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. Globe and Mail, 12 September. As children learn in, The critical appropriation of apocalyptic tropes to foreground their complicity with oppressive power dynamics is typical of contemporary post-apocalyptic novels. But you know, here I am in Philadelphia this afternoon. So that line became almost the thesis statement of the entire novel. The prophets image of the pandemic as an avenging angel (Mandel, 2014: 60, 286) echoes Revelation 1516, where the seven bowls of gods wrath are unleashed on the Earth by seven angels. Available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/station-eleven-offers-suspense-and-science-fiction-but-it-is-undoubtedly-a-literary-work/article20577909/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Writing with Intent 19822004, pp. Drawing attention to the dystopian aspects of traditional apocalyptic discourse, contemporary post-apocalyptic novels suggest that its totalising historical teleology is a narrative construct which serves oppressive ideological agendas, for those who posit an end to history, no matter how utopian this end is, also conceive of themselves as the only rightful interpreters and agents of this telos. This critique of teleology is reflected in Station Elevens narrative structure. Station Elevens post-apocalyptic beauty is a far cry from The Roads ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. 34268. 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. How Station Eleven pulled off the impossible, ALeague of Their Own review feelgood baseball drama still knocks it out the park, Point Break: Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze face off in surf-crime bromance, Orange is the New Black: season four will take over your life, without parole, ThePoint Break remake: Five rules to keep it young, dumb and you know, Emily St John Mandels bestselling Station Eleven. Coupland, D (2010) 2011 Player One. The full Long Island Rail Road terminal in Grand Central Station opened Monday. 2nd ed. Mandel, E S J 2015 Ask Me Anything. The great modern revolutions, from the American, to the French, to the Russian, rely on the apocalyptic faith in radical renewal after violent cleansing (Abrams, 1984). If nothing else, its pleasant to consider the possibility. In particular, progress, the modern metanarrative par excellence, represents the main example of the secularization of apocalypse and of its utopian telos (Keller, 1996: 6). Yes, there were dangers there, but no doubt there was also a lot of food and, potentially, fellow nonmurderous survivors. Are you supposed to be? In this altered world, there is a traveling Shakespearean theater company and symphony orchestra touring the small and fairly isolated communities in the Midwest.". It wasnt like that. In: Patrides, C A and Wittreich, J (Eds. As Lee Quinby sums up, the apocalyptic metanarrative is a quintessential technology of power/knowledge, since its tenet of preordained history disavows questionings of received truth, discredits skepticism, and disarms challengers of the status quo (1994: xiii). I have seen many, and characters are almost exclusively categorized as hero, villain, victim but never bard, never artist. Griffith, C 2015 When the Dust Settles: An Interview with Emily St. John Mandel, April. Theres nothing you cant survive, because theres nothing that you will not do (Mandel, 2014: 139). 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. De Cristofaro, D 2013 The Representational Impasse of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction: The Pesthouse by Jim Crace. Mousoutzanis, A 2014 Fin-de-Sicle Fictions, 1890s1990s: Apocalypse, Technoscience, Empire. ), Moving Targets. This critique of the sense of an ending is particularly important because, while it may be innocuous in narratives, if we construct history according to a teleological narrative model, we subscribe to determinism and a totalising explanation of the flow of time that risks justifying oppressions as part of a necessary pattern tending towards betterment. 2 De Cristofaro: Critical Temporalities 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 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). Nor did I want the kind of Theres Got to Be a Morning After survival celebration disaster stories so often rely on. Adult Kirsten is, per the Katniss Everdeen amendment to the Geneva Convention, a skilled knife thrower and general badass, but she is also the companys go-to Hamlet, surrounded by a group of people who survived without surrendering their belief in the power of making beautiful things. Kermode, F [1966] 2000 The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Clark lashes out at Arthur after a bender; the music scores the end of the episode at 00:56. This is a reference to Revelation 20:1115: during the Last Judgment, people are judged according to their deeds, which are written in books, and only those whose name is in the book of life will be allowed to dwell with god in the new heaven and earth of the New Jerusalem. 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. 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. Goldman, M 2005 Rewriting Apocalypse in Contemporary Canadian Fiction. Flawed but engrossing, the craft of HBO Maxs post-post-apocalyptic tale masks its narrative imperfections: As in the Bard, plot gives way to poetry. Rosen, E K 2008 Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Survival is never sufficient. It is almost more discomfiting, however, to be able to point now to moments the creators get wrong. The improbability of it, muses Clark, who is echoed by Kirsten reminiscing about the urban landscape seen from a plane at night: clusters and pinpoints of light in the darkness, scattered constellations linked by roads or alone. As West writes, Station Eleven excuses a mindset in which problematic, even apocalyptic, systemic structures are minimized, rather than critiqued (2018: 20). 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. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. While Station Eleven does not fall into the traps of the utopian teleology of traditional apocalyptic logic, which risks, in its determinism, legitimising oppressive power dynamics, the novel is too complicit with the current system and its exploitations. The narrative continuously moves between the pre- and the post-apocalypse without any regular pattern, and, what is more, even in these two distinct periods, the narrative keeps shifting between different times, from the night Arthur dies and the pandemic begins, to various moments in his life and that of people that are connected to him, from the catastrophes immediate aftermath, to fifteen and twenty years after it.12 Just as in Cloud Atlas, Station Elevens structure encourages us to read for connections between pre- and post- apocalyptic fragments, rather than for an end that integrates the various moments. Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Twentieth-Century Novel. 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 You know, I think I'd want to save a globe. 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. The same interplay of artificial lights and darkness can be found in the description of a shipping fleet permanently anchored off the coast of Malaysia due to the 2008 economic crisis. This is, of course, how apocalyptic logic works, with the end ushering in a perfect new world which makes sense of everything that happened before. Keller, C 1996 Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World. 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. 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. If you can stick with it, you will be rewarded. London: Sceptre. Gomel, E 2010 Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination. Station Eleven. 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. On what she'd want to save in an apocalypse. The contemporary post-apocalyptic novel, instead, is not only predominantly dystopian but articulates temporalities critical of the apocalyptic model of history to make space for unwritten futures which are key to agency. Ultimately, Station Elevens critique of apocalyptic temporality as a self-referential narrative construct is particularly effective because the prophets fanatic apocalyptic fabrication is an attempt at making sense of history in the wake of an apocalypse that, as typical of the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel, failed to bring about the expected utopian renewal. 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. We always seem to think the world's ending. We begin, really, to care, to wonder, to ask more questions. The final minutes of the Station Eleven finale reunite Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis) and Jeevan (Himesh Patel) after 19 years apart. Similarly, Bertis, a fanatic sniper in Player Ones peak oil post-apocalyptic scenario, believes that the pre-apocalyptic world is dying and corrupt and about to be renewed through divine intervention (Coupland, [2010] 2011: 129). The novels elegiac tone is encapsulated by the Museum of Civilization, where civilization refers to the bygone hyper-globalised world. 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). 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). Chute, H L 2016 Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. To take refuge in the art, dammit. 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. 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. Montral: McGill-Queens University Press. Does Station Eleven depict an unrealistic social regeneration? At first, Station Eleven is bewildering, all discombobulating cuts between the present and what seems to be a desolate, sparsely populated future. 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. Station Eleven self-reflexively emphasises this difference between traditional and contemporary apocalyptic imagination. 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. The generation gap between those born before and after is gestured at but scarcely plumbed. Ive spent the entire season trying to reconcile the above with my deep and abiding affection for the episodes Hurricane, The Severn City Airport, Goodbye My Damaged Home, Dr. In: Derrida and Negative Theology, Coward, H and Foshay, T (Eds.). The following contains spoilers from the season finale of Station Eleven.. A finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner, Emily St. John Mandels best-selling Station Eleven is set in the eerie days of civilizations collapse. How deeply strange it is, how deeply unsettling, to be able to compare and contrast a fictional pandemic with the real thing. 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. 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. Jeevan avoided it, stayed mostly in the woods. She has no expectation that anybody else will ever see her work. Station Eleven is going to struggle to find an audience this winter. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.206, Download XML 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. Toronto: Anansi. Brennan: Look, Im not calling Station Eleven a failure, or a disaster, or even a half-assed genre entry. 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. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajr019. London: Picador. "Virginia Lottery tickets are available for purchase here!" As time passes through the night the world starts to crumble. Even in rural Pennsylvania, let alone Asia, you know your world becomes so small so quickly. 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. 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). WebStation Eleven Questions and Answers - Discover the eNotes.com community of teachers, mentors and students just like you that can answer any question you might have on Station Eleven Search this site Similarly to Player One, which features sections foreshadowing what happens in the next hour of the story narrated by the post-human Player One (the implication being that, when it comes to history, the apocalyptic perspective from after the end of time is manifestly impossible in human terms), sentences like The Georgia Flu would arrive in a year, Civilization wont collapse for another fourteen years, A year before the Georgia Flu, Two weeks till the apocalypse, just before the old world ended, the Georgia Flu so close now (Mandel, 2014: 40, 71, 110, 201, 217, 328) punctuate Mandels narrative. As Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth (1992) emphasises, if modernity is about the belief in the epistemic neutrality and objectivity of our representations, postmodernity is ultimately about foregrounding the constructedness of our representations and of neutrality itself. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.256. 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. Aptly described as an elegy for the hyper-globalised present by Andrew M. Butler of the Arthur C. Clarke Award committee (ACCA, 2015: n.pag. Snow and stopped cars with terrible things in them. However, on the one hand, the novel is far from adhering to the radical utopian renewal of traditional apocalyptic discourse. Atwood, M 2004 Writing Oryx and Crake. Derrida and Negative Theology, Coward, H L 2016 disaster Drawn Visual! 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