The analysis of fear in dystopian films in the early 21st century

Abstract

The research aims to study fear appearing in dystopian films in the early 21st century (2001-2020) through qualitative research conducted by textual analysis and website documentary research. The samples were selected from four dystopian films with four dimensions of fear: Social disparity in "In Time" (2011), dictatorship in "V for Vendetta" (2005), scientific and technological growth in "I, Robot" (2004), and a natural disaster in "Children of Men" (2006). The concepts of fear, film genres, and a dystopia were applied as a conceptual research framework.

From the analysis, it is found that all four movies are similar in their setting related to time. Namely, daytime often reflects the governor's deprivation of rights, while nighttime is the period of domination through the use of a variety of violence for expressing fear. The spatial setting is found to ignite criticism against a society of indifference and ignorance, as witnessed from people's corners of life and the cruelty of some groups of people. Moreover, the social environment is integrated between a society of modernity and deteriorated buildings and houses, including immorality caused by human beings. The movies reflect the impoverishment of people who try to search for freedom from an oppressive society in various domains, i.e., politics, inequality, the use of technology and science, and natural disasters. Especially, "Children of Men" illustrates a high dystopian society through the plot of the coming human extinction, symbolized by early morning time, dust, gunpowder, soot, corpses on the road, riots, and refugees; thus, it is so-called a "dark dystopian film."

The ideologies presented in the films project people's loss and hopelessness to remind the audience of the fearful truth in the real world. Moreover, ideologies also play a role in summarizing the dimension portrayed in each movie under the same formula of dystopian films. Besides, the old definition of a dystopia is found to be modified to respond to what happened in the early 21st century, such as the ideology of belief in humanity, an ideology of religion, and the ideology of the anti-enlightenment age. Remarkably, it is further found that the appearing fear in each movie has different sequences despite being all dystopian films.

The study also finds that dystopian movies try to reproduce and project fear so repeatedly that it becomes normalized and natural since the society faces fear all the time and may not be bettered, even moving into the 21st century.