"Dystopias make for conflicts… something for the human spirit to push against.” "Watchmen" artist Dave Gibbons explains our obsession with imagined states.
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00:00Dystopias make for conflict, make for unhappiness, dissatisfaction,
00:05something for the human spirit to push against,
00:07a very fertile ground for the imagination.
00:30As a vehicle for satire or social comment, because they basically extrapolate the way
00:45the worst things in society are going, I think they're a very fertile ground for the imagination
00:51and for humour and for conflict.
00:54Not to say too much about the HBO TV series, but what they're dealing with there are very
01:00contemporary problems, that whilst they are contemporary, do actually have an eternal
01:05appeal and have always been problems, have always been issues for society.
01:24I think that certain stories do have an appeal beyond the time that they're set in.
01:37Watchmen is that it is in a sense a timeless story, it's about uniting against a common
01:43threat, how we view people who take the law into their own hands, lots of things that
01:49have always obsessed society, so that's a very eternal question.
01:54The latest game, Beyond a Steel Sky, is a dystopia as well, it's got a lot to do with
02:13what really makes people happy, how can you make people happy.
02:17Not everybody has a happy life, and a lot of people live in circumstances which are
02:23not as good as they would wish, but entertainment has a wonderful ability to take people out
02:29of the everyday reality and to transport them somewhere else and for a short while help
02:33them forget their own circumstances, and that's one of the powers of great entertainment.