, starring Kristen Stewart
and Nicholas Hoult
, is set in a world where most of humanity has been wiped away by massive war. The 'utopia' that the citizens live in has deep shades of a scientific dictatorship and emotion is thought of as a disease that's needs to be managed until a "cure" can be found. Citizens who need it are prescribed inhibitors to keep their emotions dulled down. Much like how millions of Americans today volunteer to be kept complacent by 'big pharma's' drugs.The disease of emotion, called "Switched-on Syndrome", in Equals is also ranked in stages of severity, much like cancer is. If an individual develops symptoms of the disease then they're usually pushed away by the other members of The Collective. Even though the "disease" isn't thought to be contagious in the film. Which is very much representative of American leftism. Wherein, if an individual or individuals don't represent the right way of behaving, feeling, thinking, and acting (usually standards developed by their 'collective', their peers) then they are pushed away from the group.
The treatment for Switched-on Syndrome in Equals comes in stages too. You face medicating for the disease or, if you're sent to The Den, you're treated to electro-restraint, emotional suppression, and a "pain-free death scenario". The pain-free death scenario is phased out by a true "cure" being discovered later in the film.
To find the closest example of this sort of leftist Utopian ideal, one only has to look at Jim Jones. A deluded cultural Marxist that saw socialism, communism as enlightenment. Jim Jones was very much a social justice warrior from the 1950s until the days of his final crimes against humanity. The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project was his own version of The Collective. Members of the agricultural project went to great lengths, for the "collective", to suppress any dissent. The ultimate act, at the end, was Jones trying to suppress dissent and stop people from leaving by the Kool-Aid drinking, mass poisoning. As people were dying, he was even telling them to suppress their emotions and not cry. Saying their deaths were a revolutionary act.
You see, leftism always uses emotional control as their main tool. No amount of unacceptable acts are allowed as the collective, of which you belong, will turn you in for such things. Much like in Equals and with The Collective. True emotion, not seen as contributing to the greater of the collective, is made out as an 'evil' to be avoided.
Far-leftism's perfect world is an existence without emotion. A world representative of Hell on Earth.
