Expository Dark Angel James Cameron\'s Television Series

Expository Dark Angel

James Cameron's television series Dark Angel is about a young woman who has been genetically engineered to be a strong weapon in the service of the military. During the pilot episode of the series, set in 2009, Max (they young woman) and eleven other similarly genetically-engineered children escape from the top-secret facility where they are being experimented on. For the next ten years, these children live and grow in complete anonymity trying to avoid capture by the man in charge of the experiment, Lydecker and his search hounds. In addition, there is limited technology or even basic means of communication because of an internal terrorist attack on the United States some time in between 2009 and 2019 where the present of the series is set. This does not sound like a Utopia. In a Utopian society, everything is wonderful. There are no genetically-engineered children trained as high-tech weapons because there is no need for weaponry at all. There are no wars and no disharmony. The opposite of the Utopia is a Dystopia. It is evident from the observations made that Dark Angel is most assuredly an example of a Dystopia.

In the series, an extremist left-wing political caption used a giant Electro Pulse Magnet to destroy technology in the United States. Having come to depend on technology for communication and information, the country is ill-equipped to return to a time when such advances are unavailable. Reflecting a return to relative simplicity, the protagonist of the series Max, played by actress Jessica Alba, though equipped to be a superhuman military weapon is a simple bicycle messenger who moonlights as a burglar. Max is a representation of the results of the internal terrorist attack on the United States. She was a piece of extremely advanced technology, but in this new version of America, she has no place. Instead of killing people or committing other acts in the employ of her government, Max is a bicycle messenger. Her job is to allow others to communicate with each other in a version of society where most more-advanced means of communication have been shut down. Instead of cellular phones or email, the people of 2019 have to rely on bicycle messengers. In this way, Max is functioning as the most advanced technology permissible during this time. It is as if she has had to be downgraded along with the rest of the country's technology.