The Albertine Notes was a whirlwind of a story, confusing in the way that Inception was. I feel like I need to read through it a second time in order to fully understand it, however, from just one reading themes that we have been discussing all semester did clearly emerge. Continue reading
This week, one of the running themes was the father’s detachment, relative to his son’s. In the second half of The Road, there is an interesting moment where the boy seems to have begun to adopt the same desensitized reaction: Continue reading
After a slow start, I have become captivated by The Road. Though I didn’t like McCarthy’s writing style at first, it has grown on me, and I think it is especially powerful given the simple but heartbreaking conversations the father and son have, and is also effective in conveying the bleak landscape and the frightening encounters the two experience. Continue reading
It seems that our stopping point for the first week of reading the Turner Diaries was the perfect break point – right before the trauma (being arrested, beaten and tortured for a year) that cements Earl’s disassociation. The issues of sexuality that so struck me while reading the first part of the Turner Diaries seemed to fall away given the massive, gruesome scale of the violence perpetrated by the Organization and Earl himself (though it was certainly still evident in statements such as “womanly handwringing” (77)). Continue reading
One of the points of contention during the discussion for “Colossus: The Forbin Project” was whether the movie explored a realistic fear of the dangers of technology or whether the sci-fi trope of computers gone wild was merely a lens through which to examine the human condition. In our class, for example, we focus less on the actual details of the apocalypse in the various media we study and more on what apocalyptic belief reveals about human fears and anxieties. I found that sort of critical detachment not only useful, but necessary while reading The Turner Diaries. I know that there is an idiom along the lines of forewarned is forearmed, but I still wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of racist ideology. I have never before been exposed to unfiltered extreme right wing rhetoric and I never realized how deep the hatred cuts.
Apocalyptic themes prevail heavily in the films Apocalypto, Children of Men, and 28 Days Later. While these movies use different plot schemes and settings, they converge at the portrayal of a largely apocalyptic event in which doom has disrupted the world “as we know it” and created a post-millennialist scenario. Through graphic and technological means, these films offer visual representations of the awaited and questionably irrevocable doomsday experience.
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Watching Apocalypto, Children of Men and 28 Days Later back to back all in the same night, had me feeling pretty fed up with over-exaggerations, fight scenes, and ominous music. Now that I’ve had a few days to digest all the doom, gloom, blood, and violence I’ve come to realize that we are relatively limited in terms of creative renderings of the end. Continue reading
Having never read a comic book before, and not being a big fan of cartoons in any medium, I approached Watchmen with trepidation. However, I quickly realized that Watchmen was far different from what I expected. It was beautiful, and exquisitely written. The intricacy of interwoven storylines and the pictures full of hidden meaning made Watchmen exhausting but exciting to read. Continue reading
In Watchmen, a graphic novel by Alan Moore, we see a number of motifs arise that mimic the themes of the Apocalypse. These redundant themes uphold the strong consciousness and prevalence of apocalyptic phenomena in our contemporary culture.
Much of what Strozier wrote in this week’s set of essays seemed to respond to my concern about how easily the “saved” characters in Glorious Appearing accept the punishment of the surrounding sinners. It is no less appalling to me that they could simply sit and watch, and even enjoy, the mass murder of most of the remaining population by Jesus – especially considering the gruesome manner in which the deaths were carried out. Continue reading
