Holden K's been writing a great series exploring why depictions of non-ironic utopias are so rare / unappealing.
I really love this suggestion in his latest post—that you can get a feel for a "moderate" utopia thru media centered on sports or performing arts.
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Earnest depictions of utopias often seem dreary because everything's too perfect—no telos!—but of course in these shows struggle for material scarcity is broadly replaced by struggle for creative expression, excellence, actualization, etc. Quite a beautiful vision, in some sense!
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(Of course, in practice much of the conflict and struggle in these shows is "really" about material scarcity—the paucity of scholarships, the practical zero-sum-ness of being an athlete or musician in the world, etc. But I can subtract that away and still get an intuition…)
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also see The Repair Shop on Netflix, it’s the pinnacle of Utopian Process Porn, a completely Fantastic universe where artisan craftsfolk lovingly restore a treasured bauble with a level of care that is nigh impossible to find at any price.
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Gosh, this sounds awesome.
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Thanks for sharing links. Should also acknowledge that making good art about "happy" stuff is just harder than "sad". We all know the cliche that "all great art is tragic". By default we find it easier to connect (deeply) with struggle for survival, loss etc.
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And to add some obvious examples of utopian works we have Huxley's Island and (better) Le Guin's (ambiguous) The Dispossessed and Herbert's Santaroga Barrier (if you subtract the weird cheese monster and just take it as psychedelics).
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