A scene depicts Tyler as a child reading Revelation 18 to the victims of the Flu sealed forever in a quarantined plane (Mandel, 2014: 259). Available at: http://www.tor.com/2014/09/12/a-conversation-with-emily-st-john-mandel/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. Station Eleven has a nonlinear storytelling style: The story doesn't begin at one point and then progress through time to an ending; it often flashes forward or back in time. Ultimately, Station Elevens critique of apocalyptic temporality as a self-referential narrative construct is particularly effective because the prophets fanatic apocalyptic fabrication is an attempt at making sense of history in the wake of an apocalypse that, as typical of the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel, failed to bring about the expected utopian renewal. Station Eleven replicates what Gomel identifies as the plague pattern, where there is no place for millenarian rebirth. I dont [sic] think so. Chute, H L 2016 Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Despite the tidy conclusion, I can only hope creator Patrick Somerville and HBO Max are in negotiations for a second season. Station Eleven is a massive collaborative effort, but much of the series warmth is shaped by three key visual choices in its first episode. ow deeply strange it is, how deeply unsettling, to be able to compare and contrast a fictional pandemic with the real thing. Thus, the critical temporalities of contemporary post-apocalyptic fictions challenge the hegemonic temporality of modernity: time as a neutral, homogeneous and teleological continuum. Open Library of Humanities 4(2), Station Elevens structure similarly articulates a critical temporality that complicates the sense of an ending. Why, I kept asking myself, are they still living on the ground? 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. The theory that I found the most interesting was suggested to me by a bookseller in England last year: she thought perhaps our interest in these futuristic narratives had to do with the fact that there are no more frontiers. Aptly described as an elegy for the hyper-globalised present by Andrew M. Butler of the Arthur C. Clarke Award committee (ACCA, 2015: n.pag. Clarks optimistic musings on the possibility of ships and life in the countries on the other side of the ocean stand in stark contrast to the fathers answers to his son: Do you think there could be ships out there? Modern metanarratives are apocalyptic, in that they are totalising explanations of history based on utopian teleology. And, looking back to his past towards the end of his life, a retrospection that by definition should allow the sense of an ending to emerge, Clark does not see any meaningful order but only a series of photographs and disconnected short films (Mandel, 2014: 279). Thus, one might suggest that Mandels book describes an apocalypse that already happened in 20082009: it is a novel not about a post-apocalyptic future but a post-apocalyptic present, for the ships embody the breakdown of capitalisms fundamental premise of eternal growth (Hoberek, 2015: n.pag.). 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. I hadnt read the book, so I had no idea what I was in for, but I certainly was not prepared for a very young Shakespearean actress trotting around snowy Chicago in her young Goneril costume as the world collapsed. However, as The Ringer's Alison Herman wrote, the show leverages our own experience of the pandemic to The red bandanas turn up and disappear in one fell swoop to provide a cliffhanger between episodes; ditto the strained mystery of the the Prophet. Yeah, I was interested in the randomness of what survives and what doesn't. Notice the singular civilization of the Museums name: it encapsulates the neoliberal dream of a unified globalised world in which all difference is erased under the global free market. I found it hopeful. The mere existence of a character like the Conductor, played with bug-eyed, Emmy-worthy brilliance by Petty, made my heart sing. 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. In this section, I compare Station Elevens narrative structure with that of Mitchells Cloud Atlas.10 Both texts complicate the teleological linearity of apocalyptic narratives to make space for unwritten futures which are key to agency. The Museum soon becomes a sanctuary where people go to pray, for Station Elevens post-apocalyptic characters clin[g] to the hope that the world they remembered could be restored (Mandel, 2014: 213), just like the people of the Undersea in the comic Station Eleven, penned by Miranda, the title of which signals its status as a mise-en-abyme text.9 Thus, children at school are taught about the way things were, although these are just abstractions and essentially science fiction to them (Mandel, 2014: 269, 262, 270). Emily St. John Mandel. Mandel, E S J 2015 Ask Me Anything. Even in rural Pennsylvania, let alone Asia, you know your world becomes so small so quickly. Rather, during the first traumatic months spent walking on the road after the catastrophe, Jeevans litany of biographical facts unravels and is replaced by strange fragments (Mandel, 2014: 194). What the readers find in Mandels novel is not the destruction of the corrupt old world and subsequent ushering in of a utopian new world but, rather, a lament about the lost wonders of technology and the splendours of the former world (Mandel, 2014: 288, 231) which undermines apocalyptic sense-making. McCarthy, C [2006] 2007 The Road. Here in the present, we play we play musical instruments at refugee camps. I remember describing the premise of the novel to my husband, and he said, "People would want what was best about the world. I loved Station Eleven because it is the first post-apocalyptic show that revolves around its own holy text, in this case the hypnotic, possibly prophetic, graphic novel Station Eleven. We see its origins as, in flashback, Miranda (with Deadwyler in an equally devastating performance), turns her own experience with trauma and loss into a sort of universal language that connects the past with the future and literally helps save civilization. We try to make the world make sense for a minute, she explains to young Kirsten. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/38e15y/hi_im_emily_st_john_mandel_author_of_station/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. (2018) Critical Temporalities: Station Eleven and the Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel, Mandels novel thus exposes apocalyptic temporality as an artificial teleological order that one imposes on contingency, often with oppressive agendas in mind, as is the case of the prophet. It is in the context of what Heather J. Hicks, in her study of the twenty-first-century post-apocalyptic novel, discusses as an unprecedented outpouring of fully developed post-apocalyptic narratives by major, critically acclaimed anglophone [sic] writers (2016: 56) that my article situates Station Eleven. WebThe book Station Eleven, by Emily Mandel, started when a famous actor dies on stage while performing the play King Lear. I have seen many, and characters are almost exclusively categorized as hero, villain, victim but never bard, never artist. It won several major awards, was an NPR Books Concierge pick, and it's just come out in paperback. Tom's Guide's latest streaming news. Im calling it a partial masterpiece! How deeply strange it is, how deeply unsettling, to be able to compare and contrast a fictional pandemic with the real thing. 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. Station Eleven has been a best seller. It won several major awards, was an NPR Books Concierge pick, and it's just come out in paperback. The final minutes of the Station Eleven finale reunite Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis) and Jeevan (Himesh Patel) after 19 years apart. Ermarth, E D 1992 Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time. Mandels list (2014: 312) of what is lost in the disaster is incomplete first and foremost because, in its elegiac harkening back, Station Eleven ignores present systemic problems, offering merely a few jabs at celebrity culture through Arthurs storyline, the dependence on technology see the iPhone zombies the joylessness of corporate work and the meaninglessness of corporate jargon (Mandel, 2014: 160, 1624, 2768). Miranda, Arthurs ex-wife, was unprepared for [the fleets] beauty. Still, my sense that the series is too Pollyanna-ish for its own good that its conclusions about the uses of art in the world are ultimately unearned stems from the fact that these sections are often dramatically inert to begin with. While the novels prophet holds on to a religious understanding of apocalypse in which the end is followed by utopian rebirth, the Georgia Flu, the pandemic that kills 99% of the worlds population, is termed apocalypse by the television newscasters in the sense of dystopian catastrophe rather than utopian revelation, and the apocalyptic narratives referred to in the text are disaster movies, with the dangerous stragglers fighting out for the last few scraps (Mandel, 2014: 243, 256). The dazzling power of electricity floodlights, porch lights, candy-coloured halogens, screens shining, the points of glimmering light that are towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows populates Mandels incomplete list of what is lost in the catastrophe (Mandel, 2014: 312). Just like the parallels between the stories, the conclusion emphasises the individuals agency to shape the future and the openness of actual time, as opposed to the closure of time in traditional plots. From Station Eleven to Atlanta, GLOW and more, Christian Sprenger has shot some of TVs most beautiful images. In the new miniseries "Station Eleven," it's two decades after a deadly flu pandemic, and global civilization has nearly collapsed. And I think it would be very easy to lose perspective and think that this was the entire world. It received critical acclaim and was nominated for seven Primetime The novel begins with the apocalyptic end, Arthurs death on Night One (Mandel 2014: 180) of the pandemic. Someone suggested to me that it has to do with economic inequality. Rather than stressing the end, the emphasis is on the present and its ethical value, as the moment in which individuals take choices that inform the future. Are you ever surprised? Bernstein, M A 1994 Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History. 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). This passage is another intertextual reference to The Road. The author has no competing interests to declare. Log In; You know, it's interesting to think about what survives. People die alone, with their loved ones unable to be with them, and people grieve alone. WebIn this video we take a deep dive, review, recap and explain the ending to HBO's adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel's novel STATION ELEVEN. Albany: State University of New York Press. In: Atwood, M (Eds. Previously she was assistant managing editor for arts and entertainment following a 12-year stint as television critic and senior culture editor. 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). Maybe, though people appear to be living in small, mostly primitive communities and the fact that the story confines itself to the shoreline of Lake Michigan (at least I think its Michigan) serves the narrative both spiritually and logistically. This pattern comprises panic, dissolution of The full Long Island Rail Road terminal in Grand Central Station opened Monday. The Museum, set up by Clark in the Severn City Airport, hosts everyday objects of the pre-apocalyptic society, such as a laptop, an iPhone, a credit card and a snow globe. However, on the one hand, the novel is far from adhering to the radical utopian renewal of traditional apocalyptic discourse. Tyler reunites with his mother. Having established its And, as a sniper, he believes he is clearing the way for gods new utopian order, for [T]he people [he] shot bothered God. Arthur C Clarke Award 2015 2015 Winner. who dies of a heart attack onstage as he plays King Lear in Toronto. 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. 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? So yeah, there is a comic book that's drawn by a character in the present day. London: Bloomsbury. For the thing with the new world is its just horrifically short on elegance (Mandel, 2014: 151). 2nd ed. This critique of teleology is reflected in Station Elevens narrative structure. 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? Furthermore, teleology entails determinism, which compromises the possibility of choices and ethics. Get Screen Gab for everything about the TV shows and streaming movies everyones talking about. Flawed but engrossing, the craft of HBO Maxs post-post-apocalyptic tale masks its narrative imperfections: As in the Bard, plot gives way to poetry. In this podcast, PSR Versus podcast hosts Josh Wigler ( @roundhoward) and LaTonya Starks ( @lkstarks) compare episode 7 of The Last of Us and Station Eleven. London: Sceptre. This critique of the sense of an ending is particularly important because, while it may be innocuous in narratives, if we construct history according to a teleological narrative model, we subscribe to determinism and a totalising explanation of the flow of time that risks justifying oppressions as part of a necessary pattern tending towards betterment. Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but I did like the idea that a Shakespearean company might be able to make it. Even when the man contemplates the possibility of ships out there, these are deathships, and the hypothetical father and son on the other side are similarly hopeless, living among the bitter ashes of the world st[anding] in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 219). How Station Eleven pulled off the impossible, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Cultural Dominant. Yet beyond this cursory reference to the economic crisis, the novel remains curiously silent on the issues of the neoliberal order, including anthropogenic climate change, which represents the flip side of, and a significant threat to, capitalisms fundamental premise. The concluding discovery of a town with a functioning electrical grid (Mandel, 2014: 311) suggests not the advent of a radical new world and the revelation of a sense-making pattern to history, but, rather, that civilisation might slowly revert to its pre-apocalyptic state and given the positive and optimistic tone of the conclusion, reinforced by the way in which electricity and lights are repeatedly described as beautiful, this, too, indicates the novels problematic celebration of the current system. 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