The thing is, the genre of post-The Hunger Games dystopia that Divergent belongs to— the “what if LOVE was illegal”/“what if you were sixteen and you had to take a TEST that DECIDED YOUR FUTURE”/etc genre of YA dystopia— are a distinct genre from socially critical dystopias in the classical vein. They don’t attempt to make social commentary, for the most part, but what they do attempt to do is fascinating. I’d compare them less to 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale and more to the horror genre in the way that they take the psychosocial anxieties of everyday life and exaggerate them so that they actually are as threatening as they feel.
Specifically, YA dystopia of this kind takes the concerns of the imagined everyteen (burgeoning romantic and sexual attractions, specifically of a hetero nature as there are rarely queer MCs in these books; grades/the SATs; peer pressure and parental pressure and growing independence— not that these things are not real concerns for people in that age demographic, but “imagined everyteen” is important because the idea that these concerns would be a teenager’s biggest concerns is a very straight, white, and upper middle class one) and blow them up to the level of societal issues. The problem is that in seeking to validate the anxieties of the everyteen, it doesn’t really do anything else, and the experience of reading them is ultimately kind of selfish. Not that selfish comfort reads are a BAD thing, but I think if you’re writing a dystopia, you should aim a little higher.
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, though it belongs to a different era, is an example of this actually being done well, because the “everyteen concern” of enforced conformity to beauty standards is actually a real problem outside of teenagers’ heads, and provides opportunity for societal critique as well as validation of the anxieties of its target demographic.
The thing is, the genre of post-The Hunger Games dystopia that Divergent belongs to— the “what if LOVE was illegal”/“what if you were sixteen and you had to take a TEST that DECIDED YOUR FUTURE”/etc genre of YA dystopia— are a distinct genre from socially critical dystopias in the classical vein. They don’t attempt to make social commentary, for the most part, but what they do attempt to do is fascinating. I’d compare them less to 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale and more to the horror genre in the way that they take the psychosocial anxieties of everyday life and exaggerate them so that they actually are as threatening as they feel.
Specifically, YA dystopia of this kind takes the concerns of the imagined everyteen (burgeoning romantic and sexual attractions, specifically of a hetero nature as there are rarely queer MCs in these books; grades/the SATs; peer pressure and parental pressure and growing independence— not that these things are not real concerns for people in that age demographic, but “imagined everyteen” is important because the idea that these concerns would be a teenager’s biggest concerns is a very straight, white, and upper middle class one) and blow them up to the level of societal issues. The problem is that in seeking to validate the anxieties of the everyteen, it doesn’t really do anything else, and the experience of reading them is ultimately kind of selfish. Not that selfish comfort reads are a BAD thing, but I think if you’re writing a dystopia, you should aim a little higher.
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, though it belongs to a different era, is an example of this actually being done well, because the “everyteen concern” of enforced conformity to beauty standards is actually a real problem outside of teenagers’ heads, and provides opportunity for societal critique as well as validation of the anxieties of its target demographic.