‘Poster Girl’ Discovering the Allure of the State of Surveillance

Veronica Roth is a bestselling author Difference novels, which have been adapted into a series of popular films. Her new novel Girl poster tells the story of Sonya Kantor, a young woman growing up in an authoritarian society in Seattle in the near future.

“I wanted her to be not a typical heroic figure, but an accomplice to a fallen dictatorship, and struggle with how she understood it, and how she was controlled by it. this system,” says Roth in Episode 528 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy audio file.

Girl poster imagine the ultimate surveillance state, where every action is recorded and evaluated using common eye implant devices. Roth says it’s all too easy for her to imagine how Sonya might enjoy being constantly monitored and rewarded for her good behavior. “I’m definitely one of those students who enjoys being rewarded at school, and I’ve always been good on tests, and I’ve always had good behavior,” she said. “It’s fascinating to know that you’re doing the right thing, and that you’re doing everything you’re supposed to, in a certain personality type.”

The book is also influenced by Roth’s frequent trips to visit her husband’s family in Romania, a country ruled by communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu until 1989. “Even now, if you go to Christmas markets in Romania, they still sell some magnets with Ceaușescu’s face on them, and this man is brutal and horrible to a lot of people,” said Roth. “But there are some people who have nostalgia for communism, because for them, that time may not have been so bad – perhaps even better. But everyone benefits, some people don’t.”

Roth says the US is getting closer to becoming a surveillance nation than we’d like to think, and studying all the ways our devices track us has made her increasingly paranoid. “Basically, you have to choose your poison — no system is particularly great,” she says. “We’ve put this up for users to find ways to prevent your data, but I think it’s really not our responsibility, it should be protected on a larger scale.”

Listen to the full interview with Veronica Roth in Episode 528 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Veronica Roth on privacy:

With recent Contents of the Supreme Court about abortion, this has become easier to understand for everyone. A lot of women have an app on their phone that helps them track their menstrual cycle and there’s a lot of talk about “Oh, you should delete that app now” because if the government could access your app data, they can Visually Track when you last had your period and determine if you’ve had an abortion. And that’s unsettling, but it’s just one example of how things can change overnight. … I have arrived Women’s March in Atlanta after Trump was elected — my presence there was recorded on my phone and on social media — so if there’s a major regime change and it’s suddenly criminalized as joined those protests — or not even criminalized, but it just puts you on some sort of list somewhere where you’re being followed — that’s closer than people I think I’d like to believe thought.

Veronica Roth in Her Upcoming Novel Dome Conspirator:

It’s a sci-fi retelling of Antigone. … It’s post-apocalyptic. There is one last settlement on Earth, and they are all dying. Basically, I think the main difference [from the play] was that I had to ask myself how I would handle the incest, because Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus, who accidentally killed her father and married her mother, and then had children, and Antigone is one of those kids. The play’s incest is important because she feels like she was cursed from birth for it, and others in her society treat her that way. So I had to figure out if I was going to do it right away, and I decided not to because I wanted to create a lot of magic and mystery around why she felt that way. I am cursed. So there’s going to be pretty strict gene editing in the future, because of how ugly people are Dead Earth environment, and she is not edited. So it was taboo that she carried with her like a curse.

Veronica Roth about the end:

I have sent [Courtney Summers] an early version of the sketch [Poster Girl] with two endings. One is happier, and the other less happy. I chose the less happy story because she said, “I don’t think the way you set this up, that this is really an ending that feels true to the book or feels earned.” … [The happy ending] just feels cheap to me. I feel its wrong. I tried to make it work, and I was like, “Well, what else can I do that’s more risky for me emotionally?” And she said, “You have to do it. It was a great ending.” And I said, “But I don’t know that I can stand it.” I remember saying that to her. Emotionally, as the person who wrote it, I don’t know if I can live in that reality for that long. And she said, “You can. You have to.”

Veronica Roth on Introverts:

My mom was a model when I was a kid, so when I was little, she would always try to give us advice — like for high school photos — she would try to give advice: “You need have to do this or do that”. And I just remember getting prints and being like, “Well, none of what I’m trying to do shows up on my face.” I don’t know what my face is doing at any given time. So I think the difference between how you feel and how you come across is something many people can relate to. Especially introverts, I feel like. You feel this rich and complex inner world inside of you, and then people on the outside are like, “Hmm, the quiet type.” And it was like, “Wow, that’s silly, to be described like that.”

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