Dystopias tell us where we are going – and where we are not

By Peter Aspden, FT Life&Arts writer

The outlook in ‘The Hunger Games’ is at least less bleak than in ‘1984’

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“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen . . . .”

The first, dislocating words of George Orwell’s 1984 were meant to stir readers from postwar complacency. Begun in 1947, during the opening skirmishes of the cold war, the novel illustrated the results of allowing an all-powerful state to rule without regard to the rights of its citizens.

It had a profound effect on our culture. Ever since its publication, we have been obsessed by the portrayal of dystopian nightmares. In the 1940s, these were mostly confined to sophisticated journalism and works of fiction, discussed heatedly in highbrow circles. But popular culture has proved to be in greater thrall to the fashioning of future doomsdays. This month, worldwide box office returns for The Hunger Games: Catching Firesurpassed the $700m mark. The film, based on the second part of Suzanne Collins’s trilogy of novels, is capturing young imaginations all around the globe. How to explain its popularity? Are we growing more scared, and rather enjoying it? Or are our worst fears being sanitised and rendered more acceptable?

Orwell’s satire spawned terms that survive to this day: Newspeak(the official language in 1984), Big Brother, Room 101(the torture chamber of the Ministry of Love in 1984). His remarkable book describes a state of being by which we now measure our civic health.

Today, we are nearly as far away from 1984 as Orwell was.

Orwell’s prediction was palpably exaggerated. We bumble along, keeping the rats at bay. Yet our appetite for delving into dystopian fantasy as a form of therapy appears undiminished. We cannot stop picking at the scabs of our deepest fears.

The Hunger Games depicts a world that is cruel and violent, but which allows the glimpses of redemption that is the stuff of cult following. It is a work of its time: although the gladiatorial “games” described are based on the rough pastimes of ancient Roman high society, the mise en scène is strikingly modern.

The premise of the books and films is reassuringly remote. Two children, aged between 12 and 18, are selected every year by lottery from each of 12 outlying districts of a prosperous and unequal city-state. They must fight to the death in an arena created and manipulated by the authorities. There will be only one survivor, and he or she will attain wealth and celebrity status.

But there are many recognisable aspects in the nightmarish society depicted in The Hunger Games: a high camp, effetely attired elite enjoying its insulation from the proletarian masses; a media with frightening technological potential; an unquenchable voyeurism that has caused the loss of ethical bearings.

It is a skilled and occasionally amusing mash-up that provides pricks of discomfort. Ms Collins was inspired while zapping between reality shows and war coverage on television. Her inventions are not so far-fetched. The challenges in the jungle arena of Catching Fire are just extreme forms of the slug-eating, rat-infested trials in I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here!, the UK reality show(about living in a jungle). Today, we vote to humiliate people; tomorrow we may want to inflict deeper damage.

Our dystopian fantasies are different today. The fears expressed in 1984, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World before that, were philosophically based. Those fables followed the horrors of the second and first world wars. They pointed out what humanity was capable of, if we were to avert our gaze as in the build-up to those ignoble events.

There is less of that soul-searching in The Hunger Games. We see instead a vivid description of a hypermaterialist society – fired by, and in thrall to, miraculous feats of technology. There has been a convergence between the worst thing we can think of and where we are already heading.

Of course, the true allure of the dystopian story lies in the rebellious figure at its heart, in whom we place our hope of finding a way out of the moral darkness. Here, Orwell and Huxley’s protagonists disappoint, crushed by the respective systems against which they are pitted.

In The Hunger Games, the view is not so bleak. The 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen is the chosen vehicle for revolutionary change. Remember girl power? This could be its finest moment: we happily pin our hopes for insurrection on a sullen adolescent who fights the system with nothing more sophisticated than a bow and arrow.

Computerised infernos(hell) can be brought down by the most rudimentary of weapons; solidarity with morally just causes can vanquish unfeeling oppressors. The nightmares of the 21st century may feel close enough to touch; but they are more easily ended. These are messages from a society that feels generally pleased with itself. Whatever fresh hell we think of, we will find a way out. It is a triumph of the human spirit, of sorts.