E-raamat: Programming the Future: Politics, Resistance, and Utopia in Contemporary Speculative TV

"Dystopia is alive and well in contemporary American society, and not least of all on the small screen. Long studied as a mass means of shrouding the headlines and the nightly news in affect in order to render intelligible an increasingly chaotic and terrifying world (removing any potential for panic or revolutionary action) television has certainly not lacked for material of late, furnishing allegorical retellings of events from the paranoid, corporatized world created by 9/11, the 2008 economic collapse, 2016 election and other traumatic events. These pessimistic dystopian tales, however, are not the full story. More and more frequently, these television shows also attempt to visualize an alternative world - one in which the pressures of dystopia create an imperative for change. Programming the Future takes a close look at this phenomenon and provides close studies of some of its prime examples. Grounding their analysis in Ernst Bloch's conceptualization of the role of utopia as either abstract (and diversionary) or concrete (and revolutionary), Vint and Alexander explore the long-form SF narrative's emerging role as a generative space of political imagination about the future. Examples include "alien" invasion narratives such as Threshold and Falling Skies, which endorse a jingoistic/nationalistic response to post-9/11 fears of invaders of various stripes; The Man in the High Castle, as a fully-formed, alternate "fake America," that eerily resembles reality despite positing a Nazi victory in WWII; andthe hopelessness in the face of corporate power evoked by Mr. Robot, in which the fall of an evil corporation only results in greater suffering for ordinary people"--

Programming the Future examines how recent speculative television takes on the contradictions of the neoliberal order. Sherryl Vint and Jonathan Alexander consider a range of popular SF narratives of the last two decades, including Battlestar Galactica, Watchmen, Colony, The Man in the High Castle, The Expanse, and Mr. Robot.

From 9/11 to COVID-19, the twenty-first century looks increasingly dystopian—and so do its television shows. Long-form science fiction narratives take one step further the fears of today: liberal democracy in crisis, growing economic precarity, the threat of terrorism, and omnipresent corporate control. At the same time, many of these shows attempt to visualize alternatives, using dystopian extrapolations to spotlight the possibility of building a better world.

Programming the Future examines how recent speculative television takes on the contradictions of the neoliberal order. Sherryl Vint and Jonathan Alexander consider a range of popular SF narratives of the last two decades, including Battlestar Galactica, Watchmen, Colony, The Man in the High Castle, The Expanse, and Mr. Robot. They argue that science fiction television foregrounds governance as part of explaining the novel institutions and norms of its imagined futures. In so doing, SF shows allegorize and critique contemporary social, political, and economic developments, helping audiences resist the naturalization of the status quo. Vint and Alexander also draw on queer theory to explore the representation of family structures and their relationship to larger social structures. Recasting both dystopian and utopian narratives, Programming the Future shows how depictions of alternative-world political struggles speak to urgent real-world issues of identity, belonging, and social and political change.