Doomsday

Hi everyone,

My project statement can be found on my participant page.

Can’t wait to see the videos from last week’s class. Thanks to Professor Quinby,  John, and of course everyone in the class for all the great discussions in class and on the blog.

-Ariana

Last week, I wrote about dreams, and how the father denied himself the escape offered by good dreams, instead preferring nightmares, or better yet, reality. In this week’s reading I was again struck by the father’s refusal to let go of his chokehold on reality, this time by refusing to relive good memories.

The father in The Road strives not to remember. “He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins…So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not” (McCarthy 131).

I think the father’s reluctance to remember is more than just concern for the origins of the memory. If he allows himself to be distracted by a memory, even for a second, it could be fatal.  This, I think, is why he leaves the mother’s picture in the road – to remember her would be to damage her even further, but more importantly, would damage himself.

In The Albertine Notes, the junkies are forever chasing good memories, looking for relief from life after the bomb. Either that, or they’re trying to jump into the future, desperately seeking to experience something, anything, other than the present. By using Albertine, they’re destroying their ability to remember, but they don’t care about the forgetting, the “brownout” in their brains caused by the drug (Moody 181-183).

The concept articulated by McCarthy, above, that remembering something inevitably causes the memory itself to change, is the basis of Moody’s ahistorical remembering phenomenon. If the act of recollection can change one’s experience of a memory (becoming numb to a painful experience, a first impression colored by the ensuing relationship, etc.) why stop there? Why not be able to change the very reality that created the memory in the first place?

This week, I was intrigued by the difference between coping methods in the post-apocalyptic worlds of The Albertine Notes and The Road. Everyone in The Albertine Notes seems consumed by escapism. The junkies are obsessed with using the drug, the dealers are obsessed with selling the drug, and even the Resistance movement is singlemindedly fighting in the past and the future to stop the spread of the drug. No one, it seems, is very interested in rebuilding present-day Manhattan, or even moving away from the wasteland and starting over.

I get this. When everything falls apart (even on a non-apocalyptic scale), it’s tempting to hide under the covers, self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, or food, obsess over controlling the little things, and refuse to acknowledge reality.

What I don’t understand is, in The Road, the father’s total rejection of the comfort of his dreams. He is living in a terrible, horrible, post-apocalyptic world, and he is “learning how to wake himself” from dreams of a world with flowering forests, birds, and bright blue skies. He mistrusts good dreams, believing “the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death” (McCarthy 18).

I understand he has a responsibility to his son, and he can’t afford to get lost in a dream world, but I find it hard to believe that the best solution is to sleep with only nightmares for company. In a world where every-day waking life is a nightmare, wouldn’t it be more beneficial (to maintain humanity, sanity, hope, etc.) to take solace in whatever small comforts are available? I don’t think that’s a luxury, or too indulgent. Or is it just too much of a slippery slope?

In Chapter 1 of Millennial Seduction, Professor Quinby writes, “skeptical revelation entails seeing both emotion and cognition as not only time and culture bound, but also bound together” (Quinby 22).

In the creative works we’ve read and seen so far, how do the authors manipulate emotion (either on the part of the characters or the reader/viewer) within the apocalyptic framework?  In the examples you choose, discuss whether the use of emotion compliments or complicates the traditional apocalyptic story.

The second half of Glorious Appearing documents the fulfillment of prophesy – “history written in advance” (237).

Members of the Trib Force continuously exclaim over Carpathia’s eternal capacity to reject the prophesy, even as it starts to be fulfilled in front of his eyes. “Carpathia had to have read the Bible. He had to know all this was prophesied. He even had to know the predicted outcome. Yet he brazenly came to the very post he was supposed to, and…he still had the gall to believe he would prevail” (269).

From this and similar statements, it seems as if everything is predestined – who will win, who will lose, who will live, and who will die. When Ming asks Eleazar about people who choose not to come to Israel, he just laughs and replies, “Did you see anyone at the judgment today who appeared to have a choice?” (368).

But at other times throughout Glorious Appearing, the authors emphasize that it is possible to have a choice. By choosing to believe in Jesus, a person will be spared the plagues and ultimately the lake of fire. Conversely, those who choose to believe in the Antichrist get the punishment they deserve. “The Unity Army soldiers were slain simply by the Lord’s words…they had long since made their decision. They had pledged their loyalty to the god of this world, had willingly taken the mark of Antichrist and bowed the knee to him. For them there was no recourse” (239).

It seems to me LaHaye and Jenkins are trying to have it both ways. Do we have free will to choose between good and evil? Or is everything predestined, and are our actions today just fulfilling ancient prophesies?

The questions are more than merely theological. As McAlister notes, “the series offers its readers a way to see the aggressive actions of the United States (and those of terrorists or other actors in the region) as part of a divine plan…beyond any human agency to effect – or to judge.” (McAlister 194). Obviously, it can be a slippery slope from predestination to abdication of responsibility.

I know we’re all about Glorious Awakening this week, but there’s something on my mind from last week that I don’t think we discussed. Apologies if everyone is already bored to death by Angels.

Towards the end of the film Twelve Monkeys, Dr. Railly says to the older psychiatrist, “Psychiatry: it’s the latest religion. We decide what’s right and wrong. We decide who’s crazy or not. I’m in trouble here. I’m losing my faith.”

Elizabeth Rosen writes that in earlier drafts, “the analogy of religion to psychiatry is emphasized even more with Kathryn adding that psychiatrists are the priests of the religion” (Rosen 87).

In Angels in America, Roy tells Belize the same thing, almost word for word. He says, “Lawyers are…the High Priests of America. We alone know the words that made America. Out of thin air. We alone know how to use The Words. The Law: the only club I ever wanted to belong to” (Perestroika, Act 4, Scene 1) .

In Angels, God is literally missing, and there seems to be no room for God in the Twelve Monkeys universe, complete as it is with human time travel and a deadly epidemic. So these two postmodern apocalyptic stories offer up the alternative religions of psychiatry and law in place of Christianity (or Judaism or Mormonism).

We’ve discussed secular replacements for God (Ozymandias in Watchmen), secular replacements the end of the world (nuclear annihilation in Watchmen and On the Beach, viruses in Angels in America and Twelve Monkeys), secular replacements for New Jerusalem (end of the Cold War in Watchmen, epilogue of Angels) – all elements of the apocalyptic paradigm.

This secularization makes the stories more believable, and thus (maybe) more compelling – as entertainment, calls to action, social critique, etc. It’s easy to imagine nuclear attack (see the Duck and Cover video), or dying from a disease (AIDS, swine flu, anthrax, etc.) Much easier than imagining oceans turning into blood, or 200 million demonic horsemen galloping around (Revelation 8:8, 9:16-19). But, as we’ve discussed in class, we live in the most religious industrialized nation. Ultimately, the idea of law or psychiatry taking the place of Christianity is just as hard for me to swallow as the idea of a lake of fire filled with nonbelievers (Revelation 20:15).

Elizabeth Rosen, while analyzing Terry Gilliam’s film Twelve Monkeys, argues that “being an End-time prophet is maddening; that is, by its nature, it jeopardizes one’s sanity” (Rosen 89-90). Kushner’s Prior Walter would certainly agree.

Prior is quickly convinced he is going crazy during his dealings with the Angel. The first time he mentions the voice to Belize, he blames it on the drugs he’s taking. But Belize isn’t so sure – he’s afraid of dementia and warns Prior, “Don’t go crazy on me, girlfriend” (Millennium Approaches 61).

Later, when Louis is pumping Belize for information about Prior, Belize tells Louis Prior thinks he’s going crazy, and Prior himself repeats this concern to his nurse, Emily (Millenium Apporaches 97-98).

Finally, in Part Two, Prior says to Hannah, “I saw an angel. That’s insane. Insane. But I’m not insane. But then why did I do this to myself? Because I have been driven insane…ever since She arrived, ever since, I have been consumed by this ice-cold, razorblade terror that just shouts and shouts ‘Keep moving! Run!” And I’ve run myself…into the ground. Right where she said I’d eventually be” (Perestroika 102-103).

Prior’s fight with AIDS and the reactions of other characters (especially Hannah and Belize) when he tells them about the Angel support Rosen’s belief that “Prophets sow anxiety and discord…so the ends they suffer…tend to be ugly ones…Certainly, such prophets suffer scorn and their prophecies are dismissed as delusions of diseased minds” (Rosen 89).

However, unlike most of the prophets (Cassandra, James Cole, Jeffery Goines, etc.) Rosen mentions in Chapter 3, A Tortured State of Mind, Prior gets a fairly happy ending. By rejecting his prophesy and choosing life, Prior avoids eternally experiencing “the agony of the apocalyptist” (Rosen, 88). Prior is lucky in that he gets a chance to say no – it is rare that a prophet gets the opportunity to wrestle with an angel and be granted a choice.

My proposal for the Creative Project is to redesign the Game of Life to fit a more apocalyptic vision. Using the Book of Revelations, class movies and readings, and outside sources for reference, I’d like to chart a fun and interactive roadmap from the breaking of the first seal to the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Along the way will be pit stops for nuclear annihilation, a night with Jezebel, melted ice caps, and more.
Game pieces will include a spinner (with 6 appearing three times, of course), player tokens (four horsemen, St. John, the Lamb, the dragon/Antichrist, etc.), Sin cards in place of Salary cards, Doom tiles in place of Life tiles, which can be either damning or redemptive, and the game board itself. At the end of the game, players will “retire” either to Heaven or the lake of fire, depending on their sins and the content of their Doom tiles.

Before reading Angels in America, the apocalypses we read about and discussed in class seemed to have at least one thing in common – the whole world was affected. From nuclear destruction to environmental degradation, there was always a sense that come what may, we’re all in this together. (Except, of course, Fundamentalist Christians. And the 144,000 virgins.)

In Angels in America, however, we’re treated to a view of the apocalypse (in the form of the AIDS epidemic) as it affects only one community, in only one place – the gay, male community of New York City. I don’t mean to downplay the severity or the horrific consequences of the AIDS epidemic, but does it really constitute an apocalypse?

According to Professor Quinby, there are five essential elements of an apocalyptic story.

1. God, or divine authority (the Angel)
2. Receiver of the message (Prior)
3. End of the world (AIDS diagnosis)
4. Judgment day (Prior refusing the mission to stop humanity’s progress)
5. Eternal life in new Jerusalem, or some other form of transcendence (scene at the Bethesda Fountain)

None of these points (taking a less than literal view of the word “world” in #3)  demands participation from a large group of people, and  I would say that Angels in America hits all of the five points. My question, however, is whether the idea of a localized apocalypse is inherently oxymoronic.

Obviously the AIDS epidemic was devastating to gay communities around the country during the 1980’s and 90’s. But if we can consider Angels in America a local or niche apocalypse story, what’s to prevent us from labeling stories about 20 people, or 10 people, or two people, or even one person “apocalyptic”? (Great, now I feel like Abraham.) Can such personal stories be considered apocalyptic?

I would argue no, they shouldn’t be included in the genre. Apocalypse, for me, always connotes something that affects a large group of people.  But what do I know? As it says in the Talmud, “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

In the introduction to Apocalyptic Transformation, Elizabeth Rosen says, “it is the intent of this study to examine only texts which are working with the traditional apocalyptic form…and to think about what each artist gains from choosing to work with the classic rather than the new paradigm” (Rosen xxv-xxvi). The “new paradigm” she’s referring to is neo-apocalyptic, “a unique sub-branch of eschatological literature…focused on cataclysm” (Rosen xv). The defining characteristic of the neo-apocalyptic genre is pessimism, based off of the assumption that “no one deserves saving and that everyone should be punished” (Rosen xv).

In examining Watchmen in Chapter 1 of her book, Rosen presents this graphic novel as a traditional apocalyptic story. Such traditional stories contain elements of “New Jerusalem and the hope it symbolizes” and are “meant to lend hope and bolster faith” (Rosen xv).

After reading Watchmen, I have to disagree with Rosen’s classification. Although at the end of the book Veidt’s plan to usher in an era of international cooperation seems to be working, as the reader, I was hardly left with a feeling of hope. Even Rosen recognizes that “It is strongly suggested that the times have only been temporarily changed by Veidt’s devious plan” (Rosen 42).

Most striking is the return of the smiley-face with the streak of sauce, resembling blood, in the last panel. As an obvious link to the beginning of the book and the murder of Edward Blake, I think it more than “strongly suggests” Veidt’s failure to permanently change the world. In the absence of anything remotely resembling eternal salvation, a New Jerusalem, or even a permanent shift in ideas or worldview, I fail to see how Watchmen fulfils the definition of a traditional apocalyptic story, and I would categorize Watchmen as an entirely neo-apocalyptic story.

Who’s with me?