Beyond American Dystopia: On the Rise of Apocalyptic Visions in the Contemporary United States Stefan Höhne
1 The Future’s Not What It Used to Be According to recent media discourse, American contemporary life has finally managed to imitate art, specifically dystopian fiction. Especially in recent years, countless journal articles, TV reports, books, think pieces, and op-eds have claimed again and again that the United States is presently nothing more or less than a dystopian nightmare realized. A flood of headlines—for example, “Trump’s America Is like a Dystopian Novel” (Feffer), “California Is Living America’s Dystopian Future” (LeMenager), or simply “America Is a Dystopia” (RajendraNicolucci)—present grim and cynical assessments of current political, social, and economic conditions, often with fatalistic undertones. Comparing American society to a dystopian fantasy-turned-reality has also become the basis for memes on social media, as well as the topic of millions of tweets, Facebook posts, and Reddit threads. At the same time, large and small screens have been flooded with highly successful dystopian stories for all demographics, from movies like The Hunger Games and Divergent to TV series like The Walking Dead and The Handmaid’s Tale. Along with this recent surge of tropes in both popular entertainment and political analysis, dystopian narratives have taken on new meanings and functions. While dystopianism has traditionally been employed to warn us of a grim future, often serving as a cautionary tale of possible technological, economic, and environmental dangers, in recent years it has become more exigent and urgent. It has also transformed into something else: namely, a powerful reflection of the present. Even after the 2020 elections, with the Trump administration voted out, these interpretations do not seem to be decelerating. Amerikastudien / American Studies 66.1 (2021): 271-77
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