Apocalyptic Narratives and Popular Culture

Note: This isn't a blog post about literature, I just found it very interesting to write about! 

According to Bendle (2005) ‘popular culture is awash with apocalyptic imagery and narratives’ , so for this posting I shall examine why apocalyptic scenarios are so prevalent within popular culture, and what this reveals about contemporary attitudes. In the archetypal apocalypse movie, the human race is presented from a misanthropic perspective, and everyday life is portrayed as dull, repetitive and tedious. The apocalypse then ensues, sometimes from a zombie plague which sweeps the world- this could be a suggestion that the way in which contemporary society which involves following a conventional lifestyle of perpetual consumerism has, or is deadening our capacity for independent thought. As stated by Marxist theorist Theodor Adorno, ‘Capitalist production hems them in so tightly, in body and soul, that they unresistingly succumb to whatever is proffered to them’^[1]. Therefore, it can be argued that the zombies are a metaphor for our lack of autonomy which is a part of mass culture, or perhaps, a reflection of how the masses are viewed by the economically elite. This can be further supported by the fact that many zombie movies such as Synder’s Dawn of the Dead[2] are set in an American shopping mall, which is the central hub of consumerism in America. 

In other cases, the apocalypse occurs when technology overrides humanity, for example in the Terminator franchise, which revolves around the battle against synthetic intelligence which threatens to wipe out the human race. This could reflect a fear of the way in which as a society we have become almost wholly dependent on technology. While this type of apocalypse is secular, or promethean in nature, as they were caused and therefore can be ended by humans, the Terminator franchise does draw on biblical themes. Firstly, through the naming of the films ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’[3] which directly refers to the apocalyptic judgement day in the Bible ‘I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak’ (Matthew 12:36). Also the fact that the apocalypse is a result of humankind delving too far into technology, therefore having too much knowledge can be viewed as an allegory to Adam and Eve who eat from the tree of knowledge, so are banished from the garden of Eden ‘So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden’ (Genesis 3:22).

The popularity of apocalypse movies within today’s society does draw on a religious fear of the Judgement Day which is detailed in the Bible, but they also act as a commentary on our contemporary lifestyles. Therefore, their prevalence could be due to the fact that the audience identifies with this scenario, reflecting our contemporary anxieties.

 Dawn of the Dead. (2004). [DVD] Hollywood: Zack Snyder.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day. (1991). [DVD] United States of America: James Cameron.

Secondary sources:

Horkheimer, M and Adorno, T. (2006). 4 The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In: Durham, M G and Media Cultural Studies. Revised edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Feel free to comment below, I would be interested to hear your take on the subject!

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[1] Horkheimer, M and Adorno, T. (2006). 4 The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In: Durham, M G and Media Cultural Studies. Revised edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.  p. 94

[2] Dawn of the Dead. (2004). [DVD] Hollywood: Zack Snyder.

[3] Terminator 2: Judgement Day. (1991). [DVD] United States of America: James Cameron.

'The Love that Dare not Speak it's Name'

Lord Alfred Douglas wrote ‘Two Loves’[1] in eighteen- ninety two as a love letter to his partner, and fellow poet, Oscar Wilde. The final line of his poem refers to ‘The love that dare not speak its name’ (74), a phrase which later became recognised as a euphemism for homosexuality. This line illustrates the repression that Douglas and Wilde encountered, echoing the fact that within a sexually repressive Victorian society, homosexual love was viewed as shameful, and was punishable at the time by incarceration, as Wilde later experienced, after being publicly outed by Douglas's Father. Outraged at the company his son chose to keep, he penned the following letter to express his contempt:

Secondly, I come to the more painful part of this letter—your intimacy with this man Wilde. It must either cease or I will disown you and stop all money supplies. I am not going to try and analyze this intimacy, and I make no charge; but to my mind to pose as a thing is as bad as to be it. With my own eyes I saw you both in the most loathsome and disgusting relationship as expressed by your manner and expression. Never in my experience have I ever seen such a sight as that in your horrible features. No wonder people are talking as they are. Also I now hear on good authority, but this may be false, that his wife is petitioning to divorce him for sodomy and other crimes. Is this true, or do you not know of it? If I thought the actual thing was true, and it became public property, I should be quite justified in shooting him at sight. These Christian English cowards and men, as they call themselves, want waking up.

Your disgusted so-called father,
Queensbury [2]

In a highly conservative Victorian era, Douglas had to use highly ambigious yet implicity language in order to convey his emotions. The poem uses personification to categorise love in two ways- firstly, the heterosexual love between and male and female ‘I am true love, I fill//the hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame’ (72). The latter type of love which Douglas refers to is more cryptic, with it being referred to as ‘Shame’ (68). Douglas illustrates the latter type of love as forlorn ‘sad and sweet’ (53) ‘he sighed with many sighs’ (55), using sibilance, which creates a sense of secrecy, reflecting the way in which homosexual lovers were forced to lead double lives, hiding their feelings for each other in the public realm.
Many of Wilde's works also contained homosexual themes, particularly in The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which he laments the injustice of a heteronormative society 'your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful'. Whilst Wilder doesn't explicitly refer to homosexuality in this quotation, yet it is clear what forbidden desires Wilde is referring to, not only forbidden to the soul, but made unlawful by a nineteenth century government.