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Alex Bujaj Ms.

O'Connor Period 8

Utopia/Dystopia Essay April 7, 2015

Dystopia is a lilting word with a dash of humor in it when pronounced aloud; and so is utopia.

Nevertheless, the definitions behind them are very serious. A dystopia is defined as an awful, terrible

place; utopia as a perfect one. In Orwell's novel 1984, he combines the concepts of a utopia and a

dystopia. Its characters live under a brutal, totalitarian state, but their government brainwashes them

into believing it is a perfect world, or a utopia. Utopia and dystopia, similarly, appear in the simmering

stew of American rhetoric and life. Although some may claim Ameica is a utopian country due to its

guaranteed freedoms and widespread first-world living conditions, it seems more like a dystopia when

one considers the abundance of neurologically and psychologically deleterious television screens,

which can quite prophetically be grooved in parallels in Orwell's 1984.

So-called first-world living conditions (barring even for this essay the multiplicity of places in

which this is not the case, in which people in America live in poverty and danger, not in first-world

living conditions) are not so first-world when one considers the plethora within well-off America (and

even not-so-well-off America) of televisions, for research has shown that the pulsating flicker-rate of

turned on TV screens induces within the viewer alpha brainwave states, switches the majority of brain

activity from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere, and, finally, stimulates opioid receptors by

causing the release of endorphins within the brain (which is to say, causes chemical happiness); the

alphawave state is associated with greater receptivity or suggestibility, daydreaming, and inattentive

wayward thoughts (as opposed to the normal betawave state associated with rational thinking and

performing mentally aerobic exercises such as reading, writing, solving math problems, and speaking

well) in this state, it is far easier to advertise products to the viewer and to influence the viewer's

emotions (which see next clause); brain activity in the right hemisphere is correlated to emotional

decisions and reasoning, whereas the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for rational thinking
and reasoning; moreover, a certain area in the left brain-hemisphere is responsible for separating

illusion from reality, such that, neurologically, physiologically, the average television viewer believes

(or their body believes) that what they are seeing on the screen is real; when this switch from left- to

right-hemisphere functioning is considered, it is very possible that people could, indeed, be traumatized

by or desensitized to certain violent or scary situations shown on TV or movie screens, just as a woman

in Orwell's novel complains that, they didnt oughter have showed [the frightening scene] not in front

of the kids they didnt it aint right it aint [sic] (Orwell 9; Moore). Finally, the sheer pleasure TV-

watching induces by releasing endorphins within the watcher's brain is such that TV-viewing could be

called addictive, or, euphemistically, habit-forming; families who were asked for a study not to

watch TV at all could not resist for longer than a few months, claiming that they felt depressed and

lonely after a while without it (Moore). The widespread acceptance of and usage of an addictive

glowing screen forcefeeding distorting notions about reality fabricated by a few buddy corporations

into its viewers' subconsciousnesses throughout America is quite the dystopic thought, also pointed out

by Orwell's conception of a telescreen always turned on and blaring propaganda, announcements,

and exercise routines in every Outer Party member's home. William Gaddis, in his posthumously

published novella Agap Agape (pronounced, a-GA-pay a-GAPE, the first one being a transliteration

of the Greek word for divine, Platonic, Christian love), bemoans also this abundance of simple,

dumbed-down mechanized pleasures in America, not just limited to televisions but also appearing in

things such as the player piano, the computer, and popular novels and music; or, rather, if one wants to

be picky, the narrator of the novel, an old man with a terminal illness undergoing surgeries and taking

prednisone as a painkiller (which is heavily implied to influence the rambling, disjointed, sometimes

ecstatic style of his roughly one-hundred page long monologue) complains about the stupidity of the

masses and overabundance of chaos and entropy in the modern world due, paradoxically, to an

information overload and excess of mechanization and simple, addictive pleasures like TV, in one case

ranting, for example, entropy drowning everything in sight, entertainment and technology and every
four year old with a computer [grammar sic]; which is to say, he complains of the dystopic quality of

America (Gaddis 2).

To conclude, the train of true happiness has already departed, leaving all Americans loitering at

the bare and run-down station of addiction; however, despite the possible fact that the world one lives

in is dystopic, one shall always have the simple pleasure of laughter to cheer one up.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gaddis, William. Agap Agape. New York: Viking, 2002. Print.

Moore, Wes. Television: Opiate of the Masses. The Journal of Cognitive Liberties. Vol. 2, Issue No.

2. 2001: pages 59-66. Web.

Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Signet Classics, 1977. Print.

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