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). The website's critics consensus reads, " Station Eleven rewards patient viewers with an insightful and thematically rich assertion thateven in the post-apocalypsethe show must go on." A finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner, Emily St. John Mandels best-selling Station Eleven is set in the eerie days of civilizations collapse. Toronto: Anansi. The novels elegiac tone is encapsulated by the Museum of Civilization, where civilization refers to the bygone hyper-globalised world. Station Eleven replicates what Gomel identifies as the plague pattern, where there is no place for millenarian rebirth. New York: Vintage. Goldman, M 2005 Rewriting Apocalypse in Contemporary Canadian Fiction. Station Eleven is a slow burn. Station Elevens appropriation of biblical apocalyptic serves to foreground the violence inherent in apocalyptic logic.7 As Kirsten, a child actor with Arthur in the pre-apocalypse and a member of the Travelling Symphony in the post-apocalypse, muses, [I]f you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then theres nothing that you cannot justify. We begin, really, to care, to wonder, to ask more questions. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4159/9780674495647. Even in 2014, I was sceptical that there would be such an appetite. In part because the partnership of Jeevan and Kirsten was so odd and hypnotic that Goneril dress! Despite the tidy conclusion, I can only hope creator Patrick Somerville and HBO Max are in negotiations for a second season. Twentieth Century Literature, 46(4): 40533. Told in a relentless stream of disclosure, the story swirls around two troubled siblings, an addict named Paul and his absurdly gorgeous half sister, Vincent. Questioning the passivity of apocalyptic determinism, Adam, the protagonist of the nineteenth-century narrative, reminds us that history admits no rules; only outcomes and encourages us to believe in the possibility of a better world than one culminating in an apocalyptic dystopian future (Mitchell, 2004: 528). The ships were lit up to prevent collisions in the dark, and when she looked out at them she felt stranded, the blaze of light on the horizon both filled with mystery and impossibly distant, a fairy-tale kingdom (Mandel, 2014: 28). This staunch rebuttal of apocalyptic determinism through the emphasis on the role that chance plays during the pandemic is echoed when Clark describes the period of contagion as a choreography of luck, the hours of near misses, of coincidence[s] (Mandel, 2014: 223, 224). DOI: http://doi.org/10.4324/9780203969908. 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. It seemed at least plausible to me that there would eventually be some kind of hope. London: Continuum. Therefore, the plot of pestilence is not so much a fiction of an end as a fiction of an end indefinitely postponed. Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the Read full review I found it hopeful. Indeed, as opposed to analyses of the contemporary apocalyptic imagination that interrogate its relationship with the current socio-historical conjunctures traumas and risks, especially environmental risks (Berger, 1999; Mousoutzanis, 2014; Skrimshire, 2010), I contend that to understand the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel we need to consider the very core of the apocalyptic imagination: time. How Station Eleven pulled off the impossible, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Hardly by chance, schooling in the post-apocalypse insists on transports and communications that create a hyper-connected world in which borders are meaningless: Satellites beamed information down to Earth. Station Eleven is a massive collaborative effort, but much of the series warmth is shaped by three key visual choices in its first episode. By Richard Events unfurl like a runaway train: Jeevan (Himesh Patel), an anxiety-ridden mess, is attending a performance of King Lear when an onstage tragedy prompts him to intervene. 2nd ed. Station Eleven manages to find something different: beauty and meaning, most of it wrapped up in the pandemic's survivors, our main characters, and the way they manage to connect to others and find some joy even in a grim time and place. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Basingstoke: Palgrave. Is a Disarmingly Hopeful Post-Apocalyptic Tale. They discuss both shows and recap the events of Station Eleven, then halfway into the podcast, set the two shows against each other in a head-to-head battle. Its one of the most profound meditations on love, loss, grief, and community Ive ever seen. McCarry, S 2014 I want It All: A Conversation with Emily St. John Mandel, 12 September. As I am Irish, and firmly believe in Thomas Cahills premise that Irish monks saved civilization by maintaining texts and libraries while Europe fell into the Dark Ages, I was all in. As he claims, when we speak of the light, we speak of order. 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. 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]. How? Station Eleven requires audiences to pay attention, offering up a dramatic tapestry of considerable depth. Quinby, L 1994 Anti-Apocalypse: Exercises in Genealogical Criticism. TV Details DOI: http://doi.org/10.2307/827840. Audience member Jeevan (Himesh Patel) tries to take her home, but they are overtaken by the collapse of civilisation and begin their new life navigating the disaster together. Globe and Mail, 12 September. According to Elana Gomel, plague narratives are structured by the logic of iterative mortality that undermines the teleological progression of the apocalypse. 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. 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. An uplifting pandemic drama? I in fact stole it shamelessly from Star Trek: Voyager. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/books/station-eleven-joins-falls-crop-of-dystopian-novels.html [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Mackenzie Davis, left, leads the sprawling cast of HBO Maxs (post-)apocalyptic series Station Eleven.. This structure articulates a critical temporality that undermines the apocalyptic sense of an ending and, more specifically, foreshadowing, which, with its view of the present as the harbinger of an already determined future, is at the core of the temporality of traditional plots and apocalyptic history alike (Bernstein, 1994: 12). The novels final paragraph consists mostly of questions, while the hypothetical ships move towards another world just out of sight (Mandel, 2014: 333; emphasis mine), that is, towards a future that, contrary to the normative and prescriptive utopian visions of apocalyptic logic, remains undefined. For me, its what Ive taken to calling the series present the Furthermore, teleology entails determinism, which compromises the possibility of choices and ethics. Why, I kept asking myself, are they still living on the ground? Get our L.A. Apocalyptic writings, ever since their religious origins, have flourished at times of crisis and [I]t is to this disquieting sense of disorder that the apocalyptic myth speaks, reasserting teleological design and cosmic meaning (Rosen, 2008: xviii). Yet, she explains, it was important to me to not write that book [The Road]. 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). For the profound influence of apocalypticism on modernity can also be qualified as a chronic disease of the Western politics and poetics of temporality, a disease characterised by what Derrida called the disorder or delirium of destination (Gomel, 2010: 121). Published by Matt Brennan is a Los Angeles Times deputy editor for entertainment and arts. If nothing else, its pleasant to consider the possibility. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2017.1369386. Yes, an episode that aired in 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. She had ample experience to draw from. Previously she was assistant managing editor for arts and entertainment following a 12-year stint as television critic and senior culture editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Immediately following the Second World War, there was a fashion show in Paris. 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. 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? I dont [sic] think so. Skrimshire, S (Eds.) But I fear the social future Station Eleven imagines is implausible, if not disingenuous. WebThe book Station Eleven, by Emily Mandel, started when a famous actor dies on stage while performing the play King Lear. Brennan: Look, Im not calling Station Eleven a failure, or a disaster, or even a half-assed genre entry. You seem to get reborn almost every time you leave the house, says Arthurs best friend, Clark (David Wilmot, another mesmerising turn), after listening to a California female actor be an excessively California female actor over dinner for too long. 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. West, M 2018 Apocalypse Without Revelation? 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. Unlike with The Leftovers, Station Eleven was billed as a mini-series from the beginning, and Somerville doesn't seem interested in continuing the story. 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. The Traveling Symphony is a troupe of actors and musicians dedicated to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. Open Library of Humanities, 4(2): 8, 123. Mousoutzanis, A 2014 Fin-de-Sicle Fictions, 1890s1990s: Apocalypse, Technoscience, Empire. 2nd ed. I definitely had some questions in the end the Prophets use of children as suicide bombers was never really addressed but I was frankly astonished that Somerville was able to keep so many balls themes, characters, flashbacks, contexts, relationships in the air, never mind land them with such optimism and grace.