The Dystopia Where Nothing Gets Cancelled
We’re creating a marketplace of disinformation
The 1993 film Demolition Man imagines a future given over to surveillance, cultural conformity, and social control. There is even a literal “speech police” — an A.I. that automatically gives people tickets for using foul language. Some who don’t want to be subject to such restrictive controls live underground in order to preserve their freedom of speech and choice.
At one point in the film, leading rebel Edgar Friendly, played by Dennis Leary, mounts a passionate monologue defending personal liberty. He says “I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter, and buckets of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a nonsmoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to.”
Many of the most popular dystopias in science fiction are concerned with the tyranny of control, surveillance, and censorship. From 1984 to Minority Report and even to Star Wars, creators imagine that dystopia will result from powerful oligarchies restricting freedoms of speech, thought, and association.
In America, a libertarian impulse for unfettered free speech and choice is, of course, one of the most…
