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What you can't force onto people, sell it to them. They will always buy it.
George Orwell would turn over in his grave if he ever learned of what we've done with his seminal novel 1984. It's still widely read and appreciated today, but 99,9% of its readers have lost all perspective about the criticism it entails. Oppressive regimes and cultural tyranny are not born out of a vacuum and they don't freakin' belong to a dystopian future. They are here and they are all works in progress. Very few people share this opinion and I was glad to find that French author Seb Doubinsky's ruthless and efficient novel White City brought tyranny back where it belongs: in your lives and on your minds.
I'm probably going to rant a lot. Consider yourselves warned.
I'm probably going to rant a lot. Consider yourselves warned.
White City is set in a mysterious alternate present/future where cities don't have the same name. There is New Paris, New Babylon and most important Viborg City, where the characters of the novel live. There is Lee Jones Jr., a successful horror author looking for a sense of purpose and belonging to Viborg City's cold streets. Leila Bogosian, Lee's career-driven girlfriend who's leveraging her profession as a journalism to try and transcend the color of her skin and there's finally Sigrid Wulff: an Aryan-looking policewoman with a bad reputation. They are brought together by a murder that threatens to collapse the foundation of the oppressive and intolerant regime they live in.
Tyranny is usually portrayed in contemporary science fiction as totalitarian regimes enslaving the shit out of everybody, except for the wealthy and decadent elite they need to stay in power. Seb Doubinsky illustrates in White City that the truth * is much more unpleasant. Choosing three main protagonist was very much a deliberate decision as Doubinsky wanted to illustrate how different the experience of Viborg City is for people, depending on your cultural and ethnic background. Inequity and discomfort is key to understand tyranny. The faceless government of Viborg City is anything but fair to its people, but it keeps its story straight and its people in ignorance of the facts and the past, so everybody's unhappy, but powerless to change things.
She felt like in a movie with Marlene Dietrich, one of those noir Weimar Republic films announcing the darker days ahead. Except that the darker days were already here, but had been artificially colorized.
The characters of White City struggle with the idea that they're being deceived and controlled a faceless government as it gradually dawns upon them. The greater truth is conflicting with their own personal interest. ** Nobody ever thinks they're supporting a tyrannical regime. It's how it settles in: by alienating citizens from one another. White City is terrifying because it is deliberately low key. Seb Doubinsky pictures an oppressive regime from its citizens point of view and their world is not so different than ours. Tyranny does not necessarily equals a totalitarian state and it's not because that you're not oppressed that you're necessarily not letting it happen to anyone else.
I loved White City to death. It's a courageous and involving novel that kept my gears grinding for its entire duration. I can't ever see it becoming a best-seller though, because it hits too close to home. There's a reason why 1984 was forsaken to the land of dinner party discussion: it's terrifying to think about what's happening to your world if you still can afford a rather comfortable existence. White City is promoting ideas the majority of us aren't ready to accept and this is why it's bound to forever remain underground. So, I did rant a lot after all, but White City is a very à propos novel as it discusses a potential future at a time where we all have our heads in the sand. Are you brave enough to read it and look at yourself in the mirror?
BADASS
BADASS
** It's a bit of a blanket statement, but it would be a spoiler if it wasn't.
