Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. While the novels prophet holds on to a religious understanding of apocalypse in which the end is followed by utopian rebirth, the Georgia Flu, the pandemic that kills 99% of the worlds population, is termed apocalypse by the television newscasters in the sense of dystopian catastrophe rather than utopian revelation, and the apocalyptic narratives referred to in the text are disaster movies, with the dangerous stragglers fighting out for the last few scraps (Mandel, 2014: 243, 256). : Shakespeare, Salvagepunk and Station Eleven. What would make life still worth living after the collapse of civilisation? ", On what survives including a comic book treasured by several characters. I remember describing the premise of the novel to my husband, and he said, "People would want what was best about the world. WebIn this video we take a deep dive, review, recap and explain the ending to HBO's adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel's novel STATION ELEVEN. 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 you can stick with it, you will be rewarded. Open Library of Humanities 4(2), As West writes, Station Eleven excuses a mindset in which problematic, even apocalyptic, systemic structures are minimized, rather than critiqued (2018: 20). If there are again towns with streetlights, if there are symphonies and newspapers, then what else might this awakening world contain? Thus, one might suggest that Mandels book describes an apocalypse that already happened in 20082009: it is a novel not about a post-apocalyptic future but a post-apocalyptic present, for the ships embody the breakdown of capitalisms fundamental premise of eternal growth (Hoberek, 2015: n.pag.). 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? Every individual experiences what she or he experiences and deals with it in a different way. WebA pandemic show based on a pandemic novel airing two years into a global pandemic, "Station Eleven" may seem fatigue-inducing. Indeed, both Station Eleven and Player One emphasise how the teleological determinism and moral dualism of apocalyptic logic are self-referential narrative constructs which legitimise the oppressions and violence of those who articulate these narratives. Mandel self-reflexively plays with the determinism of the sense of an ending by deploying apocalyptic foreshadowing as a narrative device that connects the various sections. Through their content and narrative structure, contemporary post-apocalyptic novels take issue with the apocalyptic delirium of destination of Western modernity (Derrida, 1992: 53), that is, with the closed and deterministic conception of time at the core of apocalyptic logic and its equally closed and normative utopian visions, which leave no space for agency and for alternative visions of the future. 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. Frankly I was grateful to skip all the store-looting and scavenging we are inevitably treated to in these kinds of tales. And, as a sniper, he believes he is clearing the way for gods new utopian order, for [T]he people [he] shot bothered God. For the profound influence of apocalypticism on modernity can also be qualified as a chronic disease of the Western politics and poetics of temporality, a disease characterised by what Derrida called the disorder or delirium of destination (Gomel, 2010: 121). 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. In the very early days, for example, Jeevan and Kirsten go round a supermarket that is full of produce but empty of people. who dies of a heart attack onstage as he plays King Lear in Toronto. Confronted with Bertis preaching, the other characters of Couplands novel notice that the way Bertis talks is weird (Coupland, [2010] 2011: 187). WebA summary of Part 7 in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven. It's not that I don't think that there would be a period of absolute mayhem and chaos and horror. Now that that's all mapped and charted out and there are no more frontiers that's left us with a certain restlessness, that I suppose gets channeled into our interest in this futuristic, speculative fiction. 21:1), frames the apocalyptic origin of the distinction between the elect and the non-elect at the core of the cults credo when fervently claiming that the survivors names are recorded in the book of life (Mandel, 2014: 286). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/books/station-eleven-joins-falls-crop-of-dystopian-novels.html [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Foursquare City Guide. Yeah, I was interested in the randomness of what survives and what doesn't. There was no place on Earth that was too far away to get to. Zamora, L P 1989 Writing the Apocalypse: Historical Vision in Contemporary U.S. and Latin American Fiction. Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Twentieth-Century Novel. Like Hicks, I argue that the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel addresses the nature of modernity (2016: 4); unlike Hicks, I argue that these fictions do so to critique, rather than to salvage, modernity, and specifically, to critique the apocalyptic understanding of time underlying Western modernity through what I term critical temporalities. Art and literature can, the series argues, offer some safety rails, some moments of connection. The novel begins with the apocalyptic end, Arthurs death on Night One (Mandel 2014: 180) of the pandemic. The word beauty recurs in the descriptions of the post-flu world: the beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone, there was beauty in the decrepitude this dazzling world, It was very difficult, but there were moments of beauty (Mandel, 2014: 148, 297, 302). 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. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Where the book felt stylized, more like poetry or a fable, the But soon, within minutes, the death of one man playing Lear disappears into the vast, mass death of a worldwide plague called the Georgia Flu. 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. Rather than stressing the end, the emphasis is on the present and its ethical value, as the moment in which individuals take choices that inform the future. 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. Traditional apocalyptic narratives reveal a utopian teleology to history, a conception of time that deeply informs western modernity and its metanarratives. The Georgia Flu, the prophet claims, was our flood. McCarthy, C [2006] 2007 The Road. Coupland, D (2010) 2011 Player One. At first, Station Eleven is bewildering, all discombobulating cuts between the present and what seems to be a desolate, sparsely populated future. Even the Georgia Flu, Jeevan notes, has a disarmingly pretty name (Mandel, 2014: 17). Martin Carr We Got This Covered. 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. Chaudhary that stuck, as the series has it, to the surprises of just what happened, and so actualized our own collapsing civilization through burning houses and corpse jets and big box stores-turned-maternity wards. On the other hand, the key element of the novels final passage is the sense of possibility (see my emphasis below), rather than the totalising teleological determinism of apocalyptic logic: is it possible that somewhere there are ships setting out? Mary McNamara: Given the spiritual undertones of the series, and the repetition of the sentence I remember damage. London: Windmill. Does Station Eleven depict an unrealistic social regeneration? Tom's Guide's latest streaming news. Feb. 26A BIG QUESTION keeps popping up on Manchester community groups on Facebook: What happened to the 7-Eleven gas stations on South Main and Maple streets? The question of class distinctions (resource hoarding) is left mostly to an episodes worth of country-club symbolism and a ruinously miscast David Cross. I have seen many, and characters are almost exclusively categorized as hero, villain, victim but never bard, never artist. Just like McCarthys father and son, Jeevan and [A]lmost everyone was moving south in a silent landscape. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 59(2): 24357. You know because, mayhem is not a terribly sustainable way of life. In this section, I compare Station Elevens narrative structure with that of Mitchells Cloud Atlas.10 Both texts complicate the teleological linearity of apocalyptic narratives to make space for unwritten futures which are key to agency. Even in rural Pennsylvania, let alone Asia, you know your world becomes so small so quickly. Even in 2014, I was sceptical that there would be such an appetite. Survival is never sufficient. I even caught myself asking a blasphemous question: If art were truly capable of saving us, wouldnt we already have been saved? Theres nothing you cant survive, because theres nothing that you will not do (Mandel, 2014: 139). We try to make the world make sense for a minute, she explains to young Kirsten. A scene depicts Tyler as a child reading Revelation 18 to the victims of the Flu sealed forever in a quarantined plane (Mandel, 2014: 259). How? If nothing else, its pleasant to consider the possibility. Why in his life of frequent travel, had he never recognized the beauty of flight? doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.206, Download XML You know, it's interesting. Why Netflix is dabbling in livestreaming, Stranger Things play that may hold key to the end taking 1959 Hawkins to West End, NBCs Chicago series have strong showings but CBS wins weekly TV ratings race, Before and after photos from space show storms effect on California reservoirs, Dramatic before and after photos from space show epic snow blanketing SoCal mountains, The chance of a lifetime: Five friends ski the tallest mountain in Los Angeles, Best coffee city in the world? Its one of the most profound meditations on love, loss, grief, and community Ive ever seen. Available at: http://www.tor.com/2014/09/12/a-conversation-with-emily-st-john-mandel/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.235. And the reason for that is that I feel that most dystopian fiction tends to dwell on that immediate aftermath of horror and mayhem. This biblical passage contains a prophecy about the city of Babylon, symbol of the sinful Roman empire, being destroyed by plagues for mighty is the Lord God who judges her (Mandel, 2014: 259) an obvious parallel with the Georgia Flu and with the prophets argument that the pandemic targeted those who were found lacking by god. The spectre of the 2008 economic crisis and ensuing recession does haunt the novel, in which 12 percent of the worlds shipping fleet lay at anchor off the coast of Malaysia, container ships laid dormant by an economic collapse (Mandel, 2014: 28). In part because the partnership of Jeevan and Kirsten was so odd and hypnotic that Goneril dress! Lighter moments leaven the darkness, particularly when the irreducibly charismatic and off-kilter Lori Petty, as the troupes composer Sarah, is on screen, or when we flash back to pre-pandemic times. WebStation Eleven contains many explicit references to other works of art, and relies on them heavily for source material. Ermarth, E D 1992 Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time. Yet contemporary post-apocalyptic scenarios are predominantly dystopian. They discuss both shows and recap the events of Station Eleven, then halfway into the podcast, set the two shows against each other in a head-to-head battle. 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). As Mandel muses, Its almost as if The Road gave more literary writers permission to approach the subject [of the post-apocalypse] (Alter, 2014: n.pag.). Whats on the other side? See, for instance, the state propaganda in Colson Whiteheads, There are varying degrees of dystopian post-apocalyptic scenarios: from, The world of the comic has suffered an apocalypse of its own: the space stations artificial sky was damaged during a war with the aliens that have taken control of the Earth so that Station Eleven has been in a state of perpetual twilight for fifteen years (, A similar alternation between pre- and post-apocalypse, which troubles the teleological linearity of apocalyptic history, can be found in Selfs, In this sense, it is interesting to note Hillary Chutes reflections on the form of comics in terms of their spatial gaps that subvert linearity: through its spatial syntax [of gutters, grids, and panels], comics offer opportunities to place pressure on traditional notions of chronology, linearity, and causality as well as on the idea that history can ever be a closed discourse, or a simply progressive one (. 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