Alter, A 2014 The World is Ending, and Readers Couldnt Be Happier: Station Eleven Joins Falls Crop of Dystopian Novels. London: Picador. The novels elegiac tone is encapsulated by the Museum of Civilization, where civilization refers to the bygone hyper-globalised world. Traditional apocalyptic narratives reveal a utopian teleology to history, a conception of time that deeply informs western modernity and its metanarratives. The super flu it depicts may be deadly, but its also swift, running its course in a matter of days. Even the moments of transcendent beauty and joy created by the Travelling Symphonys performances consist in conjuring, through Shakespeare, what was best about the [pre-apocalyptic] world (Mandel, 2014: 47, 38). And, as a sniper, he believes he is clearing the way for gods new utopian order, for [T]he people [he] shot bothered God. 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. Instead we got a department store turned into a maternity ward and an Oreo used to demonstrate a cervix dilated to five centimeters. "No cities," she tells NPR's Scott Simon. A life, and therefore actual, rather than fictional time, is made up of a number of loose ends (Mandel, 2014: 27) that resist the retrospective patterning of the sense of an ending. You seem to get reborn almost every time you leave the house, says Arthurs best friend, Clark (David Wilmot, another mesmerising turn), after listening to a California female actor be an excessively California female actor over dinner for too long. Furthermore, teleology entails determinism, which compromises the possibility of choices and ethics. The novel begins with the apocalyptic end, Arthurs death on Night One (Mandel 2014: 180) of the pandemic. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of Station Eleven and what it means. Derrida, J 1992 Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy. Station Eleven. The Road is a recurrent point of comparison for Station Eleven in academic analyses and reviews alike (Tate, 2017: 13233; Alter, 2014; Huntley, 2014). Station Eleven and The Last of Us share one more very specific similarity: juxtaposing destruction with art. At first, Station Eleven is bewildering, all discombobulating cuts between the present and what seems to be a desolate, sparsely populated future. Just like Tyler, Bertis sees himself as the prophet of the new world to come, which is, however, not for everyone. It wasnt like that. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Station Eleven manages to find something different: beauty and meaning, most of it wrapped up in the pandemic's survivors, our main characters, and the way they manage to connect to others and find some joy even in a grim time and place. Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Twentieth-Century Novel. Indeed, as opposed to analyses of the contemporary apocalyptic imagination that interrogate its relationship with the current socio-historical conjunctures traumas and risks, especially environmental risks (Berger, 1999; Mousoutzanis, 2014; Skrimshire, 2010), I contend that to understand the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel we need to consider the very core of the apocalyptic imagination: time. London: Windmill. The Station Eleven soundtrack song accompanies a flashback sequence. Israeli police lobbed hundreds of stun grenades, fired water cannons and arrested at least 40 people in response to Wednesdays demonstration in Tel Aviv against a judicial overhaul. Martin Carr We Got This Covered. Id long since grown skeptical of most topical art, often so calculated in its conclusions, but as Omicron surged and 2022 plans were suddenly canceled, Station Eleven began to feel like the first great screen fiction about the pandemic. Herein lies its critical distance from the utopian teleology of the traditional apocalyptic paradigm. Clark speaks to himself in bed next to Miles. Secondly, the interruption of each story defers closure, and even the stories conclusions contain hints to the following narrative. Even in 2014, I was sceptical that there would be such an appetite. Berkeley: University of California Press. But Station Elevens apocalypse does not bring any sense-making order. Open Library of Humanities, 4(1): 7, 126. London: Continuum. People die alone, with their loved ones unable to be with them, and people grieve alone. The Museum soon becomes a sanctuary where people go to pray, for Station Elevens post-apocalyptic characters clin[g] to the hope that the world they remembered could be restored (Mandel, 2014: 213), just like the people of the Undersea in the comic Station Eleven, penned by Miranda, the title of which signals its status as a mise-en-abyme text.9 Thus, children at school are taught about the way things were, although these are just abstractions and essentially science fiction to them (Mandel, 2014: 269, 262, 270). (Not to worry, I slogged through.). 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. Station Elevens critique of traditional apocalyptic logic is most evident in the figure of the prophet Tyler through whom Mandel self-reflexively appropriates religious apocalyptic tropes to subvert them from within.6 Tyler, the son of Arthur Leander, the character who links the texts pre-apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narrative strands, is only a child when the pandemic hits the world, but grows up to be the charismatic leader of a violent doomsday cult. 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. 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. I focus on three elements: one, Station Elevens critical appropriation of religious apocalyptic logic, which I discuss in parallel with Douglas Couplands Player One (2010); two, the depiction of the aftermath of the Georgia Flu and Station Elevens critique of utopian teleology, which I discuss in parallel with Cormac McCarthys The Road (2006); and, three, Station Elevens non-linear narrative structure, which I discuss in parallel with David Mitchells Cloud Atlas (2004). 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. 1. If you can stick with it, you will be rewarded. Hoberek, A 2015 The Post-Apocalyptic Present. Despite the tidy conclusion, I can only hope creator Patrick Somerville and HBO Max are in negotiations for a second season. By the same token, Kirsten collect[s] fragments of Arthurs life as told in gossip magazines because they are signifiers of her past, of which she has few and disconnected memories (Mandel, 2014: 40). But book awards and Immediately following the Second World War, there was a fashion show in Paris. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajr019. ), Station Eleven celebrates the beauty of the pre-apocalyptic world and mourns its loss. Now I am more so, but beyond the practical, the questions posed by the book and the show about how much of a refuge art can provide, what we should work to preserve, what makes a civilisation and what, ultimately, makes life worth living, remain interesting ones. But book awards and paperback releases are a thing of the past in the world Mandel has created. Published by who dies of a heart attack onstage as he plays King Lear in Toronto. Because in the now, the before is all we have. As Jeevan describes it, this night, was going to be the divide between a before and an after, a line drawn through his life (Mandel, 2014: 20; emphasis in original). Station Eleven and The Last of Us share one more very specific similarity: juxtaposing destruction with art. For her, the important thing is the work itself, not whether or not it's ever published. Station Elevens plot itself consists of fragments from before and after the apocalypse, which challenges the teleological linearity of apocalyptic temporality. Read full review Theres nothing you cant survive, because theres nothing that you will not do (Mandel, 2014: 139). We were saved because we are the light. 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. I confess I came to Station Eleven reluctantly. 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. Station Eleven replicates what Gomel (2000: 408) identifies as the plague pattern, where there is no place for millenarian rebirth. 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 ). And the reason for that is that I feel that most dystopian fiction tends to dwell on that immediate aftermath of horror and mayhem. [18] In her study of contemporary Canadian apocalyptic narratives, Marlene Goldman writes that: Canadian authors introduce particular twists to the familiar myth of the end by challenging rather than embracing apocalypses key features, specifically, the purgation of the non-elect and the violent destruction of the earthly world in preparation for the creation of a divine one (2005: 6). Zombies show no talent for climbing; is there no engineer or architect among them who could construct an elevated village? 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. I definitely had some questions in the end the Prophets use of children as suicide bombers was never really addressed but I was frankly astonished that Somerville was able to keep so many balls themes, characters, flashbacks, contexts, relationships in the air, never mind land them with such optimism and grace. Addressing this nexus, and through it the power dynamics and determinism embedded in teleology, the narrative structures of the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel articulate critical temporalities that invite us to conceive of narrative, and therefore of history, beyond the sense of an ending. In a way, Station Eleven is an interesting Rorschach test of apocalyptcisms appeal. Twentieth Century Literature, 46(4): 40533. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. We are the pure, working towards the advent of a new world, the divine plans for which were revealed to him in dreams (Mandel, 2014: 60; emphases in original). And the novel skips forward 20 years to a young woman who was just eight when she was on stage with that actor and is now trying to make her way in a world that's been shorn of most of what we call civilization. The author has no competing interests to declare. Tom's Guide's latest streaming news. 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. Importantly, these hours of miracles [are] visible as such only in hindsight (Mandel, 2014: 223), that is, the deterministic teleological pattern of apocalyptic logic, with its distinction between the elect and the non-elect, is always constructed retrospectively, after the end, be this a future projection or a past event that is perceived as an end of something, as is the case of the Flu with the survivors. This is the half of Station Eleven that persuades me, the half set in the realm of its Hamlet, its Lear: the half about human connection and isolation, about love, betrayal and, unavoidably, collapse. In: Atwood, M (Eds. 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). Author Emily St. John Mandel was not involved in the adaptation of her hit novel. While The Roads passages signify the critique of utopian teleology through a hopeless dystopian scenario in which we find an entropic dissolution, Station Elevens ending subverts utopian teleology through speculations. 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. By opening with the apocalyptic end that is foreshadowed by these sentences, Station Eleven highlights not only how the temporal order of the sense of an ending can be imposed on the randomness of time solely retrospectively, but also how this order ultimately implies a future that is already written. Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but I did like the idea that a Shakespearean company might be able to make it. 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. : Shakespeare, Salvagepunk and Station Eleven. I read, If you want the girl next door, go next door: Lori Petty on Station Eleven and surviving Hollywood, Anuplifting pandemic drama? WebA pandemic show based on a pandemic novel airing two years into a global pandemic, "Station Eleven" may seem fatigue-inducing. Foursquare City Guide. 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