Miranda, Arthurs ex-wife, was unprepared for [the fleets] beauty. Station Eleven repeatedly emphasises that there is no deterministic pattern to time, contrary to what apocalyptic logic affirms. But you know, here I am in Philadelphia this afternoon. The final season of Game of Thrones notwithstanding, I remain a big fan of the epic quest, so I chose surrender. Yet, just like The Road, Station Eleven articulates a critical temporality that subverts the utopian teleology of apocalyptic logic. Station Eleven. In order to have a good story, there needs to be emotion or entertainment. The Flash-forward Glimpses 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 I was really interested and writing about was what's the new culture and the new world that begins to emerge? 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). The following is from Emily St. John Mandels novel Station Eleven which was a finalist for a 2014 National Book Award. You know because, mayhem is not a terribly sustainable way of life. 2010 Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination. Station Eleven and The Last of Us share one more very specific similarity: juxtaposing destruction with art. 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). Read full review One of the prophets followers, who dies revelling in Revelations promise of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. There are as is starting to feel mandatory with small-screen dramas two timelines. He previously served as TV editor at Paste Magazine, and his writing has also appeared in Indiewire, Slate, Deadspin and numerous other publications. Goes Out newsletter, with the week's best events, to help you explore and experience our city. And, looking back to his past towards the end of his life, a retrospection that by definition should allow the sense of an ending to emerge, Clark does not see any meaningful order but only a series of photographs and disconnected short films (Mandel, 2014: 279). DOI: http://doi.org/10.4159/9780674495647. If nothing else, its pleasant to consider the possibility. We put on plays in warzones. 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. Miranda curtly rebukes Elizabeths apocalyptic belief that everything happens because it was supposed to happen by saying Id prefer not to think that Im following a script (Mandel, 2014: 106). We always seem to think the world's ending. Princeton: Princeton University Press. The full Long Island Rail Road terminal in Grand Central Station opened Monday. Leggatt, M 2018 Another World Just out of Sight: Remembering or Imagining Utopia in Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans. 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. Station Elevens ending is key to the texts deconstruction of utopian teleology. Its one of the most profound meditations on love, loss, grief, and community Ive ever seen. The Road is a recurrent point of comparison for Station Eleven in academic analyses and reviews alike (Tate, 2017: 13233; Alter, 2014; Huntley, 2014). The acknowledgment section explains Mandel took this statistic from Simon Parrys 2009 Daily Mail article Revealed: The Ghost Fleet of the Recession Anchored Just East of Singapore. Arthur C Clarke Award 2015 2015 Winner. Even in rural Pennsylvania, let alone Asia, you know your world becomes so small so quickly. How deeply strange it is, how deeply unsettling, to be able to compare and contrast a fictional pandemic with the real thing. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 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. People die alone, with their loved ones unable to be with them, and people grieve alone. And escape, I am tempted to tell you that whatever imperfections you felt you experienced in Station Eleven were deliberate, a kind of cinematic wabi-sabi to remind us that the quest for perfection is not only impossible it is the wrong quest. Quinby, L 1994 Anti-Apocalypse: Exercises in Genealogical Criticism. One Fine Morning by Bill Callahan (00:51): Tyler concludes a conversation with Kirsten. This reaction, of course, is a reflection of our own present, in which art seems to swim ceaselessly against the tide. But series creator Patrick Somerville had her blessing to change it. She had ample experience to draw from. As one of the survivors puts it, Elizabeths [the prophets mother] a fucking lunatic (Mandel, 2014: 253). Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/books/station-eleven-joins-falls-crop-of-dystopian-novels.html [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Washington Post, 15 October. Open Library of Humanities, 4(1): 7, 126. "don't have any 7-eleven stores where I live so when I seen that there 7-eleven's my one" Convenience Store in Something that came up for me as I was writing this book was how incredibly local your world would become. This passage is a clear intertextual reference to McCarthys The Road, whose world is complete with travellers with shell-shocked expressions, children walking covered in blankets, people being killed for their backpacks contents, and a hungry dog. If there are again towns with streetlights, if there are symphonies and newspapers, then what else might this awakening world contain? This staunch rebuttal of apocalyptic determinism through the emphasis on the role that chance plays during the pandemic is echoed when Clark describes the period of contagion as a choreography of luck, the hours of near misses, of coincidence[s] (Mandel, 2014: 223, 224). Cameron, C 2014 Station Eleven Offers Suspense and Science Fiction, but It Is Undoubtedly a Literary Work. 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 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. 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. Despite the tidy conclusion, I can only hope creator Patrick Somerville and HBO Max are in negotiations for a second season. Mary McNamara is a culture columnist and critic for the Los Angeles Times. I found it hopeful. Nor did I want the kind of Theres Got to Be a Morning After survival celebration disaster stories so often rely on. His co-stars can't remember if he had a family to notify. Goldman, M 2005 Rewriting Apocalypse in Contemporary Canadian Fiction. 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. Skrimshire, S (Eds.) Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a grey-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers (Mandel, 2014: 255). Mandel, E S J 2015 Ask Me Anything. 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. 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? Keller, C 1996 Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World. 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 a way, Station Eleven is an interesting Rorschach test of apocalyptcisms appeal. Matt Brennan is a Los Angeles Times deputy editor for entertainment and arts. The novels final paragraph consists mostly of questions, while the hypothetical ships move towards another world just out of sight (Mandel, 2014: 333; emphasis mine), that is, towards a future that, contrary to the normative and prescriptive utopian visions of apocalyptic logic, remains undefined. | ISSN: 2056-6700 | Snow and stopped cars with terrible things in them. Station Eleven is a slow burn. 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. Survival is never sufficient. Chute, H L 2016 Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Foursquare City Guide. //Www.Nytimes.Com/2014/09/06/Books/Station-Eleven-Joins-Falls-Crop-Of-Dystopian-Novels.Html [ Last accessed 24 October 2018 ] HBO Max are in for. More very specific similarity: juxtaposing destruction with art, mayhem is a! In Philadelphia this afternoon I chose surrender: 253 ) what apocalyptic logic affirms, Arthurs,... Strange it is, how deeply strange it is Undoubtedly a Literary Work apocalyptic. Role of contingency and chance in life, reflections of Arthurs include how did I want the of... 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