Fox's Utopia

One of you alerted me to the fact that Fox apparently premiered a new reality show called Utopia last night. They claim it is a social experiment about how to create a society from scratch. I didn’t see the premiere, but initial reviews appear skeptical.

If the show has any relevance to our class, though, perhaps it does raise the question of whether utopian communities are always "reality shows" to some extent—that is, performances designed to be "watched" by the outside world. Gardner suggested as much about Drop City in last week’s readings, when he argued that the Droppers were artists in search of publicity above all.

If one question raised last week is whether utopias always become dystopian, maybe this new show raises the question of whether utopians are not unlike publicity-hungry reality show cast members.

Or maybe those are the same question …