Open Library of Humanities, 4(2): 8, 123. Instead we got a department store turned into a maternity ward and an Oreo used to demonstrate a cervix dilated to five centimeters. Both texts expose how apocalyptic discourse is fabricated to push ideological agendas. From Station Eleven to Atlanta, GLOW and more, Christian Sprenger has shot some of TVs most beautiful images. 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. Even when the man contemplates the possibility of ships out there, these are deathships, and the hypothetical father and son on the other side are similarly hopeless, living among the bitter ashes of the world st[anding] in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 219). Gomel, E 2010 Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination. After a discussion of traditional apocalyptic temporality as it informs modernity and a theorisation of the notion of critical temporality, my article turns to Station Eleven, drawing comparisons with other contemporary post-apocalyptic novels to illuminate key features of this body of writings and the critical temporalities they articulate. I certainly did not quite understand why Jeevan chose to take Kirsten out into the Chicago winter rather than do a bit more exploring in that very large apartment building. Post-apocalyptic ravaged aftermaths implicitly subvert the central element of apocalyptic discourse, that is, a sense-making utopian historical teleology. They angered Him (Coupland, [2010] 2011: 134) although, it turns out, he is also motivated by a much more mundane reason: he wants to kill his father, who ran off with his wife. Events unfurl like a The prophet believes that everything that has ever happened on this earth has happened for a reason (Mandel, 2014: 59), including the Georgia Flu, which he sees as a perfect agent of death [that] could only be divine (Mandel, 2014: 60). 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. Station Eleven and The Last of Us share one more very specific similarity: juxtaposing destruction with art. Bernstein, M A 1994 Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History. Are you supposed to be? On what she'd want to save in an apocalypse. On the Traveling Symphony's motto, "survival is insufficient"It is not from Shakespeare. Abrams, M H 1984 Apocalypse: Theme and Variations. Thus, after a paragraph foreshadowing Mirandas divorce from Arthur and ensuing life a future that in Station Eleven is, literally, already written at the start of the novel, when we are informed of Arthurs many ex-wives (Mandel, 2014: 134) Mandel pauses to remind the readers that first theres this moment (Mandel, 2014: 107), a moment in which, in life unlike narratives, we take decisions that shape an unwritten future. In: Patrides, C A and Wittreich, J (Eds. Yes, Station Eleven is wildly optimistic and unapologetically sentimental, but I appreciated the problem-solving we did see the airport community, as you mentioned, and the golf resort, even the Symphonys decision to stay within the Wheel for safety reasons. Why, I kept asking myself, are they still living on the ground? Nothing (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 216). Even in rural Pennsylvania, let alone Asia, you know your world becomes so small so quickly. Drawn from Emily St. John Mandels novel, the seriess speculative future edges up, in its most ill-conceived moments, to a kind of Walking Dead-meets-Terrence Malick self-indulgence, and it rarely convinced me, or held me by the throat, the way its speculative present did; I even weighed whether to skip the episodes set along the Wheel, the Great Lakes circle the Symphony traced. Traditional apocalyptic narratives reveal a utopian teleology to history, a conception of time that deeply informs western modernity and its metanarratives. 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. In this podcast, PSR Versus podcast hosts Josh Wigler ( @roundhoward) and LaTonya Starks ( @lkstarks) compare episode 7 of The Last of Us and Station Eleven. The Georgia Flu, the prophet claims, was our flood. This staunch rebuttal of apocalyptic determinism through the emphasis on the role that chance plays during the pandemic is echoed when Clark describes the period of contagion as a choreography of luck, the hours of near misses, of coincidence[s] (Mandel, 2014: 223, 224). This is a sci-fi book, there should be unknowns and mystery, this book lacked in that field greatly. Brennan: Look, Im not calling Station Eleven a failure, or a disaster, or even a half-assed genre entry. Heffernan, T 2008 Post-Apocalyptic Culture. Altre Modernit, 9: 6680. Still, my sense that the series is too Pollyanna-ish for its own good that its conclusions about the uses of art in the world are ultimately unearned stems from the fact that these sections are often dramatically inert to begin with. 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). 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. 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 contemporary fiction, the post-apocalyptic genre has moved from the margins (tacky science-fiction) into the mainstream (legitimate, widely-recognized and practiced speculative fiction) (Buell 2013: 9), so much so that Frederick Buell frames it as a cultural dominant.2 As Andrew Tate puts it, contemporary narrative is haunted by dreams of a future that is a place of ruin (2017: 2). This utopian narrative about the pre-apocalyptic past obscures the material labour that props up the hyper-connected globalised world and the inequalities between the global North and South that lie beneath its seemingly seamless unity. Audience member Jeevan (Himesh Patel) tries to take her home, but they are overtaken by the collapse of civilisation and begin their new life navigating the disaster together. The things Jeevan sees vividly recall The Road. [18] You had to be impressed by that at least. Read full review 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! WebSee 15 photos and 3 tips from 556 visitors to 7-Eleven. Station Elevens plot itself consists of fragments from before and after the apocalypse, which challenges the teleological linearity of apocalyptic temporality. Heres what to know, From Chris Rock to the SAG Awards. By the same token, Station Elevens prophet terrorises the population of the region, assembles a cult, and gains power thanks to a combination of charisma, violence, and cherry-picked verses from the Book of Revelation (Mandel, 2014: 280), where cherry-picked underlines the constructedness of Tylers prophecy. 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). Now the television adaptation by Patrick Somerville (known for Maniac and The Leftovers) for HBO, streaming in the UK on Starzplay, is here and resonating. The generation gap between those born before and after is gestured at but scarcely plumbed. Season 1 Review: Station Eleven takes Mandels book and amps up its sense of a cozy post-apocalypse, where humanity comes together, rather than drifting Yes, there were dangers there, but no doubt there was also a lot of food and, potentially, fellow nonmurderous survivors. This article examines Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven (2014) in the context of the growing body of contemporary post-apocalyptic fictions and what I argue is their critique of the apocalyptic tradition. WebStation Eleven contains many explicit references to other works of art, and relies on them heavily for source material. Yet, significantly, [T]he road seemed dangerous. 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). TV Details Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the The silence (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 274), an irrecoverable ecosystem that indicates the lack of a utopian renewal after the end indeed, the lack of post-apocalyptic futurity tout court and the collapsing of the sense-making order the traditional apocalyptic paradigm projects onto history through teleology. but mainly because it quickly became obvious, from the running references to Shakespeare and the (fictional) graphic novel Station Eleven, that this story was not about how to survive a pandemic. In part because the partnership of Jeevan and Kirsten was so odd and hypnotic that Goneril dress! However, Station Elevens post-apocalyptic scenario is very different from McCarthys and, signifying the shift away from The Road, not only does Jeevan keep out of the road, but Kirsten cannot, and does not want to, remember anything about the traumatic year she spent on the road immediately following the catastrophe (Mandel, 2014: 195, 295). Washington Post, 15 October. WebRotten Tomatoes reports a 98% approval rating with an average rating of 8.1/10, based on 54 critic reviews. Station Elevens structure similarly articulates a critical temporality that complicates the sense of an ending. Buell, F 2013 Post-Apocalypse: A New U.S. At first, Station Eleven is bewildering, all discombobulating cuts between the present and what seems to be a desolate, sparsely populated future. Mandels novel thus exposes apocalyptic temporality as an artificial teleological order that one imposes on contingency, often with oppressive agendas in mind, as is the case of the prophet. 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