If you’re a follower of pop culture then you’ve noticed the crazy fuss about Netflix’s latest Korean production ‘Squid Game.’ A dystopian show that managed to break all records with no media pressure, and the show spread like wildfire.
Squid Game is a global success that focuses especially on the massive local class gap whilst easily reaching a global audience that witnesses the same gap in different forms. The show consists of nine congested episodes with very tense cliffhangers that effectively make you binge-watch them whilst combining entertainment and the element of social criticism in a neat mixture.
Whether you think Squid Game is worth the wide public and critical praise it received globally, or you think its success phenomena is a coincidence driven by curiosity, you cannot deny that the show has achieved one of the highest numbers of views worldwide and people absolutely loved it.
If you liked the show as most people did, then you might be a fan of the dystopian genre. Hence, we bring to you five dystopian shows, movies, novels that you’d probably fall in love with as well. Check them out below!
1) Battle Royale: The pioneer of Squid Game’s plot
This Japanese production in 2000 caused wide controversy due to its horrifying violent content that involved children and teenagers. The movie was considered to be a milestone in the Japanese and global thriller-horror genre, and one of the most influential productions in pop culture.
The movie redefined the term “Battle Royale” to refer to a specific kind of plot in literature and visual media which includes a conflict or a fight to the death for all characters, and ends up with one winner. This plot is now widely used and you might have seen it clearly in ‘Hunger Games’ and the latest world sweet heart, Squid Game.
2) Fahrenheit 451: Novel
“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing”.
A 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, one might say it serves as one of his best works. The novel presents a future American society where possessing books is a state crime, and firemen are assigned to the mission of destroying books with flame guns.
Burning books in the novel is both literal and metaphoric, a powerful allegory that also works well as a prima facie argument against censorship.
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a novel that exceeds its dystopian theme, and what makes it fascinating and compelling is the year it was published in, as it remains interesting and relevant today, still managing to deliver its cautionary message in a timeless manner.
3) The Handmaid’s Tale: TV Show based on a novel
Based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood, the story takes place in a totalitarian society that once used to be the United States. A state that is ruled by a fundamentalist government and treats women as property of the state.
A society that is threatened with a plummeting birth rate takes desperate measures to repopulate a wrecked world, and the few remaining fertile women are forced into sexual servitude.
The Handmaid’s Tale is a story about injustice, misogyny, and the corruption of totalitarianism where individuality is lost and basic human rights are disregarded with the blessing of the people and the state.
4) A Clockwork Orange: Movie
In one of Stanley Kubrick’s most riveting movies, the main character is an unpredicted and violent anarchist who doesn’t believe in society and spends his time drinking milk mixed with cocaine and robbing, frightening, and killing innocent citizens in what seems to give him a deviant pleasure. The story takes an even darker turn as a correctional facility conducts a horrifying experience to alter this deviant behavior, but at what cost?
5) The Children Of Men: Movie based on a novel
Children of Men is directed by Alfonso Cuarón as an adaptation of the novel published in 1992 by P.D. James. Personally, I think P.D. James’s novel made more sense than Cuarón’s optimistic, but inconsistent screen adaptation.
The story takes place in a not-so-far future where humanity is hit suddenly and unexpectedly with infertility for almost two decades, putting humanity on the edge of extinction, until a woman miraculously becomes pregnant and the hero’s mission in the story is solely to transfer her to safety.
What is remarkable about this story is the enigmatic and insightful exploration of human dynamics in a society facing its end. The world goes on as it always did, we have people who are hungry for authority and power, those seeking fortune, and those who lost empathy. All of these human dynamics move and alter around the very idea of annihilation.