Post-Apocalyptic and Dystopian Landscapes

I have vivid memories of watching the gripping 80s film “Red Dawn” when I was pretty young. It was fairly late at night, probably one of those Fridays when there wasn't a teenaged party to go to and I remember being thrilled by Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swayze facing up against the Cuban and Russian attackers threatening the American way of life. While I find it a bit harder these days to avoid falling asleep if it's later than 00.00 I still get really wrapped up in many aspects of novels, films and games – in particular, a certain aspect of post-apocalyptic and dystopian texts that makes them stand out from other texts types. I also remember watching “Brazil” – all that crazy ducting and strangely behaving characters - and being interested in and entertained by zombie texts which have since, of course, become very popular. I would have been about eleven when our teacher read all of “Z for Zachariah” to us. I guess it would have been on a Friday afternoon and it was the highlight of my week. Reading was an avid pastime at home too, as were computer games. Not much has changed. Some of the early top-down post-apocalyptic games really got my imagination firing and I haven't even played close to most of them. All the Fallouts, X-Com games and even good old “Twilight 2000”, what!!?! Wikipedia doesn't have this in its list of post-apocalyptic games! With a bit of work, I'm pretty sure I can remember all of the books I read, films I saw and games I played as a kid. Looking back and considering my present reactions to texts I often wonder why some post-apocalyptic and dystopian texts have a particularly intense appeal and why others are just OK.

Something about messed-up futures have always fascinated me. It's worth pointing out here than I'm going to widen a few definitions in this exploration. I'll go for post-apocalyptic as meaning: after a world-mashing disaster but also during and then after the relevant disaster. Another consideration with PA texts - my thinking tends to include (as it goes in many of them) almost apocalyptic events – at least every part of the characters' context and lives have been effected so for them it still pretty much equates as an apocalypse. And as for dystopian texts, lets go with: a future that might or might not look perfect but is actually really crappy. The dystopian text may also include things like oppressive governments and technology gone awry but a primary defining factor is the overall grimness of the setting.

Now that the definitiony bit is sorted, I'll briefly detail the aspects of the PA and dystopian fascination that I won't go into in any detail. Part of it obviously comes from the plot, a really good text needs some tasty plot at some point, even computer games imo; the characters, whether they're convincing, face challenges and either do or don't undergo some kind of compelling change; and a varying amount of the usual goodies, scifi technology, survival (and -ism) violence and hopefully some intriguing discourse and discussion. This is all in the text stuff though (I think there's a technical term for that) but what about the out of text stuff? Well, the big one there (that I think it is particularly relevant to PA and dystopian texts) is the escapism argument. It seems to crop up a lot with computer games. Dylan Horrocks informed our students a couple of weeks ago, in a fascinating presentation on comics, that this argument used to not only be levelled at comics but also books! While the escapism argument doesn't really work much for me (I've always thought that my primary motivator is that I like doing stuff that's exciting - surfing and computer games score well here) a part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic texts is imagining myself in these situations. Would I go to pieces and hide in the corner gibbering or perhaps in a more organised fashion in an underground shelter or stocked-up survivalist hideaway? Or would I pick up my shotgun (I don't own any firearms irl but I'm sure being the resourceful chap I like to think of myself as, I could find one somewhere) and mess up any fools before they messed up me, or is that me up? At any rate, in my younger years (and now) a part of the appeal is certainly about wondering how far I could and would be willing to go to survive in a whacked-out, messed-up future full of gangs of spiked shoulder pad wearing, metal pipe wielding maniacs.

All that stuff is kinda obvious though. There was another appeal to PA and dystopian texts that wasn't just about context and situational connection. I'd lived vicariously in plenty of other texts before and there was another attribute that many of these PA and dystopian texts had that I hadn't experienced elsewhere - something that made them both appealing and wondrous. I'll stop for a moment here to describe just a few of my favourite moments in PA and dystopian films, novels and games. As Jed and Robert look down from the Rockies, (every mountain range in the States is the Rockies to me – apologies to all those with a more secure geographical knowledge) Eli stands on a shattered overpass with the vast expanse of some unplaced wasteland stretching out beneath him, Gibson puts us above Chiba City imagining a world controlled by mega-corporations and technology gone bad, I wandered a blasted Europe (or America, I forget which) top-down in Twilight 2000 (I bought the paper and pen RPG after playing the computer game) or explored the wastes, first in top-down in Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics (the sound of banging corrugated iron still makes me think of post-apocalypses) then in first person as the wanderer in Fallout 3... I could go on and on here. I was aware, if only vaguely, of another omnipresent character that some post-apocalyptic texts have and others don't – the landscape.

Novels, films and games all have their relevant methods to develop landscapes. And by landscapes I mean anything relating to physical setting, in particular the literal landscape (land) and also urban environments along with the interiors of buildings and other enclosures. Despite the variance in the ways these mediums express landscape in PA and dystopian texts (the language they use) the effects on me as a reader were often much the same. Regardless of medium, the really good ones often tended to evoke a feeling not exactly Déjà vu but something with a definite sense of a 'hinge,' something in the language that evoked a partial memory or fragment of an emotion from a memory that was relevant to what I was reading. Possibly the process was like those times I'd visited a new neighbourhood or place as a kid (perhaps they were all urban environments – I can't remember) and found they evoked a strong negative reaction of some kind, impossible to articulate but nevertheless, identifiably bad. The hinge was much more vague than a straight-up: oh that smell reminds me of the streets of Bali, or: golly, the way the ocean moves like that - those heaving slabs look a lot like the waves down at Purakanui, or even: that song reminds me of that night when... They were were not so much a direct connection with a past memory but more a connection with a fragment of memory, impossible to ascertain where exactly it sat or what the original event was. Lengthy descriptions (via words, shots or game environments) or regular and relevant interjections from the landscape can evoke these less-specific connotations in a way that keeps the reader in the setting (rather than letting their own concrete memories take over) and through hijacking or utilising a fragment of the reader's past simultaneously forms a new emotional response. A response consisting of an intriguing combination of the memory fragment, the current action and setting in the text and the style in which it was described. They were also usually subtle enough to not distract from the other important action and details but strong enough to be an identifiable response that wasn't as present for me in other kinds of texts. There was something about many of the scenes from Bladerunner that harked back to something I'd experienced in the past, perhaps even something from another text, that made me feel like I'd been somewhere like that place before. It's even gotten to the point where occasionally as I'm standing in some real-life wild environment I'll begin to think of some random scene from “The Postman” – a pretty average film in some ways but with some amazingly expressed landscapes. Wholly unlike the book, apart from the beginning, but with cinematography that evoked some amazing responses – a living landscape that permeated the entirety of the text in a variety of different physical locales across the course of the film.

There was and still is something else going on with reader response for me in PA and dystopian texts too. As well as evoking emotional memory fragments, a really cunning text also seemed to be able to appeal to my memories of the physical presence of locations and settings. Again, this appeal wasn't so grounded in concrete memories of places that were directly recognisable - indeed I was never particularly interested in either adult or teen fiction that was set in a contemporary and geographical locale that was a place I recognised directly from real life. Along with the unexciting nature of settings too close to real life, the action and events in these texts often lacked the excitement of PA and dystopian texts and more often than not I would find myself not being able to relate to someone else's version of a place I knew with some degree of familiarity. I didn't resent PA or dystopian texts on the other hand because they re-created a messed-up futuristic version of landscapes that while they weren't generally recognisable settings I knew, there was a hinge or some kind of echo in there I recognised. Blasted wastelands that looked a bit like deserts I'd seen in other films, the central North Island's desert road or the road to Motunau; decaying cityscapes that reminded me of abandoned or near-abandoned industrial zones and those pictures of a deserted Pripyat and visions of cyberpunk mega-cities looked similar to buildings and built-up areas I vaguely remembered being in. There was a mix starting to form here – a combination of real and fictional landscapes blurring in memory. “STALKER” (the game) got me interested in Tarkovsky (I'd already heard his name after hearing “Solaris” was based on an older film by a Russian dude) and I managed to sit through all of Stalker (the film) in one go just because of the fragmentary 'place' echoes evoked by the various settings in the film. I'm pretty darned sure I haven't been to any of the locations used in the filming “Stalker” but due largely to the cunningly crafted scenes and depictions of the landscape, they certainly linked (I suspect both consciously and subconsciously) to memories of places I'd been that were like the settings from the film.

Novels, films or games require this connection with the reader's past experience to create a strong feeling of place and crafting the language in such a way so that it does this is often a deliberate process. While this isn't really news to anyone, being aware of the technique and doing it well are very different things. In really effective post-apocalyptic texts especially and some dystopian texts (Bladerunner comes to mind here) the landscape permeates the whole text and consciousness of the reader so acutely that regardless of the medium or engagement around characters, ideas or plot, the reader can't help but imagine the various settings of the text as if they were there. While this effect isn't just confined to PA and dystopian texts (I have vivid memories of staying up all night with a friend to play Another World on his Amiga 500 – perhaps one of the best games ever for landscape ambience) the permeation of landscape through an entire text is a must-have imo in any decent PA or dystopian text. It can work well in all three types of texts too. The inescapable greys, browns and even more versions of grey in the film adaptation of “The Road” made me nearly want to expire along with the land just as the regular interjections of the landscape in the book wouldn't let me forget how sick the geography had become. I'd wager this permeation is a difficult thing to achieve and simply devoting large passages of text to describing landscapes won't necessarily achieve it. It is also, in my mind, quite different from imbuing geographical settings with symbolic meaning – a great technique if you can manage it but one that is vastly different from developing landscape as character. Beautifully crafted passages (there's a nice example at the beginning of “England” by Richard Jefferies) are great for articulating a landscape and associated emotions accurately just as working to develop landscape as a symbol is super for informing a reader of important ideas though neither of these techniques effects the reader in quite the same way as a text in which the landscape permeates the entirety of the language. The landscape isn't just a place where things happen, it's an emotive lever, an experiential device that doesn't speak obvious, specific meanings but tweaks the reader in a quite different and sometimes much deeper manner.

Landscape as character then, seems to consist of two areas that involve considering reader response and experience and one that doesn't. Evoking fragments of emotional memory and linking to memories of locations from the past (both real and fictional – the lines seem to blur over time) both take into account reader response and experience. Although planning for this might seem fraught, I doubt any of the authors (I use the term widely to refer to any creator of a text) of the really awesome texts planned the landscape in them specifically for me. I imagine the reason they appealed so much is that the landscape was a character or something tangible for the author to begin with. Probably their personal experiences and relationship with landscapes (both real and imagined) was developed enough so that the landscapes in their texts were able to achieve both the evoking of emotional fragments and geographical memory in the reader -and- that they were able to permeate the entire text and consciousness of the reader.

There are plenty of PA and dystopian texts that don't achieve this effect too, and comparisons here might assist in illustrating what I'm on about. I enjoyed “The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins - it had some compelling characters who developed in the course of the text, a really interesting setting (at least politically and socially) and some engaging ideas. We've also had a really fantastic response from the students at school and have ended up buying a few hundred copies for our year 12 students. Check out WikiEducator for their collaborative textbook effort. For me though (and yes I know it's teen fiction but the criticism still stands) “The Hunger Games” didn't excite enough to make me want to read the next two in the trilogy. Despite all the great stuff in the novel, the landscape just didn't cut it for me – it didn't evoke any emotive fragments, geographical memories or permeate the text in the way it could have. Landscape was utilised nicely at times to develop the reader's understanding of the challenges the main characters faced both within the games and outside in wider Panem and to develop the vision of the controlling and oppressive Capitol. The landscape wasn't alive however. It wasn't a character that linked to other things from my previous experiences. One might argue that this could just be due to my less than impressive knowledge of American geography and simple fact that the places Collins had in mind when describing scenes in the novel were too different from those I'd experienced. Obviously it's difficult to engage with such an argument subjectively but when I compare the text to any of the others I've mentioned, the landscape in “The Hunger Games” as far as I could ascertain, really only served to further the plot – a serious problem in any PA or dystopian text.

It's not just a criticism of teen fiction either, some teen fiction I've read does it really well. “Unwind” by Neal Shushterman didn't really create landscape as a character to begin with but in last part of the novel in the aeroplane graveyard I really felt like I was there. Sure, I've never been to an aeroplane graveyard before but I've looked at them on google earth and something about the ongoing descriptions of the place resonated for me, definitely because of permeation and also, possibly because of some echoes against some fragment or past geographical memory. There's plenty of adult PA and dystopian texts that didn't create these effects for me too and many of them are films and games. Sure, I haven't been to New York before but I've sure seen a lot of it in films. “I am Legend” just didn't provoke any kind of spatial or emotional response from me for its landscapes. “Far Cry” did - the levels were well thought-out and varied enough to keep me interested even though the entire game was all set on tropical islands while Crysis, on the other hand, just seemed repetitive to me. After the third or fourth level, it started to feel like the same shit different sandwich. I'd be interested to hear whether anyone finds Crysis 2's setting in a PA New York does it for them and if the conversion of the game to a completely linear journey (thanks consoles! Not!) totally ruins it. Sure, films are linear but I think they can still develop landscape effects OK but games, on the other hand, rely hugely on non-linear play to help create landscape as character. But I digress, I'll get back to to finishing something I started a while back on non-linear games being awesome.

There's no doubt (at least in my mind) that all texts need to resonate in some way with their readers. Developing landscape as character through evoking fragments of memory (emotional and geographical) along with ensuring that the landscape permeates the text is an important way of achieving resonance with readers. Engineering this can be difficult just as over-engineering it can be disastrous. It is perhaps more obvious that this process needs to take place with characters and ideas but not so obvious with landscape. I'd suggest that landscape resonance through develpoing it as character is equally important as the more traditional concerns with themes and characters and even more so with PA and dystopian texts. In post-apocalyptic texts, a huge part of the appeal and potential development of ideas both for individual characters and the text as a whole, is the readers being able to identify just how messed-up the world has become. Exactly how different is the landscape from what we know now? Sure, the social and political environment is important too but you just don't get to feel them in the same way you do the landscape both in real life and in works of fiction, whether they're games, novels or films. To fully appreciate this context dissonance and then be able to properly utilise the lens science fiction texts have to offer for examining the modern world, a reader has to be able to compare what's in the text with what they know already and not just in a thinking way but also from an emotional response with a subconscious connection to geography and spatial memory. This comparison just isn't as effective when the reader hasn't engaged closely with the landscape and also compared that with what they alreadybknow. Sure, these comparisons aren't all about landscape. There's plenty of other cool things in PA and dystopian texts like the negative effects of technology, exciting turns of plot, interesting characters and the brutal violence and issues of survival just to name a few, but any PA or dystopian text that fails to develop landscape in its own right misses out on one of the core features of the type. While creating an immersive and evocative landscape obviously isn't the only necessary factor for a great text it's certainly a necessary one. I expect on a world survey of people who have seen “Red Dawn: and read “The Hunger Games” most would vote the latter as the better of the two. I would suggest however, that for a truly great text that sits in or between the labels of post-apocalyptic and dystopian, landscape as character is a vital consideration.