Dystopian Narratives in Contemporary «Young Adult» Cinema: History and Memory in the Digital Age

Article

Abstract

[In English]

The anxiety of unpredictable future and the frustration about traumatic past of humankind nowadays find a way of expressing themselves through collective memory or, more specifically, through utopian and dystopian fiction. Utopian narratives have always been a therapeutic way of processing uncertainty, and today utopian and dystopian fiction is becoming more and more popular, both in the form of novels and films. This paper examines Utopias and Dystopias in contemporary culture as the symptoms of the fear of forgetting and the inability to remember in the digital age. The analysis of digital memories and their connection to Utopia is conducted on the data set of the three most popular utopian films of the last few years “The Giver”, “Divergent”, and “Maze-Runner”. The focus is set on such aspects as the critical potential of Dystopia in politics and the ahistoricism and transformations of memory in the digital age. The goal of this article is to reveal the critical potential of utopian fiction and, more specifically, the anxiety expressed in the so-called “Utopia of neglect”.