Of Monsters and Men

There are few artistic genres more intertwined with politics than dystopia. In its very essence, dystopian fantasy is a method of criticising ideology, at the same time that it serves as a tool for the dissemination of the issuer’s own ideology. Black Mirror’s “Men Against Fire” episode provides a rich case study for considering ideology in one of its most violent formats: the creation of monsters. In the episode, deceived by a helmet that changes reality, soldiers fight and exterminate cockroaches - individuals with a genetic predisposition to diseases - while the civilian population, immersed in that bellicist ideology, dehumanises individuals even without a literal alteration of the real. This article analyses the creation of monsters, putting into dialogue theories on ideology, dystopian fantasy, and dehumanisation to construct a framework of how this dehumanisation process and its relationship with ideology works.