Doomsday

THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE! from Daniel Cowen on Vimeo.

Straight from the book and that’s the honest truth it is.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/waitingforarmageddon/

Quite timely…

Last Friday, the radio show Soundcheck had a feature on Apocalyptic music.  I thought it might inspire some of your creative projects:  http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2009/12/04

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/movies/25road.html?_r=1

Where do I begin? “It was a dark and stormy night….It was another dark and stormy night…The dark and stormy night eventually gave way to the dull glow of the grey sun, shining in the grey sky, refracting pathetic streams of light through the ash strewn air…”  I feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

“The Road” offered little recourse in a cold, grey and overall hopeless world. Before reading the book I glanced at the back and read some of the reviews. I initially believed that this was a story of hope in the face of  extreme desperation and adversity. Unfortunately, after going through the first 200 pages I found myself cold, shivering, hungry and in a somewhat gloomy state. This book actually reminded me of the ordeal I went through reading “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. As Ivan went through his day wrapping his frostbitten hands in scraps of cloth, I found my hands becoming colder and my mind wandering further and further into the depths of a Soviet gulag. The major difference in reading this text was knowing that there was life and hope after the gulag and the other devastations brought with Stalinism. In “The Road” the reader is left in a a state of suspense. The reader is completely unaware of  what exactly happened to the world. We are only given a peek into the devastation and the extent of its effects. McCarthy’s approach left me with very little to look forward to. Why would anyone do this to me? Yes I am taking this very personally. Why bring the reader to such a despairing state? This is a place absent of decency, morals and to an extent  basic humanity. I could only see humanity through the small child as his father ravaged by the burden of living slipped further into his “animal”instinct to survive. I guess in a way the author presents the apocalypse as a the end of society, law, ethics and values. Everyone is left to wander shiftlessly through the grey shroud surrounding them nothing to lose and nothing to look forward to. Not to get all philosophical but is this what Hobbes may have imagined when he described man in the state of nature? Life for the man and his child and whoever else managed to survive truly was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” I would love to believe in the resilience of the human character but McCarthy and Hobbes are an eerie reminder that without the strappings and conventions of modern society and on a very basic level civilization, we are all quite pathetic. I am not entirely sure if we should thank them for this sobering reminder or sweep their dismal rants under to be remembered only in an academic context such as now.

I wonder how this would translate onto film?

The Road does not follow the apocalyptic paradigms of the traditional apocalyptic tale or our postmodern readings. McCarthy seems more concerned with the human condition in the midst of total infrastructural and social breakdown, particularly how moral conviction and love perseveres alongside the primal brutality of humans and the wild.

This new world, or America, is a harsh landscape, cold and gray and laden with strange mutilated and barbaric men. The search for food and shelter, death and perpetual pain move the story along. Morality in the face of this total desolation is what keep’s our attention and emotions, at least mine.

It’s curious to see how what happens when the prophet, judgment and the us & them are absent from the story. Which is not to say the death of billions or being brought up to heaven isn’t emotional, but I can’t place myself on either side. I don’t consider myself an evil sinner yet I surely haven’t accepted Jesus. I can’t place myself in Revelation’s duality thus Revelation, vs The Road, feels rather weird.

—

“God” is mentioned thrice in the first half, I think, and not as an enactor of doom but as the whiff of the empty bottle. God is gone, or, God is with the pair’s every step.

I want to elaborate on the point made before in class on how to portray God in a fictionalized account. First there is the reader’s personal perspective on religion. While one could read the Man’s questions as misguided belief in a Godless world, another could see the Man wrestling with his Creator. There is also the issue of trying to describe God’s form and intended actions without coming off hokey.

McCarthy does not seem to be lauding or criticizing religion, rather using God as view into the Man’s heart – why does he persevere? Who does he blame? Who does he get angry at?

I’m sorry for dropping off the face of the planet (or the blog) for the past few weeks, but I’m back, and I will do my best to catch up. Thoughts on The Road to come later, but in the meantime, I thought I would post this link: http://stuffchristianslike.net

It’s modeled on the popular blog “Stuff White People Like“(which, according to the site, “investigates, explains, and offers advice for finding social success with the Caucasian persuasion” and has had 63,055,199 hits since Jan. 2008).

Similarly, Stuff Christians Like calls itself “your field guide to all things Christian.”  It’s written by a preacher’s kid, and has more than 650 entries. Of course, many of them mention the Apocalypse, but a few of my favorites are:

#482: Talking About The End of The World: Which includes predicting the second coming, identifying the antichrist, overemphasizing 666, awaiting the rapture, decoding Revelation, and the apocalypse as entertainment

#89. Knowing where not to be during the rapture: Or, “Ugh, I wouldn’t want to be here when the rapture comes.” Introduces the concept of “rapture proof buildings,” which apparently include nightclubs, bowling alleys, and movie theaters showing rated R moves.

#64. Fearing the rapture would come before you lost your virginity: A female commenter posted that she had been afraid of the rapture occuring between her engagment and the wedding. So apparently, “girls fear for the wedding, guys fear for the sex.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/weekinreview/12wade.html?ref=weekinreview

In particular, the last paragraph in which the author sums up his position is very interesting.  The author doesn’t discuss the implications of religious societies – fundamentalism/persecution/often apocalyptic paradigms – this he leaves open and acknowledges that individual societies can use them for good or bad ends.

Wanted: More White Babies

Demographic Winter Trailer

Ok so I am not as technically savvy as the rest of the class so if anyone wants to actually post the video to the blog (ahem daniel or john), please feel free. I do not understand , does falling birth rates Europe signifies the end of the world as we know it?! Should the non-colored people be afraid?