Dystopia...

"No more growing trees without a ground..."

Kidneythieves: Placebo

        As I was falling asleep yesterday, knowing that a calm night without an early hour -at which to wake- was ahead of me, I was flooded by the usual sea of imagery that comes at an early meditative state.
I was surrounded by silver and blue, like elven nights with starry skies.
I was listening to Within Temptation's Silent Force, as I haven't listened to it since I was 17.
I din't know if it was then or earlier that I realised, but I started wondering about setting the lay in a dystopic society. I had been truly troubled by the fact that I would not go see the play unless it had a message to put through, or something to dwell upon after leaving the theatre... well, what is one thing that I have always found fascinating: Dystopic literature and movies. Just last weekend I watched two examples of dystopia: 9, and V for Vendetta. This is what must have reminded me of my love for it.

9, Shane Acker's -Tim burton produced- animated feature, it is reminiscent of a shattered land after the World War II bombings.

Elements of Dystopia:

• A tyrant, a dictator- a police state- control over society, pessimistic view of "iron fisted" ruler/government
• -> repression/oppression- Fear- Silence- secretive dwellings, disappearnces
• progression of technology contrasted with spirituality 
• backstory, how it all started- happening after a certain catastrophe, for example set in an era of a post-nuclear explosion, maybe rapid technological changes, modifications of the human body; overpopulation,  revolution, disasters, wars- shift in systems of control, change in social norms
• no hope of improvement, overshadowed dreams- punishment of wrong behaviour
• -> secretive "resistance", a group or the protagonist who questions the society- escape or the over-turning of control and social order
• -> ultimately may fail to change anything
• conformity- equality- forgotten individuality
• commonly urban (urbanised artificial landscapes)- isolated from nature (perhaps conditioned to fear it)
• state-contolled economy, perhaps with black markets for "dangerous goods"
• privatisation, corporations taken over/replaced government- they make decisions or set policies
• degeneration of society- caste systems, low classes in worse state then low classe of contemporary society

James McTeigue's 2006 thriller based on Alan Moore's and David Lloyd's comic book by the same name, set in a near-future London.

Other dystopic stories I can think of at the moment are: George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Darren Lynn Bousmans' 2008 Repo! The Genetic Opera, Luc Besson's 1997 The Fifth Element, Michael Bay's 2005 The Island.

Only the royal family entitled to wear certain colours (here I am thinking of gold -although literally it is not a colour- because the Greeks are so often associated with it)
Going out to Nature is a taboo, that is why it is so bad to go out to Mount Cithairon...