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Praying for the End of the World: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Apocalyptic Media

in Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture

The apocalyptic films discussed in this chapter draw on science fiction and horror film conventions, but their producers contend that they are simply using drama to show something that will really ... More

The apocalyptic films discussed in this chapter draw on science fiction and horror film conventions, but their producers contend that they are simply using drama to show something that will really happen, that is, the rise of the Antichrist and the end of the world. Both Christian scientific films and apocalyptic films have sought out wide audiences beyond the evangelical market. With both kinds of films, as with other kinds of Christian media, it is seen that the wider the desired audience, the more carefully tempered the evangelical message will be. To produce their own countermedia, evangelicals have repeatedly drawn on previously existing forms, often turning them completely on their ear, as in antimarijuana reggae songs or rock tunes advocating submission to parents.Less

The End of the World

Guy Westwell

in Parallel Lines: Post-9/11 American Cinema

This chapter examines the indirect address of 9/11 through films that depict the end of the world. It argues that the diverse cycle of films appearing from the mid-2000s, including War of the Worlds, ... More

This chapter examines the indirect address of 9/11 through films that depict the end of the world. It argues that the diverse cycle of films appearing from the mid-2000s, including War of the Worlds, I Am Legend, The Mist, Cloverfield, The Happening, and The Road, all contain references that key their respective apocalypses into the experience of 9/11. The most resonant of these references is the depiction of bodies turned to dust, which corresponds to the disintegrated bodies of those killed in the World Trade Center. In Steven Spielberg's movie adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel War of the Worlds (2005), the main protagonist's inability to wash off the dust of the destroyed bodies or explain to his children what has happened presents 9/11 as something that cannot be washed away, expressed in language, or moved beyond.Less

Melancholia, or The After-All

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter argues that Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) is and may perhaps forever be the only rigorously apocalyptic film in the history of cinema. Before Melancholia there were already movies ... More

This chapter argues that Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) is and may perhaps forever be the only rigorously apocalyptic film in the history of cinema. Before Melancholia there were already movies in which the last still perfectly coincided with the annihilation of everything. One example is Ted Post's Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970): As he lay dying, Taylor (Charlton Heston) murmurs with his last breath that the day of the last judgment has arrived (“it's Doomsday”) before he collapses and sets off the atomic explosion that destroys the whole Earth. Yet there is a narrating voice that actually continues after or over the final image, that continues to recount, that becomes the huckster for a potential sequel that could still be shot someday. This is not the case with Melancholia. Until the final credits begin to roll, there is at least the radical suspension of an absolute silence that, for a few moments, allows us to glimpse the possibility of an archi-fade to black, of a total erasure after the ultimate image. The end of the film as end of the world would then also be the end of cinema itself. A cinema, finally, in the end.Less

Pause, for Inventory (the “Apo”)

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter begins by discussing how Nietzsche, like Kant, also imagined a scene for the end of the world through glaciation. It then turns to the apocalyptic genre, arguing that the end of a ... More

This chapter begins by discussing how Nietzsche, like Kant, also imagined a scene for the end of the world through glaciation. It then turns to the apocalyptic genre, arguing that the end of a properly and literally apocalyptic film must coincide with the end of the world. The final fade-out is destined to be that of the end of everything, including of film, which would end not only because there is nothing left to tell, but also and above all because its end includes—or is included in—general and generic disappearance. There is only one film that is worthy of this definitively final gesture which signs what is proper to the purely and absolutely apocalyptic genre: Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011), a kind of hapax legomenon in film history that ends with this black screen where the final point of the story affecting the characters and that of the universal history of humanity are mixed up at length and slowly but crazily exchanged—the one is constantly equivalent to the other in their mute oscillation.Less

The Master Filmmakers

Terry Lindvall and Andrew Quicke

in Celluloid Sermons: The Emergence of the Christian Film Industry, 1930-1986

This chapter looks at how World Wide Pictures and Gateway reached beyond the evangelical ghettos. The two organizations set out to bring evangelistic and historical films to churches; each was ... More

This chapter looks at how World Wide Pictures and Gateway reached beyond the evangelical ghettos. The two organizations set out to bring evangelistic and historical films to churches; each was successful in encouraging individuals to recognize God's presence. Despite staying committed to their theological purposes, their films were not embarrassing church-basement productions, but rather carefully conceptualized and professionally developed. Their hagiographic films, from The Hiding Place to Candle in the Dark, evoked thought as well as emotion. Their films also crossed denominational boundaries and promoted religious unity through shared narratives about grace, hope, and healing. In contrast, another introduced genre, the apocalyptic film, would bring terror, thrills, and urgency into churches.Less

Base but See It

Martyn Conterio

in Mad Max

This introductory chapter provides an overview of George Miller's Mad Max (1979). Mad Max is a freak picture with a fetish for fast-moving machines and the white-knuckle buzz of action cinema. It is ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of George Miller's Mad Max (1979). Mad Max is a freak picture with a fetish for fast-moving machines and the white-knuckle buzz of action cinema. It is also a dystopian narrative set one second before the great apocalyptic kaboom. In press interviews at the time, Miller specifically talked up Mad Max as a horror film. Mad Max displays an astonishing unity between character, narrative, theme, and environment. For liminality binds the film thematically, narratively and environmentally. A hero figure is in transition, society is in transition, and the land is in transition. In Mad Max, the world might be on the cusp of the gravest catastrophe, but one sees people still going about their lives. The chapter then looks at the criticisms on Mad Max.Less

The Blob, or The Bubble

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter discusses how bubble structures—the blob in The Blob (Irvin Yeaworth, 1958), the hologram in Escape from L.A. (John Carpenter, 1996), the submarine in On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, ... More

This chapter discusses how bubble structures—the blob in The Blob (Irvin Yeaworth, 1958), the hologram in Escape from L.A. (John Carpenter, 1996), the submarine in On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959), as well as the camera that falls to the ground and continues to film at the end of Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008) or the ‘magic cave’ of the last moments of Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)—can be seen and read on two levels at once. On the one hand, they appear in one form or another within the continuity of the plot. And, on the other hand, they constitute fragile filmic enclaves within acinema, ephemeral shelters in the general explosion of the cineworld. By narrating and auscultating itself from the perspective of its disappearance, cinema touches on a limit that is different from the one that would place the image and the fable in opposition within it. At stake is what is called its cinefication: in other words the constitution of the cinema and of its signs propped up on or dependent on the ultimate reference of its cineration, its becoming ash.Less

The Last Man on Earth, or Film as Countdown

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter focuses on dates and countdowns in apocalyptic films. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) opens with a scrolling text that starts with “Early in the 21st century.” In the exposition that ... More

This chapter focuses on dates and countdowns in apocalyptic films. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) opens with a scrolling text that starts with “Early in the 21st century.” In the exposition that precedes the opening credits of Roland Emmerich's 2012 (2009), one sees many inscriptions of place and date that note the signs from all over the globe which announce the catastrophe: copper mine in Naga Deng, India, 2009—Lincoln Plaza Hotel, Washington, 2009—G8 Summit, British Columbia, 2010. It argues that a date is a countdown to the now, and it will always have been in advance. It is a countdown apparatus like all the chronometers that measure the time that remains, starting with the Mayan calendar brought up to date through today's fashion for the new age and ending with the Doomsday Clock, where the minutes separating us from the apocalypse appear. The chapter then considers the The Last Man on Earth (Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow, 1964) and The Omega Man (Boris Sagal, 1971), the first and second adaptations of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, followed by a discussion of how the countdown was invented at the movies.Less

Watchmen, or The Layering of the Cineworld

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter examines apocalypse-cinema as that structural moment of the film when it all, after all, strips [s'effeuille]. It considers this stripping or leafing by looking at Zack Snyder's Watchmen ... More

This chapter examines apocalypse-cinema as that structural moment of the film when it all, after all, strips [s'effeuille]. It considers this stripping or leafing by looking at Zack Snyder's Watchmen (2009). It focuses on the character Rorschach, whose face is almost always covered up with a piece of fabric on which forms and ink stains are constantly shifting and twisting as they pass from one into another in a permanent morphing. It suggests that against all the countdowns running toward the extinction of movement, Rorschach is the stubbornness of the infinitely confluent fluidity of contours. The major moment of leafing and stripping in the film is the nuclear explosion that will destroy New York. Not only does the impact of the shock wave expanding throughout the city's streets make posters and newspaper pages fly. But above all, the psychologist's briefcase opens under the effect of the electromagnetic impulsion, and we see all the Rorschach test plates scatter in a succession of discrete images, like the pages of a big flip-book quickly sliding by before general annihilation.Less

Twelve Monkeys, or The Pipes of The Apocalypse

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter examines Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995). It shows that the film generalizes and exploits what we might call the figure of the narratological rewind (and its symmetrical ... More

This chapter examines Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995). It shows that the film generalizes and exploits what we might call the figure of the narratological rewind (and its symmetrical fast-forward counterpart) that is seen in many other films in the apo or post-apo repertoire, including S. Darko (Chris Fisher, 2009), Crack in the World (1964), and Day the World Ended (Roger Corman, 1955). It discusses how James Cole's (Bruce Willis) recurring dream is a crack that opens in the layers of the cineworld by separating it from itself or by folding it in on itself. A split or a fold thanks to which Cole, in effect, finds himself facing himself eye to eye with the child he was and yet light-years away from what he was: Between the two of them, between himself and himself, there is the apocalypse, that end of the world that the 1996 pandemic was.Less

Sunshine, or The Black-and-White Radiography

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter considers Danny Boyle's Sunshine (2004) as well as other films where the apocalypse is depicted as white. The moment of radiographic or heliographic blinding is conjugated into all ... More

This chapter considers Danny Boyle's Sunshine (2004) as well as other films where the apocalypse is depicted as white. The moment of radiographic or heliographic blinding is conjugated into all possible tones, oscillating between the extremes of documentary realism and futurist fiction. The apocalypse is white at the end of Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011), in the dazzling instant of the collision properly speaking, before the mute, black screen on which it all concludes. It is yet again in Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2012), where the intertwined bodies of Cisco (Willem Dafoe) and Skye (Shanyn Leigh) dissolve into brightness. In the whiteness of the holocaust, it might be said that nuclear war has not taken place; it is a speculation, an invention in the sense of a fable or an invention to be invented.Less

Il n’y a pas de hors-film, or Cinema and Its Cinders

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

The statement “Il n'y a pas de hors-texte” (“There is nothing outside the text”) appears under Derrida's pen for the first time in 1967 in De la grammatologie. This chapter diverts this statement, ... More

The statement “Il n'y a pas de hors-texte” (“There is nothing outside the text”) appears under Derrida's pen for the first time in 1967 in De la grammatologie. This chapter diverts this statement, which has almost become a bad sales pitch for deconstruction, toward the filmic image. It asks: How should we understand that “there is no extrafilm [il n'y a pas de hors-film]?” What changes if we substitute film for text in the aforementioned slogan? Is cinema structurally dedicated to archiving the unarchivable, to being transported in advance toward this place of the “outside-the-archive” that Derrida described as “impossible,” immediately adding that “the impossible is the affair of deconstruction?”Less

Terminator, or The Arche-Traveling Shot

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter begins by discussing the interlocking nature of destruction in apocalyptic film. The way in which destruction is propagated on screen, like a wave that goes from thing to thing, shows ... More

This chapter begins by discussing the interlocking nature of destruction in apocalyptic film. The way in which destruction is propagated on screen, like a wave that goes from thing to thing, shows how one thing refers to another, that is, the fabric of their relations with and references to one another; in short, what we call a world. That things hold onto one another, or thanks to one another, that they give one another support becomes clear when they start to collapse like a row of dominos. One finds the most striking images of this referring interlocking in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Jonathan Mostow, 2003). The chapter highlights a particular scene where the female T-X raises the crane of the truck she is driving during a car chase. Long before the twists and turns of the narrative that lead to the final holocaust, it is here, in this sequence that the nuclear holocaust of the movie's last images is being prepared.Less

A.I., or The Freeze

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter first considers the cinematic tropes of freezing and an off-screen voice present in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2004), and Quintet (Robert Altman, 1979). It ... More

This chapter first considers the cinematic tropes of freezing and an off-screen voice present in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2004), and Quintet (Robert Altman, 1979). It then turns to Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), which utilizes the same tropes as it unfurls into a large-scale narrative. It also discusses how certain shots are impossible to declare living or dead. Simply frozen or definitively extinguished, numbed yet potentially mobile or petrified forever as bas-reliefs, they seem to tremble with cold as they hesitate between the life and death of their movement. They are in a sense living-dead, that is to say spectral through their filmic movement (and not through what they show). The exemplary ones are the ones from the beginning of Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011).Less

2012, or Pyrotechnics

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter focuses on Roland Emmerich's 2012 (2009). It discusses how the continuous scenes of destruction and disintegration seem to point toward something beyond filmic pleasure, toward an ... More

This chapter focuses on Roland Emmerich's 2012 (2009). It discusses how the continuous scenes of destruction and disintegration seem to point toward something beyond filmic pleasure, toward an an-economy cinema, of which the film is a perfect example. On the one hand, each second of image, each shot cost a fortune, so grandiloquent are the special effects. But on the other hand, the film's characters, who are constantly just barely escaping the most colossal cataclysms of all time, end up giving the impression of wanting to escape the image, of trying to end with it and flee the frame of the inflationist reel that seems destined to bury them at any moment under an avalanche of means.Less

Cloverfield, or The Holocaust of the Date

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter discusses the significance of the date in Matt Reeves' Cloverfield (2008). According to Derrida, a date is in effect something that testifies. But it is a witness that can witness only ... More

This chapter discusses the significance of the date in Matt Reeves' Cloverfield (2008). According to Derrida, a date is in effect something that testifies. But it is a witness that can witness only if someone else in turn witnesses in some way for its testimony. In effect, it must be possible to repeat the date; it must be possible to cite, mention, celebrate, or commemorate it—and even remember it in advance—in order to make history. That is to inscribe its mark, which should nonetheless also be unrepeatable since it is supposed to attest to the singularity and incomparable uniqueness of an event that happened here and now and never anywhere else. Yet the testimonial structure of the date is also what, in the gap of the repetition that inhabits it, turns it into a holocaust. It is what burns it, the date and everything to which it testifies. The unique date, condemned to be repeated and thus to annul itself as such in order to be a date—this is the drama that takes place in Cloverfield. This is the holocaust that burns in the flames of the final explosion where Rob and Beth, those last witnesses, end up dying.Less

The Road, or The Language of a Drowned Era

Peter Szendy

in Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World

This chapter focuses on the ability of music to step across the apocalypse. Thanks to its power of anamnesis, music can cross over the abyss of the interworlds to transfer and reinstall us with all ... More

This chapter focuses on the ability of music to step across the apocalypse. Thanks to its power of anamnesis, music can cross over the abyss of the interworlds to transfer and reinstall us with all our footing in what was annihilated or lost. Music is the postapocalyptic marker par excellence; it can grow unbearable with nostalgia and pain, as it is, for example, to the ears of the father in the gray screen adaptation of The Road (John Hillcoat, 2009), based on the eponymous novel by Cormac McCarthy. The film invents a scene over the course of which the father (Viggo Mortensen) discovers a grand piano in the house he's just entered with his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) on their search for food. The father crouches down, caresses the wood frame covered in gray dust. He cries and then falls to his knees, visibly overtaken by intolerable heartbreak. He hits his forehead against this cursed piano that, were one to caress only one or two of its keys, threatens to resuscitate a lost world that they are making such efforts to forget, a world that it is so difficult to grieve.Less