Abrams, M H 1984 Apocalypse: Theme and Variations. 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. 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. 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. What if it's also a self-published comic book? Ermarth, E D 1992 Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time. Where the book felt stylized, more like poetry or a fable, the 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 contemporary fiction, the post-apocalyptic genre has moved from the margins (tacky science-fiction) into the mainstream (legitimate, widely-recognized and practiced speculative fiction) (Buell 2013: 9), so much so that Frederick Buell frames it as a cultural dominant.2 As Andrew Tate puts it, contemporary narrative is haunted by dreams of a future that is a place of ruin (2017: 2). Toronto: Anansi. Clark lashes out at Arthur after a bender; the music scores the end of the episode at 00:56. Princeton: Princeton University Press. WebA summary of Part 7 in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven. The chaos of historical contingency chaos which is even more evident and dreadful at times of crisis, such as that of the devastating Georgia Flu is tamed through the recourse to apocalyptic determinism, namely, to the belief that everything happens for a reason, as the prophets mother repeats throughout the novel. 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. So yeah, there is a comic book that's drawn by a character in the present day. Washington Post, 15 October. Author Emily St. John Mandel was not involved in the adaptation of her hit novel. The concluding chapter seemingly adheres to the apocalyptic pattern of end and rebirth, for the depiction of Arthurs and Mirandas last hours is followed by Clarks musings on another world just out of sight (Mandel, 2014: 333). 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). 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 Therefore, the plot of pestilence is not so much a fiction of an end as a fiction of an end indefinitely postponed. Mackenzie Davis, left, leads the sprawling cast of HBO Maxs (post-)apocalyptic series Station Eleven.. Station Eleven is a slow burn. In this podcast, PSR Versus podcast hosts Josh Wigler ( @roundhoward) and LaTonya Starks ( @lkstarks) compare episode 7 of The Last of Us and Station Eleven. ), entropy reigns. London: Continuum. Notice, in this sense, Clarks musings on the snow globe housed in the Museum. 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. The novels elegiac tone is encapsulated by the Museum of Civilization, where civilization refers to the bygone hyper-globalised world. Charles, R 2014 Sorry, Emily St. John Mandel: Resistance is Futile. The primary example of this is Shakespeare, specifically King Just like Bertis, Tyler uses contrived rhythms and repetition in his speeches, so much so that Kirsten notes a suggestion of a trapdoor waiting under every word [of his] (Mandel, 2014: 59). It won several major awards, was an NPR Books Concierge pick, and it's just come out in paperback. As Rachel explains, the sniper is deploying poetic devices, such as rhythm and regularity of speech, in order to have a stronger impact and to quickly and effectively indoctrinate (Coupland, [2010] 2011: 1878). It could remind us of our civilization. Yet, she explains, it was important to me to not write that book [The Road]. But I fear the social future Station Eleven imagines is implausible, if not disingenuous. Now the television adaptation by Patrick Somerville (known for Maniac and The Leftovers) for HBO, streaming in the UK on Starzplay, is here and resonating. While it is my argument that this challenge to traditional apocalyptic discourse and its model of history is key to contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction, in this section I focus on Mandels novel in conjunction with another Canadian text, Couplands Player One, which takes place in a Toronto cocktail lounge over five hours while the price of oil quickly escalates and a violent post-apocalyptic scenario ensues.5 Both novels subvert the distinction between the elect and the non-elect, bringing to the fore the self-righteous violence of apocalyptic discourse and how this distinction, as well as the apocalyptic historical teleology it founds, are narrative constructs which serve the interests of those who articulate them. If there are again towns with streetlights, if there are symphonies and newspapers, then what else might this awakening world contain? Cameron, C 2014 Station Eleven Offers Suspense and Science Fiction, but It Is Undoubtedly a Literary Work. Hardly by chance, schooling in the post-apocalypse insists on transports and communications that create a hyper-connected world in which borders are meaningless: Satellites beamed information down to Earth. 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. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Even the Georgia Flu, Jeevan notes, has a disarmingly pretty name (Mandel, 2014: 17). Or more nuancedly, as Clark, a good friend of Arthurs, comments to Tyler: its not a question of having been bad or the people [who died] were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (Mandel, 2014: 260; ellipsis in original). This refusal to paint the old world as worthy of a destruction that paves the way for a utopian renewal articulates the novels critical temporality but is not devoid of issues, as Station Eleven ends up unquestioningly celebrating the current system. One of the prophets followers, who dies revelling in Revelations promise of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. In part because the partnership of Jeevan and Kirsten was so odd and hypnotic that Goneril dress! You are right about how the timeframe jumps from immediate crisis to a relatively established recovery. 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. 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. Rosen, E K 2008 Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Open Library of Humanities 4(2), Chute, H L 2016 Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. "No countries, no internet, no more Facebook, no more email. This pattern comprises panic, dissolution of This [the cults community at St. Deborah by the Water] is a place of order. Emily St. John Mandel. 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. Gomel, E 2010 Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination. In: Atwood, M (Eds. Yeah, I was interested in the randomness of what survives and what doesn't. I hadnt read the book, so I had no idea what I was in for, but I certainly was not prepared for a very young Shakespearean actress trotting around snowy Chicago in her young Goneril costume as the world collapsed. Boston: Beacon. However, on the one hand, the novel is far from adhering to the radical utopian renewal of traditional apocalyptic discourse. Available at: https://tetheredbyletters.com/when-the-dust-settles-an-interview-with-emily-st-john-mandel/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. How does this style of storytelling affect the emotional impact of the narrative? Or, more precisely, it is half masterpiece, half not. After all, McCarthys text which depicts a father and sons journey in a post-apocalyptic US where, after an unspecified catastrophe, everything [is] dead to the root (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 21) is one of the most famous examples of the contemporary body of post-apocalyptic novels as it won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. If I lived in Philadelphia, I would have no idea what was going on. These are elevated by the catastrophe to the status of artworks, beautiful objects which move Clark because of the human enterprise each object had required (Mandel, 2014: 255). 32830. Download PDF. It's not that I don't think that there would be a period of absolute mayhem and chaos and horror. Theres nothing you cant survive, because theres nothing that you will not do (Mandel, 2014: 139). 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. 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). In addition to the texts discussed in my article, other examples of this growing body of twenty-first-century writings include: Louise Erdrichs, Despite the genre turn, Hoberek points out a persistent prejudice against genre fiction central to what Mark McGurl has dubbed the program era of post-World War II fiction (2011: 484). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Mystery The Georgia Flu, the prophet claims, was our flood. Get our L.A. The final minutes of the Station Eleven finale reunite Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis) and Jeevan (Himesh Patel) after 19 years apart. The road was all travellers walking with shell-shocked expressions, children wearing blankets over their coats, people getting killed for the contents of their backpacks, hungry dogs (Mandel, 2014: 1934). At first, Station Eleven is bewildering, all discombobulating cuts between the present and what seems to be a desolate, sparsely populated 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. Snow and stopped cars with terrible things in them. 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. How? On what she'd want to save in an apocalypse. Bernstein, M A 1994 Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History. Traditional apocalyptic narratives are fictions of historical order (Zamora, 1989: 4) that flourish in times of crisis and, through his apocalyptic narrative, the prophet seeks to restore order in the chaotic post-pandemic world. Miranda, Arthurs ex-wife, was unprepared for [the fleets] beauty. 2nd ed. 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. Of course you hope in a scenario like this, what would survive would be the Beethoven symphonies, the Shakespeare plays, the things that we think of as the highest and most exalted expressions of our culture. WebA pandemic show based on a pandemic novel airing two years into a global pandemic, "Station Eleven" may seem fatigue-inducing. HBO Maxs beguiling new mini-series is about a pandemic, but dont let that scare you off. 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. Zombies show no talent for climbing; is there no engineer or architect among them who could construct an elevated village? Station Eleven. Immediately following the Second World War, there was a fashion show in Paris. "No cities," she tells NPR's Scott Simon. To take refuge in the art, dammit. Yes, there were dangers there, but no doubt there was also a lot of food and, potentially, fellow nonmurderous survivors. Clarks optimistic musings on the possibility of ships and life in the countries on the other side of the ocean stand in stark contrast to the fathers answers to his son: Do you think there could be ships out there? 2nd ed. Born in the Boston area, educated at USC and an adoptive New Orleanian for nearly 10 years, he returned to Los Angeles in 2019 as the newsrooms television editor. Station Eleven replicates what Gomel identifies as the plague pattern, where there is no place for millenarian rebirth. We try to make the world make sense for a minute, she explains to young Kirsten. It may become antiapocalyptic in its refusal of the transition from the tribulation to the millennium (2000: 410, 412). WebStation Eleven contains many explicit references to other works of art, and relies on them heavily for source material. On the Traveling Symphony's motto, "survival is insufficient"It is not from Shakespeare. Station Eleven is a slow burn. 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. Finally, when the prophet is killed towards the end of the novel, people find in his bag A copy of the New Testament, held together with tape nearly illegible, a thicket of margin notes and exclamation points and underlining (Mandel, 2014: 303), which further confirms the profound influence of biblical apocalypses, and of Revelation in particular, on the prophets worldview. 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. 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). And I think it would be very easy to lose perspective and think that this was the entire world. Jeevan avoided it, stayed mostly in the woods. Unlike with The Leftovers, Station Eleven was billed as a mini-series from the beginning, and Somerville doesn't seem interested in continuing the story. 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? I read Emily St John Mandels bestselling Station Eleven shortly after it came out in 2014, when the tale of a mysterious flu sweeping the globe and laying waste to normal life lay wholly beyond the bounds of reality. She has no expectation that anybody else will ever see her work. 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. Plymouth: Lexington. 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. 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. what to eat 6 weeks after gastric sleeve surgery, how will god judge a narcissist, Panic, dissolution of this [ the Road ] you off sense, Clarks musings on the Traveling Symphony motto! Show based on a pandemic, `` survival is insufficient '' it is not from Shakespeare engineer or architect them! 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