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). You know, it's interesting. How deeply strange it is, how deeply unsettling, to be able to compare and contrast a fictional pandemic with the real thing. ), Station Eleven celebrates the beauty of the pre-apocalyptic world and mourns its loss. Indeed, Mandel glosses over the blood-drenched years just after the collapse, the first unspeakable years which were, tellingly, spent on the road, travelling (Mandel, 2014: 48, 37). Station Elevens critique of traditional apocalyptic logic is most evident in the figure of the prophet Tyler through whom Mandel self-reflexively appropriates religious apocalyptic tropes to subvert them from within.6 Tyler, the son of Arthur Leander, the character who links the texts pre-apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narrative strands, is only a child when the pandemic hits the world, but grows up to be the charismatic leader of a violent doomsday cult. See, for instance, the state propaganda in Colson Whiteheads, There are varying degrees of dystopian post-apocalyptic scenarios: from, The world of the comic has suffered an apocalypse of its own: the space stations artificial sky was damaged during a war with the aliens that have taken control of the Earth so that Station Eleven has been in a state of perpetual twilight for fifteen years (, A similar alternation between pre- and post-apocalypse, which troubles the teleological linearity of apocalyptic history, can be found in Selfs, In this sense, it is interesting to note Hillary Chutes reflections on the form of comics in terms of their spatial gaps that subvert linearity: through its spatial syntax [of gutters, grids, and panels], comics offer opportunities to place pressure on traditional notions of chronology, linearity, and causality as well as on the idea that history can ever be a closed discourse, or a simply progressive one (. 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. Of course you hope in a scenario like this, what would survive would be the Beethoven symphonies, the Shakespeare plays, the things that we think of as the highest and most exalted expressions of our culture. Im calling it a partial masterpiece! Available at: https://tetheredbyletters.com/when-the-dust-settles-an-interview-with-emily-st-john-mandel/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. 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. For me, its what Ive taken to calling the series present the This critique of teleology is reflected in Station Elevens narrative structure. Station Eleven, by contrast, is postapocalyptic in the truest sense of the term. However, Station Elevens post-apocalyptic scenario is very different from McCarthys and, signifying the shift away from The Road, not only does Jeevan keep out of the road, but Kirsten cannot, and does not want to, remember anything about the traumatic year she spent on the road immediately following the catastrophe (Mandel, 2014: 195, 295). So that line became almost the thesis statement of the entire novel. Station Eleven requires audiences to pay attention, offering up a dramatic tapestry of considerable depth. If you can stick with it, you will be rewarded. Because in the now, the before is all we have. Notice, in this sense, Clarks musings on the snow globe housed in the Museum. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Beauty features far more prominently in descriptions and memories of the pre-apocalypse. Rather than stressing the end, the emphasis is on the present and its ethical value, as the moment in which individuals take choices that inform the future. Now, as HBO Maxs tale of a pre-, post- and post-post-apocalyptic society much like our own concludes, senior editor Matt Brennan and columnist and culture critic Mary McNamara have it out about whether the series was truly great or something less. (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. The series creator explains why. Villainry arrives (via the most frightening performance Ive ever seen, from Daniel Zovatto as the stranger who insists on joining the Traveling Symphony otherwise your friends are going to start to disappear), along with the secret community known as the Museum of Civilisation. Station Eleven is going to struggle to find an audience this winter. 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 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. The scene in which a dozen women give birth was the before giving way to the future, just as all the scenes in which Miranda struggles to write Station Eleven were. Available at: https://www.clarkeaward.com/2015-winner/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Goes Out newsletter, with the week's best events, to help you explore and experience our city. [Children] were told about the Internet, how it was everywhere and connected everything, how it was us. On the recent popularity of post-apocalyptic fictionA suggestion that I hear quite often is that our interest in post-apocalyptic fiction is a natural expression of the anxiety we feel. I admit that it probably says something about where I am at right now that I wanted more of the disaster and less of the hope. The prophet believes that everything that has ever happened on this earth has happened for a reason (Mandel, 2014: 59), including the Georgia Flu, which he sees as a perfect agent of death [that] could only be divine (Mandel, 2014: 60). 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. Heres what to know, From Chris Rock to the SAG Awards. The Flash-forward Glimpses The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. Tom's Guide's latest streaming news. Clarks optimistic musings on the possibility of ships and life in the countries on the other side of the ocean stand in stark contrast to the fathers answers to his son: Do you think there could be ships out there? Or, more precisely, it is half masterpiece, half not. In this section, I compare Station Elevens narrative structure with that of Mitchells Cloud Atlas.10 Both texts complicate the teleological linearity of apocalyptic narratives to make space for unwritten futures which are key to agency. 2nd ed. Washington Post, 15 October. 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. By opening with the apocalyptic end that is foreshadowed by these sentences, Station Eleven highlights not only how the temporal order of the sense of an ending can be imposed on the randomness of time solely retrospectively, but also how this order ultimately implies a future that is already written. But then why did the One Ring choose Frodo? But you know, here I am in Philadelphia this afternoon. He previously served as TV editor at Paste Magazine, and his writing has also appeared in Indiewire, Slate, Deadspin and numerous other publications. Mandels list (2014: 312) of what is lost in the disaster is incomplete first and foremost because, in its elegiac harkening back, Station Eleven ignores present systemic problems, offering merely a few jabs at celebrity culture through Arthurs storyline, the dependence on technology see the iPhone zombies the joylessness of corporate work and the meaninglessness of corporate jargon (Mandel, 2014: 160, 1624, 2768). Frame, 26(1): 929. Though their plague is much more devastating than ours (it has a 99% fatality rate), it is still quite something to see people coughing in enclosed spaces while those nearby bristle, and others wonder about masks or gather supplies so they can hunker in apartments until the virus has burned itself out. Station Eleven features explicit intertextual references to biblical apocalyptic narratives, from the Flood, in Genesis, to Revelation. But apocalypse, from the Greek apocalyptein, etymologically means to unveil or to reveal, and the revelations of the traditional apocalyptic paradigm are intertwined with time and utopia. Station Eleven self-reflexively emphasises this difference between traditional and contemporary apocalyptic imagination. Station Eleven replicates what Gomel (2000: 408) identifies as the plague pattern, where there is no place for millenarian rebirth. Thirdly, while in the first half of Cloud Atlas the chronological order of the narratives encourages readers to look for clues foreshadowing an ending which will integrate, and make sense of, the various strands, there are gaps in the history traced by the novel and the shifts from one era to the other remain unexplained. Station Eleven repeatedly emphasises that there is no deterministic pattern to time, contrary to what apocalyptic logic affirms. Atwood, M 2004 Writing Oryx and Crake. That episode, which straddles the before and the after, was totally crazy and completely glorious; of course some female doctor would create a maternity ward in a place that once sold beds. The apocalyptic distinction between the elect and the non-elect fuels the ruthless actions of the prophet and his followers from killing to raping and enslaving which they commit [A]ll the time smiling, so peaceful, like theyve done nothing wrong (Mandel, 2014: 273), because they see themselves as the only rightful interpreters and agents of the apocalyptic goal of history, the utopian renewal of the new world. In order to have a good story, there needs to be emotion or entertainment. And the reason for that is that I feel that most dystopian fiction tends to dwell on that immediate aftermath of horror and mayhem. The concluding discovery of a town with a functioning electrical grid (Mandel, 2014: 311) suggests not the advent of a radical new world and the revelation of a sense-making pattern to history, but, rather, that civilisation might slowly revert to its pre-apocalyptic state and given the positive and optimistic tone of the conclusion, reinforced by the way in which electricity and lights are repeatedly described as beautiful, this, too, indicates the novels problematic celebration of the current system. Further threads arise from the stories of other settlements one led by Clark and the female actor (Elizabeth, played by Caitlin FitzGerald, who ended up marrying Arthur after an affair they began while he was with Miranda) and begin to be woven together. What if it's also a self-published comic book? But series creator Patrick Somerville had her blessing to change it. Herein lies its critical distance from the utopian teleology of the traditional apocalyptic paradigm. American Literary History, 23(3): 48399. To believe that the series is guilty of doubtful creative choices is not to spurn art its to know what its capable of and to expect more of it. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.256. I have seen many, and characters are almost exclusively categorized as hero, villain, victim but never bard, never artist. I confess I came to Station Eleven reluctantly. Last year, as we all scrambled to create some sort of context for the COVID-19 pandemic, Mandel got all sorts of what does it feel to have predicted the future? questions, which seemed very unfair. "Virginia Lottery tickets are available for purchase here!" 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. Even the guy who auditions by reciting Bill Pullmans speech from Independence Day believes. Confused? Survival is never sufficient. I remember watching that episode and I remember being absolutely struck by that line. The goal of traditional apocalyptic logic is to order time and make it intelligible, by disclosing that the whole course of human history is tending towards a final resolution which will make sense of everything that happened before. What would make life still worth living after the collapse of civilisation? Perhaps vessels are setting out even now, travelling towards or away from him, steered by sailors armed with maps and knowledge of the stars, driven by need or perhaps simply by curiosity: whatever became of the countries on the other side? Log In; Rather, during the first traumatic months spent walking on the road after the catastrophe, Jeevans litany of biographical facts unravels and is replaced by strange fragments (Mandel, 2014: 194). 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. Chaudhary, it finally clicked: Station Eleven soars when it rejects the mantra There is no before when it acknowledges that the future is a science fiction. London: Picador. Goldman, M 2005 Rewriting Apocalypse in Contemporary Canadian Fiction. Station Eleven , the HBO Max show whose finale airs Thursday, is something else entirely. Brennan: Look, Im not calling Station Eleven a failure, or a disaster, or even a half-assed genre entry. The theory that I found the most interesting was suggested to me by a bookseller in England last year: she thought perhaps our interest in these futuristic narratives had to do with the fact that there are no more frontiers. An uplifting pandemic drama? The acknowledgment section explains Mandel took this statistic from Simon Parrys 2009 Daily Mail article Revealed: The Ghost Fleet of the Recession Anchored Just East of Singapore. 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 loved Station Eleven because it is the first post-apocalyptic show that revolves around its own holy text, in this case the hypnotic, possibly prophetic, graphic novel Station Eleven. We see its origins as, in flashback, Miranda (with Deadwyler in an equally devastating performance), turns her own experience with trauma and loss into a sort of universal language that connects the past with the future and literally helps save civilization. Who auditions by reciting Bill Pullmans speech from Independence Day believes Patrick Somerville had her blessing to it... 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