rave, thanks for this. I'll be chasing it down the minute I walk into Borders.
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Kelwyn <ravena...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/P/paik_utopia.html > > The pitfalls and limitations of utopian politics as revealed by science > fiction > > Revolutionary narratives in recent science fiction graphic novels and films > compel audiences to reflect on the politics and societal ills of the day. > Through character and story, science fiction brings theory to life, giving > shape to the motivations behind the action as well as to the consequences > they produce. > > In From Utopia to Apocalypse, Peter Y. Paik shows how science fiction > generates intriguing and profound insights into politics. He reveals that > the fantasy of putting annihilating omnipotence to beneficial effect > underlies the revolutionary projects that have defined the collective > upheavals of the modern age. Paik traces how this political theology is > expressed, and indeed literalized, in popular superhero fiction, examining > works including Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's graphic novel Watchmen, the > science fiction cinema of Jang Joon-Hwan, the manga of Hayao Miyazaki, Alan > Moore's V for Vendetta, and the Matrix trilogy. Superhero fantasies are > usually seen as compensations for individual feelings of weakness, > victimization, and vulnerability. But Paik presents these fantasies as > social constructions concerned with questions of political will and the > disintegration of democracy rather than with the psychology of the personal. > > What is urgently at stake, Paik argues, is a critique of the limitations > and deadlocks of the political imagination. The utopias dreamed of by > totalitarianism, which must be imposed through torture, oppression, and mass > imprisonment, nevertheless persist in liberal political systems. With this > reality looming throughout, Paik demonstrates the uneasy juxtaposition of > saintliness and cynically manipulative realpolitik, of torture and the > assertion of human dignity, of cruelty and benevolence. > > > -- "If all the world's a stage and we are merely players, who the bloody hell wrote the script?" -- Charles E Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik
