;dr), I don't think that American didn't produce its own dystopian visions; I just think that they were very different from the UK ones.

[kindkit]

I'm aware of the social context, but it's not like the US didn't have plenty of its own ugliness. We had a much harsher and more thought-policing Red Scare than the UK did, we had racist laws and brutal violence against the African American civil rights movement, and we had inglorious wars in Korea and Vietnam. Yes, we did have dystopian visions, but they tended to be of the "Commies and/or aliens take over and try to destroy our sacred perfect American Way of Life" variety. What interests me is the self-criticism of the British dystopias, the way they raise the spectre of an internal slide towards totalitarianism, for which I don't think there's much US equivalent.

[kangeiko]

I see your point... But the UK has had a history of worry over a slow slide towards totalitarianism - Mosley and his fascists were loathed, and the links to the aristocracy and the Tories do still make people wary of how nasty those in power can be. I agree, there isn't as much of a focus on nationhood, but the shows you're talking about would have been made by people raised in an empire, not a nation, so their perspective would have been different. That would also have tied in to the whole anxiety and crisis of selfhood, the worry of what England is/would be without an empire. I agree that the US had the Communist scares, but that is a fear of being infiltrated, a fifth columnist, rather than an anxiety over a complete loss of identity. I'm phrasing this badly. :/

[redscharlach.livejournal.com]

The only equivalent I can think of the mini-series Amerika (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_%28TV_miniseries%29), which was about a Commie dystopia!

And I suppose you might stretch the definition to count the original version of V, but since the "fascists" came down from space, that's rather different from the "what horrors may rise from our own society?" fears that are inherent in the British stuff.

[kindkit]

Even Amerika, judging by what Wikipedia says, presumes a Soviet conquest, so it's essentially the same story as V--aliens come in and try to destroy America the Beautiful. The British dystopias are so much more self-critical. As you said, they're all about horrors arising from one's own society, which is an approach I find much more congenial.

[lilacsigil]

Huh. I can't think of any US examples either, but this seems like such a common storyline to me! Maybe I just read too much Judge Dredd as a kid.

[kindkit]

US popular culture, and indeed US political culture, has never been very good at self-criticism. US-ian dystopian fictions seem much more likely to be about alien conquest.

[st_aurafina]

Nope, can't think of any US examples. But omg, the things I watched and read in the 80's!

[kindkit]

Any recommendations?

[st_aurafina]

I didn't say they were any good!