Comedy in Dystopia

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Araceli Hernandez Professor Jason B. Williams English 105 Research Response 1 Research Response 1 Dystopian futures have made a comeback. With the rise of the nerd, sci-fi, conspiracy theories and alternate realities have become a staple of the pop culture plotlines. There are dozens of films that portray mind-controlled communities, the cult of consumerism and plenty of post-apocalypse hi-jinks. However the cheesy plots, hit-and-miss casting and unlikely happy endings bring it home for me. Comedy in dystopia came to mind when mulling over topics for this assignment. There is something darkly funny about mankind as a Sims data file, or trying to relate to a character who has woken up to a government-funded zombie pandemic. I opened a couple tabs and began my search for pop culture references, mostly because I thought it would be the easiest to begin with. Using my go-to Google, a search for "dystopian films" produced The Hunger Games, Total Recall and the third Sertoli, Sertoli, Sertoli, which I had not heard of before. I watched a trailer of Sertoli, Sertoli, Sertoli and was delighted to find the absurdity I was looking for. An Orwellian future whose secret is in the hands of an inept underground resistance agent trying to uncover the truth about the Second Branch. The entire short was available online and it was just as comical as I'd hoped. The best example I found as far as comedy in dystopia was the podcast Welcome to Nightvale. It is a set as a "This American Life"-esque radio show, it follows the daily happenings of fictional town Nightvale, which aside from the expeditious punishments from the Vague but Menacing Government Agency sounds like a swell place to live. This podcast, written by Joseph Fink, is currently churning out new episodes which I will be keeping up with. Having eliminated the easier topics, I moved on to novels.

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