Essay Analysis Entry - Week 4

This post will be in reference to the article titled Unmasking the Real? Critique and Utopia in Recent SF Films:
Within two paragraphs of the beginning of the article, the author Peter Fitting makes a very important point regarding dystopian cinema; "to take two extreme examples, a comparison between the dystopian society of Gilead in Atwood's novel and the explanation of how it emerged from our present is very different from the explanation of the dystopian future given in the Terminator movies." This statement is important because it sets boundaries for the different types of dystopian societies in fictional writing/film. Comparing the situation of the Terminator series to a society like Fahrenheit 451, for example, will obviously show an abundant amount of differences, but do they have similarities at the same time? I think one would find it easy to dismiss one as completely unlike the other, but think of them both from the following standpoint: Both are dysfunctional societies, one dependent on a robot sent from the future with an awesome accent (Ahhhnold), and one which follows a strict mindset that anything printed in books must be burned. While they are so different, they do have a likewise problem. In the Terminator, the help of a future robot is what will keep their world alive, while in Fahrenheit 451 we see how Montag's life changed drastically after meeting Clarisse, which led to the betrayal of his wife and employer and his subsequent 'death'. Both societies must survive through events which many may deem questionable. But in the realm of dystopian fiction cinema, the protagonist always has to overcome said questionable events and prevail to help their society thrive instead of continuing to be oppressed in the various ways that our class has showed us.