This chapter offers a critical analysis of the utopian aspirations of Saul Williams’ and Anisia Uzeyman’s cyberpunk-techno Afrofuturist feature film, Neptune Frost (2021). Set in an unnamed future society, the film depicts the revolutionary efforts of a group of miners and survivors of war, exploitation, and repression, as they attempt to build a utopia they call Matalusa Kingdom in an other- or inter-dimensional realm they discover, called Digitaria. From Matalusa Kingdom, the collective attempts to disrupt a global system predicated on the repression and exploitation of the labor of those who, like themselves, are consigned to its periphery. While Neptune Frost aspires to be a radical, ecological, and humanistic manifesto exposing the environmental, political, and social violence embedded in, and indeed intrinsic to, our globalized technological and historical moment, this chapter argues that it largely fails to realize these aspirations—like the very utopian project it portrays. In making this claim, I utilize Margaret Atwood’s concept of ustopia to suggest why the film fails to fulfill its utopian program. In turn, I argue that the film reveals the limitations of Atwood’s concept, effectively turning her concept against her.

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The Art of Being Governed? On Failings of the Utopic Imagination

  • Nefeli Forni Zervoudaki

摘要

This chapter offers a critical analysis of the utopian aspirations of Saul Williams’ and Anisia Uzeyman’s cyberpunk-techno Afrofuturist feature film, Neptune Frost (2021). Set in an unnamed future society, the film depicts the revolutionary efforts of a group of miners and survivors of war, exploitation, and repression, as they attempt to build a utopia they call Matalusa Kingdom in an other- or inter-dimensional realm they discover, called Digitaria. From Matalusa Kingdom, the collective attempts to disrupt a global system predicated on the repression and exploitation of the labor of those who, like themselves, are consigned to its periphery. While Neptune Frost aspires to be a radical, ecological, and humanistic manifesto exposing the environmental, political, and social violence embedded in, and indeed intrinsic to, our globalized technological and historical moment, this chapter argues that it largely fails to realize these aspirations—like the very utopian project it portrays. In making this claim, I utilize Margaret Atwood’s concept of ustopia to suggest why the film fails to fulfill its utopian program. In turn, I argue that the film reveals the limitations of Atwood’s concept, effectively turning her concept against her.