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Snowpiercer Dystopian

Decent Essays

The most alarming aspect of dystopias stem from their power to challenge personal and societal values surrounding the central notion of what it means to be human. This instigates the startling realisation that the future is greatly dependent on value-driven responses to the environmental, social and political issues of contemporary society. Korean director Joon-Ho Bong’s 2013 post-apocalyptic dystopian film ‘Snowpiercer’ depicts the environmental collapse of the Earth as a direct result of human response to global warming. It also explores the ethical concerns faced by the lower class citizen within their confined setting on a train in which horrific social stratification is enforced. Bong presents a dystopian society set in 2031 to prompt …show more content…

This provokes the shocking realisation that the future is contingent on the response to contemporary issues. Most dystopian texts ‘paint…a future world that could plausibly happen’ (DeStefano, 2011) evident in Bong’s ‘Snowpiercer’, which was inspired by the threat of geoengineering, a conceptual global intervention aimed to counteract climate change. At the start of the film, the artificial cooling substance, CW7, is dispersed into the atmosphere, however a dramatic sting effect foreshadows it eminent failure. Additionally, the unsettling long shot of the resulting dark, inhospitable wasteland Earth has become exposes technology’s ecological endangerments and the consequential fate of humanity. The eponymous train bound to circle the uninhabitable Earth is an allegory for the cyclical nature of scientific develop in the destruction of the natural environment. Bong critiques humans’ misplaced reliance on technology to survive – CW7 was thought to be the ‘revolutionary solution to mankind’s warming of the planet’ (Snowpiercer, 2013) and the train is an artificial motif for the natural world. Through the composer’s depiction of an unscrupulous dystopian future beginning from credible responses to global warming, the most shocking aspect emerges to be the realisation of the contingency of the future on present

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