Resumen de Popularizing utopia in postmodern science fiction film: Matrix, V for Vendetta, in Time and verbo

Ángel Mateos-Aparicio Martín-Albo

• The most salient feature of the postmodern worldview is the attack against all kinds of theoretical constructs that explain the world in unifying and totalizing terms, what postmodern critics have called �metanarratives� (Lyotard, 1984). This distrust of metanarratives includes the criticism of the high culture/low culture divide, and has been the basis for the increasing critical interest in popular culture in general and in popular literature in particular. In this sense, utopian projects are seen by postmodern authors as textbook examples of all-explaining theories of reality, and consequently the very notion of utopia seems in conflict with the postmodern stance. Nevertheless, several critics like Fredric Jameson have realized that these postmodern doubts about utopias have been appropriated by the dominant capitalist discourse to justify the lack of alternatives to the economic and social order of late twentieth century global capitalism. Ironically, the conviction that there is no alternative to global capitalism has been seen as another example of metanarrative by postmodern authors, and therefore subjected to criticism in postmodern science fiction movies like Matrix, V for Vendetta, In Time, and Verbo. The aim of this paper is to show that these films launch an attack against the dominant capitalist discourse and offer wide audiences a popular �although perhaps domesticated� notion of utopia and project for revolution which are coherent with and may stand in the postmodern worldview.