f Abjection and the New Extreme of utopia

While it is true that contemporary filmmakers are finding new resources to explore the topic of utopia, this exploration has occurred primarily within the confines of two genres: science fiction and fantasy. In many instances these films are guided by an appeal to the pop culture boom of the young adult sub-genre; these cinematic explorations tease out many of the themes of utopia previously underdeveloped such as young love and romance, maturation and growth. One thing that recent mainstream Hollywood productions do not develop or address is the sheer horror and pain that moving towards something better, i.e., utopia, entails. The transition or movement towards utopia is not seamless in any way but rather fraught with struggle, angst, schism, terror and even death. To examine these aspects of utopia, I turn to the so-called New Extreme genre of cinema, primarily out of France. Specifically, analysing À l’intérieur (Inside) (Bustillo and Maury, 2007) and Martyrs (Laugier, 2008), I argue that New Extreme cinema offers unconventional and unexpected lessons on the process of working toward utopia, lessons not foregrounded in more mainstream utopian cinema. I build my argument by weaving some existing criticism of utopian theory with themes from New Extreme cinema such as abjection, death, pain, suffering and torture. In my analysis I draw on the theory of abject as used in the work of Julia Kristeva.