The Way

In Episode 14 of Dystopian Fiction Has Been Moved to Current Affairs, Clare and Masha are discussing The Way, a recent dystopian drama from the BBC, set in Port Talbot, Wales. Content Warning: this episode includes reference to suicide. In this episode, we talk about divided families and generational trauma, with particular relation to changing industrial landscapes in Britain. In particular, we discuss the theme of Welsh steel, and compare the real-life situation in Port Talbot right now. You can read more about this situation here, here, and here. Another area we focus on is privatization of policing, use of data, security camera culture, and deep fakes. On privatization we reference this paper by A White. In the recent developments of deep fakes, we allude to the news stories you can find here, here, here, and here. While discussing the narrative of a reversed refugee story, including a small boat crossing of the channel, we reference an interview with David Miliband on this episode of The News Agents, and also recommend our earlier episode on the show Years and Years. We also highly recommend this interview with the cast and creators of The Way by the BFI, which was very informative for our discussions. Do follow us on Instagram to find out more about what we do. You can sign up to our newsletter, which comes out alternate weeks from the podcast. You can also donate to support our work via the KoFi page for our sister project, Being Society.