What is unclear, however, is how the leaders of New Babyl determined that hip-hop specifically was more transgressive than say, soul, which exemplar candidates are allowed to perform. They maintain order by keeping the populace ignorant, because if you’d never heard someone describe oppression you might not recognize you’re being oppressed. The Authority does not tolerate self-expression or any form of dissent. Cole (who Aliyah and her friends seem particularly drawn to) use their lyrics to share their experiences and reflect their realities. Hip-hop is storytelling in music form, and artists like Kendrick Lamar and J. There is no question as to why the Tribunal, New Babyl’s governing body, would want to keep pre-apocalypse music and art away from its citizens, especially hip-hop. The Exemplar is to New Babyl what The Hunger Games are to Panem: propaganda as entertainment, but to a much gentler degree. Their new style inspires and energizes the citizens of New Babyl, much to the dismay of the Tribunal. Aliyah, Bodhi, along with friends Tempo (Robbie Graham-Kuntz), Apollo (Phillip Lewitski), Sage (Devyn Nekoda), Mags (Mickeey Nguyen) and Brooklyn (Humberly González), begin to incorporate hip-hop elements into their music and dance performances. The Exemplar candidates are given “traditional” compositions, which are “safe,” usually watered-down popular songs from before the Great Flash, and expected to perform under rigid standards with very little deviance from the expected. Read more: Top New YA Books of February 2020 Bigotry may not exist in this world in the way we think about it today, but classism certainly does, and it one of the things Aliyah and Bodhi become aware of as they delve into the context and meaning behind the songs they discover in the Archive. As you can imagine, being born in Reform, the sector for people who have committed crimes (and their families, who have done nothing), puts you at a severe disadvantage compared to those born in, say, Progress. Except, there is an obvious hierarchy between the sectors. Sexism and homophobia also seem to be things of the past, and for all intents and purposes everyone is equal. Fortunately, the song and dance aspects did not detract from my overall enjoyment of the show.ĭescribed as “post-racial,” New Babyl has all the trappings of your average dystopic society wherein race is no longer a factor, but other, equally trivial distinctions separate people into the privileged and the oppressed. Musicals can be a hard sell for many modern audience members, including this one, so I had a healthy bit of skepticism around whether I’d enjoy the series. I am self-proclaimed YA Trash, so on paper this was Extremely My Shit, but I realized (maybe too late) that there is a performance element to the show. Thorne ( Degrassi: The Next Generation, Degrassi: Next Class), Utopia Falls seems like it should garner higher expectations than its weird premise would suggest. It’s Divergent meets Step Up and how you feel about either or both of those franchises is probably a good barometer for how you will feel about Utopia Falls.Ĭoming from showrunner Joseph Mallozzi (known for his work on the Stargate series, and more recently Dark Matter) and created by Canadian director R.T. Every year, New Babyl hosts “The Exemplar,” which sees twenty-four teenagers participate in a musical competition to win the title, and make history. Channeling the rebellious spirit of Hip-hop, Aliyah and her friends face off against the government for the freedom of the people in a finale that will rock the very foundation of their society, changing all of their lives forever.Utopia Falls, Hulu’s latest TV series offering, has a premise straight out of young adult fiction. The journey to unravel that mystery will play out over the course of the first season while our candidates prepare and participate in The Exemplar competition. Through the discovery of a mysterious archive, she is exposed to hip-hop, an ancient form of music culture, which will lead her to question everything she has ever known and change her world forever. For all of them it’s a chance to write their names in the history books, but for Aliyah, the independent and adventurous daughter to a city government official, it’s the beginning of an incredible adventure. According to the official Hulu press website: Hundreds of years in the future, in the last living colony on earth, a city called New Babyl, twenty-four teenage candidates are chosen to take part in an annual musical competition known as The Exemplar.
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