Savannah Lucas - Blog Post 5

Williams and Moylan

1. strand: politics, political opposition, political thought, discourse, public policies, critical
2. strand: contemporary, popular culture, cultural shift, modern society
3. binary: reality/imaginary
4. strand: destruction, repression, devastated

Both authors really dig into this strand of politics and critiquing them. Moylan credits the dystopian genre with creating a new “critical strand” in popular culture (xii). He discusses what makes a dystopian work critical and offers that these works are “challenging capitalist power as well as conservative rule” (xv). Moylan very slightly states that he encourages students to use these dystopias as tool to look differently at the world around them. On the contrary, Williams makes it very clear to his readers that he is an advocate for using dystopia for thinking critically about politics. His approach is somewhat different because he is focusing solely on film analysis. While Moylan mentions popular culture, Williams gives us comparisons to other forms like impressionism and stage dramas.