The End Review: Introducing the Genre

3/27/2009

Introducing the Genre

Since I was a kid, I've been fascinated with the end times. It's not the end that I crave, it's what comes after and how humanity deals with it. I should amend that by saying "if there's a humanity left, what would they become." A lot of the time, I see situations where the people who are survivors of cataclysm are portrayed in much the same way: destitute, vicious, weary, caricatures of whatever "present day" exists at the time the work was written. "Mad Max", for example, shows bands of roving maniacs who appear at once to be groupies of the Sex Pistols and as muscle headed motor racers. It's these similarities with the present that draw audiences into these stories. I could sit here and cite examples all day long, but for this introduction, I would like to focus on my own discovery of these stories.

I was born in 1979. When I was a kid, I would catch glimpses of "The Road Warrior," a film that was already in and out of theaters and highly edited for television. It seemed that I always caught it in the midst of the plot. I didn't see the beginning of the film until I was much older so viewing it as a kid I couldn't understand what was happening or where the action was taking place. Big desert, so what? Little did I know at the time, but there was a backstory! There were details that would explain everything that was happening here and enrich my understanding of this! So I saw the beginning, finally. For those who don't know, the beginning of the tale is told through newsreel footage of everything from U.N. conferences to great battles from a bygone time. It's done in such a way as not give up the suspension of disbelief but to heighten the belief by using actual scenes from real life's past. As an adult in a world where we are fighting for oil rights and politicians are endlessly talking over one another and there is an economic crisis that threatens, I find post-apocalyptic stories, if done right, can be a real picture into what will come to pass. Rather than cautionary tales that highlight ethical themes, PA films and stories show us that history repeats itself no matter how hard societies try to fend off the sins of the past. It's inevitable.

Since I was a kid, I've been fascinated with the end times. It's not the end that I crave, it's what comes after and how humanity deals with it. I should amend that by saying "if there's a humanity left, what would they become." A lot of the time, I see situations where the people who are survivors of cataclysm are portrayed in much the same way: destitute, vicious, weary, caricatures of whatever "present day" exists at the time the work was written. "Mad Max", for example, shows bands of roving maniacs who appear at once to be groupies of the Sex Pistols and as muscle headed motor racers. It's these similarities with the present that draw audiences into these stories. I could sit here and cite examples all day long, but for this introduction, I would like to focus on my own discovery of these stories.

I was born in 1979. When I was a kid, I would catch glimpses of "The Road Warrior," a film that was already in and out of theaters and highly edited for television. It seemed that I always caught it in the midst of the plot. I didn't see the beginning of the film until I was much older so viewing it as a kid I couldn't understand what was happening or where the action was taking place. Big desert, so what? Little did I know at the time, but there was a backstory! There were details that would explain everything that was happening here and enrich my understanding of this! So I saw the beginning, finally. For those who don't know, the beginning of the tale is told through newsreel footage of everything from U.N. conferences to great battles from a bygone time. It's done in such a way as not give up the suspension of disbelief but to heighten the belief by using actual scenes from real life's past. As an adult in a world where we are fighting for oil rights and politicians are endlessly talking over one another and there is an economic crisis that threatens, I find post-apocalyptic stories, if done right, can be a real picture into what will come to pass. Rather than cautionary tales that highlight ethical themes, PA films and stories show us that history repeats itself no matter how hard societies try to fend off the sins of the past. It's inevitable.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

"The End Review" is a journal dedicated to post-apocalyptic fiction. All other posts are the product of the author's own mind. Any resemblence to any person, place or thing are the product of the author's imagination and any similarities to people in the real world are purely coincidental. Although, wouldn't you feel just a little bit special if you happened upon a website where there was a description of a certain person that sounded just like you? Of course, such an honor would be completely diminished if said portrayal was tarnished by a little something called "the truth." In that case, I should probably get a lawyer.