Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Apocalyptic Dreams

In a silly mood last night, I spun a DVD of a giant bug movie titled Infestation (2009). Giant bug movies have a long lineage with their strongest showing in the 1950s: Them (1955), Tarantula (1955), The Deadly Mantis (1957), etc. Infestation follows the tradition though with a bit less earnestness; the flick is clever and funny with characters as well drawn as one reasonably can expect in such a movie. Infestation also is a post-apocalyptic cross-over: unlike most 50s flicks in which the heroes narrowly defeat the bugs, in this one the bugs already have won. The human survivors simply try to stay alive. Post-apocalyptic books and films are a genre even more well-established than giant bug movies. I’ve written one myself (see Slog).

There are relatively few books and films that end with a total apocalypse (e.g. On the Beach [1959], Last Night [1999], Kaboom [2010]); those few typically do so for surprise value or to make some political/philosophical point. Overwhelmingly, though, books and films about the end of civilization are post-apocalyptic and focus on how survivors deal with situation. HG Wells, as so often in SF, set the standard: in print with The Time Machine (1895) and in film with Things to Come (1936) for which he wrote the screenplay. Both of those are ultimately optimistic – heavy-handedly in the case of Things to Come. This too set a pattern. In World without End (1956) 20th century astronauts, flung into the future in a time dilation accident, teach the effete civilized folks living underground to stand up to the murderous mutants on the surface; in Logan’s Run (1976) fugitives from the domed city learn there can be life after age 30; in 2012 (2009) a nucleus of humanity saves itself; in World War Z (2013) a way is discovered to trick the zombies; in Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse (novel, 2008) civilization is down but not out.

Attempts to explain the persistence of this genre have wrinkled more than few brows over the years, but I think the key is the way the protagonists generally prevail. The end of the world is a metaphor for our own mortality, and the suggestion that it is in some sense survivable remains a popular one. Then there is a less admirable reason. Our fellow humans and their social structures can be pretty annoying, and it is fun to imagine their destruction – imagine, mind you, not effect it. On the other hand, it would be lonely all by oneself, so a smattering of other survivors is good for spice and drama. Besides, among a small number of people, one can’t help but be important. At least as a fantasy, the prospect seems to please audiences.

Today for me has been a troublesome one requiring tedious and expensive navigation of some of those aforementioned social structures, so perhaps tonight is a good to sit back and watch Radioactive Dreams (1985). Here’s hoping, though, that those dreams don’t come true.


“If your heart is in your dream/No request is too extreme”
Glenn Miller - When You Wish Upon a Star

4 comments:

  1. Wondered if you'd seen Cormac McCarthy's The Road or Stephen King's The Mist? They both end on a question mark as to how the rest of the world will survive with the Mist ending a little bleaker. A lot of these end of the world films disturb some film fans, but I've always found them somewhat interesting. I heard one SF author say that he wished we'd move away from the dark and gloomy and make more optimistic SF. That would be interesting too.

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    1. Roddenberry famously wanted to portray an upbeat future -- to the point that Star Trek scriptwriters struggled since conflict and tragedy are the meat of drama. To the extent that there is life at all after the smash, most post-apocalyptic films are optimistic at their core, despite the losses in The Road and horrible error in The Mist. Beginnings and ends are almost always more interesting than middles, so end-of-the-world flicks catch my attention, too. Besides, the usually portend new beginnings, too.

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  2. I was recently revisiting the entire "Planet of the Apes" saga (gotta blog about it coming up soon). And the earth is destroyed in the second film! I first saw that movie as a young kid and it really freaked me out. You're right, not too often do we see the end of humanity as we know it. But sometimes things just shift a bit. I just read Matheson's "I Am Legend" which I somehow managed never to have seen any film version of. And the ending really surprised me. Life continues on earth, just not the human life we are familiar with. A real surprise, but perhaps closer to what would actually happen. To quote another monster flick, "Life... finds a way." Had to throw in a line from "Jurassic Park". :)

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    1. There's the old suggestion that if the asteroid had missed 60m years ago the descendants of the fairly large-brained bipedal dinosaur Troodon formosus might have evolved greater intelligence and then developed a civilization. If there exists an alternate universe in which that happened, I suppose to the denizens of it we really are the Planet of the Apes.

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