Numerous works of fiction look to the future and find there some reflection of issues in the present. One of the ways of depicting the consequences of current problems is to project them into the future and to show how they affect a society intended to be utopian but that is in reality dystopian, and this technique can be seen in Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale and in the films Metropolis (1926) and Soylent Green (1973). The social problems addressed in each film are different, but in each case the creator of the work shows that problem in stark relief by setting it in a supposedly utopian social setting.
The word "utopia" can have a specific meaning or a broader meaning. A utopia is a society that offers a perfect form of government, at least according to the individual who has developed it. The word is of Greek origin, a play on the Greek word eutopos, meaning "good place." Many writers have seemed convinced of the idea of and the inevitability of progress, and yet the reality has often seemed to belie this belief with periods of economic troubles, social unrest, and other ills. At various times, this has produced a reaction in the form of utopian literature suggesting how to correct the ills of society by reshaping it from top to bottom. Jean Pfaelzer writes of a spate of such writing at the end of the nineteenth century,
The popularity of this generation of utopian fiction lies partially in its incorporation of various explanations for the recurrent industrial depressions and suggestions for their cure. Progressive, pastoral, and feminist utopias subscribed to class analyses and cooperative remedies, while conservative, dystopian, and apocalyptic utopias realized the promises of "trickle-down" theories, which held that the community prospers where industry prospers (Pfaelzer 8).
Margaret Atwood raises a number of feminist issues in her novel The Handmaid's Tale, a book embodying a vision of a dystopia...