A Dreddful Situation

Discussing a dystopian film and its relationship to real-world societal issues

In this essay, I will be looking at the real-world societal issues presented in Dredd (dir. Pete Travis, 2012), these issues are nuclear fear, overpopulation, civil unrest, police violence and drug use. Dredd takes place in a society in which law enforcers, Judges, have been given the power of judge, jury, and executioner. The film follows Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) and rookie-judge Anderson (Oliva Thirlby) as they attempt to bring peace to Peach Trees while facing Ma-Ma (Lena Heady), an influential gang leader. The film is an adaptation of the 2000AD Judge Dredd comics, a series which brings up many of the same topics.

Dredd is set within Mega City One, a vast city stretching from Boston to Washington DC, and is one of the few areas to survive a nuclear war. The fear of the effects of radiation is brought up in Dredd. Anderson is orphaned due to her parents being exposed to radiation and her genetics have been permanently mutated to give her telepathy. Dredd uses the “apocalyptic imagination to express real concerns about proliferation and consequent changes in the cosmological and mundane levels of life” (Shapiro, 111) as the Fukushima nuclear disaster happened a year before the film’s release, it was a nuclear disaster that fell into the same classification as Chernobyl and forced over 150,000 people to evacuate from the area (Anon, 2021) Outside the megacity the world, referred to as the Cursed Earth, is uninhabitable, it has been reduced to an irradiated desert. The barren desert of the Cursed Earth shows a lack of plant and animal life, a reflection on the real-world issue of nature’s population decline as the human population rises; since 1970, the world's plant and animal life populations have plummeted by 69% (WWF). The Cursed Earth and setting of Peach Trees mirror the lack of habitability that animals and plant life face; humans have been trapped in one area with no chance of escape as they are surrounded by threats on their dwindling population.

The focus of the film moves from the outside of the city to within the city itself, this shift echoes Hollywood’s changing focus on what the population feared, “overcrowding and resource depletion became central to Hollywood as nuclear fears temporarily subsided” (Dean, 172). Peach Trees is a two-hundred-floor housing block built within the ruins of the old city and is essentially a self-contained city; it is home to an extremely large number of people, most of whom are unemployed, as well as the Ma-Ma Clan. The housing block is continuously shown as being incredibly cramped with poor living conditions. The gang that inhabits the area has everyone appeasing their leader and no mistake goes unpunished, this can be seen when Ma-Ma throws three men, who have gone against her gang, off the building’s roof. The mega-city itself is a bleak prediction of what might occur in the mega-cities appearing across the globe, such as Saudi Arabia’s ‘Neom’. This issue was kept in mind when creating Dredd, as the production notes directly reference Sao Paolo, Mexico City and Jakarta, and these close quarters have been taken to the “next level of heart-stopping human chaos” (Dredd production notes, 315).

Chaos is made by showing civil unrest throughout the entire city, civilians are distrustful of Judges and are kept under the thumb of various gangs, drug lords and gang leaders are set on remaining powerful, and Judges are shown to be corrupt, taking bribes from gang leaders. These tensions can be seen in the real world, corrupt policemen, gang control and civilians’ distrust of police are commonly seen in news headlines and these themes have been used in films, such as 16 Blocks (dir. Richard Donner. 2006) and L.A. Confidential (dir. Curtis Hanson. 1997), for decades. American society prides itself on being fair and just as well as on individual rights. The echoing of civil unrest reflects the distrust of the American Dream and the systems America has put in place to instil ‘equality’, this unrest has “dispelled the myth that liberally governed industrial society was providing political and material equality to all Americans” (Shapiro, 149). The lack of equality can be seen in Dredd when comparing Peach Trees to the Hall of Justice. The government building is clean, spacious and well-lit. Peach Trees is a maze of dark, cramped, rubbish-filled corridors and compact rooms. Those who are seen as ‘valuable’ to the government have been given the privilege of a clean and safe living space. This police privilege can be seen in the real world as police often negate accountability for their actions, with both police-led and civilian-led misconduct organisations being called “dysfunctional” (McDaniel). Judge Dredd himself is subject to this privilege, he forces Ma-Ma to take the illegal drug Slo-Mo before killing her, an extreme action used to prolong Ma Ma’s death. Judge Dredd isn’t shown being held accountable for his actions, the mission simply being classed completed, and Anderson, who was complicit in this, earns a promotion. Though Judge Dredd takes advantage of this privilege, he carries out his duty to uphold the law, he leads his own investigation into misconduct when the Judges who arrive to assist him and Anderson are revealed to work for Ma-Ma. These Judges who have broken their oath and committed misconduct are swiftly executed, they have been held accountable for their actions yet Judge Dredd hasn’t, showing the double standard that is present in real life.

The Judges are seen as the epitome of just violence. Judge Dredd is similar to the nuclear weapons that produced this dystopian world. Franklin describes atomic bombs as “the ultimate peace making weapons” (1988), Judge Dredd is seen as an elite weapon in the fight against crime, he is renowned as being dangerous and efficient. His violent reputation causes the corrupt Judges to ask for an incredibly high payment for killing him. Judges’ violent actions are seen as warranted as the criminals they face are almost always shown to be violent and the option to be sent to an ‘Iso-Cube’, Dredd’s version of a prison cell, is rarely presented. An audience would normally be horrified by the brutality used by this film’s ‘police force’, instead they have become complicit in the violence used to uphold the law. The audience’s personal view of what is right and wrong has become distorted to fit the film’s societal views. Violence is an integral part of Dredd and the use of Slo-Mo leads to the “aestheticization” of it, it “create(s) significant aesthetic pleasure and emotional distance for viewers” (Prince, 28), this emotional distancing from distorted violence causes the audience to process real-life violence in the same way, diminishing the real-world effect of any violent actions.

Dredd briefly touches on the quality of the prison system, as one criminal would rather die than be sent to an Iso-Cube. The Human Rights Watch created the Prison Project, an international human rights group that examines the conditions of prisoners, and over the years have found many instances of sexual assault, physical assault and staff using excessive force (Anon)

Drug use is used as a form of escapism. Slo-Mo, a drug that slows the user's perception to 1% of its normal speed, is used many times in the film. The slowed-down sequences act as a reprieve from the closely packed corridors, giving the audience an escape from the claustrophobic feelings caused by Peach Trees; and “providing aesthetic relief” (Orpana, 303) creating oddly beautiful sequences, with the slowed music creating a psychedelic effect as blood splatter shimmers in the air. This need to escape the unpleasant area is found in real life with drug use being heavily connected to escapism. The want to see more Slo-Mo sequences echoes the want for more drugs, “escapism can serve as a motive or amplifier of addictive behaviour” (Jouhki and Oksanen, 202), drugs are taken to escape real life, offering relief, once this relief has ended, more of it is wanted, causing more drugs to be taken. The addictive nature of drugs and the escapism that they crave from their dystopian lifestyle is forced upon the viewer, as the rare glimpses of beauty from the Slo-Mo sequences leave the audience wanting more, simulating a real-world addiction and the escape it allows.

Dredd uses the basis of a dystopian setting to critique both contemporary issues and issues apparent at the time of release, as well as some that have remained continuous. As of 2022, there is a heightened awareness of overpopulation and its control, civil unrest, and certainly police violence. Fear of anything nuclear became heightened due to a nuclear disaster just before the film’s release. Awareness of drug use has remained a continuous issue, from the pro and anti-drug messages of the 1970s when Judge Dredd first made an appearance in the comics, to 2012 and 2022 where drug use and abuse have continued.

Bibliography

Anon (n.d.) Human Rights Watch: Prison Conditions in the United States [Internet]. Available from https://www.hrw.org/legacy/advocacy/prisons/u-s.htm. [Accessed 7th November 2022].

Anon (2021) Fukushima disaster: What happened at the nuclear plant? BBC News [Internet], 10th March. Available from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56252695. [Accessed 7th November 2022].

Dean, J, F. (1978) “Between 2001 and Star Wars”, Journal of Popular Film and Television 7, no. 1. Cambridge. MIT Press

“Dredd Production Notes” (n.d.). Lions Gate Entertainment. Lions Gate Publicity.

Franklin, H.B. (1988) War stars: the superweapon and the American imagination. New York, Oxford University Press.

Jouhki, H. and Oksanen, A. (2022) To Get High or to Get Out? Examining the Link between Addictive Behaviors and Escapism. Substance Use & Misuse [Post-print], 57 (2), pp. 202–211. Available from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10826084.2021.2002897. [Accessed 7th November 2022].

McDaniel, J.L.M. (2021) Police Accountability in the United States: A View from the UK. Policing: A Journal of Policy & Practice [Post-print], 15 (3), pp. 1684–1687. Available from https://yorksj.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=asx&AN=152716743&site=eds-live&scope=site. [Accessed 7th November 2022].

Orpana, S. (2014) The Law and Its Illicit Desires: Transversing Free Market Claustrophobia and the Zombie Imaginary in Dredd 3-D. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies [Post-print], 36 (4), pp. 298–319. Available from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10714413.2014.938568. [Accessed 7th November 2022].

Prince, S. ed. (2000) Screening violence. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, N.J, Rutgers University Press.

Shapiro, J,F. (2002) Atomic bomb cinema: the apocalyptic imagination on film. New York, Routledge

WWF, 2022 - https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-GB/

Filmography

Dredd (2012) Directed by Pete Travis. [Film] United Kingdom. Entertainment Film Distributors

L.A. Confidential. (1997) Directed by Curits Hanson. [Film] United States. Warner Bros.

16 Blocks. (2006). Directed by Richard Donner. [Film] United States. Warner Bros