Tag Archives: anthropocene

Reading the Anthropocene: Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake”

Anthropocene, Book Reviews, Dystopian Fiction, , ,

In this, the inaugural entry in my series “Reading the Anthropocene,” I’ve decided to focus on Margaret Atwood’s biting dystopian novel Oryx and Crake, the first volume in the “Madaddam Trilogy.”  The novel, by turns funny, disturbing, terrifying, and even oddly sentimental, is a testament to Atwood’s continuing ability to paint a portrait of a future world that could, feasibly, stem from the one that we are currently in the process of creating.

The novel, set sometime in the not-too-distant future, follows the character Jimmy, narrating both his present (a world in which most of the population has been decimated by a terrible plague), as well as the past (in which he befriends a scientific genius named Crake, as well as an inscrutable young woman named Oryx).  Theirs is a world overrun with science and capitalism, where a select group get to live in various Compounds (owned by corporations), while most of humanity is relegated to the crime and disease-ridden (and thus sinisterly appealing) pleeblands.  After an unremarkable (though quite unhappy) youth, Jimmy ends up attending the disgraced Martha Graham Academy to study humanities, while Crake (originally known as Glenn), ends up at the prestigious Watson Crick Institute.  Gradually, unbeknownst to Jimmy, Crake develops a pill that, while claiming to offer sexual satisfaction to any who take it, is in actuality the host for a powerful virus with which he intends to restart the evolutionary clock, replacing flawed humanity with his own bio-engineered race of humanoids (dubbed either Crakers of the Children of Crake/Children of Oryx).  Using Oryx as his proxy, he spreads the virus around the world, triggering the apocalypse, but leaving Jimmy alive to care for his creations (he also kills Oryx, leading an enraged Jimmy to shoot him in turn).  At the end of the novel, Jimmy realizes that he is not, in fact, the only human left alive, as two strangers walk into his territory.

As this description makes clear, Oryx and Crake doesn’t pull any punches, serving as a needling rebuke of our present cultural moment and our obsession with the endless production of beauty, food, and all of the other fatally glitzy trappings of modern capitalism.  Indeed, one cannot help but feel a bit of sympathy for Crake’s point of view, given how thoroughly we have managed (so far) to ruin much of the planet that we call home.  Like the best dystopian fiction, particularly that which has emerged during the growing awareness of the anthropocene, the novel attempts to make us aware of just how much ruin we are in the process of perpetrating, ranging from the mass extinction of species (by the time in which the novel takes place, many species of animal have gone extinct) to dangers of science gone unchecked.  Even climate change makes an appearance, though in this novel it remains on the edges, a haunting reminder of things to come (it makes a marked appearance in several places in the novel’s sequel, The Year of the Flood).

At times, the novel manages to evoke the viscerally terrifying nature of a world in which commercialized science has run amok, playing havoc and manipulating every aspect of nature in an attempt to reach some intangible, and ultimately unattainable, measure of perfection.  It’s hard to say which of the fantastic creations the novel evokes are the most disturbing, whether it’s the fiercely intelligent and ruthlessly carnivorous pigoons (pigs that were developed as homes for easily transplantable human organs), or the Chickie-Nobs, a genetically modified chicken that produces a steady supply of chicken nuggets (the chicken itself has no brain to speak of, only that part that manages the unconscious functions necessary for the barest survival).  Even the relatively benign creations, such as the rankunks (raccoon/skunk hybrids), still carry with them the idea that they are not completely natural and that, as a result, they might turn sinister at any moment.

Like many cultural products of the anthropocene, Oryx and Crake attempts to make sense of a world gone mad (both in the context of the novel and, one could argue, the world that we currently live in).  The novel expresses a hope that the end of the world as we know it can be understood at the level of the personal (after all, it is due to the actions of a single individual that the virus is unleashed), but also that that individual and his motivations can only be understood in their complexity when we situate them in the world in which they live.  Thus, there is something both comforting and disconcerting about this vision of the end of the world, as we are, at least briefly, encouraged to believe that the end of the world can be understood (and thus, perhaps, prevented) at the same time as we are also encouraged to understand that, in some fundamental way, the end of the world will always remain inscrutable, forever beyond the grasp of any one thinker 0r reader.

Further, like Atwood’s other (and probably most famous) dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake ends on a cautiously optimistic note, with Jimmy/Snowman stepping out to confront the two newcomers to his territory.  While the novel ends on a cliffhanger (we are left wondering who these people are and what they are doing, and we have no idea how they greet the arrival of Jimmy), there is still the faint sliver of hope that somehow, human life has not been entirely extinguished.  Given the lengths to which the novel goes to make Jimmy (who adopts the name of Snowman in his interactions with the Crakers, for whom he is something of a prophet), a quasi-sympathetic character, we hope for his sake (and our own?) that there is still hope that our world can be rescued from the ashes.

That is a hope that, as the full force of the anthropocene becomes more and more obvious with each passing day, begins to seem ever more futile and more ephemeral.  And that, in the end, grants this novel its raw and terrible power.

Film Review: “Mad Max: Fury Road”

Anthropocene, Apocalyptic Film, Dystopian Film, Film, Film Reviews, , , , ,

Warning:  Full spoilers for the film follow.

When I first heard that another version of the Mad Max story was in the offing, I wasn’t terribly excited.  While I am, as a rule, a fan of dystopian fiction (being obsessed with the anthropocene and with the ways in which humanity seems fixated on its own imminent destruction), there was just something about the way this film was advertised that made it seem like just a bunch of stuff getting blown up without much more than that behind it.  Not that there’s anything wrong with scenes of wanton destruction per se (Michael Bay has practically made a career out of it), but it’s not my personal cup of tea.

But somehow, Mad Max, either in spite of or because of its particular mix of narrative sparseness and excessive visuality, manages to reach a level of operatic viscerality that seems all too rare in our age of blockbuster cinema.

Throughout its two hours, not a great deal happens.  Max (Tom Hady), the titular character, becomes enslaved by the minions of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who utilize him as a “bloodbag” for Joe’s “War Boys.”  After Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) escapes with several of Joe’s enslaved wives (who bear with them the possibility of flawless children), the enraged dictator sets out with an enormous war band to reclaim them.  A lot of bloodshed, violence, explosions, and thunderous music occurs, and in the end Joe is slain by Furiosa who, along with the wives, reclaims Joe’s colony for the people.

Of course, I would have gone to see the film for no other reason other than that it seems to have aroused some MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists) to heights of apoplectic rage typically reserved for feminist reading groups.  While I’m still not quite certain what about the film aroused such fits of spleen (other than the fact that it features female characters that have agency that can fight as well as, if not better than, their male counterparts), there was much else about the film that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Indeed, despite some initial reservations about the film, I finally just gave in to the power of the image and the sound and embraced this raw experience of cinema.

However, while the aesthetics and affect of this film do rely, for the most part, on intensity, there were a few genuinely touching and soft moments thrown in, such as the steady conversion of War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult), who gradually finds his thirst for blood replaced by genuine affection for the escaped women.  The fact that he ultimately gives up his life so that others may live gives his presence in the film a certain poignancy that serves as a nice counterpoint to the more laconic and hard-edged presences of Max and Furiosa.

As in so many dystopian films of the anthropocene, our future is a bleak one, with a landscape blistered by hot sun and scarce water, many of our descendants deformed from the damage that we have so willfully inflicted on our planet.  However, as with most dystopian tales, there is also a strain of utopianism, an expression of a desire that maybe, just maybe, there is hope for the world after all.  And, in this case, that means that the waters of the Colony will be made available to all, and women’s bodies will no longer be subject to the sexual whims of a deformed and diseased dictator with the effrontery to position himself as a savior.

Overall, there is something disorientingly and perturbingly bizarre about the mixture of technology and the primitive that is a central part of the film’s aesthetic.  This sense of the bizarre and the almost unthinkable, I believe, is key to the film’s general appeal.  I’ve begun to wonder recently if there is still room for awe and wonder, awe, or shock in our modern world and especially in our explosion-ridden cinema.  If anything approaches that possibility, I argue that it is Mad Max.  While on the surface it appears to be just another action flick, there is a lot more going on here than at first meets the eye.

Through its narrative leanness and its startling and sometimes horrifying visuals, Mad Max pricks us with the fatal and dark reminders of our own hubris and vanity.  If there was ever an era when we needed those kinds of reminders, when we needed to be shocked by the powerful nature of the cinematic image, it is this one.

Let’s just hope that we can finally take heed.

“Avengers: Age of Ultron”: A Melodramatic Myth for the Anthropocene

Anthropocene, Film Reviews, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Films, , , , ,

Warning:  Full spoilers for the film follow.

I’ll be the first to admit a fair amount of skepticism going into Avengers:  Age of Ultron.  While I am, as a rule, a fan of superhero films, and while I believe that Marvel films in particular are often far more complex and nuanced in their address than might appear obvious at first blush, I am also not a particular fan of Joss Whedon, who I find something of a pretentious (if talented) bore.  Further, I found the first Avengers film to be compelling but not groundbreaking in any meaningful way (though it was highly entertaining).

Fortunately for me, this film managed to trump its predecessor in almost every way imaginable.

Of course, per the usual, it has all of the explosions and titanic battle scenes that have become a staple of the Marvel films, lightly leavened with snappy dialogue and witty repartee between the various characters (Black Widow particularly excels at this).  And, there’s even a little bit of a love plot thrown in, as Black Widow and Bruce Banner/The Hulk continue to develop their (perhaps ultimately doomed) relationship.  Each of the characters remains haunted by their pasts and their futures, and it is precisely the fear of future failure that leads everyone’s favourite playboy/philanthropist/bad boy Tony Stark/Iron Man to set in motion the process that ultimately creates Ultron, an AI whose daddy issues ultimately lead him to attempt to destroy humanity.

What struck me as I watched this film was how intensely melodramatic it was.  Of course, melodrama is, it seems, built into the very DNA of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but in this film it seemed to take on mythic dimension, as the film articulates a remarkably (and troublingly) reflective take on the brink of destruction.  As Ultron (played with a memorable and menacing growl by the inimitable James Spader) remarks, humans excel at creating the very thing that will ultimately destroy and supplant them.  Just as human parents beget the children that will eventually take over their role on this mortal coil, so Ultron has decided to take it upon himself to rid the earth of the meddlesome, murky, and ultimately destructive presence of humanity.  The fact that he doesn’t succeed in doing so doesn’t really lessen the bite of his caustic remark, which is troubling precisely because it is true; the nature of organic life is, indeed, predicated precisely on change, on a constant sense that our own individual lives on this planet are finite, that our descendants are biologically intended to replace us.  To me, this was one of the most frightening moments on the film, precisely because it cuts through all of the bombast and hyperbole typically associated with this genre to hit at a point that we, as a species, constantly try to forget.

Further, a profound sense of melodramatic melancholy haunts this film, as each of the key characters struggles to find that space of innocence that scholar Linda Williams is key to the ways in which melodrama functions as an affective mode of storytelling.  So much of this film remains predicated on the “too late” moments; it’s too late for Bruce and Black Widow, Iron Man remains haunted by the possibility that he will be too late to save his companions, that he will in fact be to blame for the death of everyone and everything he has come to care about.  These moments are, of course, coupled with “on time” moments:  Hawkeye’s family and his bucolic house in the countryside are saved; Black Widow is saved from Ultron (don’t get me started on the way in which she is basically reduced to a damsel in distress); and, of course, humanity is ultimately saved from absolute extinction.

And yet, for all that the film strenuously wants us to believe that saving the world is the ultimately goal, the most terrifying thing about the vision articulated by Ultron is that, unfortunately, he’s right.  We as a species have pretty much brought the world as we know it to the brink of ecological, environmental, and biological catastrophe (we are living in the anthropocene, after all), and one can’t help but feel that maybe, just maybe, the dropping of the city of Sokovia onto Earth (thus triggering a mass extinction of humanity) wouldn’t be such a bad thing, after all.  Of course, the film does everything in its formidable power to disavow this possibility, in the process suggesting that it is not, indeed, too late for the collective us in the audience to do something to save our world from its own doom.  As a species and as a culture, we desperately, one might say hysterically, desire to return to some world of pre-lapsarian grace, when we still had a sense of control over own destiny, when we were not faced so imminently, and perhaps inevitably, with our own destruction (one could even say that the anthropocene is one big “too late” moment).

What emerges from this film, finally, is a stirring melodrama that actually manages to perfect that sensibility into something approaching the emotional heights of Greek myth.  Unlike the Greeks, however, who set their myths in their remote past so as to make sense of their own present, the Marvel films present us with the uncomfortable knowledge that the world onscreen is very much like our own; the possibility of our own imminent destruction, no matter how much we try to disavow it, always intrudes on the affective bounds of the film.

Indeed, the final credits unfold against a backdrop of titanic figures doing battle, a potent reminder of the stakes involved in the film that we have just seen.  And yet, like any great myth, Avengers:  Age of Ultron confronts us with some of the most unpleasant truths and facts about our own culture.  Rather than dismissing it as just another blockbuster piece of junk, I find it valuable to think through what the film can do when thought about as a complex piece of filmmaking with something important to say.  What say you, readers?  Do films like this have something important to say about our present world?  Sound off in the comments below.

Thinking Through Extinction

Animal Studies, Anthropocene, Apocalyptic Film, Critical Theory, Subjectivity, Theory, , , ,

In case you missed it, there has been a lot of discussion lately about the possibility of bringing the passenger pigeon back through cloning.  If we leave aside for the moment the pros and cons of such a move, we can more clearly see the ways in which extinction as a phenomenon continues to haunt our collective human imagination, reminding us of just how precarious our own existence as a species remains, especially as the consequences of our rapid march toward modernity become increasingly obvious to even the most casual observer.  We have, in essence, left behind us an enormous trail of vanished creatures of all stripes and, if current trends continue, we might be on the very brink of another mass extinction.  That being the case, it is worth spending time thinking about the function that extinction serves, and how it can be not only a warning of things to come, but also a potent tool for considering how we engage with our present place in the world.

I have always been particularly drawn to and enthralled by those creatures that have been brought to extinction by the actions and influence of humans.  The great auk, the Stellar’sea cow, the passenger pigeon, the Chinese river dolphin, the Tasmanian tiger, the quagga, the Carolina parakeet…the list goes on, each of these mysterious and intangible creatures haunting my imagination, a perpetual reminder of the fragility of life on this planet.  Paired with this is also the fact that their presence in the cultural imagination is so powerful precisely because they cannot be seen again.  This also goes a long way toward explaining why there continue to be sightings of some of these creatures, as well as debates about the feasibility of resurrecting some of them via genetic technology (the passenger pigeon is but one example; there have been similar discussions about the Tasmanian tiger and, perhaps most famously, the woolly mammoth).  We as a species are so guilt-ridden over what we have wrought that we will do almost anything to undo the damage that we have caused, even while a part of us also recognizes that it is too late for such measures.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that our media is so glutted with images of the devastation wrought by nature.  I am speaking here not just of how much the 24-hour news cycle revels in the joys of chaos delivered by natural disasters (though that is certainly the case.  Nothing drives ratings like a forest fire, a hurricane, or an earthquake).  I am also referring to films such as Godzilla, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and so many more that serve as expressions of our collective guilt over the damage that we have perpetrated against entire species, though in this case we get to to be the ones that face utter annihilation, at the mercy of a force or forces that we cannot control nor effectively combat.  Whether that be a pair of giant creatures that feed on radioactivity or a virus that spreads and decimates the human population, these forces are the spectres that continue to haunt or collective human imaginary.  These media texts are also a recognition that extinction is, ultimately, the fate that has awaited almost every distinct species that has ever emerged.  There is clearly something cathartic about seeing our destruction writ large,  about embracing the oblivion that is the ontological root of extinction, even if only for two hours in a movie theater.

Extinction is a potent and troubling reminder of how tenuous and sometimes unsustainable this idea we have of progress truly is.  We want to believe, we are constantly encouraged to believe, that the world is headed toward a better place, that a brighter future is always on the horizon, just waiting to be grasped, if we but continue to believe in it.  There is much in our world, both in the present and in the past, that hauntingly reminds us of the essential fallacy that lies at the heart of this notion of progress, as well as the terrible price it exacts.  We who inhabit the conceptual and temporal space of modernity must constantly remind ourselves of the price that has been paid by numerous species as we continue our march into the future.  There is both a pleasure and a pain to the contemplation of extinction, and we as a species would do well to spend more time reflecting on both.

“Godzilla” and the Film Culture of the Anthropocene

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Upon recently watching the film Godzilla, I was struck by the ways in which the film seems to articulate and refract the ethos of the anthropocene.  In an era in which it is now recognized that the human race has become a force of nature in and of itself, a film like Godzilla seems to refute and undergird such claims, a common trait of films and television series that engage with the problems posed by the advent of the anthropocene.

This film, the most recent entry in a decades-old film franchise, sees the rise of two radiation-consuming MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Objects) that wreak havoc and chaos across the Pacific and the western United States.  As several (largely forgettable) human characters feverishly attempt to destroy the creatures, the prehistoric giant Godzilla emerges to do battle with both creatures and, though he succeeds in destroying them, the city of San Francisco is also laid to waste.

Again and again, the film highlights both the futility of humankind’s attempts to overcome the creatures that it so feverishly attempts to control and the sheer enormity of the power these prehistoric creatures wield.  The sense of human futility that pervades the film appears repeatedly, taking into its scope the atomic bomb tests of the 1940s and 1950s and the practice of storing radioactive material in the deserts of Nevada.  Significantly, both instances are the result of humans believing that technology has the power to control forces exceed the bounds of humankind’s understanding and being proven completely and unequivocally wrong in their assumptions.  The fact that the cost of such presumption is the destruction of both large segments of Las Vegas as well as San Francisco underscores the film’s essential argument that, for all that humans have become a force of nature, there is still a larger series of natural processes that continue to control and exceed the actions of humanity.  Just as importantly, the film suggests that this futility, far from just being ineffective, actually makes the situation much worse (after all, who attacks creatures that feed on radiation with a radioactive bomb?)

The twinned voices of Bryan Cranston’s Joe Brody and Ken Watanabe’s Dr. Serizawa consistently articulate and underline one of the film’s many positions regarding mankind’s hubris in believing that it has the ability to control the natural world.  Brody’s anguished cry that the MUTOs will send humankind back to the Stone Age and Serizawa’s belief that Gozilla is nothing less than a god (as well as his quote, “The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in their control and not the other way around), bespeak an acknowledgement of the limitations of humankind’s understanding.  Thus, although Godzilla does ultimately come to the aid of the beleaguered human cities, the fact that so much of the city is destroyed as a result of his battles with the MUTOs and that he seems to care little for the humans he is ostensibly helping, suggest that nature (in the person of Godzilla) has its own order and its own set of behaviors that exist beyond the ability of humans to understand.

Thus, Godzilla engages with the epistemological problems and questions posed by our culture’s growing consciousness of the anthropocene.  The film suggests that human culture, for all of its vaunted power and inviolability, is as vulnerable to the vicissitudes of nature as any other component of the natural world.  In doing so, the film displaces the anxiety of humanity’s collective responsibility for the changing climate conditions on the planet onto forces beyond humanity’s control.  After all, what better way to cope with overwhelming culpability than by continuing to assert that there are indeed forces of nature that remain greater than humanity and can indeed overcome humans?  Far from being a force that is slowly destroying the world, these types of films suggest that we are instead the victims of an uncaring (or at least completely noncommittal) nature.

Nor is this phenomenon limited to the most recent iteration of the king of the monsters.  In countless apocalyptic and postapocalyptic films (including the forthcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), there is something at work that humbles humankind and reminds us of how limited we are and how little power we have to truly impact/change the world around us.  It remains to be seen, however, whether films produced in the era of the anthropocene can truly engage with the vast epistemological and conceptual challenges posed by mankind’s increasing influence upon the very structures of of the world in/on which we live.