For the most part, I try to be an optimistic sort of a fellow. That's hard thing to be in an increasingly pessimistic society. So what is it about dystopian novels which I find so appealing? I haven't a clue. Perhaps because I know most of them are going to end on a positive note, x number of pages later, whereas with real life, I have the same belief, but the script's end in not within immediate sight.
In William Sleator's 1974 young adult science fiction novel "House of Stairs", five sixteen year old are brought to a strange prison. It is the future, but we do not know much about this world other than it is a world of scarcity. All the children come from orphanages, but have nothing else in common. Their prison is a huge room with no visible walls, floor or ceiling. There is nothing but seemingly endless flights of stairs which seem to go nowhere. On one landing is running water in a basin which must serve as both sink and toilet. On another is a strange machine with blinking lights which occasionally produces food.
The machine rewards the kids when they exhibit certain behaviors, many of which they discover by accident, and others by experimentation. As the machine begins to require more elaborate and regimented behaviors, it becomes apparent that rewards are more frequent as their behaviors grow increasingly selfish and cruel. Two of the kids realize they are being manipulated and escape as far from the machine as possible. The novel ends with one of the most chilling lines I have ever read in a science fiction novel: "Without hesitation they began to dance."
Despite the chill of that last line, this is a book which had a profound impact on me when I read it first in high school. The social degradation the kids experience has been compared to William Golding's "Lord of the Flies", but I found it ending with a great deal more hope, at least for two of the kids. To me, it is a story about moral agency. The two characters who refuse to be manipulated are seen by the others as well as by their captors, as uncooperative and incorrigible failures. But in the end they still have the ability to chose their behaviors for themselves.
I'd like to see House of Stairs adapted for the screen, but I doubt it ever will be, as least not adapted well. Hollywood talks down to teens, doesn't think they can understand concepts of freedom of choice and social order. When books with such high concepts are adapted for screen, those concepts are expunged or replaced with CGI graphics, explosions, brain-numbing music, and adult actors in revealing clothing portraying teenagers in a hurry to grow up.
Children in general and teens in particular have a great desire to move the world in positive directions, but seldom are given the tools or permission to do so. If Hollywood truly listened to youth, they would learn that youth want better things than what the evening news offers them, that they rail against injustice and seek relationships that have a deeper meaning than "entertainment" shows offer. Perhaps one reason why dystopian novels are currently so highly popular in the young adult genre is because however frightening that literary world is, people their age not only have choices, but the courage and ability to make those choices. As much as I disliked the Twilight novels, I can say this: the characters therein did make positive choices (even though they felt compelled to do two dozen incredibly stupid things before they reached that point.)
Bookstores are filled with literary pabulum. Best seller lists suggest that there are many with strong appetites for the banal. But what about longevity? What about books that might not sell 17 million copies this year but nonetheless are in print decades later, enduring because they have a point, and not simply a glossy cover? What about books which require the exercising of a bit of gray matter over books that require no more brain function than watching a soap opera?
And if those books can require intelligent thought, why not movies?
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