An Empty Space in Film

‘I would define utopia as food, water, shelter, clothing, healthcare and education for everybody on the planet, by whatever means gets us that, or the work towards that state’.

(Kim Stanley Robinson, quoted in Ford: 00:24)

Miguel Abensour described utopia as the education of desire (Playfair, 2015). As a viewer, a political subject and an artist, when I look at the body of mainstream popular film, I feel the desire to see something on the silver screen that I cannot find, to educate myself and others. Because sometimes seeing is believing.

In science fiction (sf) film I see only dystopia, which takes the present and extrapolates it towards something more hellish. In other filmic genres I see our current sociopolitical system repeated endlessly, mirroring and reflecting back on itself. What I do not see is what the lay person might call utopian film — spaces that are attempting to show how much better we could have it, given our mindboggling powers as a species, if only we could organise the world according to different principles.

The crudity of the above reasoning is likely to annoy utopian scholars. The utopian impulse is clearly present in dystopian narratives, as it is in most mainstream film. The aim of this crude logic is to attempt to prise open a neglected, narrow space, that of the utopian or eutopian art-form. I hope to elucidate this space, which in its smallness is also potentially rather large and vital. Darko Suvin wrote that sf ‘can be written only between the utopian and the dystopian horizons’ (2010: 43). If we are both correct, then consumers of film are missing half a genre. If all fiction shares the same horizon, they are missing even more.

I am concerned herein with defining what elements such a film ought to contain. As such, this is an article for makers, but also hopefully for scholars who are interested in opening up and supporting new fields of creative activity. My hypothesis asks: What if there were more such films — how might a broader public imaginary affect our collective hopes, dreams and goals?

Fredric Jameson wrote that for utopian ‘representability to be achieved, the social or historical moment […] must have reached a level of shaped complexity that seems to foreground some fundamental ill’ (2007: 14). Global climate is a symptom of such an ill: the United Nations recently announced that we have 12 years to drastically alter the way our planet is organised to avoid widespread global catastrophe (Watts, 2018). The urgency of this situation makes it clear that new strategies need to be considered for reshaping our current systems — and fast. Climate change shows that existing systems are not working properly. Considered in this light, filmic representations of life as usual that support the status quo also take on a hellish, dystopian aspect. If we can therefore bundle almost all film into the dystopian category, it becomes clear there is a need for a eutopian Yang to the dystopian Yin.

The current sociopolitical complex that includes climate change also includes other worrying trends, from post truth to rising nationalism and increasing wealth inequality. Rather than climate change, it is the global elites, enabled by neoliberal policies, that are driving these trends (Monbiot, 2016; Balunovic, 2016). Whilst plenty of dystopian films can be found that might illustrate and therefore tacitly support these trends, what is absent from film are positive visions of a different sociopolitical norm that present positive counter positions to these problems: ideas that connect the reality that our world is breaking with a broader, more generous notion of commons.

This article explores this absence. We will analyse three recent films: Black Panther (2018) and Tomorrowland (2015), which were chosen for their seemingly utopian potential, and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), which is dystopic and used to provide contrast. In order to interrogate these films we first need to do some work to define the tools of our analysis.

Why Film?

Mainstream film in particular is considered to be a more vital space within the arts than performance, sculpture or painting because, as Robert Shelton wrote, ‘movies are arguably the commodities most central to defining this American century’ (1993: 19). Of course, this comment is a simplification, but it contains an essential truth. Movies are the myth making, dream shaping constructs of light and sound that, of all the art-forms, are most consumed by the general public. They transmit and shape desire, they travel well on the internet in this century and they influence masses of minds.

George Monbiot writes, ‘Stories are the means by which we navigate the world […] You cannot take away someone’s story without giving them a new one’ (2017: 1). If we want the world to change, employing mediums and methodologies that are accessible to everyone seems wise. Movies are such a medium. Everyone on the planet with access to a TV or computer is an expert in reading these stories which, often following the well-known myths presented in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), contribute to our picture of how the world is and how it can be. In delineating a relatively unexplored part of the film spectrum, the thought is less that the introduction of more eutopian stories will change the world directly, rather that they might make a small difference to what is perceived as possible or desirable, which might in turn affect real change.

Manjana Milkoreit writes about the ‘inclusion of positive-desirable (utopian), negative undesirable (dystopian) and mixed visions of the future’ (2017: 3) as follows:

All three types of future visions can have different cognitive emotional effects on political actors. The full spectrum of future thinking on political behavior needs to be explored to develop a good understanding of the psychology of utopian vs. dystopian thinking (2017: 3).

This is clear. A complex relation exists between what we see on screen, the world which we inhabit and our future desires for that world – and this relation is little understood. If the above hypothesis is correct that eutopian film is absent, then one part of the spectrum is not being explored in this very public medium. A desire to see examples of eutopian mainstream film is a desire for a fuller representation of the spectrum of imaginative possibility.

Previous Articles on Utopian Film

Having identified why film is being considered, we should first examine more carefully if the utopian or eutopian filmic space really is as empty as I claim. During the 1990s there were a number of articles written for the Utopian Studies journal about utopian film. Peter Fitting (1993) opened proceedings in Issue IV, No. 2 by employing Lyman Tower Sargent’s definition of utopian fiction as ‘a non-existent society described in considerable detail’ (1990: 4) to perform an introductory taxonomy of the field.

Fitting starts by observing that according to Tower Sargent’s definition there are very few films that might be called utopian. He references Things to Come (1936) and Lost Horizon (1937) as two obvious but dated examples. Observing that both of these films ‘devote relatively little space to the representation of the new society’ (1993: 2), Peter Ruppert observes that Fitting excludes these films from being utopian on these grounds, before opening up his field of enquiry to encompass ‘such diverse genres as dystopias, ethnographic films, political documentaries, pornotopias, TV sitcoms, and fascist films among others’ (Ruppert, 1996: 139). Despite this broad range, according to the initial terms with which Fitting conducted his taxonomy, namely Tower Sargent’s definition, Fitting’s search came up blank.

In the subsequent article in that issue, Shelton discusses utopian film with regards to genre and encounters the same problem, namely that such films are scarce. On the one hand, Shelton is certain that, as Tom Moylan writes, ‘Utopia cannot be reduced to its content’ (1986: 38, italics original) — a claim that we will tackle shortly. On the other, Shelton is certain that Things to Come belongs to the utopian film genre, despite its pedagogical nature and its failure to provide a ‘sensual, visual experience’ (1993: 22). He closes in a way that testifies to the absence of contemporary utopias, writing of potential utopian film scholars that their ‘immediate goal may be to play film historians and review and re-view the films of the sound era, especially before 1950’ (Shelton, 1993: 23)

Impulse versus Art-Form

There is a section in Fitting’s (1993: 8) article that takes up ideas presented in Richard Dyer’s ‘Entertainment and Utopia’ (1992) where Dyer writes that ‘Entertainment does not, however, present models of utopian worlds […] Rather the utopia is contained in the feelings that it embodies’ (1992: 20). Ruppert’s article, ‘Tracing Utopia’ (1996), picks this point up and expands upon it. Ruppert agrees that Fitting’s search implies a complete absence of utopian films (1996: 139). Disagreeing with Shelton, Ruppert claims a special property of utopian film is that it ‘confounds easy classification because it exceeds the normal bounds of genre description’ (1996: 139). Ruppert employs the above quote from Dyer to show that utopia does exist in film, but not explicitly. He argues that ‘Utopian film […] cannot be defined by conventions of setting, plot, iconography, codes, or structural features.’ (1996: 140) I disagree with this position. Using the word ‘utopia’ in this way obfuscates a whole avenue of possibility.

Jameson (2007) elucidates this point clearly by drawing a distinction between the ‘utopian impulse’ and the ‘utopian art-form’. Identifying a paradox in the work of Ernst Bloch, Jameson writes, ‘we would therefore do better to posit two distinct lines of descendency from More’s inaugural text: the one intent on the realization of the utopian program’, of which the utopian art-form can be considered a part, and the other, ‘an obscure yet omnipresent utopian impulse finding its way to the surface in a variety of covert expressions and practices’ (2007: 3). This is the utopian impulse. When considering the utopian art-form and film, Fitting, Shelton and Ruppert show that there is a dearth of films that share attributes with Thomas More’s Utopia (1516/1965), which does fulfil the criteria of Tower Sargent’s definition. They demonstrate an absence of the utopian art-form. For scholars who are involved in discussing existing artworks, this lack presents a problem that must necessarily be addressed by finding other ways to read existing films utopically: the utopian impulse.

To further clarify what the utopian impulse is, we can turn to Douglas Kellner, who explains in his article Ernst Bloch, Utopia and Ideology Critique (2010) a distinction that Bloch made between ‘half’ and ‘genuine’ enlightenment. He writes that whereas half enlightenment consists of a ‘rationalistic dismissal of all mystification, superstition, legend’ (Kellner, 2010: 41), full enlightenment ‘criticizes any distortions in an ideological product, but then goes on to take it more seriously, to read it closely for any critical or emancipatory potential’ (Kellner, 2010: 41). This emancipatory potential is the utopian impulse.

Crucially, Kellner is talking about critique. In dismissing films that are not utopian art-instances, it is not my intention to deny the importance of the utopian impulse. As we saw whilst discussing Shelton’s reading of Things to Come, a film that fits the utopian genre can be short on the utopian impulse. For artists, however, another avenue presents itself: the possibility to create new utopian art-instances. But what are they? To find out, going against what Moylan wrote (see Part III above), utopia must be reduced to its content.

Historical Context: More’s Rupture

Before exploring the details of the art-form, it is helpful to take a closer look at why utopia has acquired its negative reputation. Utopia’s absence is not specific to film. Utopia has been historically challenged and sidelined by almost everyone, from Marx and Engels to Margaret Thatcher. More’s Utopia (1516/1965), written at the dawn of the modern age, stands as an early depiction of a dream that was to become increasingly real over the intervening centuries. As Jameson observes, ‘the force of More’s original Utopian starting point and the grandest of all the ruptures effectuated by the Utopian Imagination [is and remains] the thought of abolishing money and private property’ (2005: 229, capitalisation original). In other words, communism. Historically, it is now clear that beginning with ‘the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions’ (Marx & Engels, 1888: 258) is not to be advised.

Marx and Engels wanted to be taken seriously and presented their arguments as having a historical, scientific basis. An association with seemingly silly or impossible fantasy stories such as Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy or News from Nowhere (1892) by William Morris created a credibility problem. However, their argument against utopia was flawed. Suvin draws this out in Defined by a Hollow, concluding that ‘in a future history, which is only postulated and contingent, science and utopia, necessity and possibility, the vertical and the horizontal, embrace’ (2010: 64). He is saying that the seeding of cultural ambition that any political movement necessarily performs always involves the creation of utopias. Consider the competing Russian and American visions of the Cold War era: Due to the enormity of what was at stake, as sf author Kim Stanley Robinson observes, western utopian stories were obliged to consider their utopian dreams within the confines of capitalism (Robinson, in Lipschutz, 2013: 16:45).

Later, as the communist systems caved in, Thatcher, Reagan and other proponents of the neoliberalism described in The Constitution of Liberty (1960) by Friedrich Hayek that these figures represented, encouraged anti-utopianism in the West. They presented communism as an impossible, undesirable dystopian alternative whilst maintaining that capitalism was the only viable utopia. As Thatcher famously declared, ‘There is no alternative’ (Monbiot, 2017: 36)

The neoliberals were aided in their critique of these failed systems by critical storytellers such as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, who described the dystopian elements of alternative systems to great effect in the mid-twentieth century. Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) critiques Marx and Engels’ ‘forcible overthrow by any means’ in such a way that it can be taken as a critique of communism in general. Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), written in response to A Modern Utopia (1905) by H. G. Wells can similarly be seen as a critique of governments in control of the commons. As the cultural presence of these two writers during the 1980s (including as topics on the British school curriculum) suggests, their passions were used against them. In focusing on communism’s failings, their critiques were not centred on the problematic elements of the developing neoliberalism. By the fall of the Berlin Wall, as the alternatives collapsed and the neoliberal ideology became global (Monbiot, 2017; Mason, 2015), dystopia was firmly, relevantly back on the agenda but the other tool for its critique — the utopian art-form — had been marginalised.

Michael Ott’s article ‘Something’s Missing’ (2015) excavates the motivations for avoiding utopia in the influential theories of the philosophers Theodor Adorno and Bloch, whose works were certainly familiar to the likes of Orwell and Huxley. Ott draws a line from monotheism through historical materialism to Adorno’s inverse theology, wherein:

the dialectical negation of the negative does not automatically create or naturally unfold the positive. Instead as history has shown, such hope filled negation of what is can produce even more horrifying conditions than what existed before (2015: 15)

This is the taboo. Adorno’s solution was to focus on negating the existing system, also described as negative, which he argued was the only valid method of critique. This denial of the value of a negative’s reflexive positive is historically understandable, but ultimately stultifying, in that it plays too safe with the imaginary. Bloch criticised this position, arguing that ‘against its own intentions, such [unrelenting] negativity allows the status quo to remain the same’ (Ott, 2015: 20).

Bloch’s solution was connected to longing and focused on drawing out the positive in what was already in existence – the utopian impulse. His optimism produced a reading of the world that would somehow, naturally or ontologically, lead to a more utopian state of affairs given time. Adorno criticised Bloch’s ‘more transcendent use of dialectics’ (Ott, 2015: 19), accusing him of praising the communist states despite their obvious failings and of preventing utopia from emerging through this activity. He argued that when reified into a specific reality, the negative would always surface and railed against such administrated worlds (Ott, 2015: 16–20).

Both theorists’ positions create difficult paradoxes for the makers of real or fictional worlds. With Adorno, no-one is permitted to actively even describe how wonderful the constructs of the future might be. In Bloch, one can long and read something wonderful into what is, but one cannot act towards that. From a practical standpoint, these positions are clearly absurd: imagine preparing to make a excellent table by making only the worst tables possible. Acknowledging this conundrum, whilst recognising the historical validity of Adorno and Bloch’s arguments, allows us to grasp the importance of creating critical stories. Moylan’s texts on the ‘critical utopias’ (1986) and dystopias (2000) provide helpful insights here, though perhaps due to utopia’s decline this work does not extend to the present. Books examined by Moylan in Demand the Impossible (1986), such as Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), simply do not go far enough for us today, embracing as they do a universe that contains capitalist and communist poles. Today requires critical visions of a shared, inclusive totality. As Žižek writes, ‘Communism is today not the name of a solution, but the name of a problem, the problem of commons in all its dimensions’ (2014: 214).

As we have briefly seen, the cumulative negative feedback of various historical processes has stripped our times of utopian art-forms, colouring our dreams of the future between the globally dominant, anti-utopian capitalist visions and a plethora of dystopian nightmares. Taking into account the above, we can now move forward to define the missing utopian art-form.

Defining Topia, U or Eu?

In their projection of alternative no-places, dystopian art-instances can be described simply as being negative projections. We are attempting to define their opposite, positive utopian or eutopian projections. The words ‘utopia’ and ‘eutopia’ both create difficulties, connected to usage, meaning and public image.

The meanings More embedded in the word ‘utopia’ stem from ancient Greek. ‘U’ or ‘ou’ means ‘not’ and ‘topos’ means ‘place’, implying that utopia is ‘no-place’. Conversely ‘eu’ means good, implying ‘good-place’. Phonetically, the sound of ‘eu’ is present when one says ‘utopia’ out loud (Tower Sargent, 1994: 5). The word ‘utopia’ contains various meanings, including the idea that the place itself is a fiction (we should remember that More was writing in the sixteenth century, 89 years before the first novel in the Western Hemisphere, Don Quixote, was published) — and that such a place cannot exist at all: the good place is a no-place. As Oscar Wilde observed, subtler readings understand that progress is the realisation of successive utopias (1915: 28–29), but the idea of utopia as no-place is often used to claim utopias are impossible.

More plainly, a ‘eutopia’ is a good-place with echoes of a no-place when spoken aloud that loses its direct connection to being a no-place when it is written down. This problem can be further avoided if we make clear that we are referring to eutopian art-instances, which must necessarily be fictitious. An additional advantage the word ‘eutopia’ provides is that it provides a more balanced opposite to ‘dystopia’, as both terms are unambiguous in meaning.

The ultimate point here is that both of these words are problematic. The field of ‘futuring’ avoids this pitfall by simply avoiding the terminology of utopia altogether. This doesn’t make sense in this case, where eutopia is selected as presenting less baggage.

Interrogating Eutopia’s Definition

Tower Sargent provides a by-now familiar seeming definition of eutopia as:

(i) a non-existent society described in considerable detail (ii) and normally located in time and space (iii) that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as considerably better (iv) than the society in which that reader lived (1994: 9)

This definition can be interrogated in greater depth. Part i) below examines the society; part ii) the place; part iii) deals with ‘better’, including a subsection on ‘perfection’; and iv) explores the relation of the imaginary society to the reader’s own.

Examples Examined: Black Panther, Tomorrowland and Blade Runner 2049

How To Create a Eutopian Art Instance

‘The real goal for future utopian film scholars is to expand our focus […] into that for best original screenplay’ (Shelton, 1993: 23).

What we have learned above can now be used to describe a method for creating actual eutopian art-instances:

In order to create a eutopian art-instance a storyteller must begin by re-imagining the sociopolitical. In a dystopia, the system is stacked against humanity. A eutopia must reverse such infrastructure. The overarching problem of our times is the global commons. How can we better share this world of ours? There are plenty of ideas to be explored in non-fiction. Considering applying an element of More’s rupture (see Part V of this article) might also be a good place to start the creative process of exploring alternate sociopolitical realities: Is it a top down hierarchical system with better checks and balances? Is it a horizontal system with solid democratic systems for inclusion and truthful information dissemination? (Jameson in Balunovic, 2016) Is it a world run by machines of loving grace (Brautigan, 1967) or a ‘doughnut economy’ (Raworth, 2018) of semi-organised anarchy? Is it a system of interconnected self-sustaining ecologies (see EFFEKT Architects, Lynge, 2019), an international system of ‘hives’ (Palmer, 2017) or ‘pradashas’ (Harvey, 2000)? Is it More’s Utopia (which is asking for the Terry Gilliam treatment)? What is it?

Once the sociopolitical angle is selected, one can allow the imagination to build the ‘places’ that reflect and explore its infrastructural consequences. These spaces should be considered as the psychological framework for the characters, creating a platform for them to explore the effects of the sociopolitical logic on their behaviour. The ‘places’ of the film are the film-maker’s tools for creating cognitive estrangement in the viewer, wherein the specifics of the imaginary space is contrasted with our lived reality. The storyteller must also decide where to situate these places in time, choosing a temporal location relative to our own world – from a parallel world to the near future or distant past. Again, the type of cognitive estrangement this might effect in the viewer should be considered.

In combining the sociopolitical model with the ‘places’ of the film, criticality becomes essential for creating effective stories with believable characters. What problems might these places create for the characters? How would their hopes, struggles and dreams work within such a framework? How might these systems combine with our inherent natures and learned behaviours? In a near-future scenario almost all of us would have to readjust our current values to function effectively, creating the hero’s struggle. In a far future the entire paradigm of human behaviour might be drastically different. How would a time traveller from our age behave in such a world? How might these systems go dreadfully wrong (at the low point of the Freytag Pyramid) and how might these mistakes be adjusted to create ‘better’ conditions for human flourishing (at the end). Does the lead character end up flourishing or suffering? Individual comedy and tragedy can both still occur against a better sociopolitical backdrop, just as they can in a dystopian setting. Inspiring stories can be found in contemporary fiction, from Alastair Reynolds’ Conjoiners – a convincing attempt at describing a compassionate, collective consciousness that stands in stark contrast to Star Trek’s anti-collective representation of The Borg – to Le Guin, to Iain Banks’ ‘Culture’ series and on. The old masters such as Morris, Wells and More are all accessible and relevant. Other essential fields currently under-explored in sf film such as gender, race and disability may also find new outlets under a broader sociopolitical umbrella. The seeds are all there, pointing to all parts of the future.

Eutopia’s Absence and Mainstream Film

Of course, mainstream film is a somewhat impenetrable industry, requiring great skill, wealth and talent to succeed within. Selecting such an unpopular position as eutopia might seem unwise. However, what Levitas captures so well with the title of her book Utopia as Method (2013) is that utopian thinking is a methodology of thought and action without end. The collective project has to be to chip away at the existing edifices to carve out new spaces of hope. Now is a time of rupture. Governments, corporations and individuals are all being required to affect drastic change to react to the climate deadline (Spriggs, 2019). In such times, new spaces open up, inside and outside of existing systems.

The question of why eutopian films are absent from the mainstream had a clear answer for Shelton and Ruppert. Shelton writes, ‘we can safely call Hollywood a nexus of capitalist co-optation’ (1993: 21). This claim is clearly true regarding our examples. Having been made at Marvel, Disney and Sony, each one is tied in with product ranges and brand names. Ruppert pushed his critique of Hollywood further, writing that ‘movies cannot be expected to be overtly critical of the industrial and ideological apparatus on which their existence depends. Nor can they be expected to promote the overthrow of existing social relations’ (1996: 139). This claim should be disputed. Movies can be expected to promote the overthrow of existing social relations. That they do not is a scandal that we have simply accepted. Such acceptance, that movies can only serve as a part of the apparatus of confirming existing ideology, is not a good position from which to operate, politically or artistically and is inherently undemocratic. Strategies can be developed for opening up spaces such as film through imagining, enunciating and creating from multiple vantage points.

Activists within Hollywood might consider anew the affect the content of their work can have. There is a telling line towards the end of Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary Before the Flood (2016) where he says, ‘Now if this was a movie […] we could write the end of the script and we could figure a way out of this mess’. Despite its longing for a now impossible, indigenous relation to the natural world, James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) created a huge depth of feeling (Blake, 2010) and is full of the utopian impulse. Perhaps DiCaprio, Cameron and other like-minded individuals might take a deeper look at the worlds they are creating and acting in.

Living as we do now in the age of the internet, with its advantages such as crowd funding and user-led media coverage, movies are regularly made outside of Hollywood that make it through the film festival circuit to appear in the cinema and online. Primer (2004), Monsters (2010) and Prospect (2018) are three relatively low budget sf examples that have entered popular culture through this route. The internet also creates new possibilities for collaboration. There are ethical brands who might consider product placement, such as those connected with the ethical consumer movement (Kirchhoff, 2013). The field of utopian film festivals is also unsaturated. Avalanches start from the rolling of small stones.

The field of utopian scholarship might also consider extending its scope to further connections with the arts. Scholars such as Manjana Milkoreit from Purdue University and Denise Baden from Southampton Business School are actively using their positions to create calls for stories that relate to more ecological futures. The engagement of utopian positions would enrich this type of cultural mixing.

The arts themselves, particularly contemporary fine art, are a relatively open space. Despite its function as a buffer zone for political dissatisfaction (Steyerl, 2012: 6) and its focus on critique, there is room and a certain amount of openness within this field for attempts to visualise more positive sociopolitical places. Through creating networks, events and most importantly, new art instances, makers outside of mainstream film can generate new impulses inwards to the cultural centre. An important implication for contemporary fine artists considering touching mainstream film is that the myths described by Joseph Campbell (1949) and the story arcs of the Freytag Pyramid are not to be dismissed out of hand as being too mainstream. The full palette of the contemporary filmmaker is open to the eutopian scriptwriter. The medium is in one sense the message (McLuhan, 1967) but so is the content of the message. In seeking to address broader audiences, this point should not be overlooked.

Conclusion

Artists must always be brave. Levitas writes, of sociology, that utopia ‘needs to be released from a damaging self-censorship’ (2013: 217). If we are too careful, we diminish the spectrum of ideas filtering through to the mainstream. As Kellner writes:

the Left tended to focus simply on criticism, on negative denunciations of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, whereas fascism provided a positive vision and attractive alternatives to masses desperately searching for something better (2010: 41).

By imagining a radical alternative that presents sociopolitically different places to those on offer in mainstream and dystopian film, More’s rupture and the communist ideal of a world without private property or wealth remain relevant yet in need of refreshing. Due to various historical processes, it is precisely this sociopolitical space that has been under-explored in film. Clear attention should be paid to this blank spot to avoid the creation of ahistorical, unconvincing stories. It is clear that applying More’s rupture to a film script to explore alternative, functioning commons would have serious effects on the sociopolitical organisation of the imaginary societies created. As shown, when done properly, a clearly defined sociopolitical stance produces fresh imaginary ‘places’ that can support original characters with new stories to tell. These stories might well create an alternative sense of ‘better’ for some viewers, if the functioning alternative world is allowed to remain in the mind’s eye after the credits roll – even when the main character has failed in his or her task.

Although accepting this position might appear to be political, it doesn’t have to be. Allowing that the full spectrum of sociopolitical imaginative possibility is necessary might even be a moral imperative. Alternatively, eutopia’s absence from film is, simply put, intellectually and artistically intriguing. As is eutopia’s relation to the current need for an expanded imaginary of the global commons.

Eutopia and dystopia are the perfect tools for exploring this need and eutopia its under-represented better half. Of course, ‘utopia is potentially dangerous’ (Tower Sargent, 2010: 9), but as a maker of fiction, one is truly free. This hypothesis is focused on a safe space — films are only stories after all. Therefore film presents a good space to try such ideas out publicly. Precedent is strong in the film world. It might only require one successful instance to open the floodgates of the field. This would be an ideal case scenario. The best way to explore eutopian ideas would be within a large, diverse network of critical, constructive minds.

As the current plethora of comic book adaptations and space opera suggests (D’Alessandro, 2019), film is ready for a new, historically aware dialectic and as climate change shows, the world needs a large, open discussion about its future. Eutopia is a serious space because it is talking about our future. But if it is to be considered deeply, it must also be a space of play, humour and freedom. There is as much validity today in seeing a completely static society played out eutopically on the big screen as there is in seeing a flexible, dialogic, open and flawed space happen — if it provokes questions. Connections between multiple films in this new genre would spark dialogue and might inspire change.

It must be acceptable to imagine better places. If your tent is blowing in a strong side wind you don’t peg it on the sheltered side, you over-peg it to windward. You certainly don’t prohibit even talking about how to stop it flapping. A healthier balance of eutopia and dystopia would at the very least produce a more constructive cultural domain than the one we currently draw from, which might ultimately affect the real, where so many continue to suffer and the planet appears doomed. That is why eutopia should be in the cinema.

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.