[tt] [x-risk] At the movies, the end is nigh

Fri Feb 1 14:56:01 UTC 2008

----- Forwarded message from "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu> -----

From: "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu>
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 09:35:31 -0500
To: For discussion of existential risks <existential at transhumanism.org>
Subject: [x-risk] At the movies, the end is nigh
Reply-To: For discussion of existential risks <existential at transhumanism.org>

February 01, 2008 CSM 

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0201/p14s13-almo.html

Trend spotter: At the movies, the end is nigh...

A wave of apocalyptic releases such as 'I Am Legend,' 'Cloverfield,' and
'The Happening' are the unexpected 'feel good' films of the year.

Apocalypse, now? A spate of science-fiction films has moviegoers
practicing the "duck and cover" drill in cinema aisles.

After the release of "I Am Legend," in which a pandemic turns the
concrete jungle of New York into, well, a jungle, viewers have packed
theaters to see the gigantic beast of "Cloverfield" (below) play a
deadly game of domino-toppling with Manhattan's skyline. Similarly, M.
Night Shyamalan's imminent "The Happening" depicts an apocalypse and
next year's "The Road" - based on Cormac McCarthy's novel - finds Viggo
Mortensen roaming a scorched Earth where the survivors are cannibalistic
marauders. (By contrast, the world of "Mad Max" seems like the Club
Tropicana.) Even PIXAR's June release, "WALL*E," is set 700 years after
mankind has been wiped out.

Why these depictions of the planet going the way of Pompeii? The films
may reflect societal fears, such as headlines about the East vs. West
clash of civilizations and global warming.

"Dystopian science fiction always comes up when people feel anxious,"
says Jonathan Taplin, professor of communications at the University of
Southern California Annenberg School of Communication. "It is a
zeitgeist [thing]." These films don't perpetuate angst so much as
reflect it, he says.

Films have popped up during uneasy times before. Some view 1933's "King
Kong" as a metaphor for the Great Depression. Later, a rampaging
Godzilla towered over postwar Tokyo like Shaquille O'Neal on a visit to
LEGOLand. Across the ocean in Truman's America, meanwhile, a robot that
seemingly invented Spandex emerged from a UFO and ran amok in "The Day
the Earth Stood Still." The message of that film, which has been remade
with Keanu Reeves for a December release, is that humans are doomed if
we don't learn to get along. (Just to clarify, Reeves doesn't play the
robot in the 2008 version.) The most indelible cinematic image of
mankind's demise, perhaps, is the Rod Serling-worthy finale of "Planet
of the Apes" in which Charlton Heston discovers Lady Liberty's hand
sticking out of a beach like a cabana that has survived a hurricane.

Those films were very much the byproduct of an era when the nations
feared the cold war would become a nuclear winter. By contrast, many
naively imagined that the 1990s heralded a new Pax Romana and so films
of the time, such as "Waterworld," "Independence Day," and the Hollywood
remake of "Godzilla," treated apocalyptic scenarios as if they were
theme-park rides. Those fantasies were rooted in the idea that America,
which has never been subject to a wholesale invasion by another nation,
was impregnable from attack - let alone widescale flooding.

Today's disaster movies are likely to be more realistic in tone.
"Cloverfield," for example, never directly references 9/11, but its
aesthetic, filmed with a hand-held camera, eerily recalls that day.
"When characters run into a storefront and you see clouds of dust blow
past the front, that's not an homage, that's tapping into a very real
panic, and terror, and recognizable disaster," observes Ty Burr, film
critic for The Boston Globe.

Films such as "Cloverfield" make the experience seem as real as
possible, he says.

"To what end? I think to actually make us feel better," says Mr. Burr.
"Here's a simple explanation: It's not terrorists who are trying to kill
us and won't go away and then disappear into caves where we can't find
them. It's a monster ... it's an enemy that we can get our cultural
brains around."

- Stephen Humphries 

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