Trauma, Time and Technology: Dystopian Visions

This project looks at trauma as “culture” within the frameworks of time and related imaging technologies. I theorize three cultural time-zones, but for the Fellowship I focus on trauma future-tense. I analyze the dystopian visions in select Hollywood films to explore today’s chronic cultural anxiety about the future of the world, often symbolized in the figure of the child. I analyze the relationship between utopian and dystopian visions, theorize functions that dystopian visions serve, and ask why they figure mainly in western cultures.