Theory notes for my essay / DYSTOPIAN FUTURES - 17th October 2018
- Isabelle Osorio
- Oct 17, 2018
- 4 min read
Updated: May 3, 2019
I expanded my written notes from last lesson and researched more into the theories, I wrote up my notes creating a word document on the presentations we all did. Now i have clear detailed notes to help me with the 'Dystopian Futures' essay.
Frantz Fanon’s ideas on oppression
· He devoted his life to helping oppressed individuals after witnessing the horrors of oppression throughout his entire life.
· He wrote four books
· He possessed an enormous amount of empathy and concern for the oppressed people of the world.
· Frantz also believed that the lack of humility and the oppressive treatment Back in the civil war era
· The main points that Frantz Fanon argues is that oppression shouldn’t happen, he has 4 books have the shared goal of the emancipation of all human beings from oppression.
· One of his theories is that certain oppressed groups can suffer from mental illnesses, suggested to be caused by unresolved grief from oppression. An example of this in his work is his theory that Native Americans suffer mental illnesses due to oppression by Europe in 1492.
The subjection of woman essay 1869
· Written by Liberal Philosopher John Stuart Mill
· Was elected as an MP in 1865 and was part of a platform called The Kensington Society.
· Presented a petition in 1866 regarding suffrage.
· John’s amendment was rejected by parliament, used this to prove his point
· Women could not vote
· If a woman married she was not allowed any legal entity to separate from her husband. Meaning any money or property she owned was under his power.
· Hid idea was we cannot know that something will not work unless we try it. He states that the arguments against woman are driven by prejudice and not rationality.
· He challenged the common discussion that women were unequal to men. He explains that the legal subordination of one sex to the other was wrong in itself, and one of the main interferences to human/society improvement.
· It had immediate and long lasting success. It was reprinted twice within the first six months and was translated into….French, German, Danish, Italian, Polish, and Russian.
· The two main arguments that he portrays was whether men are superior to women.
-Inferior Emotional Passive Apolitical
· Till society treats men and women equally, it will be impossible to know the natural abilities of women, or whether there are inherent differences between the sexes. ‘Pave the way to a new system of equality.
Social Dominance Theory

Group based inequalities are maintained In 3 primary groups.
Institutional discrimination
- The mistreatment of ethic or religious groups as a whole
Aggregated individual discrimination
-Low level of discrimination
Behavioral asymmetry
-The behaviors between dominant and subordinate groups
· Jim Sidanius & Felicia Pratto founded the theory in 1999 at Harvard University
· Recognised that different social classes stuck together and didn’t mix
· Argues for the divide between 2 social classes
· Forces the 2 classes apart
· These multiple hierarchies may be based on gender, race, age, economic status, and other characteristics
· Hunger Games: Mocking jay Part I
· political greed
· Corrupt government
· Taking advantage of the normal people society
· Trying to control this people by telling them how to live and enforcing a new way of life
Susan Faludi’s “Backlash”
· Backlash, The Undeclared War Against American Women is a book written by Susan Faludi
· It is an essay style piece, documenting the events of 1980’s North American society
· Women being oppressed, how the media portrays them as being free
· Turn of the 20th century when in actuality, they were still heavily oppressed in different ways.
· Still no equal rights that women had been striving for.
· Susan Charlotte Faludi is an American feminist, journalist, and author.
· Book = studies that where created by multiple different sources, All claiming to be legitimate studies, all of which were sexist in nature.
· By the end of the 80s, many women familiar with these "statistical" developments
· Many myths were discussed in the book
Marxism
· Marxism is what is known as a conflict theory based from Karl Mark’s and Fredrich Engels political and economic theory. The theory states that the economic power let to political power and that this is the key to understanding societies. E.g.
· High class: More money + more power = higher input in political decisions
· Low class: Less money + less power = less input in political decisions
· Marx didn’t like capitalism, he was on the side of the poor not the rich
· Marx saw capitalism as being based on a system that encourages inequality
· Marxists believe that the only way to control the working class by alienating them from all aspects of society such as; school, family and the media
· Marxism believes that economic conflict produces the classes, as it divides people based on different views from different backgrounds in term of wealth, income and social profile
· Capitalism can only thrive from exploiting people from a working class
· Marxism believes that there was a real contradiction between human nature and the way in which people should work in a capitalist society
· Hunger games – takes place in a dystopian future. The capital separates high class life style from the working class by segregating them into different districts in which each have their own roles to complete which the capital benefits from
· Wall-E the humans have created robots to ‘fix’ the world whilst they are in space on a ship with technology which allows them to sit around being lazy
I also thought more about the films i am going to be analyzing within my essay and researched their Dystopic qualities.
The films i am thinking about talking about in my essay are:
-Divergent
-Hunger Games
-Elysium
-Logan's run
-Blade runner
1,500 word essay-
DEADLINE - 7TH NOVEMBER...

Include the four types of societal controls.
How they are relevant in Dystopian films from Pre 90's and post 90's.
How the systems of control are shown in the films.
How they reflect the fears of society at the time of production.
Bibliography
Harvard references
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