{"id":1132,"date":"2024-06-20T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-20T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/wrigley\/?p=1132"},"modified":"2024-08-23T20:28:48","modified_gmt":"2024-08-23T20:28:48","slug":"the-other-side-of-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/wrigley\/2024\/06\/20\/the-other-side-of-apocalypse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other Side of Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n\n \n
\n \n
\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n \n\n<\/div>\n \n
\n \n
\n\n \n

2024 Wrigley Institute Graduate Fellow Aidan Diamond, a PhD student in USC Dornsife\u2019s Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture Program, examines apocalypses narratives and how climate change is depicted in various novels, films, and comics. (Nick Neumann\/USC Wrigley Institute) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

\n \n \n
\n\n \n

The Other Side of Apocalypse<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n By<\/span>Aidan Diamond<\/strong>\n \n June 20, 2024<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n\n \n
\n \n \n Share\n <\/span>\n \n \n <\/svg>\n <\/span>\n Copy Link<\/span>\n <\/a>\n \n \n <\/svg>\n <\/span>\n Facebook<\/span>\n <\/a>\n \n \n \n\n<\/svg>\n\n <\/span>\n X<\/span>\n <\/a>\n \n \n <\/svg>\n <\/span>\n LinkedIn<\/span>\n <\/a>\n \n \n \n \n <\/svg>\n <\/span>\n Bluesky<\/span>\n <\/a>\n \n \n <\/svg>\n <\/span>\n Email<\/span>\n <\/a>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n \n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n\n \n \n
\n\n \n
\n

My dissertation, \u201c\u2018For A Better Future\u2019: Narrative and Hope at the End of the World,\u201d examines the ways in which the context of climate change\u2014which we might describe as an apocalyptic process\u2014revises the narrative structure of apocalypse the last two thousand years have accustomed us to. Through this revision, the apocalypse narratives I examine (films, comics, and novels) take on the difficult work of imagining not just what climate apocalypses might look like, but what futures might lie on the other side.<\/p>\n

\n

The body of work I study is comprised by nine texts: three novels (Margaret Atwood\u2019s\u00a0MaddAddam<\/i>\u00a0trilogy, Ruthanna Emrys\u2019\u00a0A Half-Built Garden<\/i>, Kim Stanley Robinson\u2019s\u00a0The Ministry for the Future<\/i>), three films (Benh Zeitlin\u2019s\u00a0Beasts of the Southern Wild<\/i>, Guillermo Del Toro\u2019s\u00a0Pacific Rim<\/i>, and George Miller\u2019s\u00a0Mad Max: Fury Road<\/i>), and three comics (Ann Nocenti\/David Aja\u2019s\u00a0The Seeds<\/i>, Joe Keatinge\/Leila Del Duca\u2019s\u00a0Shutter<\/i>, and John Layman\/Rob Guillory\u2019s\u00a0Chew<\/i>).<\/p>\n

Each text approaches apocalypse in a very different way, even though each comments on climate change either through literal representation or metaphorical invocation. The apocalypses represented among them include pandemics, first contact with aliens, imperialist extraction, resource scarcity, and, of course, climate change itself as the principal apocalyptic threat.\u00a0These apocalypses are rendered in vivid palettes or in monochrome, are satirical or deathly serious, operate on scales both epic and profoundly personal. They gesture to the breadth of possibility in the apocalypse genre: the many ways the world can end, and, more importantly, what it takes to navigate those ends and find a path to a better future.<\/p>\n

This is the \u201capocalyptic plot\u201d in its most basic form: destruction, then renewal. Apocalypse, and then utopia. It\u2019s an alluring plot, because a better world lies on the other side of the apocalyptic present; it\u2019s ALSO a dangerous plot, because it suggests that the only way to that better world is through apocalyptic violence. One can see manifestations of this plot on both ends of the political spectrum\u2014the conservative Christian Rapture that saves the \u201cdeserving\u201d and damns the rest, the leftist Revolution that tears down oppressive structures and builds something better from that destruction. In each case, only a few survive. Because a better world (Heaven or a socialist utopia) lies on the other side of apocalypse, believers are motivated to spur on apocalypse, to conjure it if it takes too long to manifest, and they can believe that the apocalyptic violence they cause is justified\u00a0because it is the only way to the better world<\/i>. What price is too high to pay for admission to paradise? Nearly any atrocity becomes justifiable if it\u2019s committed in pursuit of utopia. The road to Heaven is paved with corpses.<\/p>\n

So, this is the plot that has dominated the apocalypse narrative since the Book of Revelation, the last volume in the New Testament. What\u2019s fascinating to me about climate-inflected apocalypse narratives\u2014like the ones I study\u2014is that these narratives are actively revising the apocalyptic plot in three key ways:<\/p>\n

(1) Climate-inflected apocalypse narratives\u00a0refuse to justify or elide the high cost of apocalyptic violence<\/i><\/strong>.<\/strong>\u00a0If these narratives demonstrate apocalyptic violence\u2014as in the\u00a0MaddAddam<\/i>\u00a0trilogy or\u00a0Mad Max: Fury Road<\/i>, to name two examples\u2014they insist upon confronting their audience with that violence. You\u2019re not allowed to look away from the damage, because the characters can\u2019t:\u00a0MaddAddam<\/i>\u2019s Jimmy\/Snowman, the narrator of the first book, lives with the inescapable horror of being the last human being alive, and of having been an unwitting accomplice in the genocide of humanity. It defines his every thought and every waking moment. Apocalypse, for Jimmy\/Snowman, is no escape hatch to a better future, but a hellish nightmare from which he can\u2019t awake. Atwood writes of his existential horror: \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know which is worse, a past he can\u2019t regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there\u2019s the future. Sheer vertigo\u201d (Oryx and Crake<\/i>\u00a0147).<\/p>\n

Mad Max: Fury Road<\/i>\u00a0operates on a parallel logic: the protagonists, and especially Furiosa and Max, are seeking not only their \u201cbetter selves,\u201d as the film\u2019s closing epigraph states, but a better world in which to live. When they discover that there is no Green Place to which they can escape from the horrors of the Wasteland, they resolve to remake the world they live in by reclaiming the verdant Citadel and reshaping its society\u2014a decision that requires spectacular brutality (rendered by director George Miller and editor Margaret Sixel\u00a0as spectacle<\/i>) against those who run the Citadel, embodied by Immortan Joe and his fanatical followers.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Grievously injured herself, Furiosa (Charlize Theron) prepares to kill the brutal patriarch of the Citadel, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), whose death cult of War Boys and sadistic allies have pursued her and her party across the Wasteland. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), dir. George Miller, Warner Bros.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(2)\u00a0Typical apocalypse narratives focus on either an individual survivor or a very small group of survivors<\/strong>\u00a0(playing into the logic of the Rapture that emerges in the progenitor of apocalypse, the Book of Revelation); Mark Payne\u2019s\u00a0Flowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction<\/i>\u00a0persuasively argues that \u201cpostapocalyptic\u201d fiction of the last three hundred years engages in what he terms the \u201cpostapocalyptic pastoral,\u201d in which apocalyptic violence clears the path for individual self-actualization. Reductively, the end of the world becomes a stage for a character to become the best possible version of themself. Climate-inflected apocalypse narratives are largely unwilling to valorize the individual survivor, and they are entirely unwilling to justify apocalyptic violence as a necessary act to allow individual betterment. Instead, these narratives are deeply invested in how to get\u00a0the collective<\/i>\u00a0to a better future, because\u00a0a better future is only possible through collective action<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Take, for example,\u00a0The Ministry for the Future<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Pacific Rim<\/i>: the first examines climate change in meticulous detail, and the second does so by way of metaphorical afterthought. But each text insists, with almost obsessive conviction, that the world can only be saved\u2014from greenhouse gas emissions, from invading alien monsters\u2014by people working together to counter the apocalyptic threat and build something in the aftermath. Stacker Pentecost\u2019s iconic speech just before\u00a0Pacific Rim<\/i>\u2019s climactic battle\u2014the one where he declares that \u201cToday, we are cancelling the apocalypse!\u201d\u2014is addressed not only to the Jaeger pilots who will risk their lives on the oceanic front lines, but to every engineer, technician, and other personnel who have devoted themselves to this mission of cancelling the apocalypse, and his choice of collective pronoun in that sentence and throughout his speech encompasses every person and every effort that has sustained their defense for so long. \u201cToday,\u201d he says, \u201cwe have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today there\u2019s not a man nor woman in here that shall stand alone.\u201d The work of making a better future possible requires collective hope and, more to the point, collective action for that better future.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) addresses the pilots and personnel of the Shatterdome before their final effort to defeat the invading Kaiju aliens for good. Pacific Rim (2013), dir. Guillermo Del Toro, Warner Bros.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

The Ministry for the Future<\/i>\u00a0similarly insists upon collective effort to make any headway against the climate crisis. Though the book has a main character, most chapters are not written from her point of view, but from the point of view of an Antarctic scientist, a photon, various individuals spearheading efforts to assassinate oil executives or re-wild rural America or engage in regenerative farming in India. But one chapter stands out from the rest in its encapsulation of the book\u2019s belief in collective action\u2019s ability to bring better futures into being: a conference of conservationists from around the world. Not a single quotation mark is used in the three-and-a-half page long chapter; each sentence represents a different country\u2019s delegation describing their work to conserve and care for the land they\u2019re responsible for. The chapter closes with something like an ode to the power of collective action to change the world:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n\n \n
\n <\/svg>\n \n
\n\n \n

We are all here together to share what we are doing, to see each other, and to tell you our stories. [\u2026] You will find us out there already, now, and then you must also realize we are only about one percent of all the projects out there doing good things. And more still are waiting to be born. Come in, talk to us. Listen to our stories. See where you can help. Build your own project. You will love it as we do. There is no other world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n