ENG 3310 - Fall 2026 - Chiodo

This course examines dystopian science fiction films as imagined worlds shaped by surveillance and systems of social control. Science fiction is a broad genre, and from the 1980s until the contemporary era, it has seen a common theme of what it means to live in a world where human behaviour is tracked, regulated, and managed, whether it is early cinematic visions of controlled industrial societies or contemporary films concerned with digital monitoring and predictive technologies. Through close analysis of key films such as, but not limited to, Blade Runner (1982), Brazil (1985), The Truman Show (1998), The Matrix (1999), and Ready Player One (2018), alongside various theoretical approaches from theorists such as Foucault and Deleuze, students will consider how dystopian science fiction represents the relationship between technology, power, and everyday life.

Together we will explore how dystopian films imagine societies organized around observation and control—whether through centralized state authority, corporate power, or more subtle forms of self-surveillance. The leading questions of the course will focus on asking how the assigned films depict authoritarian societies structured by technology, including artificial intelligence, data systems, and automated governance, and how dystopian science fiction both questions and reinforces technological forms of social control. Taking a historical approach, the course will move from mid- to late-twentieth-century films to contemporary works to trace the evolving conventions and boundaries of dystopian science fiction as a genre.