Poster Girl is so much more than just a gripping novel. You cannot possibly read it without asking questions about the ethical frameworks governing the society we live in. The book asks how the decisions we make in the present, sometimes unconsciously so, affect our future. It paints a picture of how our stories can unfold if we allow certain things to happen without questioning them. These questions pertain to how we make choices about those who govern us and how we use technology responsibly. 

Poster Girl is centred around the story of Sonya Kantor. Sonya is the daughter of a former high-ranking official of the ruling authority, The Delegation, in the Seattle-Portland megapolis. Following a revolution, The Delegation was overthrown and Sonya’s family is dead when the story begins. She has been jailed at the Aperture, an unkempt space with two streets and four buildings that hosts a community comprising those who had been loyal to The Delegation. Before the revolution, Sonya was a poster girl for the ruling authority. Her face, with the slogan, “What’s Right Is Right,” was used prominently in public spaces to indoctrinate the populace on the values of The Delegation. 

The Delegation used a trading system called “DesCoin.” DesCoin was used for commercial transactions, but also to keep people in check. Using constant surveillance, The Delegation would award DesCoin for things like maintaining the correct posture, marrying the right person, or saying the appropriate thing. In the same vein, DesCoin could also be lost for actions that The Delegation deemed unsavoury. Going to a funeral could earn you DesCoin, but groaning could cost you DesCoin. DesCoin served as the currency for shopping — the backbone of a capitalist economy. But here’s the crappy thing about DesCoin: it ascribed value to every aspect of life — being happy earned you money, but being not-so-great cost you money.  

The intrusion of technology into our lives is a pivotal theme of the book. The Delegation was able to monitor every aspect of people’s lives through an “Insight,” a device implanted into the brain. The Insight created a data stream, a camera of sorts in people’s heads that allowed the authorities to follow everyone, all the time. Once installed in the brain, the Insight could also be used to access information, either virtually or auditorily — it served as an internet of sorts. 

The story begins with The Triumvirate, the current ruling authority, making an offer to Sonya — they need her help to track a missing child. They will allow Sonya, for a set time period, a daytime pass out of the Aperture to find the child. If she succeeds, her reward will be her freedom. The story then follows Sonya’s journey to find the child. We witness her reemergence into society and the obstacles she encounters — both physically in contending with those who do not want her to find the child, as well as mentally and emotionally as she grapples with who she is in a changing society. 

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Poster Girl is an important book in getting us to think about accountability and ethics in the functioning of societies. A key theme is the accountability of governments. When a government is established in the name of the collective good and then becomes a force for bad, how should it be held accountable? 

Poster Girl shows us how governments do more than develop and implement policies — in addition to having policy preferences, they also have a value system. In direct and indirect ways, they advocate for a system of practices that are a product of political and historic conjuncture. 

We get to see how governments are a byproduct of different political struggles clamouring for leverage. When Sonya is arrested, The Triumvirate has established its rule. But, a counter-movement, The Anologue Army, has emerged and is vying to subvert it. We see how power is not always top-down. The ruling authority, of course, exercises power. Yet, there is also the potential for groups like the Analogue Army to claim power within the system by winning people over to its way of thinking. The book asks us to think about whether or not systemic power is used responsibly and in the interest of building social equity. The bigger issue is, what do we do when there is an abuse of power and no accountability?

Poster Girl is also about how the prevailing social norms can indoctrinate us into believing certain things — the normative values that we hold as a society. At the outset of the book, Sonya is very much a product of the fallen regime — she buys into its way of thinking without questioning the rationale for its policies. As she reemerges into society and sees the outfall of her father’s political decisions, she faces the discomforting situation of questioning everything that she thought she knew. 

Another pivotal theme of the book is how surveillance is increasingly invading our privacy, encroaching into our work and home lives and how we, for the sake of convenience, allow this encroachment. 

When talking about The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood said: “Nothing went into it that had not happened in real life somewhere at some time.” In the same vein, it can be argued that we are already experiencing a downscaled version of what unfolds in Poster Girl. We might not have a brain implant monitoring our every move, but we have the next best thing: surveillance technology that infiltrates our lives sharing information about our location, our worldviews, our consumer patterns, etc.  

Johann Hari in his book Stolen Focus argues that social media has been using our data to build a business model. This model is used to create an algorithmic feed on our social media platforms that provides us with information and product suggestions. Poster Girl raises questions about the ethics of tracking people and of invading their privacy; it asks us to think about how the acquisition of massive amounts of data creates power that can be used to manipulate others. 

If you’re up for a futuristic, world-building read, then you’re going to love Poster Girl. The book sets you up for breathing a sigh of relief, thinking, “Wow, we’re so lucky we don’t live in that world.” Then, when you sit back in contentment, you begin to realise that you very much are living in that world. DM/ML