station eleven criticismstation eleven criticism

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). DOI: http://doi.org/10.4324/9780203969908. Modern metanarratives are apocalyptic, in that they are totalising explanations of history based on utopian teleology. Indeed, both Station Eleven and Player One emphasise how the teleological determinism and moral dualism of apocalyptic logic are self-referential narrative constructs which legitimise the oppressions and violence of those who articulate these narratives. 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. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajr019. Similarly to Player One, which features sections foreshadowing what happens in the next hour of the story narrated by the post-human Player One (the implication being that, when it comes to history, the apocalyptic perspective from after the end of time is manifestly impossible in human terms), sentences like The Georgia Flu would arrive in a year, Civilization wont collapse for another fourteen years, A year before the Georgia Flu, Two weeks till the apocalypse, just before the old world ended, the Georgia Flu so close now (Mandel, 2014: 40, 71, 110, 201, 217, 328) punctuate Mandels narrative. To take refuge in the art, dammit. New York Times, 5 September. This article examines Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven (2014) in the context of the growing body of contemporary post-apocalyptic fictions and what I argue is their critique of the apocalyptic tradition. The Traveling Symphony is a troupe of actors and musicians dedicated to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. As I have argued, the critical temporalities of the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel debunk the apocalyptic conception of history at the core of western modernity as a narrative construct. The full Long Island Rail Road terminal in Grand Central Station opened Monday. The narrative moves literally and metaphorically away from the road the actual road of the first post-pandemic years as well as McCarthys The Road. Survival is never sufficient. 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). Published by | 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. In Player One, Bertis justifies his murders through a similar self-righteous moral dualism and teleology. McCarthy, C [2006] 2007 The Road. The Swiss Family Robinson managed, and they were mostly kids! 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. Mitchell, D 2004 Cloud Atlas. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1057/9781137430144, Munslow, A 2006 Deconstructing History. Ermarth, E D 1992 Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time. London: Windmill. Goes Out newsletter, with the week's best events, to help you explore and experience our city. People with chaos in their hearts cannot abide here (Mandel, 2014: 61). West, M 2018 Apocalypse Without Revelation? Lighter moments leaven the darkness, particularly when the irreducibly charismatic and off-kilter Lori Petty, as the troupes composer Sarah, is on screen, or when we flash back to pre-pandemic times. WebSee 15 photos and 3 tips from 556 visitors to 7-Eleven. With the grown Kirsten serving, when necessary, as something like a one-woman militia, Station Eleven is not without its effective, if sometimes tonally jarring, genre thrills. How does this style of storytelling affect the emotional impact of the narrative? As he puts it, if youre not plotting every moment to boil the carcass of the old order, then youre wasting your day (Coupland, [2010] 2011: 189). Nothing (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 216). McNamara: As a nonmillennial Im not going to dive into those murky generation-defined existential waters, debate the historical nature of progress or try to predict the fate of democracy, though I think we can agree any television show that sparks debate about those things is a damn good television show. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 59(2): 24357. The first concerns the early days and years of the pandemic. There's something about art I think that can remind us of our humanity. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.206, Download XML The Station Eleven soundtrack song accompanies a flashback sequence. You know, I think I'd want to save a globe. HBO Maxs beguiling new mini-series is about a pandemic, but dont let that scare you off. 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. For me, its what Ive taken to calling the series present the 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. Station Eleven is a slow burn. Mary McNamara: Given the spiritual undertones of the series, and the repetition of the sentence I remember damage. She is the author of the Hollywood mysteries Oscar Season and The Starlet. She lives in La Crescenta with her husband, three children and two dogs. 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). I have seen many, and characters are almost exclusively categorized as hero, villain, victim but never bard, never artist. So I would want a globe, just to remember that there was a world out there. Where the book felt stylized, more like poetry or a fable, the The peculiarity of the novel is that all the stories with the exception of the sixth, the post-apocalyptic one, situated in the middle are interrupted in order to give way to the following one in a chronological order, and are then resumed in reverse order in the second half of the book. But book awards and Confronted with Bertis preaching, the other characters of Couplands novel notice that the way Bertis talks is weird (Coupland, [2010] 2011: 187). For me, its what Ive taken to calling the series present the scenes set around a flu pandemic that wipes out 99% of the worlds population that vibrate with acute emotional energy. 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. In the new HBO Max series Station Eleven, Davis plays the lead as a tough but vulnerable survivor of a pandemic. Open Library of Humanities As she puts it, I assume that there would be a period of utter chaos immediately after an apocalyptic event, but I dont find it credible that that period would last forever (Griffith, 2015: n.pag.). Ive spent the entire season trying to reconcile the above with my deep and abiding affection for the episodes Hurricane, The Severn City Airport, Goodbye My Damaged Home, Dr. This pattern comprises panic, dissolution of NATIONAL BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST Set in the eerie days of civilizations collapse - the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking In the very early days, for example, Jeevan and Kirsten go round a supermarket that is full of produce but empty of people. Is a Disarmingly Hopeful Post-Apocalyptic Tale. Griffith, C 2015 When the Dust Settles: An Interview with Emily St. John Mandel, April. Im calling it a partial masterpiece! Mandel, E S J 2014 Station Eleven. I confess I came to Station Eleven reluctantly. It won several major awards, was an NPR Books Concierge pick, and it's just come out in paperback. 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. Chute, H L 2016 Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Or at least part of it is. The contemporary post-apocalyptic novel, instead, is not only predominantly dystopian but articulates temporalities critical of the apocalyptic model of history to make space for unwritten futures which are key to agency. Indeed, one criticism of Station Eleven the novel was that it made surviving the apocalypse look too easy, with Sigrid Nunez writing in the New York Times in 2014 Now I am more so, but beyond the practical, the questions posed by the book and the show about how much of a refuge art can provide, what we should work to preserve, what makes a civilisation and what, ultimately, makes life worth living, remain interesting ones. 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. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Public Books, 15 June. Tyler reunites with his mother. Station Eleven is so good, you can buy it outright on Amazon, which sells it for between $28 (DVD) (opens in new tab) and $40 (4K Blu-ray) (opens in new tab). The full Long Island Rail Road terminal in Grand Central Station opened Monday. Both texts expose how apocalyptic discourse is fabricated to push ideological agendas. Clark lashes out at Arthur after a bender; the music scores the end of the episode at 00:56. June 24, 2015. Open Library of Humanities, 4(2): 8, 123. 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. Station Eleven , the HBO Max show whose finale airs Thursday, is something else entirely. Feb. 26A BIG QUESTION keeps popping up on Manchester community groups on Facebook: What happened to the 7-Eleven gas stations on South Main and Maple streets? In this sense, it is interesting to note that, just like another winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, Margaret Atwood (, On the essentially temporal nature of traditional apocalyptic logic see also Kermode (, See also the prototype of the Western concept that history has an intelligible and end-determined order, whether fideistic or naturalistic, is the scheme of the course of earthly affairs from genesis to apocalypse which is underwritten by a sacred text (, Indeed, it is my contention that, in its critique of the apocalyptic understanding of history, the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel addresses aspects of Western modernity that transcend national borders, which in any case become irrelevant after the catastrophes depicted by the texts. And the novel skips forward 20 years to a young woman who was just eight when she was on stage with that actor and is now trying to make her way in a world that's been shorn of most of what we call civilization. WebSee 10 photos and 3 tips from 190 visitors to 7-Eleven. She had ample experience to draw from. 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