Pre-Apocalyptic World

I think; sooner or later there will be an end. It should be. From a scientific approach, the Sun will burn out, eventually. In another aspect, there will be an end for all individuals; death. So, our lives are not like the concept of aevum. It will end eventually, but we are living in a denial of this situation.

Creating scenarios about apocalypse might occur because of the desire toward “second chance” or “restarting” ideas. Most of the people create crazy scenarios about what wanted; this might a day dream about saving everyone from a crazy gun-man or about relaxing, but everyone does it. For some men like the ones in Fight Club, a brand new life or start is a dream. Thinking constantly on it causes these absurd scenarios. They have nothing to live for, or a purpose to fight for. They live in a vagabond; a possibility of restart is their heaven. At the very beginning of the class, we talked about a group of people that committed suicide while a meteor passing nearly to the Earth. If they had a purpose or a people to devote for, would they do the same thing? I do not think so. Also, waiting for a close apocalypse is a whole different thing; several results could occur. Firstly, there is Homer effect; you start to get sad and cry about your ending, secondly, there is an unleash effect; you start not to care about the results of what you do, thirdly (I think it is the rarest one), you does not care about ending because you have a complete satisfaction about your life and you continue to live as you do today. 

I know, all these scenarios seems crazy; how can a man gets so high that he think dying will cause a rebirth or wants zombies to hunt. However, the conditions lead them into this craziness; the system is their cage and there are two exits; breaking cage or ending your live.

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Is there has to be an end? Or do we have to believe it and Make plans? My question about end and our obsession about it creating scenarios while all of us will have our ends. I am wondering while we are making claims do we really believe it ? Or if we do not then why do we wonder about such scenarios?

In the history of literature, there are many accurate shots that an author write possible future one of his/her books and his/her assumptions happen; George Orwell and Jules Verne are example of this amazing event. So, what do you think about the novels we read or the movies we watch; do you think is there any chance that they will happen one day? I’m not questioning the zombies or nuclear apocalypse, I’m wondering the changes in the human behaviors like cannibalism or murdering people violently to survive. If the answer is yes, why do you think these behaviors are not occurring today and what is the role of apocalypse in this change?

Well, we finally finished the Zone One; it was a rough path to climb, the climax was not completely satisfying (in my opinion of course), but the things we get on the road; what I learnt from the book is unforgettable. 

There are some art-pieces; that are all about the ending; like a novel modern fiction or a movie like Se7en; it is all about its ending. We might like how the story built or how the characters change in the story; but think about it, if the end of Se7en was just about catching the killer, would we enjoyed like this? I do not think so; endings have a great role in modern fictions and stories. Yet, without giving them a great role, we can still construct a great story. Moreover, we can just told the ending and see how the audience react to the development of the story like Memento and Iliad; we know the end and wait with an excitement. Zone One does not give a clue about ending or just saying it, but the end does not matter; only thing that matter is how the story developed like this? Moving toward end; in the middle of flashbacks and climaxes, I learnt many different things about the horror genre. I think Whitehead contributed the horror genre, more than we think; first of all, he introduces the apocalypse concept, of course most of us seen it in the other horror movies, but none were like this. For example, The Dawn of the Dead is horror movie with zombies. The movie about a group of people who tries to survive from zombies; it look like same to Zone One, however, it does not focused on concepts like individualism and capitalism in the background, or the popular cultural jokes. With combining a post-apocalyptic story with them and giving a philosophical or a modern is amazing. I think Whitehead find the missing part of the post-apocalyptic genre; strong arguments and combination of different concepts, properly. It may be the future of all genres today. Today no one watches a story about a man’s love story, but with a strong background concepts and different arguments it becomes a great story. For example, Breaking Bad, a great TV series on AMC, no one watched a story about a father who tries to give his best to his family; however, if you put unusual concepts and crazy fictions which starts with “what if” questions, story becomes more interesting. For Breaking Bad, the question was “what if we took a weak chemistry teacher with lung cancer and make him to “cook” drugs to leave his family huge amount of money.” Now it becomes more interesting story. This was not made in the post-apocalyptic genre before; however, Whitehead did it in a great way. This will be the future of every genre and the ones without this technique especially the ones without anything more, will not be successful; like Walking Dead, it is an interesting story, but it does not go beyond the question “what if we put a family into a post-apocalyptic story”, so? Is it all? We expect much, of course. All art audience expects much. 

I’m glad that we read Zone One, I learnt many thing while reading about the genre. I hope every art works on this genre will be like this; not like “what if we make love stories between zombies”.

“What’s next?” Gary asked.
The old World Trade Center station, Mark Spitz thought. That was a long time ago, but he remembered.               Whitehead, 212

Not a long time ago, I was thinking it is pointless that using another fiction to compare today and post-apocalyptic world. Since, Whitehead used two fictions; the artistic value of Zone One was not much for me. However, in the last two weeks I figured out that he was not using the two fictions for the comparison of two worlds. He was using it to adjust climax point and to increase profound meanings of the story. In the book, there is not any obvious comparison, at least not from Whitehead. There are many implications about people who lived in a certain place.

(I was not going to talk about it; but, I think there a reason why he always talks about cities without any exception. He constantly talks about a city like everyone is the same in those cities; for example, I do not everyone in Connecticut is merciless banker, yet he always implies all zombies around those cities have same attitude. I think he wants to imply individualism before apocalypse again; people before apocalypse were like a herd of sheep.) 

Why he is always reminding us those places? It is obvious that he is criticizing the behavior of societies by their metamorphosis to zombies. Yet, why he is reminding the Old World Trade Center? As a Turkish person, I cannot understand what kind of trauma does the 9/11 left on Americans; I can just predict that feeling. However, there were certain theories about its effect on America, the movie 25TH Hour discuss that 9/11 has increased individualism lately. Everyone became more alone than usual. It is also a side effect of capitalist system. Maybe by reminding 9/11, Whitehead wants to emphasize on individualism in a different way. 

Another theory about usage of the Old World Trade Center in the book might be emphasizing on horror. There are many scary figure and action scenes in the book, yet they may not be enough to remind us the horror (after using the word “horror” I could not stop myself to remind this scene from Apocalypse Now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNUr__-VZeQ SPOLIER ALERT). Of course, we aware of that world’s terror and the possibility of death in every second, but this could be ineffective. In the first discussion about Kermode, we were discussing about the death of millions could be seen from us “normal”. I think we are encountering this false imagination here again. We should have felt so deep about those deaths, but like we discussed, it became “normal” and because of it we did not feel much about it. However, a reminder about a biggest destruction and terror from near past could increase our focus on the terrifying scenes. It is a helpful transition tool. In the Shakespeare tragedy Macbeth, at the Act 2 Scene 3, while the characters were chit chatting about the last night events, Lennox, one of the main character, started to talk about destruction and because of that speech we, the audience, had started to feel something is coming. The transition succeeded, the climax point is reached, well. It is a similar thing what Whitehead did by reminding 9/11. He wants to emphasize on terror concept and adjust a good series of emotions.

I think this book is a good example of adjusting feeling of the audience and indirect telling by implications of the concepts. Before these sections, I did not like it, but now I see much more things and I have started to like it.

A few words on Children of Men; even though I like the concepts and the story of movie. I could not keep myself on thinking how could Clive Owen and the pregnant girl survive from that non-stop conflict? Except those scenes it was good, it introduce a new type of apocalypse sense and what fascist ideas could cause in the future. Suffice it to say; I like it but it was not perfect. 

As we discussed or read in Kermode, human beings have a tendency to exaggerate their individual problems and want to act like they are the center of the world. I do not think this tendency or this general manner is a psychological problem. It very common or normal and I think it is happening because of the inner narrative of us. Like all fictions, we all have a inner narrative that talks with or without conciously. Most of the time we just use it for reading or writing. Some of us did not notice it, yet live with it and used it, some of us notice it and use it as an inner motivation tool. If we noticed this narrative, sometimes it feels like it we are in a story; our story. These stories of individuals are making our lives more dramatic and tragic sometimes. Every individual knows his/her story better than everyone else. We know where does our sufferies comes from , we know the things make us happy. This self awareness might cause a biased approach to ourselves. It obvious that we found ourselves close to our personalities, but we also pity ourselves. We got sad about our tragedies and these are constantly popped up in our minds thanks to our inner narrative. This narrative (mostly a subconscious voice) also knows our story and sometimes it gives us some advices about decisions. Of course, applying every advice defined our insanity. Most of the serial killer or criminal that have mental issues accuse their inner voice to what they did. Applying those “voices” orders give them a self satisfaction. However, in most of the case the voice just give us an approach about an issue. In a crisis of ours, like Kormode mentioned, our inner voice start to work automatically, even though our crisis might be less harmful then the others because our inner voice knows our problems better, it could say “ovv poor us” and does not care about others problems. Only a person with worse condtion can stop our selfish thought. This approach leads to pragmatic actions. In McCarhty’s The Road this inner voice of The Man always work for their good. He never cares about others crisis in most of the time. In Whitehead’s Zone One, Mark Spitz looks like a person without any inner voice. Of course he always tries to survive but he never feels something or shows his emotions clearly, and because we can not connect with his emotions, the information about his background is the only thing that close us to him. Ps. If you are a Family Guy fan you might enjoy the 16th episode of 8 season which shows a funny approach to apocalypse.