Annual Students Conferences at Humboldt: Conferences
 
Utopian Thoughts


Participants & Abstracts

Katarzyna Sobieraj
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Katarzyna Sobieraj was born on 22 January 1984 in Opole, Poland. In 2003 having graduated from International Baccalaureate in V Liceum Ogólnoksztalcace in Wroclaw, Poland, she has continued her education at the English Department at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, where in 2006 she has been awarded a Bachelor degree in English Philology. This is when her interest in American Studies has originated. Simultaneously to studying English Philology in 2004 she has chosen to vary her educational qualifications by undertaking studies at Department of Economics, University of Wroclaw. In January 2005 she was awarded SOCRATES/ERASMUS scholarship and as a result of that since October 2005 she has continued her studies in Germany, currently as a student of Master of Arts in American Studies at Humboldt-Universitaet in Berlin. Katarzyna is fluent in Polish and English, conversant in German, and is intensively learning Russian. Her other interests are linguistics, film, minimal art, and skiing.

Paper:
What Is Utopian About 24?

24 is an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning American television series first aired on November 6, 2001, with an initial thirteen episodes and broadcasted worldwide. Since then five seasons of 24 have been produced, and the sixth began airing on January 14, 2007. A motion picture based on the show has been written and was scheduled to be filmed, a video game - 24: The Game - was offered on the market, books and comics were written as well as many other gadgets created like 24: Conspiracy - a low budget, cellphone-only spin-off. The show was also parodied in other television shows and raised many controversies concerning for instance torture scenes shown in the series.

24 is without doubts one of the most popular television shows aired in the last couple of years. In order to assess what contributed to its popularity and attracted so many viewers to the television screens, I analyze the structure of the show, the formation of the characters and the way of storytelling. In my presentation I look for both utopian and dystopian elements and investigate their interplay in the series.

Having analyzed various articles as well as the show itself, I came to the conclusion that the combination of utopian and dystopian elements adds to the popularity of the series. A viewer identifies the familiarity of the society depicted on the screen with the surrounding him real world. In addition if a viewer can identify the patterns or trends that would lead to the dystopia it becomes for him/her more involving experience.

I am convinced that the 24 series is important and relevant in the context of the conference topic not only due to its popularity but also the marked influence it had on its public.


A version of this paper has been published in:
Envisioning American Utopias. Fictions of Science and Politics in Literature and Visual Culture.
Antje Dallmann, Reinhard Isensee, Philipp Kneis (Editors). Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010.