Agency and Control:
Dystopia, Social Media, and the Role of the People
by
Martijn van der Laan
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Arts in Literary Studies – Literature and Culture: Specialization English at the University of Amsterdam
24 June 2014
I would like to dedicate this thesis to my girlfriend, who has kept me sane throughout the years
and to my friends, without whom
Table of Contents
Introduction……….……….3
Chapter 1: Out With the Old……….………...…..……….5
Chapter 2: In With the New………..…..……….12
Chapter 3: The Technology of Oppression……….…….………….20
Chapter 4: Recent Developments and the Dystopian Shift………30
Chapter 5: “Third Wave” Dystopian Narratives...………...…….37
Conclusion……….46
Introduction
The dystopian narratives of the early 20th century had the tendency to conclude their narrative arc in a moment of utter defeat of the main character. The two most notable examples of dystopian narratives that ended in such a manner are, at the same time, the two most well-researched dystopian novels, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).1 Contemporary critics have argued that the cause for the unfortunate endings that befall the protagonists of these novels is, in part, due to the political nature of these works.2 Because of this political nature, the structure of oppression in these novels is portrayed as a top-down system in which the state or government holds all the power and has achieved more or less complete control over society. More recent dystopian narratives, however, have started addressing the issue of society’s agency in their own oppression. Instead of emphasizing society’s plight of being oppressed, these novels attempt to show the role that the people play in this oppression.
This development in dystopian narratives is, as I will argue in this thesis, caused by recent developments in the social media landscape. By comparing and contrasting Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley’s Brave New World with the contemporary dystopian narratives of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games-trilogy (2008-2010) and Dave Eggers’ The Circle (2013) in chapters one and two, I will identify key concepts and themes in these works and show how they have shifted from a politically critical to a socially critical point of view. In the third chapter, I will look at the technologies depicted in the narratives. I will then compare the tools used for the oppression of society to any real world counterparts or attempt to explain how these fictional technologies can be seen as an expansion of already existing technologies, in order to place these tools of oppression within the time periods of their respective novel.
To place the recent dystopian works within our contemporary timeframe I will then discuss recent events, such as the NSA’s spying scandal, in the fourth chapter, and show how these events have not only made the research towards dystopian
1 While I argue that Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four are the most well-researched dystopian novels
of their era, I recognize that other popular dystopian texts have a similar narrative strategy. Consider, for example, Zamyatin’s We, Forster’s “The Machine Stops”, or Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
2 See for instance Judith N. Shklar’s article “Nineteen Eighty-Four: Should Political Theory Care?” in Political
novels more relevant than ever, they have also brought an awareness to contemporary Western society of the dangers that lie in the ever-increasing transparency of private life. Furthermore, in this chapter I will attempt to show how recent dystopian works have addressed society’s underlying consciousness that media and social media can be abused by institutions, corporations, and governments, to devastating effects.
In the fifth and final chapter I will argue that, because of the shift from politically critical to socially critical, recent dystopian novels have now entered a new “school” of the dystopian genre, which addresses recent underlying themes and fears. Building on Hannah Matus’ definitions of previous schools as “First Wave” and “Second Wave” dystopian narratives, I will argue that contemporary dystopian narratives can be labelled as “Third Wave” dystopian works. I will then argue that this “Third Wave” has emerged alongside social media outlets and continues to develop parallel to them. I will then propose that because of the nature of these recent works, namely that they deal with privacy and the free-flow of information, these “Third Wave” novels have shifted away from being politically critical. Rather, “Third Wave” dystopian narratives deal with the agency of a society and the role they play in their own oppression and are therefore far more socially critical.
Chapter 1: Out With the Old.
In this chapter I will examine the two most well researched dystopian narratives, namely George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New
World, and attempt to identify their key dystopian themes and narrative structure to
show how they can be read as politically critical works. To do so I will not only look at the novels themselves, but also the broad range of critical responses to both Orwell’s and Huxley’s work. What makes these novels particularly interesting when researching the role of society, is that both novels contain a society in which the oppression is generated through a top-down system. That is, in these narratives the government is controlling its citizens, in essence taking both blame and agency away from the people and putting them in a passive role.
There are but few dystopian narratives as extensively researched and as influential on contemporary society as Nineteen Eighty-Four. The term “Big Brother” for instance, is known and used throughout the Western world to indicate an oppressive and intrusive government or state. One of the reasons for the novel’s impact is perhaps, as Toma Sava argues, the novel’s unequivocal ending. Sava argues that “the totalitarian regime in reign that crushes all, a definitive and incontestable conquest over everyone and everything” was so influential that it “prompted an extensive quest towards identifying the auctorial intention” (Sava 51). The question raised by this extensive research is whether Orwell was simply entertaining the thought of a society such as the one he presents to the reader, or whether he was warning his society of what might happen to them if their government were to take too many liberties with their privacy, and potentially misuse the increasing technological advances that became available at the time. The warning that Orwell potentially gave in Nineteen Eighty-Four was that society’s current path would lead them to being oppressed by the state. In other words, as Robert Resch argues, the role that society played in the politics of the novel’s time was a passive one, rather than an active one. He states that the novel was an “impassioned representation of totalitarianism as the historical destiny of middle-class individualism” (Resch 139). The simple state of being that the middle-middle-class of the time was in, was enough to ultimately lead to a totalitarian regime, according to Resch.
In contrast to this, an interesting point is brought forward by Toma Sava. He explains that George Orwell himself commented on two works by James Burnham, which propose a society similar in both the structure and the oppression of the society in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Particularly aimed at the apparent failings of the socialism at the time, Burnham’s novels The Managerial Revolution (1941) and The
Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (1988) imagine that the political vacuum left
behind by the disappearing capitalist state, and socialism’s failure to fill that vacuum, would eventually create three super-states similar to those in Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the class structure “will be composed of an aristocracy of talent at the top and a class of semi-slaves at the bottom” (Sava 53). Both books propose that “the world’s tendency is to become a totalitarian system” (Sava 53-54). Orwell responds to these ideas by summarizing the theories asserted by Burnham into two main points: “Politics is essentially the same in all ages” and “political behaviour is different from other kinds of behaviour” (Orwell qtd in Sava 54). Furthermore, Orwell asks: “Why does the lust for naked power become a major human motive exactly ‘now’, when dominion of man over man is ceasing to be necessary” (Orwell 210-211). Sava then uses Orwell’s own words to suggest an answer to the question of whether the system created by this lust for power will ever come to be, when he states that “Orwell dismisses both the inevitability of the [classes] and the success of the class structure imagined by Burnham”, because “slavery is no longer a stable basis for human society” (Orwell qtd. in Sava 54).
What is peculiar about the way in which these arguments unfold, is that Orwell has, in essence, argued against the possibility of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s political society of ever existing. Certainly, if Nineteen Eighty-Four is meant as a direct warning of the dangers of totalitarianism, Orwell’s comments here are problematic. However, there are two possible solutions to the conundrum of applying Orwell’s own statement -that slavery is no longer a stable basis for human society- to
Nineteen Eighty-Four. The first solution is that people would be willing to be
oppressed, but to be fully willing to be oppressed, a society must first know the extent to which they would be oppressed, which is not necessarily the case with the dystopian narratives of Orwell’s and Huxley’s time. The second solution is that the people are unaware that they are oppressed to a point where they are practically slaves. I propose that it is this latter solution that can best be applied to Nineteen
characters in these texts are unaware that they are being oppressed -and to what degree-, the political powers that be have used tools, such as the Ministry of Truth, to essentially push society into a passive and submissive role. Arguably, if a society can never find out the truth about historical events, what is presented to them will be accepted as truthful. This argument brings to mind Foucault and his theories concerning the Panopticon and the internalization of behaviour through constant observation, but this will be addressed in a later chapter.
This line of thinking, that a passive society is an easily repressed society, is arguably one of the main themes of Nineteen Eighty-Four. When denied any and all tools to fight, or even recognize their oppression, a society will be easily controlled. And even if, as happens with the protagonist of the novel, an individual or small group of individuals would rebel, the systems already put in place will easily indoctrinate them and introduce them back into their passive society.
From the perspective of dystopian rhetoric, then, the main difference between
Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World lies by and large in the means used to
oppress society. Orwell’s society is controlled by the government through a lack of recourses, and subsequently through fear and misery. Huxley’s society on the other hand is controlled through an abundance of recourses, which lead to an ostensibly “happy”, and thus complacent, people. In his article “Power and the Perfect State”, Martin Kessler puts forward the idea that the two principal sub-goals of the government in Brave New World are “absolute depth conditioning on the subconscious as well as on the conscious level and a directed consumption economy” (Kessler 571). To achieve this level of control, he argues, a government will need to exercise “absolute institutional control over human utilities and aspirations”. Huxley’s government achieves this by, essentially, mass-producing human beings. Kessler argues that this puts the state in such a position as to control the “very condition of human existence” (Kessler 571). As such, “[l]ife becomes literally a gift of the state” (Kessler 571).
It has been suggested that this type of control by the government, through the gift of life, should not be seen as Huxley’s simple attempt at a politically satirical remark. Rather, it should be read as an “imaginative engagement with the contemporary scientific debate surrounding the role of eugenics and scientific planning in the future of society” (Congdon 2). Arguably, this attaches more of a “work-of-warning” label to Huxley’s novel than to Orwell’s work. As such, because of
the structure of Huxley’s society, the comments made by Orwell indicated above, can be applied to Brave New World’s society, and out of the two possible solutions to the conundrum this raises, Huxley’s work also adheres to the second solution that the people are unaware of their slavery. However, the method used to keep the people unaware differs greatly between the two novels. While both societies are controlled through a hierarchical dictatorship for which the state “depends upon institutionalized instrumentalities to do the repressing” (Kessler 575), Orwell’s society requires a constant rewriting of history -through the self-regulating Ministry of Truth-, whereas Huxley’s society is essentially completely self-regulating through the citizens themselves. The suggested engagement that Huxley has in Brave New
World with contemporary scientific debate in regards to eugenics, then turns to a
warning to society of becoming stuck in an endless loop of repression through the genetic modification of new generations. When people are imprinted with the idea that there is no social mobility at all, and that they are happy with the position appointed to them, from before birth even, they will never question their society or its moral values. As suggested by Kessler: “Except for the need of industrial technology for division of labor, […] differentiation is politically unnecessary for the perpetuation of the ‘happy’ dictatorship” (Kessler 575).
This difference between modes of repression has been commented upon by Huxley himself in Brave New World Revisited. He links this difference between his approach and Orwell’s approach to the path followed by the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, where Stalin’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four-style dictatorship”3
evolved into a “system that sought to control part of its population, especially the high‐ranking professionals, through rewards, granting them certain liberties to think and act, while, at the same time, imposing conformity on the masses through the fear of punishment” (Diken 5). While the system of state in Brave New World is as equally unstable as the system of state in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Huxley’s “happy” -and thus complacent- society gives more merit to the idea that he was warning his society. Besides partaking in the discussion of eugenics and scientific planning on the future of society, he also foregrounded the issues that might arise when a state would misuse genetic modification. In a CBS Radio Workshop from 1956, Huxley explained
3
how he considered the society from Brave New World to be a reflection upon his actual society, when he said that:
Brave New World is a fantastic parable about the dehumanisation of human beings. In the negative world described in my story, man has been subordinated to
his own inventions. In the 20th century, science, technology, politics and social organisations have ceased serving man; they have instead become his masters. (Huxley 3 February 1956)
When taking into consideration the political and -especially- the scientific climate in which Huxley wrote Brave New World, it becomes easier to read the novel as a satirical work, rather than just entertainment.
Although the specific technologies used within the narratives of both Nineteen
Eighty-Four and Brave New World will be discussed in a later chapter, it is important
to note now how important the power of the media is in both novels. The media, as well as other forms of communication, are used to a great extent to suppress the masses in Nineteen Eight-Four and to lead them to believe certain aspects that are presented to them as truthful, even if these go against their rational nature. The three often quoted pillars of the society in Oceania (“War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery”, and “Ignorance is Strength”) would seem to be paradoxical to any contemporary reader, which makes their effect on the society of Oceania even more baffling. Accepted as unconditional truths by the people in Orwell’s novel, these statements are the pinnacle example of the term “doublethink”. The meaning of doublethink -to hold two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting them both as equally truthful- is part of a theme that runs throughout Nineteen Eighty-Four (and arguably Brave New World). Both the previously mentioned pillars and the Ministry of Truth are examples of this theme.
The Minitrue -as it is called in the language being enforced by the government of Oceania, Newspeak- rewrites history to suit the needs of the current state and to validate its existence: it essentially creates nothing but lies. The people that work at the Minitrue are fully aware of the fact that they are fabricating lies by rewriting historical events, but they eventually start accepting and believing the things they are creating. They become self-affirming to the extent that they forget what is real and what is not. The Minitrue’s function is essentially to manage all types of information distribution, such as news, entertainment, education, and art. The ministry is the
quintessential representation of “the media” in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Party, the controlling agency in the novel, “takes propaganda to totalizing limits in its project of political control over not just everything that people do or say but everything they think or believe” (Yeo 51). Through the efforts of the different ministries, “the persuasive power of every medium, technique and genre of communication is exploited to its maximum potential and single-mindedly put to work. Virtually every communication is calculated to propagate politically charged messages” (Yeo 51). In his function at the Records Department of the Minitrue, Winston acts as a censor and as a vehicle for the Party’s propaganda. Yet he remarks that the records he is falsifying were most likely not true either, which is arguably a reflection of the opinion towards the media of Orwell’s time: “Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version” (Orwell 48). A difference in definition arises here, as Yeo argues, the facts that are propagated by the Minitrue “are not simply false; they are lies because they are known to be false” (Yeo 52). However, the notion that “people believe certain lies to be facts is not what really matters to the Party; what matters is the beliefs they form about matters of political concern to which these facts persuade them” (Yeo 52). Arguably what Orwell has demonstrated by showing the effect of the actions of the Minitrue, is that through propagation of falsehoods by the media, people can be indirectly persuaded to form beliefs about matters of political concern, even if the falsehoods that are presented to them do not directly reflect upon these matters. The trusting consumer of any media outlet “would be persuaded to opinions not just about facts but also values” (Yeo 52).
It is worth noting that the Party’s methods of maintaining control are quite different from those employed in Brave New World, as Varricchio points out: “While the Orwellian society resorts to repression and comparatively rudimentary techniques, the fordian world relies on a much more sophisticated technology” (Varricchio 105). Where Orwell’s novel used propaganda to persecute and oppress its society, Huxley’s society is oppressed by making “the ‘positive’ side of propaganda […] as effective as the negative one”, what needs to be solved, therefore, is the previously mentioned solution of “making people love their servitude” (Huxley, xii). Varricchio, in his article “Power of Images/Images of Power”, claims that Huxley’s “suggestion techniques, genetic manipulation, pleasure-giving drugs and, of course, ‘feelies’ and television, dispense with the need for repression in the fordian society” (105). He further argues that in comparison with the “feelies”,
the television set plays an important role in creating the character of society in Brave
New World. The television “is the most convenient device to prevent people from
being on their own in the very few moments” in which they are not compelled to share their lives with others because of work or social activities (105-106). The television set becomes a part of human conditioning in Huxley’s society. Unaware of its influences, because they enjoy its constant companionship, the people of Brave
New World are being kept complacent by being bombarded with a constant stream
of drug-affected sensations. As such, the television and the “feelies” in Brave New
World both “construct needs and desires” and immediately “cater to their fulfilment”
(106). This desire for sensation, both constructed and provided by the media in Huxley’s novel, culminate in a mass orgy of soma, sex and violence near the end of the narrative. In this scene, the indoctrinating effect that the media has had on the society of Brave New World becomes evident when the people see John attack Lenina and “by the habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them” the people begin to “mime” John’s actions which eventually ends in a mass orgy (Huxley 228). Both the desire and the potential to escape from this endless cycle of the television’s effect on society is made impossible through the people’s inability to see its effect on them. Diken explains this by quoting Adorno; “The more a society becomes its own justification, the more it brands as blasphemy every suspicion ‘against the notion that what is, is right – just because it exists’” (Diken 5).
Ultimately, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four are both politically critical works and differ only in the methods employed by their respective governments to oppress their societies. Where they are most similar is the fact that everything within their societies is used as a tool to propagate politically laden messages. Everything, from birth to death, is structured so that their citizens adhere to the rules, morals, and values that are set out by the government. As such, both novels address the political issues of their times and arguably differ only in their approach to the subject.
Chapter 2: In With the New.
In this chapter I will examine two recent dystopian works, Suzanne Collins’ The
Hunger Games trilogy and Dave Eggers’ The Circle, and attempt to identify their key
dystopian themes and narrative structure to show how these works can be read as socially critical works. In doing so I will draw parallels with the novels discussed in the previous chapter to show that a shift has taken place in the role that society plays in their own oppression. Collins’ novels in particular align very well with Nineteen
Eighty-Four in how their societies are oppressed. The Hunger Games trilogy has a
society which is controlled similarly to Nineteen Eighty-Four’s society, that is, through a system of scarcity of recourses and the subsequent fear and misery that is generated through these economics. I will also compare and contrast Brave New
World and The Circle to further sketch out recent developments in dystopian fiction.
However, before I liken the society in The Circle to that of Brave New World, the novel requires special explanation. The narrative of Dave Eggers’ work does not revolve around a country per se, rather it revolves around the main character’s position within a company called the Circle which plans on incorporating all government systems and structures into its already existing social media interface. As such, the novel places its narrative focus on a character that turns out to be pivotal in creating a totalitarian regime. In contrast to the dystopian narratives of Orwell’s and Huxley’s time, this regime is controlled by a company, rather than a government. It is a unique narrative in the sense that it shows the reader a slightly distorted image of our contemporary society and imagines the potential of a social media mogul turning its monopoly into a totalitarian control machine. Much like the government in Brave New World, the company -and its proposed future state- has created a self-perpetuating system of abundance and happiness that has made its employees, and anyone “following” the Circle, increasingly complacent. I will then attempt to place these works in the contemporary context of our current Western society and its increasing transparency through the development and popularization of social media outlets. In doing so, I will attempt to show how these recent works are far more a social critique than they are political and how this puts them in contrast with the novels discussed in the previous chapter.
The Hunger Games is a “competition” in the novels by the same name, that pit twenty-four children—twelve male, twelve female—of the twelve different districts
against each other in a fight to the death. The control that The Capitol, the government in the novels, needs to hold over its people is maintained through different assets, one of which is absolute media control. The society in Suzanne Collins’ trilogy is oppressed into servitude due to a lack of resources and an unforgivingly harsh government which disciplines its citizens for the slightest transgression with capital punishment. What makes The Hunger Games trilogy such a potentially eye-opening rendition of our own society is how the people respond to their oppressors, and how they are in essence partly to blame for the situation they find themselves in. How this reflects upon contemporary Western society can be seen in the often repeated quote from Suzanne Collins in which she explains how the idea for the narrative came to be. She states: “I was channel surfing between reality TV programming and actual war coverage when Katniss’s story came to me. One night I’m sitting there flipping around and on one channel there’s a group of young people competing for, I don’t know, money maybe? And on the next, there’s a group of young people fighting an actual war. And I was tired, and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way, and I thought of this story” (Collins 1).
According to Mark Fisher, the control centre of Collins’ dystopian fantasy, the Capitol, which at first glance seems to be a metropolitan capitalist society, can best be seen as a cyber-feudal society: “The name ‘tribute’ clues us in to the fact that the Capitol extracts wealth via direct expropriation rather than through the market. Market signifiers are, after all, strangely absent from the Capitol” (Fisher 28-29). When the reader is introduced to the Capitol in the first instalment of the trilogy, it seems like an average, although prosperous and futuristic city, were it not for the fact that “commodities are ubiquitous, but there are no corporate logos, shops, or brand names in the city” (Fisher 29). We can deduce from this that, “[s]o far as we can see, the state, under the beady gaze of President Snow, seems to own everything” (Fisher 27-28). The power that the Capitol holds over its people is reinforced by the usage of the media to televise the symbolical demonstration of the subordination of the people to the Capitol. This is not only the case with The Hunger Games, but also “regular” punishment is made into a public affair, as for example with the mandatory viewing of a flogging in the town square of District 12. As such, the Capitol “exerts its power directly, via an authoritarian police force of white-uniformed Peacekeepers which inflicts punishment summarily, and symbolically, through the Hunger Games
and other rituals in which the districts are required to demonstrate their subordination” (Fisher 29).
The ruthlessness with which the Capitol responds to any form of rebellion or rebellious behaviour/thought is what, for the first novel at least, keeps the power in the hands of the government. They are the ones that control the distribution of everything in Panem, from clothing and food to knowledge and information. The information that they do disseminate amongst the populous is nothing more than propaganda of which The Hunger Games themselves are the yearly culmination. Ironically, everyone is aware that the information they are receiving is propaganda, however they are so depended on the Capitol for everything else that it is impossible for them to rebel against this deception. The Capitol’s control over the media is picked up by the main characters several times throughout the novel. For instance, the first time when Katniss thinks of what her friend Gale might say about the situation that the districts are put in by the Capitol, articulates an awareness of the governments methods of control: “‘It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,’ he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine” (Collins 2008: 6). The reader learns that these discussions are commonplace between Gale and Katniss while they are out in the woods, and yet remain impotent because, as Katniss explains, “what good is it yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods?” (Collins 2008: 17). The inability to rebel against the Capitol and the inevitable failure of a potential rebellion is an internalized idea in the society in The
Hunger Games. This internalization is emphasised when it is suggested that the
historical accounts of the rebellion that led to the instatement of The Hunger Games have been edited, something reminiscent of the actions of the Minitrue in Nineteen
Eighty-Four, “I know there must be more than they’re telling us, an actual account of
what happened during the rebellion” (Collins 2008: 51).
While social media is not a concept in its own right in The Hunger Games, mostly because the media that the Capitol controls lacks any form of interactivity -besides the “gifts” that “sponsors” can send into the arena during The Hunger Games- the importance of the communication that a form of social media would provide between districts is not lost upon the characters. As stated, the Capitol controls the distribution of everything, including all possibilities for communication between districts. The blocking off this communication and subsequent dissemination of information between the districts is essential in maintaining the level
of control that the Capitol has. This idea of controlled information flow, especially between Districts, is expressed by Katniss when she teams up in the arena with Rue, a girl from a different district; “It’s interesting, hearing about her life. We have so little communication with anyone outside our district” (Collins 2008: 246). Katniss goes on to question if the Gamemakers are potentially blocking out their conversation from being broadcast, “because even though the information seems harmless, they don’t want people in different districts to know about one another” (Collins 2008: 246). The significance of this communication blackout becomes even more evident in the second novel -Catching Fire-, when it becomes clear to the reader that it is not so much the iron grip of violence that is keeping the people of Panem oppressed, but rather this lack of communication between the different districts. For example, in a conversation with Haymitch, Katniss’ trainer, he tells her that her final act of defiance in the games may have inspired people to rise up against the Capitol but that there is ultimately no way to verify such a statement: “This of course, you don’t know. You have no access to information about the mood in other districts. […] It takes a moment for his last sentence to sink in. Then the full weight of it hits me. ‘There have been uprisings?’ I ask, both chilled and somewhat elated by the possibility” (Collins 2009: 25).
Why the Capitol maintains such rigid control over the media, and how incredibly influential it is on the people of Panem, is one of the main themes in the third and final novel Mockingjay. To incite the people to join the rebellion against the Capitol, the rebel group in district 13 aims to launch a media attack using the Capitol’s own network: “‘Our plan is to launch an Airtime Assault,’ says Plutarch. ‘To make a series of what we call propos – which is short for ‘propaganda spots’ – featuring you, and broadcast them to the entire population of Panem’” (Collins 2009: 52). To further emphasise the importance of media and the ability to be seen, Katniss is fully aware of the importance of one’s image -a key concept of any social media outlet- when she is dressed up for these “propos”: “As a rebel, I thought I’d get to look more like myself. But it seems a televised rebel has her own standards to live up to” (Collins 2009: 71). Near the end it becomes evident that the people of Panem are partly to blame for their own oppression by not acting. When the rebels inadvertently start a fight between a group of workers and a group of Capitol soldiers while shooting a “propo”, they end up televising the entire thing. When explaining what happened to Katniss, Gale says: “‘The rebels just sat by and watched,’ he says.
‘Actually, the whole country just sat by and watched’” (Collins 2009: 259). Arguably this allows us to construe the entire media theme throughout the three novels as a social critique towards a society that will accept what is shown to them on TV as truthful without question. Furthermore, the importance of communication, and especially -free- communication, is one of the main themes of the trilogy, impressing upon the reader that liberties such as the freedom of speech should never be compromised.
This importance of free communication is embodied by Katniss when she becomes, what Don Latham calls, “information and media [literate]” (Latham 34). He argues that because of Katniss’ “information and media literacy skills, Collins’ novels reflect, model, and critique the information and media practices of the society in which Katniss lives—and, by extension, those of our own society” (Latham 34). Key to this critique of our contemporary society is, as Latham argues, Katniss’ ability to identify and recognize that “the Capitol not only suppresses, but also distorts information” (Latham 38). The importance of free communication and the ability to filter what is true and what is not is reflected in both Katniss’ and the Capitol’s understanding of the control one can achieve by “limiting available information and controlling modes of communication” (Latham 45). This, according to Latham, “resonates so profoundly with 21st century teens” (Latham 45) because the welfare
and success in life of young adults “depend[s] on their ability to find, evaluate, and use information and to understand, interpret, and create media messages” (Latham 45).
Where Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy only dealt with the issues of oppression through the control of media as a sub-theme, Dave Eggers’ The Circle is rife with examples of how our contemporary society’s obsession with social media can lead to a totalitarian state controlled by the monopoly position of a Google-equivalent company. However, while the main theme of Dave Eggers’ dystopian novel is quite overtly a discussion of the dangers that come with the extensive use of social media by consumers, and the misuse of social media by corporate entities, the underlying theme of anonymity and privacy is perhaps most important to contemporary society.
The narratives of the works discussed so far place the protagonist in a victimized position within an already established totalitarian state. However, The
purposes, equivalent to contemporary American society. And whereas the dystopian protagonists generally suffer under an already established totalitarian regime, Mae Holland ends up being the catalyst for the forming of such a regime. Newly employed at the Circle, she quickly rises through the ranks and eventually has such an influential position as to suggest developments that would integrate systems and would eventually lead to a totalitarian state under the monopolized corporate control of the Circle. Drawing upon some of the arguments put forward by William Bogard, I want to suggest that the underlying theme of The Circle is the dichotomy of new social technologies, namely their potential for good and their potential for bad. Bogard argues that “a social science fiction, then aims to describe the social or institutional ‘effects’ of an imaginary technology, not in a causal sense, but in the way a simulacrum is woven into the current technical practices of a society, as a virtual form of their development” (Bogard 8). In The Circle this central imaginary technology is the UOS, or Unified Operating System, which “combined everything online that had heretofore been separate and sloppy – users’ social media profiles, their payment systems, their various passwords, their email accounts, user names, preferences, every last tool and manifestation of their interests” (Eggers 20).
While Mae feels increasingly uneasy when a new set of algorithms for a program deduce all her preferences from the information that she has shared online, she soon becomes accepting of the Circle’s technological advancements. As such, Mae embodies society’s positive view of new social media technologies. On the other side, Mercer, Mae’s ex-boyfriend, embodies society’s negative view of new social media technologies and articulates the fears that can arise when these new technologies, arguably, infiltrate people’s lives. During an argument he says to Mae: “There’s a new neediness – it pervades everything. […] [T]he tools you guys create actually ‘manufacture’ unnaturally extreme social needs. […] It improves nothing” (Eggers 133). These conflicting points of view exemplify the underlying theme that was also present in The Hunger Games-trilogy, namely that technological developments have both the potential for good and for bad, and that it is the institution, agency, or government that is in control of these technologies that allows either one or both sides to be foregrounded. As such, the ‘SeeChange program’, in which every corner of the world will be viewable through a camera, is the perfect example of this dichotomy. While the Circle portrays this technology as preventing
crime by making everyone instantly accountable, this technology can also covertly be used as constant surveillance on anyone, not just criminals.
The underlying theme of the dichotomy of technology is perhaps best exemplified in the novel by what David Altheide calls the integration of media forms. Altheide recognizes that “[t]he pervasive role of mediation has increased surveillance and provided more technology for preventing and constructing fear, on the one hand, and enabled creative resistance to symbolic presentations of resistance to such control efforts, on the other hand” (Altheide, 228). While this is true for our contemporary society4, the society in The Circle, apart from a few people like Mercer, seems oblivious to the amount of control they are willingly giving the Circle over every aspect of their lives.
Furthermore, the underlying theme of the free flow of information, which is also present in The Hunger Games-trilogy, begins coming forward then the term “transparency” comes into play in the novel. The term “transparency”, used often in the novel, resounds with our contemporary society when we reflect on the recent NSA scandal. When the Circle starts providing politicians to go completely transparent by wearing very small, high definition cameras, the pressure on the politicians that had not gone transparent quickly turns from “polite to oppressive” (Eggers 239). An argument that is reminiscent of the arguments used by people who defended the actions of the NSA during the scandal surrounding their surveillance tactics, namely “[i]f you aren’t transparent, what are you hiding?” (Eggers 239)
This free flow of information, or rather the lack therefore, is found in the novel in the power the Circle holds over politics and reflects back on Latham’s media and information literacy. The Circle’s society accepts what they see through the SeeChange political cameras as true, whereas the reader alter learns that politicians that spoke out against the Circle are all miraculously implicated in one illegal matter or another. Where The Circle differs most from contemporary society is what Best describes as the fact that contemporary media industries “must contend with a variety of social control agencies which supervise their activities at each major stage in the industrial process” (Best 611). However, the Circle is, much like the Capitol, an institution that is self-regulating in its censorship and social control. This control over the flow of information can only be jeopardized by what Best calls argues is a
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moral crusade against the company, but, as Mercer’s death and its multiple-angled, social media live-stream capture suggest, any and all opposition to the Circle is near impossible, once more emphasising the underlying theme of the importance of -free- information.
Near the end of the novel, when the Circle is almost reached “completion” – total control over every service and total transparency and thus accountability of everyone – the situation begins to look reminiscent to that of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The three slogans of the Party –War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength – are reflected in the three slogans that Mae came up with during her early weeks at the Circle – Secrets are Lies, Sharing is Caring, Privacy is Theft – and especially the last one is referred to time and time again throughout the novel.
Although our contemporary society has not yet reached a point where anyone should be concerned that we will end up in a totalitarian state controlled by Google,
The Circle warns the reader of, at least, the feasibility of such a society, “[t]here are a
thousand more [leaders] put there, people with ever-more radical ideas about the criminality of privacy” (Eggers, 432). Lastly the underlying theme of the novel is a theme that runs throughout all four novels discussed so far, a theme that reflects basic principle of social media -free communication and distribution of information to, for, and by the people- and the idea that control over people comes from control over information:
[Y]ou and I both know that if you can control the flow of information, you can control everything. You can control most of what anyone sees and knows. If you want to bury some piece of information, permanently, that’s two seconds’ work. If you want to ruin anyone, that’s five minutes’ work. How can anyone rise up against the Circle if they control all the information and access to it?
(Eggers, 482-483)
Ultimately both Dave Eggers and Suzanne Collins address the issues of the free flow of information and the power of the media through their novels. While they both approach the subject from a different fictional society, -Collins from an already established totalitarian regime and Eggers from the starting point of such a regime- they both use this subject to turn the focus to the agency of the people in their own oppression. As such, Eggers’ and Collins’ works are far more socially critical than Huxley’s and Orwell’s.
Chapter 3: The Technology of Oppression.
The changes between the key dystopian elements of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave
New World, The Hunger Games-trilogy, and The Circle lies largely in, not the
oppression itself, but the manner through which this oppression is either achieved, or maintained. As such, in this chapter I will examine the technology used by the oppressors in these texts and highlight how such technologies are either a counterpart of a new method of employing, or a technology built on already existing technologies. To do so, I will look at Foucault’s Panopticon and how the telescreens from Nineteen Eighty-Four are a representation of his theory. I will also address
Brave New World and how, as stated in the first chapter, Huxley engages in a
scientific debate surrounding eugenics by portraying a society which is genetically modified before birth. To further properly highlight the increasing importance of the media and government controlled media in dystopian narratives, I will examine how
The Hunger Games-trilogy and the Capitol controlled media-network there within can
be read as a distorted reflection of the media in contemporary Western society. Lastly, I will examine the ever-increasing transparency of the general populace’s lives through social media and how Dave Eggers’ work is a warning to our contemporary society through the Circle’s (ab)use of existing technologies. Throughout this chapter I will draw on references to the parallel development of the dystopian narrative into what it is today, and the emerging social aspect of media and the development of new social media outlets.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, establishing and maintaining control is done through what Michel Foucault describes in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977) as the internalization of an ideology. Building on the Panopticon prison design put forward by Jeremy Bentham, Foucault argues that it is not the architectural structure itself, but the idea behind it, that characterizes Western society. The structure itself, a large cylindrical prison with a solitary tower from which a single guard can view all prison cells, is not so much effective, as is the idea it imprints upon the prisoners, namely that they are constantly being watched, even if they might not be. Foucault explains the effect of the Panopticon as follows:
It is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed;
too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at any moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.
(Foucault 201)
Internalizing this ideology into an entire society would require extensive effort, and maintaining it even more so. The state in Nineteen Eighty-Four solves this problem by effectively putting the vessel for their surveillance in an object that people desire to have, namely a television:
Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still
distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. (Orwell 3-4)
In light of Foucault’s arguments, the telescreen becomes something more than a simple means of surveillance for the Party. To maintain control of the large populace of Oceania, constant surveillance would have to be maintained, something that is difficult to achieve, even for a (fictional) totalitarian regime. The telescreen, in essence, “solves” this issue of surveillance economics by suggesting that at any time, one can be watched. Thus, compliance with Oceania’s government is achieved as a function of the internalization of oppressive control and the suggestion of constant surveillance. This self-perpetuating and self-maintaining system of discipline and control is, as Foucault explains, an integral part of the Panopticon:
Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of
conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates would themselves be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. (Foucault 201)
While the panoptical use of the telescreen by the Party only applies to the Inner and Outer Party members, as they have telescreens in their homes, the “proles”5
are not being monitored. Rather, the proles are being indoctrinated through the propaganda displayed on the larger telescreens located in public spaces. The Party finds that the proles are of no interest to them in terms of constant monitoring as they have no need to rebel. As long as the proles are kept fed and distracted (through entertainment commissioned by the Party) they would remain content and complacent.
While Nineteen Eighty-Four has been argued to warn of society being controlled by the state through manipulation and surveillance, Huxley’s Brave New
World approaches technology and oppressive politics differently. In previous
chapters I have already argued that Huxley arguably used his novel to participate in the scientific debate concerning eugenics, and Derek Miller even suggests that the novel is also a “dangerously accurate prophesy of technology’s capacity to dominate society” (Miller 1). Putting aside this issue of “extrapolation”, Brave New World is certainly a politically critical work, wherein the fictional government has too much control over the lives of its citizens, through propaganda and drugs, but most of all because of the classification of people through the use of genetic modification starting before birth. From this perspective, the novel can certainly be read, as Miller argues, as a cautionary tale of a society whose only purpose has become technological progress. Building on Neil Postman’s work Technopoly: The Surrender
of Culture to Technology, Miller considers the society in Brave New World to be,
what Postman would describe as, a “Technopoly”. According to Miller, the novel’s foregrounding of technological “progress” as well as its overt critique of such developments is a reflection of how the dominating status of technology is “silently changing the goals, moralities, and values of our culture” (Miller 1). In this way, the text both articulates a popular culture of science as well as a knee-jerk response to the perceived threat such technology poses to “wholesome” qualities such as morality and culture.
What is particularly interesting about Brave New World is how the text couches its critique of technology. The control over society in the novel is established before birth through the genetic alteration of the people. This control is
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then further enforced through the audiotapes that children listen to in their early years, instilling a reverence to the classes above their own, disgust for the classes below them, and a fervent desire and happiness to remain in their own class. This technological “progress” and control over society can only reasonably be sustained by a very active and well-functioning industrial and economic system. The novel reflects its desire for a self-perpetuating consumer culture in the mantra, “ending is better than mending”: “‘But old clothes are beastly,’ continued the untiring whisper. ‘We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better’” (Huxley 35). This conditioning of society that “buying new is proper and repairing is immoral” (Miller 1) is key in maintaining the technological control over society by the World State. This conformation to the “consumer-oriented mentality” (Miller 1) of a culture is, as Miller argues, a reflection of our contemporary society. Drawing further on the idea put forward by Postman, Miller argues that Huxley may have imagined that “there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress” (Postman 42). While this can be said to reflect on our contemporary society, Huxley’s society seems to be informed by Postman’s argument that “it also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers” (Postman 42).
In Brave New World’s universe -in which children are manufactured to belong to a certain class within a class system and are set to work with the end goal being technological progress- a society does not need citizens, it needs consumers. Because of this consumerist identity of the people in Brave New World’s society, the power that the World State has over its citizens comes down to intellectual control. From before birth the intellectual development is either stifled or enhanced, but more importantly, the desire for intellectual growth is tempered. This allows for the World State to create a large group of lower class workers to sustain and maintain a society based on consumerism and technological “growth”. While the lower classes lead meagre lives, they are content with what is given to them. This, in turn, allows for the society in Brave New World to become a self-sufficient and self-maintaining system for the “creation” of people and the direct control over their desires and aspirations. The happiness of the lower classes is questioned by “John the Savage” when he
discusses the structure of society with Mustapha Mond. John does not understand why the lower classes are happy “in spite of that awful work” they are “forced” to do:
Awful? They don’t find it so. On the contrary, they like it. It’s light, it’s childishly simple. No strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, un-exhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for? True,” he added, “they might ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn’t. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. (Huxley 153)
The scientific progress that the structure of this society allows for is, according to Mustapha Mond, both the goal of their society, but also a threat to it. Science can sometimes be seen as an “enemy” to the state, he argues, because the application of new inventions is a potential “menace to stability” (Huxley 154). In the novel, Mond argues that treating science as the enemy is “‘another item in the cost of stability. It isn’t only art that’s incompatible with happiness; it’s also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled’” (Huxley 154). As such, one of the main themes of Brave New World is not necessarily the power of technology over the people, but rather, the power over the people through government-controlled technology. Coupled with Postman’s arguments concerning
Brave New World’s society requiring consumers, rather than citizens, the
technologies in the novel become a subconscious expression of consumer culture. All in all, then, the oppressive technologies used in BNW seem not so much to warn of genetic manipulation and brain washing per se. Instead, such technologies allow the World State to continue to produce consumers. In this way, the novel seems to express a fear not so much of technology itself, but of the behaviour that informs and is inspired by such technology, namely blind consumerism.
The importance of technology and its dividing power becomes even more evident in contemporary dystopian narratives. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, for instance, is informed strongly by this notion. In the world of Panem, there is a strong technological dichotomy between the Capitol and the different Districts.
The Capitol is a lavish technological wonder where the citizens want for nothing and are free from the pressures of actual survival. The Districts on the other hand are, mostly, underfed and the labour is more like slave labour than honest work. In his discussion of the first part of The Hunger Games trilogy, Mark Fisher discusses the technological differences between the Capitol and the Districts as a dichotomy between “fake” spectatorialism on the one hand, and authenticity on the other:
Yet we can just as easily understand the differences between Capitol and the districts in historical terms, so that the Capitol’s decadent (post)modernity, its apparently unlimited consumption and foppish, infantilized spectatorialism can be set against the conspicuous authenticity of older forms of labour, with their dirt-poor privations and honest work ethic. (Fisher 30)
While this view of the Capitol and the Districts, as a reflection of the opposition between rural areas and a metropolis, is arguably present, this is also where the geographical comparison ends. Rather, the differences between the Capitol and the Districts become less of a simple geographical difference, and more of a disjoint of time. The Capitol seems to be years ahead in terms of technology than the Districts. While the citizens in the Capitol enjoy luxury, the newest gadgets and technological advancements, and the ease of living that comes from them, the Districts are stuck with their only “entertainment” being the televised propaganda from the Capitol, and intermittent power outages that limit even those. Fisher makes note of this when he describes the moment that Katniss travels from her home in District 12, which is also the poorest District, to the Capitol by high-speed bullet train:
When Katniss, the daughter of a dead miner who survives by hunting on the land, is conveyed to the Capitol by high-speed train, it is as if the nineteenth century is brought face to future-shocked face with twenty-first-century media culture, a disjunction that is pointed up by the garish appearance of the Capitol’s citizens, with their grotesque cosmetics, lurid hair dye, and ornate clothes. (Fisher 30)
This disjunction can further be read in the control that the Capitol has over the power in the Districts. While normally power outages are a common occurrence in District 12, Katniss notes that during the broadcasting of The Hunger Games or during the broadcasting of propaganda, the supply of electricity is not an issue. Although the Capitol is in charge of the broadcasts during normal days, the citizens still have the
option of simply not viewing them, but The Hunger Games (broadcast on large screens in the District squares) and propaganda are mandatory viewing for all citizens. As such, not only does the Capitol control every form of technology, the base requirements for that technology to work, electricity, is also in their control:
The Capitol twinkles like a vast field of fireflies. Electricity in District 12 comes and goes; usually we only have it a few hours a day. Often the evenings are spent in candlelight. The only time you can count on it is when they’re airing the Games or some other important government message on television that it’s mandatory to watch. But here there would be no shortage. Ever. (Collins 2008: 98)
This control over power is a subconscious expression of the duality of new technologies. Newly developed technologies can be used for both good and bad, for instance, creating comfort for the people, or surveillance for the government, but to control the one thing that is required to operate such technologies -electricity- is to control both the good and the bad sides of technology. As such, the Capitol decides whether it allows the good or the bad side of a technology to be expressed. For instance, whether to allow the people to watch television as entertainment, or whether -as is the case in the narrative- to only power televisions during the mandatory viewing of the Games or of punishments.
Ultimately, Fisher argues, the form of oppression in The Hunger Games can best be read in terms of colonial domination: “In the Games, the colonized are forced to celebrate their own defeat and to acknowledge the unassailability of their colonizers’ power” (Fisher 30). However, although colonial domination is definitely one of the main themes in the novels, Fisher completely bypasses the technological aspect of the Capitol’s control. Rather, he explains the technological difference between the Capitol and the Districts as an effect of the oppression, instead of a means to oppress. Nevertheless, both sides of the argument (that technology is both a means to oppress and a means to maintain control) are equally represented in The
Hunger Games trilogy.
While The Hunger Games portrays a dystopian future containing technologies that are, as of yet, not realized in our world (such as hovercrafts, extensive genetic modification, etc.), Dave Eggers’ The Circle shows the reader an only slightly “distorted” image of contemporary Western society on the brink of falling under the control of a dystopian, totalitarian regime. What is especially harrowing about the
technology used in The Circle to establish control over society is that all the technologies used are based on, or integrated with, social media.
The major technological breakthrough that has allowed the Circle to start establishing control over the world was the development of small cameras that can transmit high quality images, in combination with ever decreasing physical sizes of ever increasing storage capabilities. These so-called “SeeChange” cameras that are implemented all over the world by loyal followers of the Circle are at first installed to let people experience places or events that they would normally not be able to experience. However, further on in the narrative these cameras start allowing for the Circle to press the ideology that a fully transparent society will be a crimeless society, as people will be accountable for their actions at all times. This idea of accountability is reminiscent of the Foucauldian panoptical society of Nineteen
Eighty-Four, with the main difference being that in a Panopticon one might be
watched, whereas in The Circle one is constantly watched, due to the recording and storage capabilities of the SeeChange cameras. This in turn amplifies the internalizing effect of surveillance that Foucault put forth.
Arguably, this amplified internalizing effect is only made possible due to the visual nature of the SeeChange cameras and the accompanying technologies For example, as David Altheide explains in “Media Logic, Social Control, and Fear” the ever-increasing focus on visual technology of a society and the subsequent increase of crime- and war-images accessible to the public can create a society of fear:
Visual technologies, including less expensive and more powerful cameras and lenses, have spawned a massive surveillance industry that plays on news reports of crime and mayhem; this discourse of fear, or the pervasive communication, symbolic awareness, and expectation that danger and risk are a central feature of everyday life, has sustained a questionable view that more information—surveillance— is necessary to keep us safe. (Altheide 230)
As stated in the second chapter when discussing the novel’s narrative, the technologies employed by The Circle are at first portrayed as a utopian development, but are quickly used to indoctrinate people into feeling secure with an excessive amount of transparency. How this reflects upon contemporary society is noted on by Altheide when he argues that “[t]hese technologies, which are often developed and justified for one purpose—such as fighting terrorism—can also be
used in other ways” (Altheide 230). As an example, he addresses to United States police force, “the information technology in the hands of police can meld surveillance formats to develop other activities. Technologies developed to fight terrorism in the United States were geared to collecting indiscriminate massive information such as license plates on cars” (Altheide 230).
The capability to use technologies that are presented in a utopian way, for other means -such as surveillance- coupled with the interconnecting of these images with social media profiles, is what eventually allows the Circle to have full access to someone’s complete information at all times. Furthermore, the society of fear that Altheide talks about reinforces the -now internalized- idea in the narrative that more transparency equals more safety. As such, the amount of personal details willingly given up by the employees and the followers of the Circle allows not only for access to personal information, but also for newly developed algorithms and computer models to interpret this data and provide information about someone without them having given this information away. Someone’s preferences in any aspect of their lives can be calculated by the Circle at near perfect accuracy. In doing so, the Circle can, through their own company and affiliates, create the supply for a demand that was never expressed by an individual. This, in turn, creates a power imbalance where citizens (or a society) can become dependent on the services offered by the Circle.
Furthermore, the integration of everyone’s social media profile (which is housed in the system of the Circle) with politics, the Circle has created a closed system of information to which they are the controllers and regulators. Through this technology, the Circle amasses immense power over politics near the end of the novel and in doing so has created a self-perpetuating system of supply and demand, both for physical products, and social interactions. Coupling the consumerist notions of supply and demand with Altheide’s society of fear, the Circle has created a method of control over both body and mind of the people. This in turn articulates the subconscious belief that giving away control over newly developed technologies to companies, can eventually lead to a form of totalitarian control.
Both this method of control over both body and mind and the control over power and media are reflected in all novels discussed so far. Where the shift in focus from politically critical to socially critical lies is by and large the capability that the people have to use these technologies for usage other than that intended by the
government. Where Huxley’s and Orwell’s novels have eliminated the agency of their society and as such their capability to use technology as a means to rebel, Collins’ and Eggers’ novels exemplify the potential strength of these technologies if they are used to rebel. This in turn emphasises the social aspect of media that has been foregrounded in dystopian narratives since the emergence of social media outlets.
