Quality Dystopian Propaganda: Our Fair City
-Vrai Kaiser
In the tunnels below and the singular monolithic tower looming above an icy, postapocalyptic wasteland, the policies of Hartlife huddle close together and listen to recorded histories of the company’s glorious history. Such is the stage for Our Fair City, a serialized podcast created by veterans of the Chicago theatre scene and spanning, thus far, six completed seasons.
Since I can already hear your mental cogs turning – a dystopian community presided over by a baritone radio announcer who paints over daily horrors with a sweet spin of propaganda – I suppose I should start by saying that OFC actually predatesWelcome to Night Vale by several months. And it isn’t just that, either: while the two podcasts share several surface similarities, they’re quite different on a thematic and structural level. OFC’s Narrator does have shades of characterization in later seasons, but his perspective isn’t an all-encompassing lens in the way Cecil Palmer’s is. Nor is it a current events broadcast. Rather, we’re listening to a corporate spin on “historical events” that clearly chafe against that top layer of jingoist blubber. And the characters of these records are quite aware (or quickly become so) of the dystopian noose round their necks – something which adds a wholly different level of melancholy to the proceedings, knowing that these things have happened and Hartlife remains. And, presence of a certain visiting scientist aside, the supernatural events of OFC are rooted in sci-fi B movies and steampunk (mole people engineered by “Dr. Moro,” lightning riggers bottling energy for the tunnels below) rather than conspiracy theories and Lovecraftian existentialism. A creature of a different genetic material, dear readers.
It is also, though it may have slipped beneath your radar before now, quite worth your attention.
