Beauty features far more prominently in descriptions and memories of the pre-apocalypse. 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. Available at: https://tetheredbyletters.com/when-the-dust-settles-an-interview-with-emily-st-john-mandel/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. At first, Station Eleven is bewildering, all discombobulating cuts between the present and what seems to be a desolate, sparsely populated future. Every individual experiences what she or he experiences and deals with it in a different way. The ships were lit up to prevent collisions in the dark, and when she looked out at them she felt stranded, the blaze of light on the horizon both filled with mystery and impossibly distant, a fairy-tale kingdom (Mandel, 2014: 28). But you know, here I am in Philadelphia this afternoon. So I would want a globe, just to remember that there was a world out there. The website's critics consensus reads, " Station Eleven rewards patient viewers with an insightful and thematically rich assertion thateven in the post-apocalypsethe show must go on." Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/38e15y/hi_im_emily_st_john_mandel_author_of_station/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Modern metanarratives are apocalyptic, in that they are totalising explanations of history based on utopian teleology. They were shown maps and globes, the lines of the borders that the Internet had transcended (Mandel, 2014: 262). NATIONAL BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST Set in the eerie days of civilizations collapse - the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking 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). 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. 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. Public Books, 15 June. With the grown Kirsten serving, when necessary, as something like a one-woman militia, Station Eleven is not without its effective, if sometimes tonally jarring, genre thrills. Boston: Beacon. 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. Bearing the unmistakable mark of The Leftovers, the masterful apocalyptic fiction on which Somerville cut his teeth, these installments felt alive to me in a way the others never did. Tom's Guide's latest streaming news. I in fact stole it shamelessly from Star Trek: Voyager. 1. 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. The sense of an ending and the deterministic foreshadowing it allows should pertain to the closure of time in traditional plots, not to the openness of time as lived, where the future is unwritten. Villainry arrives (via the most frightening performance Ive ever seen, from Daniel Zovatto as the stranger who insists on joining the Traveling Symphony otherwise your friends are going to start to disappear), along with the secret community known as the Museum of Civilisation. 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). 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. The apocalyptic distinction between the elect and the non-elect fuels the ruthless actions of the prophet and his followers from killing to raping and enslaving which they commit [A]ll the time smiling, so peaceful, like theyve done nothing wrong (Mandel, 2014: 273), because they see themselves as the only rightful interpreters and agents of the apocalyptic goal of history, the utopian renewal of the new world. Or at least part of it is. 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). 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). In a way, Station Eleven is an interesting Rorschach test of apocalyptcisms appeal. Because it seems like an improbable outcome, when I look back at the sequence of events (Mandel, 2014: 77, 157). How deeply strange it is, how deeply unsettling, to be able to compare and contrast a fictional pandemic with the real thing. Get Screen Gab for everything about the TV shows and streaming movies everyones talking about. It won several major awards, was an NPR Books Concierge pick, and it's just come out in paperback. Maybe, though people appear to be living in small, mostly primitive communities and the fact that the story confines itself to the shoreline of Lake Michigan (at least I think its Michigan) serves the narrative both spiritually and logistically. This structure articulates a critical temporality that undermines the apocalyptic sense of an ending and, more specifically, foreshadowing, which, with its view of the present as the harbinger of an already determined future, is at the core of the temporality of traditional plots and apocalyptic history alike (Bernstein, 1994: 12). The full Long Island Rail Road terminal in Grand Central Station opened Monday. The following contains spoilers from the season finale of Station Eleven.. Gomel, E 2010 Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination. Confronted with Bertis preaching, the other characters of Couplands novel notice that the way Bertis talks is weird (Coupland, [2010] 2011: 187). 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. 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. She was the leader of a band of survivors not because she was a ruthless martial arts expert but because she continued to write symphonies, and understood that music and theater fulfill a deep-seated need. For the thing with the new world is its just horrifically short on elegance (Mandel, 2014: 151). WebStation Eleven is an American post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction miniseries created by Patrick Somerville based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel.The miniseries premiered on HBO Max on December 16, 2021, and ran for ten episodes until January 13, 2022.. The refusal of this transition, I argue, is at the core of contemporary post-apocalyptic novels be they about pandemics or not for in these texts the aftermaths of the cataclysmic destruction of the world as we know it are preponderantly dystopian.8 In this section, I compare Station Elevens more nuanced and hopeful version of the aftermath with The Roads univocally ravaged and hopeless post-apocalyptic world to discuss how, notwithstanding varying degrees of dystopian scenarios, contemporary post-apocalyptic fictions consistently articulate critical temporalities that reject the traditional apocalyptic notion of a utopian teleology active in history. Bernstein, M A 1994 Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History. I did find it hilarious that, during the winter flashback, the roads were plowed, a sleight of hand Somerville admits was necessary for production to continue. Zamora, L P 1989 Writing the Apocalypse: Historical Vision in Contemporary U.S. and Latin American Fiction. The super flu it depicts may be deadly, but its also swift, running its course in a matter of days. 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. In order to have a good story, there needs to be emotion or entertainment. Rather than reading for the end, Mitchell invites us to read Cloud Atlas looking for parallels and connections, from the comet-shaped birthmark that links the protagonists of the various stories to their acts of defiance against the predatory logic that brings humanity to the apocalyptic demise.11 Finally, the chronological ending of the novel the post-apocalyptic future is effaced through the actual ending of Cloud Atlas the nineteenth-century narrative which suggest that the future is not already written. Available at: https://www.clarkeaward.com/2015-winner/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. I mean, extra points for level of difficulty, no? Indeed, Mandel glosses over the blood-drenched years just after the collapse, the first unspeakable years which were, tellingly, spent on the road, travelling (Mandel, 2014: 48, 37). 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. This deliberate timing allows Mandel not to dwell on the horror and mayhem brought about by the Georgia Flu, horror and mayhem which are instead at the core of The Roads borrowed world (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 130). (Only the Apple TV+ show See takes on the importance of myth and art, albeit in a more controlling, prophetic way, but that pandemic left everyone blind, which brings its own issues.). Rosen, E K 2008 Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Short on elegance ( Mandel, 2014: 151 ) TV shows and streaming movies everyones talking about in to... Streaming movies everyones talking about won several major awards, was an NPR Books Concierge pick, and 's! 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