This blog post examines why the emotion-suppressed society depicted in Equilibrium sought to control humanity under the banner of ‘order,’ focusing on the structure of totalitarianism and its contradictions.
The film is set in a world after the Third World War. A new world called ‘Libria’ emerges, ruled by a dictator known as the ‘Commander’. This dictator believes that human emotions like love, hatred, and anger are the fundamental cause of crime in society. He orders everyone to regularly take a drug called ‘Prozium’. As people began taking Prozium, they lost their ability to feel emotions, and it seemed as if all crime in society had been eradicated.
However, individuals who defied the dictator’s orders began secretly stopping the medication and started to feel emotions again, becoming known as ‘Emotion Inducers’. These ‘Emotion Inducers’ secretly hid and preserved soul-infused artworks and other objects that stirred human sensibilities. However, the dictator’s henchmen, the ‘Claric’ agents, exist to hunt down and eliminate these ‘emotion instigators’. Among the Claric agents, the protagonist, a top-tier agent, secretly stops taking the drug. Ultimately, the film concludes with the protagonist joining forces with the ‘emotion instigators’ to overthrow the dictatorship.
This film depicts the cruelty of a system that suppresses individuals’ free emotions. The most well-known work with a similar theme is likely George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’. Orwell wrote this work after witnessing the brutal reality of the Soviet Union he had idealized, and this subject matter has since been explored in numerous films and novels. From this perspective, the film can be seen as a rebellion against an oppressive regime that suppresses emotions for the common good, against a social structure that leaves no room for the realm of human freedom. Moreover, it suggests that the human longing for free emotion never disappears and is fundamental to human life.
The film features a setting where people must regularly inject the emotion suppressant Prozium daily; missing even one day immediately triggers emotions. The drug ‘Prozium’ depicted in the film is modeled after the substance ‘fluoxetine’, commonly known as ‘Prozac’. Fluoxetine (C17H18F3NO), widely known by its brand name Prozac, is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant. It is used to treat depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (in both adult and pediatric populations), bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, panic disorder, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). However, in reality, the effect of any medication does not immediately disappear just because a single day’s dose is missed, even if it has been consistently administered daily for a certain period. But if this was an intentional setting, I believe it leaves room for interpreting the film in a different direction.
In the film, people walk around with emotionless, robotic expressions, but it can be seen that this actually implies that everyone must unconsciously possess emotions. The resentment the rebels feel towards the Commander, or the hatred the Clarics feel towards the rebels, are emotions that ultimately recur throughout the film. In other words, Prozium itself is primarily intended to instill the emotion of ‘obedience’, and suppressing emotions is either a secondary effect or a non-existent effect—merely a MacGuffin. The protagonist felt emotions even before being administered Prozium. However, these emotions were suppressed by loyalty to the Commander, and the failure of the administration can be interpreted as causing these suppressed emotions to surface.
In the film, the group ultimately playing the most crucial role in destroying the dictator’s totalitarian regime is the rebels. This carries a sufficiently positive meaning: it dismantled a dictatorial regime that suppressed natural human emotions and sought to homogenize people. However, the rebels’ significance in the film can also be interpreted negatively. If their stance is viewed as ‘emotions being a form of personal indulgence, and feeling freedom through this indulgence,’ then their refusal to take Prozium resembles drug use. Refusing Prozium could be interpreted as breaking free from the established societal framework. From this perspective, the rebels’ refusal to take Prozium cannot be viewed solely in a positive light. Just as one easily becomes trapped once they touch drugs, those who have once tasted emotion-inducing drugs could be seen as exhibiting symptoms of addiction to emotions they cannot overcome by their own will. The reason others besides the rebels faithfully take Prozium may be that they act according to predetermined social norms and laws, not out of self-restraint, but perhaps out of necessity.
In the film, the Commander directly asserts the legitimacy of his ideology (suppression of individual emotions for the common good) through billboards and airships throughout the city. This very act of excessive ideological propaganda is a common phenomenon in totalitarian states. Put another way, it serves as evidence that the ideology itself has not been sufficiently internalized by its members. In Stalinist Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and other fascist states, the ideology was ultimately flawed and baseless, forcing individuals to reveal themselves compulsively. In contrast, the state depicted in the film was in a situation where its ideological legitimacy was far more suspect than that of Nazi Germany or the former Soviet Union. Despite this excessive propaganda, the Commander-in-Chief could not maintain the totalitarian society without the incentive of administering Prozium.
Moreover, in the film’s twist—if it can be called a twist—when it was revealed that the Commander-in-Chief was already dead and the Deputy Commander had been secretly performing his role, the Deputy knew the Commander-in-Chief’s orders were unreasonable and that the Commander-in-Chief would lose his authority without coercive means. Therefore, he could not announce his death. Simultaneously, to maintain control, he himself violates the laws the Commander-in-Chief had enacted. Midway through the film, when the protagonist questions the Deputy Commander about an order from the Commander-in-Chief (actually the Deputy Commander’s own order), asking if it wasn’t an illegal command violating the Commander-in-Chief’s principles, the Deputy Commander “The Commander’s orders are to obey unconditionally.” This scene signifies that the very act of the Deputy Commander and the protagonist carrying out their respective duties is a meaningless act for totalitarianism, where individual opinions are excluded.
We have analyzed the meaning of Prozium administration and the totalitarian social structure depicted in the film. We examined how the emotion suppressant Prozium is interpreted within a totalitarian society and how the emotion instigators—the rebel group—should be understood within a pre-totalitarian society. A totalitarian society inevitably confronts inherent contradictions within its own system, and this is effectively expressed through key elements like the rebels, the Clerics, and the Supreme Commander.
