Dystopia can be defined as an imagined placed where inhumane and unjustifiable practices occur.
I haven’t read many dystopian books or watched many dystopian movies, but, for the ones I have read/seen they all seem to have a common trend. They all relate to today, the present time. When I first started interacting with this genre it seemed as though the authors and directors went to the furthest extent of making such an imaginable society. They always included things we use as everyday norms and make them seem untouchable in these alternate realities. I hated it. I couldn’t make a connection with this topic because I had never lived it. It wasn’t until I started getting older and understood the different things that go on throughout the world that I connected the dystopian genre to one’s everyday life. It once seemed too impossible, but now it’s just too real.
Personally, I don’t believe a dystopia is a super far fetched idea anymore. After living through things like a hurricane, or even going to a prestige HBCU that is surrounded by poverty, I believe we are living in a type of dystopia now. I do enjoy my life and am very thankful for the blessings I have, but someone who lives 20ft from my apartment isn’t living the same life as me. Dystopia should be defined as a world where all are not treated equal and equity isn’t available to everybody. Unfortunately, both the definition I added at the beginning and the definition in the previous sentence can be applied to the world we live in today. The authors and directors ideas weren’t far fetched, they were just exaggerating the everyday troubles that they faced.
While the word Utopia is defined as an imagined place where everything is ultimately perfect. Contrariwise, dystopia should be defined as the two definitions I gave above. A society that isn’t working for all will never be a Utopia. Thus far the society we live in today falls under the definition of Dystopia provided above, making a dystopia not so imaginary and the present a dystopia.
