https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.084
Regulated Appetites and Disposable Lives: Food, Varna, and Hierarchy in Mickey 17
SIBTAIN AHMED KHAN
Final Year Undergraduate Student (FYUP)
Department of English
Aligarh Muslim University, India
Abstract: Mickey 17 is a dystopian science fiction film that follows the life of Mickey, a crew member aboard a spacecraft on a mission to colonise a distant planet. Within the ship, passengers are strictly classified according to their occupational roles, and access to resources, particularly food, is regulated in accordance with the hierarchy. Mickey, due to his economic hardships, signs up for the position of an “expendable,” the lowest rung in this social order, whose existence is defined by calculated caloric intake and repeated exposure to tasks deemed too dangerous for others. Each time Mickey dies in the course of these life-threatening missions, a new version of him is “reprinted,” marked by a higher number.
This stratified system closely mirrors the logic of the ancient Indian four-tier social hierarchy known as the Varna system, wherein labour, bodily value, and access to sustenance are unevenly distributed and culturally justified. Using qualitative methods of analysis, this paper examines how food operates as a crucial instrument in sustaining hierarchical power structures within the film. It further explores how the marginalised subject negotiates oppression through subtle acts of resistance and the formation of alternative cultural practices.
By placing the film’s depiction of disposability, rationing, and bodily control in dialogue with the Varna system, the paper highlights the persistence of hierarchical ideologies across temporal and cultural contexts. Ultimately, the study argues that Mickey 17 reveals how systems of domination are reproduced through everyday cultural practices such as food regulation, while also gesturing toward the possibilities of resistance within dystopian frameworks.
Keywords: Mickey 17, Varna system, Food politics, Hierarchy and power, Disposability
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