포스트아포칼립스적 민주주의: 영화 Zardoz와 민주주의의 역설

초록

This essay tries to examine the relationship between democracy and political control under the regime of democracy by analyzing John Boorman’s post-apocalyptic film Zardoz. Frequently, democracy and political control support each other. Plato in the 5th century BC Athens and Tocqueville in the 19th century America, both the founding theorists of ancient and modern democratic theory, recognize this in their analysis of democracy. Equal condition of democratic society encourages its people to speak up their opinions; voices of people are so influential that they rule all the minority’s opinions. For Plato this leads to the regime of tyranny, while for Tocqueville this brings about the control of spirit by majority rule. The theme of equality that causes the oppression of minority opinions, which could be termed as ‘democratic paradox,’ can be found in Zardoz. In the futuristic world of Zardoz, where the transhuman elite (the Eternals) cut off itself from the brutal masses (the Brutals) by its utopian place, the abundant material life and the perfect democratic culture among the Eternals can only be possible not only by the harsh exploitation of the Brutals but also by the exclusion of the minorities among the Eternals. In general, the post-apocalyptic narrative depicts the future world where most of our present commonsensical beliefs such as democracy and human rights had gone missing. This essay argues that by reading seriously the post-apocalyptic narratives one could view the democratic values not as an everlasting truth but as a historical one that is sure to be changeable in a radically different condition of the dystopian future.

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