These People Will Not Create a Perfect Society, But they do reflect our own.
Whatever utopia is, we can all agree it is not a reality TV show. But this has not stopped Fox from launching
Utopia, an ambitious reality series similar in its fundamentals to
Big Brother, but framed nonetheless as a grand, well-meaning social experiment. Fifteen strangers—accompanied by the reality TV-requisite strong personalities and/or ability to be summed up in a chyron—descend upon a bucolically situated outdoor compound where they will be isolated for a year, working the land and building—fingers crossed!—the perfect society.
Through first two episodes—the show will air twice weekly on Fox, so long as it’s not canceled; utopia can only exist
if the ratings permit it—a society in which men are not having violent temper tantrums every 20 minutes, let alone a perfect one, seems completely out of the question. And yet, even as
Utopia promises to never, ever live up to its name, its funhouse-mirror reflections of the fault lines—religion, class, politics—in our own larger, obviously imperfect society make for fascinating TV, if only occasionally. Harmonious social interactions never made for good television anyway.
