I did find it hilarious that, during the winter flashback, the roads were plowed, a sleight of hand Somerville admits was necessary for production to continue. This critique of teleology is reflected in Station Eleven s narrative structure. Time, Paul Ricoeur contends, becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative ( 1984: 3 ). The series creator explains why. Abrams, M H 1984 Apocalypse: Theme and Variations. I read Emily St John Mandels bestselling Station Eleven shortly after it came out in 2014, when the tale of a mysterious flu sweeping the globe and laying waste to normal life lay wholly beyond the bounds of reality. If one of the precepts of the series own holy text, a graphic novel, is show, dont tell, it seems to me indicative of the series strengths that its most moving moments feature spliced-in images, memories, of the characters former selves. Tyler reunites with his mother. Different episodes concentrate on the experiences of different characters, but the through line is young Kirsten (an absolutely extraordinary performance from 13-year-old Matilda Lawler in her first substantial role), a child actor who is abandoned by her chaperone when a stage performance of King Lear is chaotically truncated by the death of the lead, Arthur (Gael Garca Bernal). The red bandanas turn up and disappear in one fell swoop to provide a cliffhanger between episodes; ditto the strained mystery of the the Prophet. The acknowledgment section explains Mandel took this statistic from Simon Parrys 2009 Daily Mail article Revealed: The Ghost Fleet of the Recession Anchored Just East of Singapore. There are holes in the story, but that didnt bother me because Station Eleven felt almost immediately like an antidote to every other post-apocalyptic tale I have ever seen. Finally, when the prophet is killed towards the end of the novel, people find in his bag A copy of the New Testament, held together with tape nearly illegible, a thicket of margin notes and exclamation points and underlining (Mandel, 2014: 303), which further confirms the profound influence of biblical apocalypses, and of Revelation in particular, on the prophets worldview. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2017.1369386. Obviously, it is a narrative cheat to just slide on by all the work and infighting that went into creating those communities, but that isnt what Station Eleven is about. The scene in which a dozen women give birth was the before giving way to the future, just as all the scenes in which Miranda struggles to write Station Eleven were. How deeply strange it is, how deeply unsettling, to be able to compare and contrast a fictional pandemic with the real thing. So I would want a globe, just to remember that there was a world out there. As for the issue of whether or not art has saved us, there is no way of knowing, though it certainly has functioned, at the very least, like the COVID-19 vaccinations incapable of eradicating evil but allowing more people to survive it. 32830. The novels final paragraph consists mostly of questions, while the hypothetical ships move towards another world just out of sight (Mandel, 2014: 333; emphasis mine), that is, towards a future that, contrary to the normative and prescriptive utopian visions of apocalyptic logic, remains undefined. In addition to the texts discussed in my article, other examples of this growing body of twenty-first-century writings include: Louise Erdrichs, Despite the genre turn, Hoberek points out a persistent prejudice against genre fiction central to what Mark McGurl has dubbed the program era of post-World War II fiction (2011: 484). Miranda, Arthurs ex-wife, was unprepared for [the fleets] beauty. Gomel, E 2000 The Plague of Utopias: Pestilence and the Apocalyptic Body. The series creator explains why, Station Eleven, like the Shakespeare that sustains it, is something of a miracle, Unlike Andor, Mandalorian is going all in on Star Wars lore. Station Eleven happened to be on a break in March 2020 when COVID hit, and by the time production started up again in February 2021, the world had changed. Montral: McGill-Queens University Press. For me, its what Ive taken to calling the series present the It received critical acclaim and was nominated for seven Primetime You know, I think I'd want to save a globe. The goal of traditional apocalyptic logic is to order time and make it intelligible, by disclosing that the whole course of human history is tending towards a final resolution which will make sense of everything that happened before. Post-apocalyptic ravaged aftermaths implicitly subvert the central element of apocalyptic discourse, that is, a sense-making utopian historical teleology. Traditional apocalyptic narratives are fictions of historical order (Zamora, 1989: 4) that flourish in times of crisis and, through his apocalyptic narrative, the prophet seeks to restore order in the chaotic post-pandemic world. Hoberek, A 2011 Cormac McCarthy and the Aesthetics of Exhaustion. In accord with the postmodern narrative turn in historiography, the critical temporalities of these novels expose the modern and apocalyptic conception of history as a narrative construct deeply enmeshed with power structures. In Player One, Bertis justifies his murders through a similar self-righteous moral dualism and teleology. I admit that it probably says something about where I am at right now that I wanted more of the disaster and less of the hope. She had ample experience to draw from. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes, to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. Are you supposed to be? ), entropy reigns. Huntley, K 2014 Station Eleven: Booklist Review, August. Even in rural Pennsylvania, let alone Asia, you know your world becomes so small so quickly. While it is my argument that this challenge to traditional apocalyptic discourse and its model of history is key to contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction, in this section I focus on Mandels novel in conjunction with another Canadian text, Couplands Player One, which takes place in a Toronto cocktail lounge over five hours while the price of oil quickly escalates and a violent post-apocalyptic scenario ensues.5 Both novels subvert the distinction between the elect and the non-elect, bringing to the fore the self-righteous violence of apocalyptic discourse and how this distinction, as well as the apocalyptic historical teleology it founds, are narrative constructs which serve the interests of those who articulate them. I even caught myself asking a blasphemous question: If art were truly capable of saving us, wouldnt we already have been saved? Buell, F 2013 Post-Apocalypse: A New U.S. Station Eleven is a massive collaborative effort, but much of the series warmth is shaped by three key visual choices in its first episode. You know, it's no longer possible to set out as a pioneer and stake a claim and start a new life. The refusal of this transition, I argue, is at the core of contemporary post-apocalyptic novels be they about pandemics or not for in these texts the aftermaths of the cataclysmic destruction of the world as we know it are preponderantly dystopian.8 In this section, I compare Station Elevens more nuanced and hopeful version of the aftermath with The Roads univocally ravaged and hopeless post-apocalyptic world to discuss how, notwithstanding varying degrees of dystopian scenarios, contemporary post-apocalyptic fictions consistently articulate critical temporalities that reject the traditional apocalyptic notion of a utopian teleology active in history. Mandels list (2014: 312) of what is lost in the disaster is incomplete first and foremost because, in its elegiac harkening back, Station Eleven ignores present systemic problems, offering merely a few jabs at celebrity culture through Arthurs storyline, the dependence on technology see the iPhone zombies the joylessness of corporate work and the meaninglessness of corporate jargon (Mandel, 2014: 160, 1624, 2768). But both in terms of content and, as we shall see in this articles fourth section, narrative structure, Station Elevens critical temporality questions the idea of a historical pre-determined pattern, emphasising its constructedness. This adaptation of the astonishingly prescient 2014 bestseller is deeply unsettling, even in the bits it gets wrong. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans. Events unfurl like a Now, as HBO Maxs tale of a pre-, post- and post-post-apocalyptic society much like our own concludes, senior editor Matt Brennan and columnist and culture critic Mary McNamara have it out about whether the series was truly great or something less. ", On what survives including a comic book treasured by several characters. Apocalyptic writings, ever since their religious origins, have flourished at times of crisis and [I]t is to this disquieting sense of disorder that the apocalyptic myth speaks, reasserting teleological design and cosmic meaning (Rosen, 2008: xviii). Stepping over corpses (Mandel, 2014: 193) a description that echoes the snowy wasteland of The Road, barren, silent, godless, strewn with cars in which people were burnt alive (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 4, 273). If traditional apocalyptic discourse is about time, contemporary post-apocalyptic discourse is also about time more specifically, it is about critical temporalities, constructions of time that critique a hegemonic temporality. : Shakespeare, Salvagepunk and Station Eleven. The bulk of the series is set twenty years after a flu pandemic brought human civilization as we know it to an end. The road was all travellers walking with shell-shocked expressions, children wearing blankets over their coats, people getting killed for the contents of their backpacks, hungry dogs (Mandel, 2014: 1934). DOI: http://doi.org/10.13130/2035-7680/2987, De Cristofaro, D 2018 Time, no arrow, no boomerang, but a concertina: Cloud Atlas and the Anti-Apocalyptic Critical Temporalities of the Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel. There is nothing in the history of human endeavor, not the Bible, Shakespeare or the annals of HBO, to suggest that we are capable of the regeneration it depicts in the span of one lifetime, much less 20 years. The Station Eleven soundtrack song accompanies a flashback sequence. The apocalypse is such a gap: we do not know what happened, just as in The Road, and this in itself challenges the sense-making function of the end in both apocalyptic history and traditional narratives. On the recent popularity of post-apocalyptic fictionA suggestion that I hear quite often is that our interest in post-apocalyptic fiction is a natural expression of the anxiety we feel. The apocalyptic distinction between the elect and the non-elect fuels the ruthless actions of the prophet and his followers from killing to raping and enslaving which they commit [A]ll the time smiling, so peaceful, like theyve done nothing wrong (Mandel, 2014: 273), because they see themselves as the only rightful interpreters and agents of the apocalyptic goal of history, the utopian renewal of the new world. In this sense, it is interesting to note that, just like another winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, Margaret Atwood (, On the essentially temporal nature of traditional apocalyptic logic see also Kermode (, See also the prototype of the Western concept that history has an intelligible and end-determined order, whether fideistic or naturalistic, is the scheme of the course of earthly affairs from genesis to apocalypse which is underwritten by a sacred text (, Indeed, it is my contention that, in its critique of the apocalyptic understanding of history, the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel addresses aspects of Western modernity that transcend national borders, which in any case become irrelevant after the catastrophes depicted by the texts. (Not to worry, I slogged through.). The generation gap between those born before and after is gestured at but scarcely plumbed. These are elevated by the catastrophe to the status of artworks, beautiful objects which move Clark because of the human enterprise each object had required (Mandel, 2014: 255). Or at least part of it is. 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. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Immediately following the Second World War, there was a fashion show in Paris. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/books/station-eleven-joins-falls-crop-of-dystopian-novels.html [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Both texts expose how apocalyptic discourse is fabricated to push ideological agendas. Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a grey-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers (Mandel, 2014: 255). You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. New York Times, 5 September. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. London: Picador. This critique of teleology is reflected in Station Elevens narrative structure. Traditional apocalyptic narratives reveal a utopian teleology to history, a conception of time that deeply informs western modernity and its metanarratives. Bernstein, M A 1994 Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History. It won several major awards, was an NPR Books Concierge pick, and it's just come out in paperback. 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). WebRotten Tomatoes reports a 98% approval rating with an average rating of 8.1/10, based on 54 critic reviews. Mitchell, D 2004 Cloud Atlas. Stressing the role of contingency and chance in life, reflections of Arthurs include how did I get from there to here? and How have I landed in this life? Yet, significantly, [T]he road seemed dangerous. WebStation Eleven is an American post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction miniseries created by Patrick Somerville based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel.The miniseries premiered on HBO Max on December 16, 2021, and ran for ten episodes until January 13, 2022.. Of course you hope in a scenario like this, what would survive would be the Beethoven symphonies, the Shakespeare plays, the things that we think of as the highest and most exalted expressions of our culture. 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. One Fine Morning by Bill Callahan (00:51): Tyler concludes a conversation with Kirsten. Station Eleven, a ten-part limited series from HBO, is adapted from Emily St. John Mandels bestselling 2014 novel of the same name, which won the Arthur C. Clarke award and has sold more than 1.5 million copies. And one that in its most poignant moments reaches the same depths of emotion as the greatest television dramas: as Beasts of the Southern Wild composer Dan Romers roadside jug-band score measures the heartbeat of the end of the world; as the camera catches the glimmer of tears in Tylers eyes during that final performance of Hamlet; as an impromptu rap song or homemade costume render the pain of the human condition at a single humans scale. 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. The Swiss Family Robinson managed, and they were mostly kids! Boston: Beacon. 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