In order to have a good story, there needs to be emotion or entertainment. In: Derrida and Negative Theology, Coward, H and Foshay, T (Eds.). Montral: McGill-Queens University Press. The red bandanas turn up and disappear in one fell swoop to provide a cliffhanger between episodes; ditto the strained mystery of the the Prophet. Published in 2014 to critical and popular success, Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven is part of a widely-discussed, growing corpus of post-apocalyptic novels written by authors who do not typically write science fiction.1 In what Andrew Hoberek (2011) identifies as the genre turn of contemporary fiction, the post-apocalyptic genre has moved from the margins (tacky science-fiction) into the mainstream (legitimate, widely-recognized and practiced speculative fiction) (Buell 2013: 9), so much so that Frederick Buell frames it as a cultural dominant.2 As Andrew Tate puts it, contemporary narrative is haunted by dreams of a future that is a place of ruin (2017: 2). 2 De Cristofaro: Critical Temporalities Published in 2014 to critical and popular success, Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven is part of a widely-discussed, growing corpus of post-apocalyptic novels written by authors who do not typically write science fiction.1 In what Andrew Hoberek (2011) identifies as the genre turn of DOI: http://doi.org/10.2307/827840. If traditional apocalyptic discourse is about time, contemporary post-apocalyptic discourse is also about time more specifically, it is about critical temporalities, constructions of time that critique a hegemonic temporality. By Richard The series creator explains why. Mackenzie Davis, left, with Caitlin FitzGerald in Station Eleven., Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Meet the cinematographer whose controlled naturalism is changing the face of TV, Station Eleven made major changes from the book. West, M 2018 Apocalypse Without Revelation? Chaudhary that stuck, as the series has it, to the surprises of just what happened, and so actualized our own collapsing civilization through burning houses and corpse jets and big box stores-turned-maternity wards. After all, McCarthys text which depicts a father and sons journey in a post-apocalyptic US where, after an unspecified catastrophe, everything [is] dead to the root (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 21) is one of the most famous examples of the contemporary body of post-apocalyptic novels as it won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I remember watching that episode and I remember being absolutely struck by that line. Huntley, K 2014 Station Eleven: Booklist Review, August. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes, to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. WebRotten Tomatoes reports a 98% approval rating with an average rating of 8.1/10, based on 54 critic reviews. As Mandel muses, Its almost as if The Road gave more literary writers permission to approach the subject [of the post-apocalypse] (Alter, 2014: n.pag.). Read full review Firstly, Times Arrow bec[o]me[s] Times Boomerang (Mitchell, 2004: 149), that is, the linear and teleological development of traditional plots and apocalyptic history the arrow of the novels first half is complicated by the boomerang of the second half. It began to read to me as a tacit acknowledgement that its vision of the future is not as immersive as its vision of the present or past. Because in stretches the first comes achingly close to being a masterpiece. WebA pandemic show based on a pandemic novel airing two years into a global pandemic, "Station Eleven" may seem fatigue-inducing. "No cities," she tells NPR's Scott Simon. Atwood, M 2004 Writing Oryx and Crake. Rather than reading for the end, Mitchell invites us to read Cloud Atlas looking for parallels and connections, from the comet-shaped birthmark that links the protagonists of the various stories to their acts of defiance against the predatory logic that brings humanity to the apocalyptic demise.11 Finally, the chronological ending of the novel the post-apocalyptic future is effaced through the actual ending of Cloud Atlas the nineteenth-century narrative which suggest that the future is not already written. While it is my argument that this challenge to traditional apocalyptic discourse and its model of history is key to contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction, in this section I focus on Mandels novel in conjunction with another Canadian text, Couplands Player One, which takes place in a Toronto cocktail lounge over five hours while the price of oil quickly escalates and a violent post-apocalyptic scenario ensues.5 Both novels subvert the distinction between the elect and the non-elect, bringing to the fore the self-righteous violence of apocalyptic discourse and how this distinction, as well as the apocalyptic historical teleology it founds, are narrative constructs which serve the interests of those who articulate them. This utopian narrative about the pre-apocalyptic past obscures the material labour that props up the hyper-connected globalised world and the inequalities between the global North and South that lie beneath its seemingly seamless unity. Station Eleven happened to be on a break in March 2020 when COVID hit, and by the time production started up again in February 2021, the world had changed. The improbability of it, muses Clark, who is echoed by Kirsten reminiscing about the urban landscape seen from a plane at night: clusters and pinpoints of light in the darkness, scattered constellations linked by roads or alone. This is a reference to Revelation 20:1115: during the Last Judgment, people are judged according to their deeds, which are written in books, and only those whose name is in the book of life will be allowed to dwell with god in the new heaven and earth of the New Jerusalem. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2017.1369386. In a way, Station Eleven is an interesting Rorschach test of apocalyptcisms appeal. What I was really interested and writing about was what's the new culture and the new world that begins to emerge? Maybe, though people appear to be living in small, mostly primitive communities and the fact that the story confines itself to the shoreline of Lake Michigan (at least I think its Michigan) serves the narrative both spiritually and logistically. Available at: http://www.tor.com/2014/09/12/a-conversation-with-emily-st-john-mandel/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. New York Times, 5 September. I certainly did not quite understand why Jeevan chose to take Kirsten out into the Chicago winter rather than do a bit more exploring in that very large apartment building. Gomel, E 2010 Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination. After all, this end the death of Arthur, who ties together the various characters, and the apocalypse, which is the catalyst of the story has already been given at the beginning of the narrative. Through their content and narrative structure, contemporary post-apocalyptic novels take issue with the apocalyptic delirium of destination of Western modernity (Derrida, 1992: 53), that is, with the closed and deterministic conception of time at the core of apocalyptic logic and its equally closed and normative utopian visions, which leave no space for agency and for alternative visions of the future. Is a Disarmingly Hopeful Post-Apocalyptic Tale. In her study of contemporary Canadian apocalyptic narratives, Marlene Goldman writes that: Canadian authors introduce particular twists to the familiar myth of the end by challenging rather than embracing apocalypses key features, specifically, the purgation of the non-elect and the violent destruction of the earthly world in preparation for the creation of a divine one (2005: 6). Finally, when the prophet is killed towards the end of the novel, people find in his bag A copy of the New Testament, held together with tape nearly illegible, a thicket of margin notes and exclamation points and underlining (Mandel, 2014: 303), which further confirms the profound influence of biblical apocalypses, and of Revelation in particular, on the prophets worldview. The apocalypse is such a gap: we do not know what happened, just as in The Road, and this in itself challenges the sense-making function of the end in both apocalyptic history and traditional narratives. And though I admire HBO Max for releasing a show about a fictional deadly pandemic in the middle of an actual pandemic (after the shows production was shut down for months by same), I was not interested in any kind of survival guide. HBO Maxs beguiling new mini-series is about a pandemic, but dont let that scare you off. Emily St. John Mandel. Why, I kept asking myself, are they still living on the ground? Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a grey-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers (Mandel, 2014: 255). 21:1), frames the apocalyptic origin of the distinction between the elect and the non-elect at the core of the cults credo when fervently claiming that the survivors names are recorded in the book of life (Mandel, 2014: 286). Immediately following the Second World War, there was a fashion show in Paris. This passage is a clear intertextual reference to McCarthys The Road, whose world is complete with travellers with shell-shocked expressions, children walking covered in blankets, people being killed for their backpacks contents, and a hungry dog. But the recent surge of post-apocalyptic novels brings to the fore this critical tension between the contemporary and the traditional understanding of apocalypse by appropriating apocalyptic tropes to subvert them from within and, more fundamentally, by being essentially concerned with time and history, a concern that is often embodied within their structural narrative features. The only descriptions of the immediate aftermath Mandel gives her readers are through Jeevan, a paramedic who tries to help Arthur when he has a stroke on stage the night the pandemic begins. I mean, extra points for level of difficulty, no? Arthur C Clarke Award 2015 2015 Winner. The question of class distinctions (resource hoarding) is left mostly to an episodes worth of country-club symbolism and a ruinously miscast David Cross. As Jeevan describes it, this night, was going to be the divide between a before and an after, a line drawn through his life (Mandel, 2014: 20; emphasis in original). DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.256. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 59(2): 24357. Instead of examining all the light/dark political dynamics of rebuilding a post-catastrophe society, it concedes that capturing mass trauma is impossible and potentially unhelpful. These fictions also target the nexus between narrativity and apocalyptic logic captured by Kermode through the notion of the sense of an ending. Foursquare City Guide. Brennan: Look, Im not calling Station Eleven a failure, or a disaster, or even a half-assed genre entry. I did find it hilarious that, during the winter flashback, the roads were plowed, a sleight of hand Somerville admits was necessary for production to continue. The postmodern subversion of a realistic epistemology leads to the idea that there is no ultimate knowable historical truth, that our knowledge of the past is social and perspectival, and that written history exists within culturally determined power structures (Munslow, 2006: 27). In: Patrides, C A and Wittreich, J (Eds. There was no place on Earth that was too far away to get to. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of Station Eleven and what it means. The light we carry within us is the ark that carried Noah and his people over the face of the terrible waters (Mandel, 2014: 60). Goldman, M 2005 Rewriting Apocalypse in Contemporary Canadian Fiction. The chaos of historical contingency chaos which is even more evident and dreadful at times of crisis, such as that of the devastating Georgia Flu is tamed through the recourse to apocalyptic determinism, namely, to the belief that everything happens for a reason, as the prophets mother repeats throughout the novel. How does this style of storytelling affect the emotional impact of the narrative? You know, I think I'd want to save a globe. Or more nuancedly, as Clark, a good friend of Arthurs, comments to Tyler: its not a question of having been bad or the people [who died] were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (Mandel, 2014: 260; ellipsis in original). Backstories are filled in notably of Miranda (Danielle Deadwyler), Arthurs lover and the author of the graphic novel (called Station Eleven, but dont let the meta-ness put you off) that has been Kirstens lifeline over her 20 years of post-apocalyptic wandering. Available at: https://tetheredbyletters.com/when-the-dust-settles-an-interview-with-emily-st-john-mandel/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Bernstein, M A 1994 Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History. This pattern comprises panic, dissolution of socioeconomic structures, and despair, succeeded by a makeshift return to normality once the disease has run its course. I confess I came to Station Eleven reluctantly. Gomel, E 2000 The Plague of Utopias: Pestilence and the Apocalyptic Body. Instead we got a department store turned into a maternity ward and an Oreo used to demonstrate a cervix dilated to five centimeters. The narrative continuously moves between the pre- and the post-apocalypse without any regular pattern, and, what is more, even in these two distinct periods, the narrative keeps shifting between different times, from the night Arthur dies and the pandemic begins, to various moments in his life and that of people that are connected to him, from the catastrophes immediate aftermath, to fifteen and twenty years after it.12 Just as in Cloud Atlas, Station Elevens structure encourages us to read for connections between pre- and post- apocalyptic fragments, rather than for an end that integrates the various moments. 1. Traditional apocalyptic narratives reveal a utopian teleology to history, a conception of time that deeply informs western modernity and its metanarratives. But you know, here I am in Philadelphia this afternoon. If one of the precepts of the series own holy text, a graphic novel, is show, dont tell, it seems to me indicative of the series strengths that its most moving moments feature spliced-in images, memories, of the characters former selves. ), Moving Targets. This dynamic is what Frank Kermode terms the sense of an ending: We project ourselves a small, humble elect perhaps past the end, so as to see the structure whole, a thing we cannot do from our spot of time in the middle ([1966] 2000: 8). Flawed but engrossing, the craft of HBO Maxs post-post-apocalyptic tale masks its narrative imperfections: As in the Bard, plot gives way to poetry. It is in the context of what Heather J. Hicks, in her study of the twenty-first-century post-apocalyptic novel, discusses as an unprecedented outpouring of fully developed post-apocalyptic narratives by major, critically acclaimed anglophone [sic] writers (2016: 56) that my article situates Station Eleven. Station Eleven and The Last of Us share one more very specific similarity: juxtaposing destruction with art. Thus, one might suggest that Mandels book describes an apocalypse that already happened in 20082009: it is a novel not about a post-apocalyptic future but a post-apocalyptic present, for the ships embody the breakdown of capitalisms fundamental premise of eternal growth (Hoberek, 2015: n.pag.). London: Windmill. Chute, H L 2016 Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. This passage is another intertextual reference to The Road. the Prophet, reconciles with his mother (Caitlin FitzGerald); graphic novelist Miranda Carroll (Danielle Deadwyler) meets her fate; Sarah (Lori Petty) shuffles off this mortal coil; and, most importantly, Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis as a adult, Matilda Lawler as a child) reunites with Jeevan (Himesh Patel), capping off one of the most finely wrought love stories in recent TV history. In particular, progress, the modern metanarrative par excellence, represents the main example of the secularization of apocalypse and of its utopian telos (Keller, 1996: 6). Frame, 26(1): 929. WebSee 10 photos and 3 tips from 190 visitors to 7-Eleven. | Privacy Policy |, Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/books/station-eleven-joins-falls-crop-of-dystopian-novels.html, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/station-eleven-offers-suspense-and-science-fiction-but-it-is-undoubtedly-a-literary-work/article20577909/, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2014/10/15/sorry-emily-st-john-mandel-resistance-is-futile/, http://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2017.1369386, https://tetheredbyletters.com/when-the-dust-settles-an-interview-with-emily-st-john-mandel/, http://www.publicbooks.org/the-post-apocalyptic-present/, https://www.booklistonline.com/Station-Eleven-Emily-St-John-Mandel/pid=6862248, https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/38e15y/hi_im_emily_st_john_mandel_author_of_station/, http://www.tor.com/2014/09/12/a-conversation-with-emily-st-john-mandel/, Special Collection: Station Eleven and Twenty-First-Century Writing, For the sake of simplicity, in what follows contemporary post-apocalyptic novel refers to the subject of this article, post-apocalyptic fictions written by non-SF authors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament and the central text of religious apocalypticism, is ultimately not about the catastrophic end of the material world, but rather the revelation of a utopian new world, the New Jerusalem, the divine kingdom which awaits the faithful at the end of history.3 This utopian teleology is central to the Western understanding of time, indeed, [the apocalyptic] vision of history gives rise to history as a theoretical production (Keller, 1996: 89) and the traditional apocalyptic paradigm lies at the very core of secular Western modernity.4 The age of discovery and colonialism is informed by apocalyptic beliefs, as suggested by the trope of the new world (Keller, 1996). While the novels prophet holds on to a religious understanding of apocalypse in which the end is followed by utopian rebirth, the Georgia Flu, the pandemic that kills 99% of the worlds population, is termed apocalypse by the television newscasters in the sense of dystopian catastrophe rather than utopian revelation, and the apocalyptic narratives referred to in the text are disaster movies, with the dangerous stragglers fighting out for the last few scraps (Mandel, 2014: 243, 256). Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/38e15y/hi_im_emily_st_john_mandel_author_of_station/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Furthermore, teleology entails determinism, which compromises the possibility of choices and ethics. Quinby, L 1994 Anti-Apocalypse: Exercises in Genealogical Criticism. The author has no competing interests to declare. Indeed, the passages beautiful writing and imagery sublimates and glosses over a production process that relies on the exploitation of cheap labour from the global South, something Mandel merely hints at through the mention of workers somewhere in China and the cadences of a half dozen languages. She had ample experience to draw from. Matt Brennan: With its emotional finale, Unbroken Circle, Station Eleven ties off the loose ends in its sprawling narrative: Tyler (Daniel Zovatto), a.k.a. I even caught myself asking a blasphemous question: If art were truly capable of saving us, wouldnt we already have been saved? The novels elegiac tone is encapsulated by the Museum of Civilization, where civilization refers to the bygone hyper-globalised world. Are you ever surprised? (Sorry, it all always comes back to Lord of the Rings.) Because this is an epic quest and those kinds of stories make certain demands. Available at: https://www.booklistonline.com/Station-Eleven-Emily-St-John-Mandel/pid=6862248 [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Importantly, these hours of miracles [are] visible as such only in hindsight (Mandel, 2014: 223), that is, the deterministic teleological pattern of apocalyptic logic, with its distinction between the elect and the non-elect, is always constructed retrospectively, after the end, be this a future projection or a past event that is perceived as an end of something, as is the case of the Flu with the survivors. Drawing attention to the dystopian aspects of traditional apocalyptic discourse, contemporary post-apocalyptic novels suggest that its totalising historical teleology is a narrative construct which serves oppressive ideological agendas, for those who posit an end to history, no matter how utopian this end is, also conceive of themselves as the only rightful interpreters and agents of this telos. In addition to the texts discussed in my article, other examples of this growing body of twenty-first-century writings include: Louise Erdrichs, Despite the genre turn, Hoberek points out a persistent prejudice against genre fiction central to what Mark McGurl has dubbed the program era of post-World War II fiction (2011: 484). Tyler reunites with his mother. 20 years later it the Traveling Symphony, a group that travels and performs for people, roams the wastelands. Confused? Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2014/10/15/sorry-emily-st-john-mandel-resistance-is-futile/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. And, as a sniper, he believes he is clearing the way for gods new utopian order, for [T]he people [he] shot bothered God. You know, it's interesting to think about what survives. Station Eleven repeatedly emphasises that there is no deterministic pattern to time, contrary to what apocalyptic logic affirms. Station Eleven is a slow burn. Albany: State University of New York Press. Twenty years after the pandemic, when Station Elevens post-apocalyptic narrative strand is mostly set, society has stabilised into an archipelago of small towns, and although almost everything, almost everyone [is lost,] there is still such beauty (Mandel, 2014: 48, 57). While The Roads passages signify the critique of utopian teleology through a hopeless dystopian scenario in which we find an entropic dissolution, Station Elevens ending subverts utopian teleology through speculations. Twentieth Century Literature, 46(4): 40533. It was about how art and culture can help people, and civilization, survive complete catastrophe. It's some sort of combination of pessimism or narcissism that it's almost as though we want to believe or living at the climax of the story. Im calling it a partial masterpiece! "Virginia Lottery tickets are available for purchase here!" Even in 2014, I was sceptical that there would be such an appetite. Even when the man contemplates the possibility of ships out there, these are deathships, and the hypothetical father and son on the other side are similarly hopeless, living among the bitter ashes of the world st[anding] in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 219). I remember describing the premise of the novel to my husband, and he said, "People would want what was best about the world. We were saved because we are the light. How Station Eleven pulled off the impossible, ALeague of Their Own review feelgood baseball drama still knocks it out the park, Point Break: Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze face off in surf-crime bromance, Orange is the New Black: season four will take over your life, without parole, ThePoint Break remake: Five rules to keep it young, dumb and you know, Emily St John Mandels bestselling Station Eleven. Author Emily St. John Mandel was not involved in the adaptation of her hit novel. In this altered world, there is a traveling Shakespearean theater company and symphony orchestra touring the small and fairly isolated communities in the Midwest.". The concluding chapter seemingly adheres to the apocalyptic pattern of end and rebirth, for the depiction of Arthurs and Mirandas last hours is followed by Clarks musings on another world just out of sight (Mandel, 2014: 333). On what she'd want to save in an apocalypse. Nor did I want the kind of Theres Got to Be a Morning After survival celebration disaster stories so often rely on. That we secretly desire a situation in which this entire apparatus is blown up and we all start over again on perfect equal footing. Yet, just like The Road, Station Eleven articulates a critical temporality that subverts the utopian teleology of apocalyptic logic. You are right about how the timeframe jumps from immediate crisis to a relatively established recovery. 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