Freedman, Carl. "Utopianism and Bong Joon-Ho's Snowpiercer.

" Science Fiction Film and

Television, vol. 9, no. 1, 2016, pp. 84-86.
84 Carl Freedman

Utopianism and Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer

Carl Freedman
In 1961, Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst and (marginal) adherent of Frankfurt
School Marxism, contributed an afterword to the Signet Classic edition of
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four (1949). Fromm begins by considering
the great tradition of positive utopian fiction, as established by Thomas More’s
Utopia (1516), and continued through such subsequent Renaissance texts as
Johannes Valentinus Andreae’s Christianopolis (1619) and Tomasso Campan-
ella’s City of the Sun (1623), all the way up to the late nineteenth century, with
Edward Bellamy’s hugely popular Looking Backward (1888) – and Fromm
surely ought to have also included William Morris’s masterpiece, News from
Nowhere (1890), which was self-consciously composed to provide a revolu-
tionary Marxist alternative to Bellamy’s reformist and highly mechanised
version of socialism. Fromm maintains that this tradition, for all its vigour
and historical depth, runs aground shortly after the First World War, when
Renaissance and post-Renaissance hopefulness is replaced by modern fear
in the new tradition of the negative utopia: as instanced not only by Orwell’s
novel but also by its most prominent precursors, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1927)
and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932).
More than half a century later, Fromm’s generalisation – that the positive
utopia has been overwhelmed and superseded by the negative sort – still
pretty much holds good. There have certainly been exceptions, most notably
what Tom Moylan designated the ‘critical utopias’ produced by the radical
energies of the American 1960s and early 1970s: Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispos-
sessed (1974), Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), Marge Piercy’s Woman on
the Edge of Time (1976) and Samuel Delany’s Trouble on Triton (1976), among
others. But, for the most part, those who construct images of alternative and
future societies are far more likely nowadays to depict horror than happiness;
and this tendency is perhaps even more pronounced in cinematic than in
literary texts. For this reason, it is worthwhile to pay especially close attention
to such remnants as still survive of the positive, hopeful imagining of ‘no place’
that More initiated half a millennium ago.
Such hopeful elements are visible in a particularly interesting recent film
whose utopianism, however, might well be considered predominantly negative:
Snowpiercer (South Korea/Czech Republic/US/France 2013), the first (mainly)
Anglophone film by the South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. The basic
framing situation of the movie should seem familiar enough to any connoisseur
of science-fictional representations of planetary disaster. The donnée is that,
 Utopia anniversary symposium 85

prior to the time present of the film, the threat that global warming posed
to humanity became so obvious that the world’s governments – finally – got
together to take decisive action against it. A certain chemical (perhaps inspired
by ice-nine in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (1963)) was injected into the
planet’s upper atmosphere with the intention of cooling things off. The scheme
worked much too well. Not only was global warming reversed, but the Earth
was plunged into a planet-wide ice age; a sub-freezing climate took hold all over
the world’s surface, where human life was thus rendered impossible.
And that would have been that for homo sapiens, had it not been for the
prescience of a single eccentric multi-billionaire – one Wilford (Ed Harris)
– who was always sceptical of the global-cooling scheme. He arranged for a
remnant of humanity to be preserved aboard a moving train – the Snowpiercer
of the title – that ceaselessly circles the frozen Earth. As the action of the
film begins, Snowpiercer has been in service for 17 years, and an apparently
more-or-less stable human society has developed in its constantly moving
cars. It is a society violently divided by class. Most of the passengers are
packed tightly into the rear of the train, living in overcrowded, filthy cars with
nothing to eat but disgusting, mass-produced blocks of protein. A bit closer
to the front, in slightly more tolerable conditions, are certain kinds of skilled
technical personnel. Closer still are the real elite: the first-class passengers who
inhabit a lifeworld of steaks and sushi, of tailor-made suits and fine dining,
of steam saunas and discos. Finally, at the front of the train, right behind the
all-important engine, is Wilford’s own private compartment. This hierarchical
order is maintained by Wilford’s thuggish paramilitary force, which governs
by torture, murder and other forms of physical terror.
Thus far I have described a fairly typical negative utopia, with the chief
emphasis on the savage violence of socio-economic class so crucial for Orwell
himself. Yet hope is kept alive – as Fromm’s Frankfurt School colleague Ernst
Bloch would insist it always must be – by indications that Wilford’s totalitar-
ianism is not as stable as it initially seems to be. Two alternatives are suggested.
In the main action of the film, the charismatic Curtis (Chris Evans) leads a
classic proletarian revolution of the rear-car dwellers with the intention of
capturing the engine. Inspired by his mentor Gilliam (John Hurt) – essentially
Marx to Curtis’s Lenin – Curtis insists that an inability to capture the engine
was the central failing of all previous revolutions (in this context the engine may
be taken as a metaphor for the generalised production of exchange-value). Yet
this Marxist (or quasi-Marxist) project is challenged by the more anarchistic
rebellion of the technical worker Nam (Kang-ho Song) and his protégé Yona
(Ah-sung Ko). Nam (named after the East Asian country that defeated France
86 Lisa Garforth

and the US in warfare) believes liberation to lie not in capturing the train but
in blowing it up: which he actually manages to do. He has been studying the
frozen landscape from the train’s windows for years, and is convinced that the
Earth is now warm enough for human life (after the manner of the Inuit) to
take hold on its surface again.
There are no guarantees that either Curtis’s Marxism or Nam’s anarchism
are adequate. In a conversation with Willard (which recalls O’Brien’s extended
colloquy with Winston Smith in the final section of Nineteen Eighty-four),
Snowpiercer’s boss tells Curtis (though perhaps falsely) that Gilliam has actually
been working in collusion with him. Maybe even revolutionary Marxism itself
can be contained within some sort of Marcusean ‘repressive tolerance’. As for
Nam’s explosive propagande par le fait, it is unclear whether it will really lead
to life and liberation, or amount only to the sort of pointless destruction for
which the Marxist tradition has traditionally criticised anarchist violence.
As with every other serious positive utopia from More onwards, the positive
utopianism of Bong’s film offers (in Le Guin’s now canonical phrase) a very
ambiguous utopia indeed. Nonetheless, Snowpiercer works through Gilliam,
Curtis, Nam and others to remind us that, even in the most unpromising
circumstances – from the bloody Tudor absolutism of 1516 to the far bloodier
global regime of inequality in 2013 that is condensed and satirised in Willard’s
train – the impulse to imagine different, better alternatives must never die.

Looking at the ends of the Earth: utopian fantasies on ice

Lisa Garforth
I want to propose a couple of images from the BBC nature documentary series
Frozen Planet (UK/US/Spain/Germany/Greece/Canada 2011–12) as indicative
of a kind of green utopianism for the early twenty-first century, 500 years after
More’s text named or founded a genre. Perhaps it is most appropriate to think
of this as a green utopianism for the Anthropocene, if that name invokes not
only a geological era in which human activities have become the dominant
influence on environmental and climate change, but also a cultural era in
which we constantly reflect upon this state of affairs. The images might help in
thinking through the uncertainties and contradictions of a world after nature.
They seem simultaneously to invoke the purest wilderness and the wildest
human fantasy. They indicate something of the highest value but at the utmost
peril; they signify nostalgia for a past that perhaps never was, and the collapse
of the future into the present.
Troy Bordun
Student ID #
ENGL 170 Writing and Communication Skills
Dr. Troy Bordun
Article Map
Jan. 31, 21

Freedman, Carl. “Utopianism and Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer.” Science Fiction Film and
Television, vol. 9, no. 1, 2016, pp. 84-86.

Preliminary map
Freedman outlines the debate, namely that we have more negative utopias than positive ones in
post World War I. A recent film, Snowpiercer, is an interesting case because it only seems
negative.
Thesis (Note that we can divide this up into a generalized thesis on p. 84, then the specific thesis
at the end on p. 86. A thesis does not need to come at the start, although it’s usually best to do so
especially as you’re developing your writing skills): But, for the most part, those who construct
images of alternative and future societies are far more likely nowadays to depict horror than
happiness; and this tendency is perhaps even more pronounced in cinematic than in literary texts. For
this reason, it is worthwhile to pay especially close attention to such remnants as still survive of the
positive, hopeful imagining of ‘no place’ that More initiated half a millennium ago. (84)
As with every other serious positive utopia from More onwards, the positive utopianism of Bong’s
film offers (in Le Guin’s now canonical phrase) a very ambiguous utopia indeed. (86)

Key terms and definitions:

Positive utopia: an idealized place where happiness is maximized for all, represented in works such
as Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Bellmay’s Looking Backward (1888), and Morris’s News from
Nowhere (1890)
Negative utopia: Authoritarian society, such as Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Brave New World
(1932), and We (1927)
Ambiguous utopia: the subtitle of Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed (1974). In this novel, neither the
capitalist planet nor anarchist moon are full utopias – the message is that the two need each other to
fully realize utopia (if utopia is possible at all – Le Guin would suggest no, but we should still try).

After the introductory materials (debate and context), Freedman begins with a general overview
of the film's story, moves to refining the world and characters, and finally sets up a central
tension between two political views: Marxism v anarchism.
Story: uninhabitable world with a train circling the frozen wasteland. The train is organized by
social and economic class. Lower-class Curtis starts the proletarian (term for worker/working
class) uprising to the front of the train. Revolution derailed by the anarchist Nam who believes
that destroying the train is a better plan than taking it over.

Final argument on page 3: The film isn’t clear as to whether the Marxist or anarchist revolution
is the best option. Snowpiercer is thus an ambiguous utopia, thus a change in direction for
contemporary utopian films and studies (because most films and literature these days depict
negative utopias).

Conclusion: however ambiguous the film may be, “the impulse to imagine different, better
alternatives must never die” (86).
 VISUAL ESSAY PLANNER
OPENING BODY CONCLUSION

Topic A1 Ref 1 A + “So What?”

Utopia and Snowpiercer Story of the film in general terms
The film suggests that Marxism may even
be part of what Marcuse calls repressive
tolerance, i.e., the passive acceptance
of governance that restricts freedom.
A2 Ref 2
Plot of the film: detailing specific characters and the
structure of the train
THESIS
Today, films/media depict dystopia rather than
utopia. Snowpiercer pits a marxist against an
anarchist and the result is an ambiguous utopia A3 Ref 3
rather than a negative utopia.

B + “So What?”
The film suggests that anarchism may just
result in pointless destruction and violence,
Argument A not leading to life or liberation.
B1 Ref 1
Curtis (Marxist) v Nam (anarchist) Curtis believes other revolutions failed because they
results in the ambiguous utopia did not aspire to capture the engine of the train

B2 Ref 2
Nam belives the world is warm enough again for
humans to inhabit. Thus, he believes the train should
be blown up (eradicating class altogether)

Argument B C + “So What?”

B3 Ref 3

C1 Ref 1

Argument C

C2 Ref 2
CLOSING STATEMENT

even if Bong cannot pick a side in the political

debate between Marxism and anarchism, it is a
valueable film for its utopian impullse to imagine
C3 Ref 3 a better world.

Adapted from The student's only survival guide to essay

writing. ASC 2011