Apocalypse: The New Dystopia

There are multiple reasons people choose to read books or watch movies, but there seem to be two reasons that are way more popular than the rest. The first is to escape our current reality. People find something to watch that makes them feel good or excited, and use that as a way to briefly escape the struggles of their own life. The other main reason that people read or watch movies is to highlight our worries and put them into a form that can more easily be expressed. It's sucks to just feel like somethings wrong but not really know how to verbalize that. So when something comes out that is able to express your fears, it becomes much easier to focus on what those fears are and explain them to others. A great example of this is 1984, which people used as a way to express their fear of the Soviet Union. However in one of my previous posts, I talked about how dystopias are becoming less popular as a form of entertainment, and I mentioned how it is probably because they dont feel as relevant as they used to. People aren't really as scared of dystopias anymore. I mean sure it can be scary to think about, but its hard to relate it with our current world. Now while dystopian media has gone down, the popularity of post-apocalyptic media has risen drastically. I think this is a reflection on what our modern society fears the most nowadays. It's no longer dystopias or the Soviet Union, now it's all about climate change. People are scared that we won't be able to stop it, and because of that post-apocalyptic scenarios are much more popular as a form of media. Another example of this phenomenon is from the mid-late Cold War. There was so much stuff about nuclear war. Some of the most popular movies from that time were about surviving a nuclear apocalypse. But 40-50 years later, we hardly ever see things about that. People aren't terrified that a nuclear apocalypse will suddenly occur anymore. Now everyones worried about how we're ruining the planet, and that fear is shown in our choices of media. So really, Apocalypses are the new dystopias. Which I guess would mean that a society where we stop climate change would be seen as a utopia? I dont know, its just something interesting to think about. 

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