Sunday, 11 May 2014

utopia ... dystopia

A little visual joke:



Gretchen Edelen » Utopia/Dystopia

Utopia means ‘no place’.

Dystopia means ‘bad place.’

The major difference is this, or so says the Wit: a utopia is the kind of place you’d want to live in.

Dystopia is simply that place lived by someone else.

A dystopia is therefore a vision of someone else’s ideal society imposed upon you, usually extended out to a nightmarish pitch for the specific purpose of satire. Many of you would find my ideal state and my ideals, applied to the real world, to be your own private little hell: dystopia, though really, it is good for you, I swear.

Yevgeny Zamyatin, ‘We’ | The Anatomy Lesson

In other words, one person's view of heaven is another person's view of hell:
Jay Doubleyou: history of britain in front of the tv

But it all makes great material for the English-language lesson...

Here's a whole set of steps to follow:
Design Your Own Utopia

And here's a look at the Truman Show (in French!)
ESL utopia dystopia in literature and films | tweeters, team anglais

This looks at the American Dream and Utopia:
www.mensaforkids.org/lessons/americandream/mfklessons-americandream-all.pdf

A useful overview from Wikipedia:
Utopian and dystopian fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
List of dystopian literature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A new film, due out in August, considers these themes:
The Giver (2014) - IMDb
... based on the children's novel:
The Giver - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
... and there are several lesson-plans built around this:
fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1109&context=education_ETD_masters
Dystopia | BetterLesson



The Giver - Official Trailer - The Weinstein Company - YouTube
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