When the balloon goes up: Horror and the post-apocalypse

(Part one in an occasional series of, mainly alcohol- and insomnia-fuelled, ramblings about a serious literary and cinematic theme)

He might. The audience on the other hand...

AMC’s The Walking Dead has been a hot topic these last few months. I think by now it is apparent that I’m not a huge fan; in fact, I’m only watching it because there is currently nothing else on with zombies in… I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone in that. There has been talk in recent weeks that NBC might take a TV version of the awesomely funny Zombieland (which, according to its makers, was always intended as a pilot to launch a small-screen version) into production – I guarantee, if that was airing, I’d watch it instead. No contest. Not because I only want to see zombies getting their brains blown out, but because it would be an entertaining show about a zombie apocalypse that didn’t take itself seriously and pretend, all po-faced and self-righteous, to actually be about “human nature” – with good old fashioned slapstick humour as the icing on the cake. (Did I mention it also has zombies?)

But that’s all by the by. Criticising TWD is now like shooting fish in a barrel, and is hereby declared no longer cool. Let’s be gracious about this, put down the pitchforks and torches, and see what they come up with next February. Deal?

Let’s talk instead about the sub-genre that TWD is attempting to occupy: the post-apocalypse.

Historically, as explained by Teresa Heffernan* (Associate Professor of English at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia), the apocalyptic narrative was concerned with satisfying our need for a “sense of purpose”, for transcendence and resolution, and was traditionally informed by the Genesis to Revelation arc. The culmination was a positive one – the utopia of a New Jerusalem.

Mary Shelley was one of the first novelists to break ranks with her 1826 novel The Last Man, the story of a man living in a future world emptied of humanity by plague, possibly influenced by the works of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Immanuel Kant. Although Shelley would always consider it one of her best works, the concept was not well-received, with critics deriding it as “sickening”, full of “stupid cruelties”, and describing her imagination as “diseased.” One can only wonder what they would have said – if asked to review it – about the Bible, in that case… The book effectively disappeared, not seeing republication until 1965!

The 20th century – particularly in the immediate aftermath of World War I – saw a sea-change in attitudes and outlook. Our faith in Utopia had crumbled in the face of the horrors of industrial-age warfare, and, as Heffernan says, while the present world was now viewed as exhausted “there is no better world that replaces it… [and no] new beginning or any hope of rebirth or renewal.” The apocalyptic narrative ceases to offer resolution or salvation and instead promises only a senseless and arbitrary end.

The abandonment of the idea of a better future eventually – via World War II, Hiroshima and the Shoah - brought us full circle to Shelley’s vision. By the latter half of the 20th century, as James Berger says in After The End, the apocalypse, “the unimaginable, the unspeakable, has already occurred,” and the emphasis shifts to the dystopian post-apocalyptic world. We find ourselves now walking – like the metaphorical “walking dead”, you might say – in a post-modern, post-Christian landscape of existential nihilism: life has no meaning, no value, no purpose, and any morality that exists is one that has been abstractly contrived by its inhabitants… Sound familiar…?

So how has this post-apocalyptic narrative manifested in modern horror? For me, the problem with many cinematic interpretations of the sub-genre is that they venture into How It’s Made or Popular Science or – whisper its name – Guns and Ammo territory. Honestly? I don’t give a flying rat’s ass about how to survive in this place, or how to barricade the lower floors and defend from the roof, or how to hit the Wal Marts for bottled water and tinned goods with long use-by dates. I’m interested in the real meat: humanity. TWD is too “lite” to serve up here; likewise 28 Days Later or even The Omega Man.

I offer you The Road…

Bleak? Yes. A good ole boys’ cheery, Republican, red-neck survival guide to World War Z? No.

This, my friends, is real horror cinema.

(tbc…)

• “Post-Apocalyptic” Is All the Rage, But Where Are the Good “Apocalyptic” Movies? (thebrowntweedsociety.com)
• If Zombie Apocalypse Takes Place (aisjournal.com)
• Believable Characters (wwdoctor.wordpress.com)
• Say Goodbye To Looking Good (intheeventofazombieapocalypse.wordpress.com)
• New Writer: Zombie Apocalypse Among Us!! (whiteglossyundergroundboard.com)
• Syfy’s ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ Begins This X-Mas (bloody-disgusting.com)
• Ving Rhames Enters The Asylum to Survive Another Zombie Apocalypse (dreadcentral.com)
• Mothering through the Zombie Apocalypse (navelgazingbajan.wordpress.com)
• The Asylum Unleashes the Trailer for Zombie Apocalypse (dreadcentral.com)
• Watch Ving Rhames Brave Another Zombie Apocalypse this Halloween (dreadcentral.com)

*What’s up with this world? Check out that bio – “post humanism and science studies… apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic culture…” How come I never meet girls like this? My last girlfriend’s favourite book was the Avon catalogue.

~ by gabriel on December 10, 2011.