Wastelands and Wonderlands : Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leggatt, Matthew.

Series:

SUNY Series, Horizons of Cinema Series

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (332 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, 2026.

Summary:

Explores a wide range of utopias and dystopias in film and literature and their important relationship to our present moment.Wastelands and Wonderlands challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Imagining an Exit

Optimistic Dystopianism

Organized Chaos

Conclusion

Works Cited

Part I: Utopias on Screen

1 Playfulness, Utopia, and The Fifth Element

Divine Light

Tone and Structure

A Utopia of the Practical

2 Heavenly Pictures: Utopian Thinking in the Anti-Utopian Cinema of Michael Haneke

A Better Place

Evi's Prayer

Final Thoughts

Note

3 "I Don't See How Singing and Dancing Could Be Dangerous": Becoming Utopian in Utopia Falls - Interrogating a Nano-Utopian Moment in Young Adult TV

Screening the Future and the Prefigurative Potential of Television

Utopia Falls's New Babyl - A Dystopian Overview

The Power of Archives

Becoming Utopian

A Nano-Utopian Moment - A Far-from-Equilibrium Emergence

4 Utopian Technology in The Mosquito Coast

The Navel of the World

Fat Boy

Technologies of War

Totalitarian Dreaming

Utopia Redux

America's Utopian Breadbasket

A Consumer's Utopia

An Adolescent Utopia

Life on a Raft

The Paradise Within

5 The Utopian World of Technicolor

Four Utopian Moments

The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille, 1952)

Lili (Charles Walters, 1953)

His Majesty O'Keefe (Byron Haskin, 1954)

This Island Earth (Joseph M. Newman [and Jack Arnold], 1955)

Utopia Produced

Utopia Ltd.

Utopia Commodified

Outcomes

Notes

Part II: Utopias on the Page

6 On the Nature of Utopia: A Dialogue Between Ursula K. Le Guin and N. K. Jemisin

Texts and Contexts

Le Guin and the Dilemma of Utopia

Jemisin and the Paradox of Tolerance

7 Utopianism and Imperialism in H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau and William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

Utopianism in The Island of Doctor Moreau

Utopianism in Lord of the Flies

8 Pessimistic Utopianism

Optimism, Hope, and Utopia

Carl Neville's Eminent Domain

Pessimistic Utopianism

9 Utopias, Human Nature, and Green Lifestyles

News from Nowhere: Beautiful People in a Beautiful World

Ecotopia: "Natural" People in an Ecological Utopia

Freer than Before, but Far from Perfect

Part III: Dystopias on the Page

10 Algorithmic Satire and the End of Social Media Utopianism in Dave Eggers's The Circle (2013) and The Every (2021)

11 The Double Gesture of Nonhuman Voices in Kazuo Ishiguro's Speculative Fiction

Critical Posthumanism and Nonhuman Narratology

"Clo-narrans": Never Let Me Go

"Robo-narrans": Klara and the Sun

12 Indigenizing the Critical Dystopia: Alexis Wright's (Post)Apocalyptic Imaginaries in Carpentaria and The Swan Book

Indigenous Australian Imaginaries of the Ideal

Carpentaria and The Swan Book as Critical Dystopian Counternarratives

13 The End of Dystopia

Genre Flail

Labor as Non-Freedom

The Past Keeps Coming Back

Part IV: Dystopias on Screen

14 Lonely Utopia, Lonesome Dystopia: The Crisis of Today and Tomorrow

The Lone Astronaut, the Last Man, and the Lost Child

The Friendless Simulant, the Melancholic Android, and the Hateful Cyborg

Conclusion: Wasteful Loneliness

15 Totality and Totalitarianism in Four Hollywood Dystopian Films

Totality, Totalitarianism, and Utopian Thought

Utopian Flaws, Dystopian Secrets

16 "Hell Is Empty and All the Devils Are Here": Space, Corporeality, and Failed Utopia in Westworld

Space

Who Is It For?.

The Body and the Individual

Failure and Coherence

17 Young Adult Dystopia's Influence on the Female Heroine in the TV Series The Handmaid's Tale

18 Rebels with a Cause? Waste in Star Wars

May the Force Be with You Me: Wasted Youth or the Waste of Youth in Star Wars

One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Millennium Falcon: Recycling Waste in Star Wars

List of Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Leggatt, Matthew Wastelands and Wonderlands

ISBN:

9798855806274

OCLC:

1581075565