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Police states in fiction
- see Police state
Metropolis is a 1927 silent science fiction film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and Thea von Harbou. Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia.
Wikipedia:George Orwell's Wikipedia:George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (WP) describes Britain under a totalitarian régime that continuously invokes (and helps to create) a Wikipedia:perpetual war. This perpetual war is used as a pretext for subjecting the people to Wikipedia:mass surveillance and invasive police searches.
Wikipedia:George Lucas' feature film version of "Wikipedia:THX 1138" (1971), and the film school project he based it on, portray a police state.
The ten-part graphic novel Wikipedia:V for Vendetta, by Wikipedia:Alan Moore and David Lloyd, tells the story of a masked Wikipedia:anarchist's efforts to subvert the fascist Norsefire Party that has gained control of the Wikipedia:United Kingdom. (See also the film of the same name.)
Wikipedia:Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We depicts a dystopia in which the walls are made out of glass, the only means of getting information is the state newspaper, and imaginations are forcibly removed from people.
Wikipedia:Sinclair Lewis' Wikipedia:It Can't Happen Here satirically details the rise of fascism in the 1930s United States.
Sleeper (1973) is a futuristic science fiction comedy film, written by, directed by, and starring Woody Allen. It is loosely based on the H. G. Wells' novel The Sleeper Awakes. 22nd-century America seems to be a police state ruled by a dictator, about to implement a secret plan known as the "Aries Project."
Wikipedia:Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction film written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. In the year AD 2293, a post-apocalypse Earth is inhabited mostly by the "Brutals", who are ruled by the "Eternals" who use other "Brutals" called "Exterminators", "the Chosen" warrior class.
Wikipedia:Enigma Babylon One World Faith is the state religion of the totalitarian Wikipedia:world government in the Wikipedia:Left Behind series that ostensibly seeks to harmonise the remaining faiths on earth after the Rapture as portrayed in the novel.
Wikipedia:Battle Royale, a Japanese novel by Wikipedia:Koushun Takami, describes an Wikipedia:alternate timeline Wikipedia:Japan as being in a police state. This Japan is known as the Republic of Greater East Asia (大æ±äºœå…±å’Œå›½ Dai TÅa KyÅwakoku).
Wikipedia:Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) is a science fiction film based upon the 1966 novel Colossus, by Dennis Feltham Jones, about a massive, eponymous American defense computer becoming sentient and deciding to assume control of the world.
Wikipedia:Watership Down (1972), Richard Adams' famous novel about rabbits running away from their warren and building a Utopian society, features another warren, Efrafa, which is run like a police state. Each rabbit in Efrafa is given an identification mark, sentries are posted 24/7 around its borders to prevent escapes and patrols are sent out regularly to hunt down and imprison stray rabbits. Rabbits are allowed out in the open at certain times of day, and if they are caught outside without permission, they are punished – one form of punishment shown in the book involves ripping the ears off of the perpetrator.
Wikipedia:The Running Man (part of the Bachman books series written by Wikipedia:Stephen King), first published in 1982, depicts a dystopian United States in the year 2025; a film of the same name with Wikipedia:Arnold Schwarzenegger released in 1987 (set in the year 2019) has a United States under a totalitarian police state where convicted felons participate on a television show to win a presidential pardon. The film version goes into more detail about how television controls a police state - including the use of computer-generated imagery to mislead viewers.
In 1988, Queensrÿche released Wikipedia:Operation: Mindcrime, a narrative Wikipedia:concept album that proved a massive critical and commercial success. The album's story revolved around a junkie who is brainwashed into performing assassinations for an underground movement; the junkie ("Nikki") is torn over his Wikipedia:misplaced loyalty to the cause and his love of a reformed hooker-turned-nun ("Mary," vocals by Wikipedia:Pamela Moore) who gets in the way. "Mindcrime" has often been mentioned by critics alongside other notable concept albums like Wikipedia:Pink Floyd's Wikipedia:The Wall and Wikipedia:The Who's Tommy. The band toured through much of 1988 and 1989 with several bands, including Wikipedia:Def Leppard, Wikipedia:Guns N' Roses and Wikipedia:Metallica.
Equilibrium (2002) is a science fiction/action film. Equilibrium is set in the futuristic, and dystopian city-state of Libria. In the year 2072, the leaders of the world sought to create a society free of conflict. It was determined that human emotion was the primary cause of conflict, and thus any and all emotionally stimulating material was banned. These materials are rated "EC-10" for "emotional content" (a reference to the MPAA film rating system[3]), and are typically destroyed by immediate incineration. Furthermore, all citizens of Libria are required to take regular injections, called "intervals," of an emotion-suppressing drug called Prozium, collected at the distribution centers known as "Equilibrium". Libria is governed by the Tetragrammaton Council, which is led by a reclusive figurehead known as "Father".
"Wikipedia:The Minority Report" (1956) is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick first published in Fantastic Universe January 1956. It is about a future society where murders are prevented through the efforts of three mutants who can see the future. It was made into a film in 2002.
In the Wikipedia:Honorverse series of novels, the Wikipedia:People's Republic of Haven is a classic (quasi-Communist) police state until the end of the ninth novel of the series, titled Wikipedia:Ashes of Victory. Also, in more recent novels and stories of the series (and its spin-offs), the Wikipedia:Solarian League, despite being outwardly a Wikipedia:democracy, manifests many typical traits of a police state, especially in its outer territories (which are administered by the Wikipedia:Office of Frontier Security).
In Suzanne Collin's Wikipedia:The Hunger Games, a futuristic dystopian North America, now called Panem, consists of a ruling government called the Capitol who controls the remaining twelve districts, by forcing one boy and girl from each district to compete in a live broadcast show called The Hunger Games, in which the 24 children must fight to the death on live TV. Only one of them can survive and escape the life of the poor and starving for a life of riches and food.
In the Wikipedia:Nickelodeon series Wikipedia:The Legend of Korra, the main setting, Republic City, shows characteristics of a police state in the oppression of the city's non-benders, including cutting out their power and enforcing curfews against them.
The Wikipedia:video game Wikipedia:Half Life 2 features an alien empire called the Combine controlling Earth, and ruling Wikipedia:City 17 as a police state.
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