Popular culture and reflexivity

the impact of dystopias on critical thinking

Abstract

Reception of popular culture (TV, genre literature, comic books, streaming series) is usually seen as ’mass culture’ that is a spectacle that stimulates consumption and paralyses critical thinking, following the Frankfurt School thinkers (the culture industry)
and Guy Debord. But popular culture is not necessarily the opposite of reflection and critical thinking. The dystopia, a type of novel that originally appeared in literature, draws attention to this. Like the state-theoretical utopias of the 16th and 17th centuries, these fictions focus on social issues in a world depicted as real (but removed in space or time) or imaginary, but presenting a deterrent rather than an ideal. A new phenomenon of our time is the emergence of dystopia as a transmedial genre in its own right, not only as an expression of a global sense of crisis, but also as a means of raising awareness of the present through projecting problems into the future (social injustice, environmental problems, etc.), for the widest possible audience, including the poorly educated, illiterate masses. The paper discusses the phenomenon in the context of informal learning and transversal competences, taking dystopia as a possible means of developing critical thinking and reflexivity. The dystopias, through their typical themes (human rights and bioethical dilemmas, environmental catastrophe, uncontrollable technological development, mass media manipulation, consumerism and ideologisation), are capable of raising awareness of these dangers on a broad scale.