TASK DEFINITION: Given a document and an entity the task is to select the author's sentiment towards the entity. Sentiments can be Positive, Neutral and Negative. Select Positive if the article expresses a positive view towards the given entity or praises its quality or skills. Select Neutral if the document expresses no clear view towards the entity or has equal amounts of positive and negative statements or expressing some fact/quote by someone else. Select Negative if the article expresses a negative view towards like harsh remarks, criticizing entities action/decision etc. Note that URLs in the text have been replaced with [Link].
PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Philip K. Dick ? Lately  weâve been seeing a boom in TV dystopias. Two of the most successful premieres in the past few years have been HBOâs Westworld and Huluâs The Handmaidâs Tale: the former a solemn  plodding update of Michael Crichtonâs 1973 film  in which subjugated androids revolt and take over a theme park; the latter a stylish and compelling adaptation of Margaret Atwoodâs 1985 novel  in which the United States becomes a patriarchal theocracy. Other recent examples include Amazonâs The Man in the High Castle (based on Philip K. Dickâs 1962 novel about an alternate reality in which the Axis powers have won World War II)  HBOâs The Leftovers (about a world in which 2 percent of the population has mysteriously disappeared)  and Netflixâs new Altered Carbon (a cyberpunk gorefest based on a 2002 novel by Richard K. Morgan). Stretching the criteria a bit  one could perhaps include the long-running zombie odyssey The Walking Dead and its spin-off  Fear the Walking Dead  and sitcoms that play with dystopic elements  like The Good Place and The Last Man on Earth.
The success of Black Mirror is the proximate cause for the existence of  Philip K. Dickâs  Electric Dreams  also produced by Channel 4 and available here on Amazon. Dick  of course  is one of the past masters of the dystopia genre: His 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was the basis for the seminal Ridley Scott film Blade Runner  and his work has been mined by Hollywood countless times ever since.  Electric Dreams  adapts 10 of  Dickâs  short stories  including âThe Hood Makerâ (which imagines a class war between telepaths and normal citizens  who resent their mindsâ being invaded) and âThe Father Thingâ (in which a childâs father is replaced by a sinister alien doppelgÃ¤nger).
 Electric Dreams  is slickly made and intermittently effective  but despite some half-hearted attempts to reimagine or update the material (the boy in âThe Father Thing â upon uncovering the alien conspiracy  posts a video on the Internet with the hashtag â#RESISTâ)  it doesnât really feel of our moment. Part of the problem is that Dickâs work has been adapted for film so many times already that itâs hard to watch a given episode of Electric Dreams  however well executed  and not compare it unfavorably  if unfairly  with Blade Runner  or Paul Verhoevenâs Total Recall  or Steven Spielberg âs  Minority Report.  Dickâs  sensibility is idiosyncratic and sui generis  but at this point it feels more like a piece of intellectual property than the amphetamine-fueled gnostic vision it once was. Is anybody âs  mind really blown by the is-our-world-real-or-just-a-simulation conundrum posed by âReal Life â for example  after weâve seen not only Total Recall but The Matrix and Westworld and a hundred other iterations of it?
The problem  however  isnât just overfamiliarity. Dystopias draw their power from an analysis of the present  and  Dick âs once-radical vision of the future is now as far in the past as H.G. Wellsâs was for  Dick  when  he  began writing. This is what Black Mirror  for all its flaws  has over Electric Dreams: The series feels like itâs about things that Brooker is genuinely worried about  not a dutiful tribute to what someone was worried about in the 1960s; itâs the future as seen from the 21st century  not the 20th. This problem is endemic to many of the recent dystopian shows. The fact that Westworld is based on a movie from 1973  and The Handmaidâs Tale on a novel from 1985  doesnât invalidate their value as entertainments or as cultural commentaries. But it does introduce concerns alien to the dystopiaâs imperative to take the worst of the present day and amplify it.

SOLUTION: Neutral

PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Kamila Shamsie ? Kamila Shamsie  didnât have to stretch to fit the plot to the times when  she  decided to adapt the Greek tragedy Antigone into a contemporary novel about terrorism.
The gripping novel explores how western responses to terrorism show the limits of our ideals and laws. In an interview over Skype   Shamsie  told me  her  initial imperative with the novel was to explore the question of citizenship  to delve into what it means to begin stripping people of citizenship for certain crimes.
âRepeatedly people in [Theresa Mayâs] government have said  âcitizenship is a privilege not a right ââ  Shamsie  said. âAnd thatâs simply legally untrue  but increasingly they want to be able to take away citizenship for people who they think are unworthy. And they get to decide.â
 She  added: âItâs your own citizens and youâre saying that for all that we have our judicial system and prison system and probation and all of that  this is the one crime that we donât know how to deal with  so weâre just going to leave you out of the country. It should be seen as a real failing of a state  to say that our judicial system is incapable of knowing how to respond to this criminal act.â
And  as in the United States  the notion of terror is racialized and associated with Muslims (President Trump entertaining the idea of sending Sayfullo Saipov  the man who killed eight people when he drove a truck down a bike path in Manhattan on Halloween  to GuantÃ¡namo  is at this point to be expected.) While stripping citizenship might initially be justified only in terrorism cases   Shamsie  noted Theresa Mayâs attempts to revoke the passports of a group of British-Pakistani men convicted of sex crimes â âthereâs no way of saying itâs not about Islamophobia and racism  because no one is making those suggestions about anyone who is white and committing similar crimes.â
In the narratives that she read of radicalization  of youth attempting to join ISIS   Shamsie  saw only demonization and one-dimensional narratives: â It âs almost an inevitability now. If youâre young  Muslim and male  and angry  then youâre going to strap a bomb onto yourself.â But she dug into research on ISIS propaganda and youth who were convinced by it  and found that the reality  for many teenage would-be fighters  was complex.
âOne of the things I was interested in was the lure being something other than violence  and all the other ways that this world that we know to be nihilistic and brutal could also be seductive â  Shamsie  said.
âThere is this link between masculinity and violence that should be inescapable  it should be part of every conversation on violence â said  Shamsie . âInstead we compartmentalize violence: Thereâs the violence of gun shooters in America  thereâs the violence of suicide bombers in Iraq  thereâs domestic violence everywhere  there are men in Pakistan who are committing honor killings â and we donât draw the line between all of them and say what is it with men  what is it with masculinity  what is it that young men do to prove to themselves or to someone else that they are a man in the right kind of way?â
All of these complexities are missing from most media narratives of radicalization  and so also is the possibility of empathy   Shamsie  believes. In  her  research   she  found little compassion for the families whose children had gone to Syria  âfamilies facing the most horrendous thing â your child or your sibling who is very young or very stupid or angry â has gone to a place from where you know they will probably never return. And these families are treated as though they are guilty  rather than as if they are mourning.â
The novel gave  Shamsie  the space to create that empathy.

SOLUTION: Positive

PROBLEM: What is the sentiment of the following document towards the entity Assad ? BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syriaâs army and its allies will keep fighting in Syria after the battle ends in Deir al-Zor province  where Islamic State has its last significant stronghold   President Bashar al-Assad  said on Tuesday.
âThe victories against terrorist organizations  starting in Aleppo and not ending in Deir al-Zor  formed a critical strike that foiled partition projects and terrorist goals â  Assad âs office quoted  him  as saying.
 Assad  regards all the groups fighting against the Syrian state as terrorist groups.
 Assad  said in  his  meeting with Velayati that the battle would last âuntil the recovery of security and stability to all Syrian landsâ   his  office said.

SOLUTION:
Neutral