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Even the dystopias have gone bad.

Thats the conclusion from a much-shared piece by Ewan MorrisoninTheGuardianyesterday. Morrison surveyed the young adult fiction advocated by a left-leaning friend and did not much like what he saw:

Books such asThe Giver, DivergentandtheHunger Gamestrilogy are, whether intentionally or not, substantial attacks on many of the foundational projects and aims of the left: big government, the welfare state, progress, social planning and equality.

Morrison compares such stuff unfavourably to the fiction of H.G. Wells and Philip K. Dick. It was those earlier books, he decides, that his buddy (a progressive parent friend of mine) must have been contemplating when he declared dystopian YA a great left-wing educational tool.

By contrast, in todays bestsellers the bad guys are not the corporations but the state and those well-meaning liberal leftists who want to make the world a better place.

Lets back up here.

Like all mass cultural products, the titles Morrison lists are thoroughly over-determined. We might equally declareThe Hunger Gamesan allegory for Bushs War on Terror, with young people from poor rural backgrounds forced to fight in meaningless struggles for the benefit of a pampered elite. But that too would be crass. Were dealing with sprawling franchises accessed across an array of formats (books, films, games, fan sites, etc), and its simply not sensible to pin their meaning down so glibly. TheHarry Potterempire might, as Morrison says, fill childrens heads with right-wing dreams of public schoolsbut thats not all it does.

In any case, progressive dystopias warning about an all-powerful state run by those who say they want to bettersociety are scarcely new (think of Orwells1984).

Its not the dystopias that have changed so much as the worldand the attitudes of so-called progressives.

A fortnight or so ago, the little American town of Ferguson was rocked by scenes that might have come straight from a dystopian movie, as Robocop paramilitaries dispersed demonstrators protesting against the killing of an unarmed teenager. In the context of Edward Snowdens NSA surveillance revelations, its scarcely surprising that faith in big government and social planning has plummetedblack kids in America dont need a book to mistrust the state.

See the rest here:
Katniss Everdeen is not turning your kid into a right-wing nutjob