Tag Archives: New York

Zone One: All Places At Once

Posted on by

Reading Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, I was reminded most of one reading in particular – Rick Mood’s The Albertine Notes. As Colby mentions in her post, I too found myself getting lost amongst the time in Mark Spitz’s world because he so often slips from pre-Last Day to post-Last Day.

What stuck out to me the most was the relationship, if I can call it that, between Mark Spitz and the skels. On one hand, there was this desire to recognize their humanness, and in a sense it is completely unavoidable. There is the fact that he sees skels and automatically associates them with people he “knew;” his desire to leave “Ned the copy boy” alone; his noticing of thongs – all of these things show that, in this knew world ruled by military organization and tactical emotion-quelling, he struggles to reconcile the pre-Last Day with this “new” world.

I did also love the fact that Whitehead doesn’t allow for this novel to become a hack-‘n’-slash, Zombie-hating kind of story, which I feel it easily could have. He instead ties in  elements, like Mark Spitz’s emotionalism, that allow for the reader to feel, and notice, moments of connect and disconnect. There is the fact that PTSD becomes PASD, and that all of the sweepers are heavily aware that their jobs are both allowing some closer and completely screwing up their psychological relations to the dead, the Apocalypse, and their place in this new world.

Lastly, the language in Whitehead’s book is so concise and crisp, which I think fits the processing one’s mind would go through in the new world. One would focus and process things in terms of essential-ness: “What is the essential knowledge about what I am doing? What memories? What thoughts?” in a way that one can easily be thrown off track, but also make associations. I found this interpretation (as someone who tends to dislike both violence and zombies in entertainment) much more rewarding than the more violent, kill-em-dead types of entertainment that often utilize military ethics, control, and violence in regards to zombies and the Apocalypse.

Nuclear Suburbia

Posted on by

I found the online “Nuke York, New York” article fascinating especially as someone that considers herself a New Yorker, an a person that has been displaced from the city in the face of natural disaster. It was somewhat nice to see that the correlation between New York and fictional apocalypse depictions was more than my keeping my eyes open for my hometown, and interesting to see how 9/11 and Hiroshima imagery combined in the public psyche.

Continue reading →

New York: The Place Apocalypse Calls Home

Posted on by

Reading Mick Broderick and Robert Jacobs’ Nuke York, New York essay, I found myself both surprised and having moments of, “Oh, that makes so much sense!” Why New York has always been depicted as a city that gets destroyed was something I think I had noticed, but never been consciously aware of – and now I understand why, at least historically.

I find the idea of this fascination, in culture, with discussing/seeing images of NYC’s destruction so bizarre. Why New York was chosen as the main point to transfer On one hand, there is the idea that I can totally understand – Hiroshima/Nagasaki was a horrible, destructive event. Max Page refers to New York as, “regarded as a national and international site for both awe and envy” (Broderick, Conclusion). This made some sense to me. (And the irony of the Manhattan project and then a fascination with Manhattan’s destruction isn’t lost on me either.) I found myself trying to interpret why people may have become so willing to, and interested in, the image of New York City as it is being rendered apocalyptically.

On one hand, if a citizen views the destruction of cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one that, I feel, many Americans weren’t too culturally familiar with, picking a city like New York to use in the 1945 example “Here’s What Could Happen to New York in an Atomic Bombing,” chooses a city that everyone “knows,” with both foreign and familiar elements. It is als pretty tightly populated, so perhaps it makes sense to use it as an example to show things like mileage. However, it’s still curious to me. If I were a New Yorker, I don’t know how kindly I’d take to such populating images of a city’s destruction – watching movies where cities get destroyed, when I’ve been or have lived there, always feel different to me.

Post-9/11 I think that there is more of a direct link between the idea of New York’s destruction and the public or social consciousness. Also, I think that (commercial) filmmakers often set films in New York, and want to pick a place that an audience will have some identity in mind with. “Oh, a famous banker – Wall Street, let’s put it on Wall Street!” And with so many other films choosing New York, as a city where people move to “make their dreams come true,” I am not surprised that setting films where dreams come true is the first choice among lots of people. Also, New York has so many micro-cultures of its own – the line in Broderick’s essay about the destruction of east coast elites and minorities, I think, has a lot of validity for certain people. How true this kind of NYC-hate is in Hollywood, I’m less sure of, and more think that they are just keeping up an already popular kind of image.