The Heroes of Post-Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
In the last few decades human civilization has come to terms with the fact that it might soon collapse and that it’s probably gonna be our own fault. Pretty much all civilization-ending threats we currently face have been created by humans: nuclear warfare, global warming, superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics, ‘colony collapse disorder’ among bees, and some even think the main threat comes from artificial intelligence, which might be intelligent enough to realize that we should probably be replaced, soon.
Humans aren’t just aware of the reality of an impending apocalypse, they have created an endless amount of movies, literature and video game about this, with the most common apocalyptic scenarios involving either zombies or Roland Emmerich. It could be argued that many people subconsciously want this to happen, the struggle of life being so difficult that sometimes people just want to feel the death drive catharsis of seeing it all end. But personally I think people are mainly becoming aware of the possibility that our current civilization might eventually reach a point in which it becomes unsalvageable.
Lately there have been some works of fiction that don’t deal so much with the apocalypse itself or the events immediately preceding it, but rather explore the arduous process of rebuilding and renovating civilization, often with the goal of not repeating the same mistakes of the present. For example there are some video games like Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us that deal with the conflict within these surviving societies, while also trying to prevent a second collapse.
The best example of this is Dr. Stone, a popular anime and manga series (published in Weekly Shōnen Jump) that’s all about the process of reconstructing modern civilization from scratch by using science, technology, teamwork, perseverance and hard work. It’s a very hopeful show so far, and the series also has this very shonen manga quality of having an absolute trust in the ability of people to work, grow and fight together in order to create a better world for everyone.
A less obvious example is Attack on Titan, another popular anime and manga (published in Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine) that’s all about fighting against an eternal conflict caused by the power of gigantic man-eating titans that have forced the remnants of an ancient civilization to hide inside giant walls in order to prevent its complete extinction. The series is way more grim and violent than Dr. Stone, but it’s also about humans fighting together to create a better world in which everyone is free to pursue their own goals.
These anime shows draw from a very long tradition of Japanese pop culture that’s heavily inspired by tokusatsu film and television that have its origins in films like Godzilla and Rodan. Tokusatsu entertainment is all about heavy use of special effects in order to create, impressive and often harrowing, spectacle. Attack on Titan in particular has influence from the entire tradition, featuring giant monsters typical of a kaiju films, but also having superhero and mecha elements in the tradition of Ultraman and Super Sentai.
What all this films and shows have in common is that they are primarily about power and powerlessness, Godzilla itself being a very obvious metaphor for the use of nuclear weapons and firebombing of Japan that caused the deaths of countless civilians and displaced millions of people. In the other hand it’s also obvious that the brutal power of the American war machine was unleashed in reaction to Japan’s own imperialist ambitions, and that the actions of its leaders led to the destruction of its own nation.
It’s this awareness of power that I think separates generic post-apocalypse fiction from shows like Dr. Stone and Attack on Titan, an awareness that’s also common across many shonen anime shows. Anyone who grew up watching shows like Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya knows these series aren’t about violence for violence’s sake, but about a group of people joining forces and fighting together to save the world from major catastrophes through the use of teamwork, skill, determination and the sheer strength of human willpower.
This sense of hope is what makes this shows so memorable, and it’s what’s often missing from many post-apocalyptic films (mostly made in the USA) that are all about endless nihilism and hopelessness, in which the destruction of civilization is often nearly absolute and if there are any survivors they are likely to have very little hopes of long-term survival. I think this might say something about the dominant ideology in America in which people often feel unable to use power to change the system they live in, and also that people with said power can do little more than administer the end of the world.
But in the past few years there have been more examples of this type of hopeful apocalyptic fiction in film, with one of the most notorious examples being Mad Max: Fury Road, an amazing piece of cinema in nearly all its elements, and the film also provides a message of hope and power amid an incredibly harsh world that seems almost completely dead.
The most recent and prominent example of a film that deals with these themes is Avengers: Endgame, a film that deals with the aftermath of a cataclysm caused by Thanos, who is the embodiment of the worst excess of imperialism and capitalism, in which the remaining heroes work to rebuild and create a new world amid the ashes of the old one, and yet that isn’t enough for them, it’s not enough to fight for the present but it’s also necessary to fight for the past, to fight to understand the mistakes that we made in the past and appreciate the things that are gone forever.
Humanity cannot sit back and watch the apocalypse unfold, we cannot just look at the collapse of previous civilizations and assume that the end of all human life is inevitable, we need to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors, we need to see how those previous civilizations could have prevailed and survived, to reject the curse of endless war and build a better world, or at least teach the future generations how to create a better one.
Because we have really fucked up so far.
