Prepped for harvest: Monstrous metaphors of capital in the young adult dystopian film, The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Abstract Through the use of horror movie motifs like zombies and mad doctors, The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015) stands in drastic contrast to other young adult dystopian properties like The Hunger Games (2012), for example, in that Scorch Trials uses allegory as a means to comment on neoliberalism, alienated labor, and commodity fetishism essentially functioning as a Marxist critique of capital. However, this reading only occurs subtextually. By using a contextual cultural studies approach, which reads film as embedded in cultural politics, and a “monsterology,” which captures capital as a specter within the film, this essay will serve as an intervention surrounding discourse on The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. In doing so, this analysis will make the case that films targeted at students and young adults are important sites of pedagogy that contribute to an understanding of how capital alienates us from ourselves, each other, and social democratic structures.