Dystopia is a totalitarian society where specific groups of people are oppressed from some sort of elite group or from their own consciousness that results in a loss of humanity, freedom, and power, all of which gives the individual misery.
Young’s Five Faces of Oppression described the characteristics of what it means to fall into oppression in a dystopian state. Powerlessness, exploitation, cultural imperialism, violence, and marginalization are all traits in a society that can build a dystopian society. Young describes powerlessness as the lack of control over your own life due to some superior elite. This goes hand and hand with my definition of dystopia for when you are stripped of your own power and free will, what else do you have left? An example of powerlessness seen in current worlds is the issue of classes. Humans are labeled based on their social class which can be diminishing to the humans as the lower class feels as if they are hopeless with no power. In a dystopian society, the individual may fall into the belief of not being able to get out of this mindset or issue causing them to continue to be oppressed. When you can’t control the circumstances given you, you feel like you lose all power.
Another perfect example that describes the definition of a dystopian society is the show Alice in the Borderland. The show randomly places individuals into a game society to survive, earning playing cards for every game you win. When all the playing cards are collected, you are able to leave the society. The games may be individual or teams, however, in the end only one person can win. This society is depressing as you have no free will in your actions. You have to participate in the game or you die, but if you participate, you also risk dying. There is someone controlling this whole game, but no one knows who the master behind it is. Humanity is lost as the participants are immune to the violence around them and the idea of survival. This puts the participates in misery which is seen in the dystopian society described above.