A Punchline That Isn't Coming
I watched 28 Days Later tonight. Got me thinking...
I've been big on movies for many years. I've spent a lot of my adult life working in and around film. I've been a cinema manager, a projectionist, and even a film journalist. I love the movies. I love escapism. I love that feeling you get when a film just takes you away, makes you forget the trivial details of your own life. Most of all, I have a bittersweet romance with that feeling you get after you've been to the cinema and seen a film that really got to you, and then afterwards, as you walk out into the street and back into reality, it almost seems as if it is this that is the fantasy.
28 Days Later touched a nerve with me. I've got a thing about post-apocalyptic stories. If you're up with this blog, then you've probably picked up the impression that I am not, generally speaking, in love with the world around me. And if you did, well, congratulations. I'm not the alienated loner I've so casually derided in other posts, but I do struggle to be a social creature sometimes. I guess it's a constant battle. Half of me adores company, the other half basically hates the human race as a whole and believes the world would be a far better place without us.
This could be a long post. I could go into my politics and my feelings and all kinds of other things. From the starting point of that one movie, I could pretty much touch base with everything that bothers me and everything I value. I'm not going to. Not right here and not right now. But it's an interesting point to make. It's also an interesting lead into what's on my mind.
If I could, briefly, be political and philosophical... I think my post-apocalyptic fantasies stem from a feeling that it's all over, that the era we live in represents the end of history. The postmodern age is a cycle I'm not sure we can escape from. As a global culture, we've become shallow and tired. At this point in time, the general zeitgeist is a feeling that it's all been done, that all the great political theories have been used up. It's a drift towards the centre, towards that place where most of the people get at least part of what they want and most of the great fights have been settled by compromise. It's a place where we find our entertainment in satire and homage, where everything harks back to something else. It's a nod and a wink and a knowing smile that exists only to mask the desperation that lurks behind it.
It's the eternal wait for some punchline that isn't coming.
Given all that, an apocalypse might be kind of fun, no? You wake up one morning, and something terrible has happened. Everything's gone. All the things you took for granted have been taken away from you. It's a world that's more or less empty, a world of quiet anarchy. No more governments, no more laws, no more Democracy. Suddenly it's all about survival and - if you live that long - finding some way to start again.
I guess that appeals to me because I wouldn't feel as helpless and impotent as I am in this society. First comes anarchy, a chance to be out in a world where all is crisis. A chance to meet those that survive on entirely new terms. Suddenly you're outside of the cage. Suddenly the rules have changed. In a scenario like that, everybody goes back to basics, to the things that make them who they are, to the feelings and thoughts and traits and insecurites that define them. You have a chance to see these people as they truly are, rather than as mannequins whose emotions are dressed up by a culture that thrives on victims and competition.
Initially, apocalypse would destroy that urge to compete. In terms of survival, luxuries like gas and electricity would be gone, while food and water would be plentiful. Traditional institutions like school, family, the media, and the church would have been wiped out. Their doctrines would last, of course, but it wouldn't take a genius to figure out that these were the very things that had brought us to this point...and that these things could no longer do anything for us.
No more careers. No more work. An end to that philosophy that has us all performing like monkeys, struggling desperately to find a place for ourselves in a world where the reward is financial, where success is based on material possession.
I'll be honest. I would love a world like that. And if 99% of the population had been wiped out to make it happen? Well...what could you do? It would be the past, a thing you were powerless to prevent. Better to move on, to finally evolve.
Evolution. Where would we go? What would we do? It would take time to re-organise, to get to a point where some kind of structure could be built. That part of me that still believes in people likes to think that we would come up with something different...but what that might be is another post for another time.
Of course, 28 Days Later had zombies. So did another of my post-apocalyptic fantasies, George Romero's Dawn Of The Dead. Even Stephen King's The Stand had a dark demon that gathered only the 'evil' people of the world to be his army.
Heh. That's the other part of my movie-fantasy. Just give me a pump-action shotgun and point me in the right direction, will ya?
I've been big on movies for many years. I've spent a lot of my adult life working in and around film. I've been a cinema manager, a projectionist, and even a film journalist. I love the movies. I love escapism. I love that feeling you get when a film just takes you away, makes you forget the trivial details of your own life. Most of all, I have a bittersweet romance with that feeling you get after you've been to the cinema and seen a film that really got to you, and then afterwards, as you walk out into the street and back into reality, it almost seems as if it is this that is the fantasy.
28 Days Later touched a nerve with me. I've got a thing about post-apocalyptic stories. If you're up with this blog, then you've probably picked up the impression that I am not, generally speaking, in love with the world around me. And if you did, well, congratulations. I'm not the alienated loner I've so casually derided in other posts, but I do struggle to be a social creature sometimes. I guess it's a constant battle. Half of me adores company, the other half basically hates the human race as a whole and believes the world would be a far better place without us.
This could be a long post. I could go into my politics and my feelings and all kinds of other things. From the starting point of that one movie, I could pretty much touch base with everything that bothers me and everything I value. I'm not going to. Not right here and not right now. But it's an interesting point to make. It's also an interesting lead into what's on my mind.
If I could, briefly, be political and philosophical... I think my post-apocalyptic fantasies stem from a feeling that it's all over, that the era we live in represents the end of history. The postmodern age is a cycle I'm not sure we can escape from. As a global culture, we've become shallow and tired. At this point in time, the general zeitgeist is a feeling that it's all been done, that all the great political theories have been used up. It's a drift towards the centre, towards that place where most of the people get at least part of what they want and most of the great fights have been settled by compromise. It's a place where we find our entertainment in satire and homage, where everything harks back to something else. It's a nod and a wink and a knowing smile that exists only to mask the desperation that lurks behind it.
It's the eternal wait for some punchline that isn't coming.
Given all that, an apocalypse might be kind of fun, no? You wake up one morning, and something terrible has happened. Everything's gone. All the things you took for granted have been taken away from you. It's a world that's more or less empty, a world of quiet anarchy. No more governments, no more laws, no more Democracy. Suddenly it's all about survival and - if you live that long - finding some way to start again.
I guess that appeals to me because I wouldn't feel as helpless and impotent as I am in this society. First comes anarchy, a chance to be out in a world where all is crisis. A chance to meet those that survive on entirely new terms. Suddenly you're outside of the cage. Suddenly the rules have changed. In a scenario like that, everybody goes back to basics, to the things that make them who they are, to the feelings and thoughts and traits and insecurites that define them. You have a chance to see these people as they truly are, rather than as mannequins whose emotions are dressed up by a culture that thrives on victims and competition.
Initially, apocalypse would destroy that urge to compete. In terms of survival, luxuries like gas and electricity would be gone, while food and water would be plentiful. Traditional institutions like school, family, the media, and the church would have been wiped out. Their doctrines would last, of course, but it wouldn't take a genius to figure out that these were the very things that had brought us to this point...and that these things could no longer do anything for us.
No more careers. No more work. An end to that philosophy that has us all performing like monkeys, struggling desperately to find a place for ourselves in a world where the reward is financial, where success is based on material possession.
I'll be honest. I would love a world like that. And if 99% of the population had been wiped out to make it happen? Well...what could you do? It would be the past, a thing you were powerless to prevent. Better to move on, to finally evolve.
Evolution. Where would we go? What would we do? It would take time to re-organise, to get to a point where some kind of structure could be built. That part of me that still believes in people likes to think that we would come up with something different...but what that might be is another post for another time.
Of course, 28 Days Later had zombies. So did another of my post-apocalyptic fantasies, George Romero's Dawn Of The Dead. Even Stephen King's The Stand had a dark demon that gathered only the 'evil' people of the world to be his army.
Heh. That's the other part of my movie-fantasy. Just give me a pump-action shotgun and point me in the right direction, will ya?
posted by Michael at 1:05 PM
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