Heres what to know, From Chris Rock to the SAG Awards. I even caught myself asking a blasphemous question: If art were truly capable of saving us, wouldnt we already have been saved? "No countries, no internet, no more Facebook, no more email. Here in the present, we play we play musical instruments at refugee camps. The narrative continuously moves between the pre- and the post-apocalypse without any regular pattern, and, what is more, even in these two distinct periods, the narrative keeps shifting between different times, from the night Arthur dies and the pandemic begins, to various moments in his life and that of people that are connected to him, from the catastrophes immediate aftermath, to fifteen and twenty years after it.12 Just as in Cloud Atlas, Station Elevens structure encourages us to read for connections between pre- and post- apocalyptic fragments, rather than for an end that integrates the various moments. Public Books, 15 June. [18] The dystopias of contemporary post-apocalyptic scenarios become all the more significant if one considers that they are set when the traditional apocalyptic paradigm posits the utopian resolution which makes sense of everything that happened before. But book awards and paperback releases are a thing of the past in the world Mandel has created. Chute, H L 2016 Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. ), Moving Targets. I focus on three elements: one, Station Elevens critical appropriation of religious apocalyptic logic, which I discuss in parallel with Douglas Couplands Player One (2010); two, the depiction of the aftermath of the Georgia Flu and Station Elevens critique of utopian teleology, which I discuss in parallel with Cormac McCarthys The Road (2006); and, three, Station Elevens non-linear narrative structure, which I discuss in parallel with David Mitchells Cloud Atlas (2004). As Rachel explains, the sniper is deploying poetic devices, such as rhythm and regularity of speech, in order to have a stronger impact and to quickly and effectively indoctrinate (Coupland, [2010] 2011: 1878). Instead of examining all the light/dark political dynamics of rebuilding a post-catastrophe society, it concedes that capturing mass trauma is impossible and potentially unhelpful. Writing with Intent 19822004, pp. The question of class distinctions (resource hoarding) is left mostly to an episodes worth of country-club symbolism and a ruinously miscast David Cross. Having established its Nor did I want the kind of Theres Got to Be a Morning After survival celebration disaster stories so often rely on. If I lived in Philadelphia, I would have no idea what was going on. Mandel, E S J 2014 Station Eleven. Leggatt, M 2018 Another World Just out of Sight: Remembering or Imagining Utopia in Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven. On the other hand, the key element of the novels final passage is the sense of possibility (see my emphasis below), rather than the totalising teleological determinism of apocalyptic logic: is it possible that somewhere there are ships setting out? Mary McNamara: Given the spiritual undertones of the series, and the repetition of the sentence I remember damage. (Not to worry, I slogged through.). She has no expectation that anybody else will ever see her work. Station Eleven, by contrast, is postapocalyptic in the truest sense of the term. Arthur C Clarke Award 2015 2015 Winner. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. It's some sort of combination of pessimism or narcissism that it's almost as though we want to believe or living at the climax of the story. The ships were lit up to prevent collisions in the dark, and when she looked out at them she felt stranded, the blaze of light on the horizon both filled with mystery and impossibly distant, a fairy-tale kingdom (Mandel, 2014: 28). I confess I came to Station Eleven reluctantly. Last year, as we all scrambled to create some sort of context for the COVID-19 pandemic, Mandel got all sorts of what does it feel to have predicted the future? questions, which seemed very unfair. the Prophet, reconciles with his mother (Caitlin FitzGerald); graphic novelist Miranda Carroll (Danielle Deadwyler) meets her fate; Sarah (Lori Petty) shuffles off this mortal coil; and, most importantly, Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis as a adult, Matilda Lawler as a child) reunites with Jeevan (Himesh Patel), capping off one of the most finely wrought love stories in recent TV history. It began to read to me as a tacit acknowledgement that its vision of the future is not as immersive as its vision of the present or past. I remember describing the premise of the novel to my husband, and he said, "People would want what was best about the world. Berkeley: University of California Press. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Skrimshire, S (Eds.) American Literary History, 23(3): 48399. I focus on three elements, which reflect central features of this body of writings the critical appropriation of religious apocalyptic logic, the critique of utopian teleology, and non-linear narrative structures and parallel Mandels novel with three other key texts of the genre, Douglas Couplands Player One (2010), Cormac McCarthys The Road (2006) and David Mitchells Cloud Atlas (2004). In both traditional fictional plots and apocalyptic history, Kermode writes, the end confer[s] organization and form on the temporal structure ([1966] 2000: 45), transforming the mere succession of events into a meaningful sequence. This pattern comprises panic, dissolution of Yet Tylers apocalyptic narrative indicates not only the complicity of apocalyptic logic with violence and power structures but also how the appeal of this kind of narrative depends on its promise of a sense-making temporal order. Boston: Beacon. For me, its what Ive taken to calling the series present the scenes set around a flu pandemic that wipes out 99% of the worlds population that vibrate with acute emotional energy. who dies of a heart attack onstage as he plays King Lear in Toronto. It's that I don't think that period would last forever everywhere on earth. Watching it from the perspective of our own existential crisis a devastating pandemic and a climate apocalypse, each worsened by the twilight of democracy I was struck by the notion that only those who come of age in a time of optimism can draw the conclusion that progress is our natural state; for others (hello, fellow millennials! Hoberek, A 2011 Cormac McCarthy and the Aesthetics of Exhaustion. Aptly described as an elegy for the hyper-globalised present by Andrew M. Butler of the Arthur C. Clarke Award committee (ACCA, 2015: n.pag. The dazzling power of electricity floodlights, porch lights, candy-coloured halogens, screens shining, the points of glimmering light that are towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows populates Mandels incomplete list of what is lost in the catastrophe (Mandel, 2014: 312). Rather, during the first traumatic months spent walking on the road after the catastrophe, Jeevans litany of biographical facts unravels and is replaced by strange fragments (Mandel, 2014: 194). This is a reference to Revelation 20:1115: during the Last Judgment, people are judged according to their deeds, which are written in books, and only those whose name is in the book of life will be allowed to dwell with god in the new heaven and earth of the New Jerusalem. This passage is a clear intertextual reference to McCarthys The Road, whose world is complete with travellers with shell-shocked expressions, children walking covered in blankets, people being killed for their backpacks contents, and a hungry dog. And I think it would be very easy to lose perspective and think that this was the entire world. 21:1), frames the apocalyptic origin of the distinction between the elect and the non-elect at the core of the cults credo when fervently claiming that the survivors names are recorded in the book of life (Mandel, 2014: 286). Even the moments of transcendent beauty and joy created by the Travelling Symphonys performances consist in conjuring, through Shakespeare, what was best about the [pre-apocalyptic] world (Mandel, 2014: 47, 38). You had to be impressed by that at least. Station Eleven , the HBO Max show whose finale airs Thursday, is something else entirely. Events unfurl like a runaway train: Jeevan (Himesh Patel), an anxiety-ridden mess, is attending a performance of King Lear when an onstage tragedy prompts him to intervene. NATIONAL BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST Set in the eerie days of civilizations collapse - the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking Since its debut last month, Station Eleven has drawn both acclaim (from critics including our own Robert Lloyd) and criticism (from fans of the novel on which its based, which it changes in key ways). Is a Disarmingly Hopeful Post-Apocalyptic Tale. Station Eleven 's premise is terribly current for the post-COVID world. But series creator Patrick Somerville had her blessing to change it. In part because the partnership of Jeevan and Kirsten was so odd and hypnotic that Goneril dress! Emily St. John Mandel's new novel, Station Eleven, opens with a vain actor and is there really any other kind? 34268. "Virginia Lottery tickets are available for purchase here!" 2 De Cristofaro: Critical Temporalities Published in 2014 to critical and popular success, Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven is part of a widely-discussed, growing corpus of post-apocalyptic novels written by authors who do not typically write science fiction.1 In what Andrew Hoberek (2011) identifies as the genre turn of Matt Brennan is a Los Angeles Times deputy editor for entertainment and arts. The postmodern subversion of a realistic epistemology leads to the idea that there is no ultimate knowable historical truth, that our knowledge of the past is social and perspectival, and that written history exists within culturally determined power structures (Munslow, 2006: 27). People with chaos in their hearts cannot abide here (Mandel, 2014: 61). Martin Carr We Got This Covered. Station Elevens post-apocalyptic beauty is a far cry from The Roads ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. But soon, within minutes, the death of one man playing Lear disappears into the vast, mass death of a worldwide plague called the Georgia Flu. They were shown maps and globes, the lines of the borders that the Internet had transcended (Mandel, 2014: 262). Tyler reunites with his mother. Last year, as we all scrambled to create some sort of context for the COVID-19 pandemic, Mandel got all sorts of what does it feel to have predicted the future? questions, which seemed very unfair. The Museum, set up by Clark in the Severn City Airport, hosts everyday objects of the pre-apocalyptic society, such as a laptop, an iPhone, a credit card and a snow globe. Station Eleven and The Last of Us share one more very specific similarity: juxtaposing destruction with art. What would make life still worth living after the collapse of civilisation? It may become antiapocalyptic in its refusal of the transition from the tribulation to the millennium (2000: 410, 412). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Matt Brennan: With its emotional finale, Unbroken Circle, Station Eleven ties off the loose ends in its sprawling narrative: Tyler (Daniel Zovatto), a.k.a. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. You know because, mayhem is not a terribly sustainable way of life. Whats on the other side? Download PDF. Importantly, these hours of miracles [are] visible as such only in hindsight (Mandel, 2014: 223), that is, the deterministic teleological pattern of apocalyptic logic, with its distinction between the elect and the non-elect, is always constructed retrospectively, after the end, be this a future projection or a past event that is perceived as an end of something, as is the case of the Flu with the survivors. Every individual experiences what she or he experiences and deals with it in a different way. They discuss both shows and recap the events of Station Eleven, then halfway into the podcast, set the two shows against each other in a head-to-head battle. In the very early days, for example, Jeevan and Kirsten go round a supermarket that is full of produce but empty of people. Does Station Eleven depict an unrealistic social regeneration? Indeed, as opposed to analyses of the contemporary apocalyptic imagination that interrogate its relationship with the current socio-historical conjunctures traumas and risks, especially environmental risks (Berger, 1999; Mousoutzanis, 2014; Skrimshire, 2010), I contend that to understand the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel we need to consider the very core of the apocalyptic imagination: time. 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