If Not Here, Then Where
If Not Here, Then Where: Reflections on Utopia and Beyond was written by the students in the Cinematic Arts & Creative Technologies Magnet Center at Helen Bernstein High School as part of Paramount Pictures' Kindergarten To Cap & Gown program in 2024
Introduction
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the changes necessary to save it.”
Why is that?
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines utopia both as “a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions” and “an imaginary and indefinitely remote place.” Over the course of this school year, students from the Cinematic Arts & Creative Technologies Magnet Center at Helen Bernstein High School and their mentors from Paramount Pictures explored both aspects of this concept, analyzing and interrogating examples of utopias from popular culture as varied as Sir Thomas More’s novel Utopia and the musical genre of Vaporwave.
It was a theme that made some uncomfortable. There were tense debates about whether such a concept was problematic, or even relevant at all. Some claimed that perfection itself was an impossible ideal, and that there had never been, and would never be, a “real” utopia. Yet, within every struggle there is the potential for unpredictable creativity.
When challenged to write stories on the theme of utopia, it is fair to say that what the students chose to write about was anything but predictable. They elegized the utopias of lost youths, lost friendships, and lost childhood homes. They praised and defended the utopias of their heritage, of the natural world, and of having a space they could call their own. Finally, they envisioned never before imagined utopian worlds, some set in the future, some in alternative histories and timelines to our own.
What should not be surprising, though, is that in these stories, utopia is not found in laws, or governments, or indefinitely remote places. For these student authors, it is much closer to home, literally. They find utopia in the values of their cultures and communities, of their friendships and families, and even their passions, whether in the forms of ardent advocacy or romantic adventure.
In their acts of remembering, of advocating, and of envisioning, these stories are templates for reclaiming the past, critiquing the present, and ensuring the future. And in writing them, these student authors ultimately challenge the idea of a “natural order,” that there are no alternatives to the way things are. In the words of the late British cultural theorist Mark Fisher, these stories, “reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency [and] what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable.”
Therein lies the power of imagination. It gives us the capacity to transcend the bounds of the known ang glimpse the forward dawnings of new horizons. Through their stories, these student authors have imagined beyond what is, and in doing so, they have imbued new possibilities into what will be.
What these stories show is that the potential—or rather potentials—for utopia have always existed, do exist now, and will always exist. As long as we know where to look for them.
It may not be here. Not yet anyway. But it could be. And if not here, then where?
Mike Dunbar, May 3rd, 2024