Alternative History: Review of "The Yiddish Policeman's Union"

Book Review

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

Winner of the 2008 Hugo Prize for Best Novel

 (My review was originally written in 2009, but was rewritten extensively in 2013.)

 

While perusing the list of books that are up for this year’s Hugo Award (for Science Fiction, a genre I have been reading since I picked up my first Ray Bradbury collection as a child), I came across the title of Michael Chabon’s latest work, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union”. This seemed a little incongruous, given that I recalled the work having been reviewed in several newspapers and programs that don’t normally take the time to review works of what is deemed “paraliterature”, which is to say, genre literature. As a matter of fact it had been reviewed quite favorably on NPR, and from what little information was provided, it seemed a work that didn’t fit the profile of those works that typically are up for consideration for Hugo or Nebula awards. Which is not to say that I don’t have a bone to pick with the way that science fiction has typically been viewed, despite the affirmations of writers such as Stanislaw Lem who had excoriated the genre as one populated by charlatans.

 

It was with these concerns that I undertook to read the novel, and quickly was able to confirm that the work was structured along the lines of one of the time-honored formulas of the genre, that of the alternative history. If the protagonist in H.G. Wells’s influential novel “The Time Machine” posited that time consisted was in reality a Fourth Dimension, one that could be traversed at will, then this opened up new landscapes that, by compressing the passage of time, would allow for the presentation of a variety of new scenarios. It also opened up the possibility of time paradoxes, namely, one in which a time travellor could journey into the past and murder his or her father before having been sired, which was resolved by the conception of multiple time lines and multiple universes, a conception that has proven fruitful and has even been incorporated by theoretical physicists in the form of the “Many Worlds” inaugurated by Hugh Everett III. It was exploited in novels such as the “Time Ships” by Stephen Baxter, the alternative histories of Harry Turtledove and the recent novel by Stephen King, 11/22/63 (which was published in 2011). It was also mined by acknowledged masters of the science fiction field such as Phillip K. Dick in his seminal “The Man in the High Castle”, a novel which posited the defeat of the Allied Powers in World War II and the consequent dismemberment of the United States. Curiously enough, that novel also won the Hugo Award, in 1963.

 

 

Michael Chabon’s novel posits as well an alternative ending to World War II, one in which the Holocaust didn’t succeed in killed off such a large proportion of Europe’s Jewish population. It is based on an actual project that was proposed during the 1930s but was never carried out, in which a temporary homeland for many of these Jews would be carved out in Alaska. It is an intriguing concept, although it only serves to underscore the fundamental obstacles that this population encountered both in Europe as well as in the Americas, one in which the European shtetls would be reproduced on this continent. But the premise, however dispiriting (and many of these alternate histories envision scenarios that are much worse than the ones that prevail), it is one that is also based on whimsy, and reflects a certain nostalgia for the life of these settlements, and a wish that at least part of these communities had been saved.

 

The verbal creativity in this novel, relayed in an English that captures the awkward structure but also the creativity of Yiddish, is at once familiar to the American reader. It is the language we associate with Eastern European immigrants to the United States, a language that is inflected with humorous inversions and a self-deprecating wit that that quickly moved out of the Borscht Belt and into the mainstream. It is the language that entreats offenders to “Go crap in the Ocean!”, a language with a directness but also a stimulating visual imagery that lends it, as always, a certain poetic quality. It thus evokes the culture we associate with this community, with dialogue that is snappy and crisp, and with situations that could well recall the lower east side of Manhattan during the 1920s, if it had been transported to the almost barren wilderness of Alaska. Which is not to say that things would have gone smoothly. The novel honestly posits the possibility of conflict with native Indian communities that would have felt displaces, but at the same time, of intermediate characters, those bewildering new hybrids that combined elements of both cultures, like the Jewish Gauchos of Argentina, to cite a real-world example.

 

Here we have memorable characters such as the physically immense and somewhat lugubrious figure of Rebbe Shpilman, the leader of a Jewish conservative clan know as the Verbovers who have shaped the district with their own mix of apocalyptic devotion (they are ever-awaiting signs of the impending arrival of the Messiah) and petty crime, and others such as the half-Indian, half-Jewish policeman known as Berko Shemets (who we could almost imagine as a stolid and taciturn figure born out of the depths of Eastern European literature, the bureaucratic schlub who carries out his duty with a certain placidness if it weren’t for the fact that this façade is broken by his periodic emotional outbursts, ones which give expression to his deep-seated empathy, his anger and his sense of isolation. It is almost as if we have a character type from the early Yiddish theater of the past century, and it represents another point of continuity, in addition to the linguistic expressions, that help to provide elements of familiarity.

 

And we have other characters, figures such as Bina Gelbfish, the no-nonsense, well-grounded Police Chief and former wife of the protagonist, detective Meyer Landsman. There is little acrimony here in this relationship, but much that lends itself to an almost sitcom scenario, and it is the reference to these genres (ones that hark back to a formulaic structure that was pioneered by figures such as the classical writer Menander, he of the “New Comedy”) that provides much of the humor for the novel that is whimsical but also deeply affecting precisely because we know that it is based on a premise that was never enacted, one of saving a considerable portion of Europe’s Jewry that perished in the Holocaust. Bina, indeed, exudes all the sexual heat and gravitational pull of a minor star, a substantial woman with presence but also mass, one that brings to mind the stocky women who are fetishized by free-spirit cartoonist Robert Crumb. In fact, almost all the characters seem to incorporate a sense of scale and primal essence which can’t help but evoke situations and tastes that are out-of-proportion, that are exaggerated and memorable precisely because that are suitable for popular dramas, and this novel at times seems like this, a story told by a doting grandmother of ethnic background, about life in the old country, or in this case, in an alternate world that might have been.

 

Since this book is also a murder mystery, the dialogue of this Yiddish shammes (detective Landesman) is appropriately dry, evincing the world-weariness of detective figures who are forced to confront their own cynicism and need for redemption (which is in part occupational, and in part existential) as they seek to craft the “stories” that will help them to solve crimes. Yes, violence is a part of human existence, as is murder and mutilation and thievery, but there is a grander pageant in evidence as well. With the backdrop of 3,000 years of Jewish suffering, what better way to underscore this paradigmatic human condition than to enact in the many ways in which these characters love (and hate), lie and cheat but also nurture and protect one another, domestic conflict that allows one to forget for a minute the grander historical predicaments, the historico-political dilemmas that are in evidence even here, in this backwater of Alaska?

 

Other readers have found the language of Chabon’s other book ("The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay") perhaps a little uneven, but in the case of this novel, the metaphors and visual imagery was, as referenced above, very true to how we tend to perceive the cultural mileaux of Yiddish immigrant culture. We’ve been enriched so much by these linguistic contributions, and by the incorporation of Yiddish idioms into everyday language, where expressions abound such as the verbs “schlepping” and “kvetching”, exclamations (“Oy, vey”) and in the very rich and funny language of vituperation (“schlemiel”, “tucchus” and “schmuck”), and expressions (“Go crap in the ocean!” exclaim several of the characters), an evocation that takes on a hint of nostalgia.

 

The murder mystery (which is explained in part through the medium of chess, and is filtered as well in the cultural references to Jewish mysticism and the belief that the murdered son of Rebbe Schpilman might have been the messiah) is fascinating, but what proves to be more engaging is the simple human story of compassion and the need for redemption that is felt by this Yiddish detective, one who has also experienced his own loss and leaves him yearning for a son who, if he had come to term and been born rather than been lost to miscarriage, would have been named Django.

 

Thus, in the end, I found this book more satisfying from an emotional rather than intellectual standpoint, and as with all good and memorable literature, enjoyed the use of formulas that, as is the case with so much paraliterature, capture the potential to tell old stories in new ways that prove emotionally satisfying not because they are new, but because they embellish on old and familiar stories, those evident, for example, in the epics of old. What could have been, if things had turned out differently? It is all details. The grander pageant would, perhaps, have remained the same: people trying to love one another, trying to carve out safe existences, trying to find happiness, but also carrying around their own torment, and like detective Landesmann, having to see the woman they couldn’t love, and being unable to forget the child of their heart that might have been. It would have been more of the same.

 

Oy, vey!

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Review of "Fahrenheit 451"

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.

(Farhenheit 451, p. 83)

 

The issues of authoritarianism, cultural censorship and the discontents of consumer society remain as relevant now as they did during the last century. They hold a prominent place in the dystopias that have been written by many science fiction authors throughout this period, ranging from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine to the nightmarish visions of authors such as George Orwell and Margaret Atwood. It is our modern-day equivalent of the tragic vision, transmuted as it is to the spectacle of the rise and fall of democratic societies, those that are sabotaged by internal pressures and by the weight of a political and economic structure that is corrupted by the imperatives of security, comfort and scientific rationality. One may well say that it has ancient roots, grounded as they are in Thucydides’ account of the rise and fall of Athens during the classical period, but one that is nuanced by the ultimately more pervasive and powerful tools available to the modern state. Our shining technological deliverance of course can’t help but seem to be a brief ephemera, one that devolves along familiar lines (plagues, totalitarianism, degeneration and war).

This vision is evident in Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451. Published during the 1940s, it is a science fiction work that reads like a thriller, delivered at a breakneck speed. It details the story of Guy Montag, a Fireman of the future whose job it is to form part of a crew in charge of burning any and all books that are discovered. He does this with immense glee and enjoyment, something that strikes us quickly as puzzling as we compare our society to his.

One of the intellectual pleasures involved in reading these dystopias resides in this parallels that the reader is able to establish with their own society. If these are invariably seen as cautionary tales, admonitions against possible outcomes that are grounded in modern-day trends, then part of the thrill of these novels resides in identifying the line of development. Such is the case with the vision of social evolution that is dictated by predatory economic pressures, leading to the advent of two human species, the Ewoks and the Morlocks, in H.G. Wells’ famous novel, for example. Or, we can see it in the nightmarish vision of totalitarian societies that come to hold sway in the aftermath of World War II, in Orwell’s 1984.

In this case, we have in Bradbury’s novel a society that seems familiar in many ways. It is a consumer society, with citizens who rely on credit to assure a decent standard of living. The Fireman burns not only books but also houses, but also returns to a comfortable house, with a wife who is firmly esconsced within the three walls of what appear to be interactive television panels. They eat familiar foods, ,they drink, they argue, they form families (although in this case Montag appears to be childless) and, bewilderingly, they are self-destructive in a singular way, one that suggests strong suicidal impulses.

What struck me as I read this novel was the way in which it was structured as an awakening on the part of the protagonist. The seed of this awakening is a painful one, because it leads to a questioning of the certitudes of self and society that had seemed to hold sway before. He is influences, of course, by his contact with Clarice McClellan, a teenager who lives nearby and would seem to have been an object of desire. Perhaps the sexual attraction is muted because she is underage, but one can’t help that, as with the psychoanalytic interpretation of Don Quixote and his interaction with his own niece, Montag may possible have “sex on the brain”. This is evident all the more so when we reflect on the sterile relationship he has with his own wife, Mildred, who has tried several times to commit suicide.

Why are books so dangerous in this society? What possible threat may they represent for  the members of this society? It is popularly assumed that this novel represents a vision of the dangers of censorship, but this would be too simplistic. Censorship is an issue in this novel, but in this book it seems to come from what we could term an elitist conception. In the conversations between Montag and his nemesis, the fire captain Beatty, we have references to what we may term the canon of Western literature, to the bible and, specifically, to the Book of Ecclesiastes, to ancient Greek (Plato’s Republic) and Roman works, to Alexander Pope and his “Essay on Man”, to Shakespeare and to other classics. These are somehow the repository of a type of experience that is multifaceted and has, what Bradbury’s spokesperson, the character of Mr. Faber, a “quality of information”, a texture or porosity that is dynamic, elastic, multi-layered and full of vitality.

This passionate defense of books seems to be one that echoes the arguments that were made by conservative scholars of the 1980s, especially figures such as Leopold Bloom who famously railed against the supposed “closing of the American mind”. While undoubtedly all constituting seminal works, it makes this argument seem to be one not of censorship, but instead a lamentation against the onslaught of popular culture. This culture is present, of course, in the form of the programming that may best be described as an amalgamation of reality television and the internet, a genre and a medium that hold sway over much of the modern imagination. Is it, indeed, an argument against the success of commercial formulas and mediums? Did it really take censorship to guarantee this success?

I would argue that on the face of it, the justification for book burning seems to be rather mysterious. As described by the character of Faber, a reclusive old man who is part of a dying generation of readers, it was the culmination of a gradual process, one that is never explicitly detailed. One can only imagine a period of increasing political turmoil, of extreme partisanship and social displacement, but of course I realize that this was the intent behind the author’s assigning any specificity to these circumstances. The reader, of course, will fill in the gaps with his or her interpretation of the steps it would take to achieve this outcome, and I can’t help but insert my own social analysis by pointing to factors and phenomena that, in 2013, strike me with concern. Perhaps that is part of the reason why the book doesn’t feel dated, at least in terms of the fundamental thesis that a democratic society can devolve into a totalitarian structure in which agencies monitor individuals for supposed nonconformist and idiosyncratic behavior (such as the girl Clarice McClellan whose family is fits this mold too well, or the man at the end of the novel who is prone to taking walks, and proves a convenient scapegoat for the imperatives of an entertainment medium that is obsessed with chase sequences and the need to portray the capture and punishment of all offenders). That this is a totalitarian society is abundantly evident in the reliance on informants to press what seem to be omnipresent “alarms” that trigger the involvement of law enforcement agencies, and in the use of robots whose symbolic association with persecution is all too evident (the infallible mechanical “hound” that relies on biometric data to chase its prey).

What does seem dated, though, is the formulaic chase sequences in a novel that reads like a thriller by Dan Brown or Michael Crichton. Guy Montag will make the transition from agent of order to a hunted and in many ways isolated protagonist, one whose anguish will be propelled by a series of calamities that serve, at the same time, to confuse and disorient him. The thrills begin with the shock over the death of the teenager Clarice, and they ascend until they culminate in the sequence in which he is called to burn down his own house, having been turned in by his wife Mildred and one of her friends. It is a classic formula in which the changed man falls through the cracks, so to speak, in a matter of days (or hours), and can never crawl back up to reclaim his position.  The downward motion is also one which can also be taken as an expulsion, and this is precisely what happens to Montag, who will be chased out of the city and who will join up with a band of fellow outcasts, the humans who live on the open land, living repositories of the books that they memorize.

In the end, I can’t help but wonder about the plausibility of this scenario. We also live in a society in which political figures and movements resort to stoking fears about national security, living as we do in a permanent state of war against “Terrorists”, one that forms an ongoing narrative in this post-911 climate. It has been going on for far too long, and it is accompanied by the continual reliance on a bloated national security structure that is becoming ever-more intrusive, signaled by the calls for more effective FBI surveillance and the supposed need to monitor against the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, this last having led to the current scandal that is overwhelming the Obama administration, that relating to the subpoena of phone records for API reporters. And, while we aren’t quite there when it comes to the spectacle of jets screeching by overhead regularly, we do live on what seems to be a permanent war-time footing. At least the rhetoric is more muted than it was during the presidency of George W. Bush, who inveighed against the “Axis of Terror”.

It doesn’t take Firemen to censor ideas and to keep control over a subservient population. I would affirm, instead, that this is more likely to result from the growth of an ever more extensive consumer culture that leads to an atomizing of personal identity. If pores are to be symbolic of texture and density of information, they may also be taken as symbol of how contained we are, in the sense that pores don’t coalesce, don’t aggregate, and are instead separated from each other. The great majority of the common people don’t read the classics, don’t  read Ortega y Gasset, don’t read Voltaire, don’t read Bertrand Russell, but the view that essential features of our culture reside only in this literature is an elitist conception.

Our cultural debates seem very active even in the mediums that encapsulate modern-day identity. Perhaps the real danger is the institutionalization of certain expressions of our culture in ways that are dangerous, as in, when they assume official form by becoming allied with the state apparatus of justice administration or adopted by economic entities that operate in accordance with authoritarian strictures, such as corporate culture.

In the dytopias of the future, we may very well have books, but control will operate by the more insidious mechanism of “buying” hegemony, that is, buying our willing assent. That is one of the many tradeoffs that beckon us, and we most certainly see the seeds for this in our modern day culture.


Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Review of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"

 

It has been remarked that we live in a period of religious revival, evident in many parts of the world. This may not necessarily be the case in Europe, where religious observance has declined notably and where church attendance is at an all-time low, but the rest of the world paints a different picture. It may well be that religious movements cloak other grievances, and that they may well point to political or ethnic or economic conflicts that have been resolved, but it is certainly true that religion has served as a rallying point. It serves as the backbone of a program of protest against global economic development throughout many parts of the world, and it serves as one of the markers for ethnic conflicts taking place in countries such as Nigeria. It has also been conflated with a whole program of agitation and resistance to what is perceived as cultural and economic domination, and has been demonized as part of a dangerous wave of fundamentalism.

We in the United States have seen how dichotomies have been created that use religion as a marker. We are especially attuned to this in the wake of the tragic events of September 11^th, 2001. This event shocked us into the realization that we were also vulnerable, and not as inviolable as we had thought. (Were we perhaps guilty of arrogance?) It brought about a reaction that played into the hand of a group of policy experts who were categorized as neo-Cons, who it was taken, were at the vanguard of a program that sought to shatter the status quo in the Middle East and other regions in the hope that they could remake those countries in our own image. Or, as cynics would decry, as least make them more pliable to US interests. Needless to say, this didn’t work out.

We still live with the specter of terrorism, of violent action directed against innocent civilians in the name of fundamentalist movements that derive their rationale behind an appeal to history and to institutions that are based on a fundamentalist reading of religion. A common term by which to refer to these groups would be “Islamist”, and this proves to be unfortunate because it imposes a reading that fails to take into account how fractured this movement is, and how culturally heterogeneous these regions are. This is a fact that has to be stated over and over, but is seems to escape popular understanding especially in the wake of events such as the Boston Marathon bombing that was, apparently, perpetrated by two brothers of ethnic Chechen origin who had been seduced by these violent extremist ideologies. It need be asserted, over and over, that the appeal to religion masks underlying root causes. It is too simplistic to speak of “Islamism” as threat, because it is an abstraction, emblematic as it is of an impulse to demonize an immense group that can't be treated as a monolithic whole, nor dismissed as an "Other" that must be contained. (It makes me return, once again, to Edward Said's famous critical study, Orientalism, that was published several decades ago.)

It was in this context that I recently saw the film by Mira Nair, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”. It was released in 2012, and unfortunately I had not read the novel by Mohsin Hamid upon which it was based. It is a story that is compelling, one of a journey of return and re-affirmation, but also, of compassion and the wish to preserve a sense of dignity and humility. It is a compassionate story, in which we see what may be termed the taming of mercenary impulses in an effort to highlight the power of ideals. It was not, perhaps, the story I was fearing I might see, one that seems to be part of a formula popularized by Hollywood in which the brush strokes are, inevitably, very broad. It was a subtle story that was characterized by unexpected symmetry. It was all the more liberating because of this.

We see the story of Changez, a Pakistani immigrant who is the son of a famous Punjab poet who is falling behind the times in the New Global Economy. He arrives in the United States to study in an Ivy League school and, to all intents and purposes, he becomes “one of us”. He is seduced by America, seduced by the dream of unlimited opportunity and the appeal of a meritocracy that dispenses (supposedly) with all forms of inherited privilege. How could he not be? He is passionately aware that his family, espousing as they do a very modern liberal outlook, is coming under siege by aggressive ideologies, whether they be the coming of the information economy or the expression of public anger on the part of those that feel left out. He decides to follow the line of the new global entrepreneurs, the economic pioneers who are akin to modern-day mercenaries, the analogues to Mitt Romney and his firm, Baines Capital.

He manages to secure a position with a capital firm that is invested in “the fundamentals” of economic liberalism, and by liberalism I am referring to the classic conception of economic organization that eschews regulation and is instead more akin to “laissez-faire”. What happens, of course, is that they are in charge of taking over struggling companies and streamlining them to make them more efficient and profitable. It is all in the name of efficiency and the maximization of value, and Changez is very good at it. He would seem to have a natural born talent.

This lays the groundwork for an epic of struggle that one imagines would have ended with his being a spectacularly rich global financier. It takes a turn, however, with the advent of the terrorist attacks of 911, which spark a change in him so that he comes to question his pursuits.

 

Which is not to say that he wasn’t feeling any doubts before this point. It takes a great effort to slow and stop when one has been traveling at breakneck speed, and he was achieving spectacular success in his work for this firm. But, it was also the case that he was to slowly appreciate what it felt like to be the outsider, to be the object of suspicion, to be considered redundant and, in a certain way, subject to suspicion. This was what happened to him after the attacks, but the road was prepared for him before, in his interaction with the representatives of the many workers who were abstractions to him before, but he slowly came to see as persons.

Just like redundant workers faced job loss and bankruptcy in the wake of the reorganization schemes he imposed on these companies, producing as he did value for shareholders but also much suffering and despair, the events of 911 prompted a change in the culture that mirrored the impetus of the program that was carried out by his firm. He himself became an abstraction, a “foreigner”, who was subject to suspicion and who was treated with little regard. He was subject to humiliating searches when traveling through airports, and he was taken into custody and subjected to humiliating detention and threats because he, somehow, didn’t fit into the profile of what was considered safe in post-911 America. It is this reversal of fortune, this stepping through the class to see how the other side lived (by which I am referring to those who were powerless, the workers, those that were evaluated according to a merciless calculus). He was an economic buccaneer, but he was also perceived as a Muslim, and the behavior he saw, the urge to portray him as part of some essential whole, served to alienate him.

 

This turnaround reached its apex in Turkey, when he was forced to confront the nature of what he was asked to do, when presented to him through the symbol of the Janissary. These were, of course, the military corps formed by the Ottoman Empire that made use of Christian boys who were kidnapped from their families in the Balkans, and who were converted to Islam, to be used as foot soldiers against those communities from which they had originally arisen.

 

(Modern-day Janissaries)

 

It is an apt comparison, because he has himself become an instrument of destruction, defending an ideology that forced him to forget his own roots. It is also a term that is shared by all communities who have their own parallels, who see this collaboration with an ideological scheme that is destructive of whole communities as a form of collaboration. It is invested in a whole symbolic framework in Mexican history, for example, and in popular culture it assumes the guise of a discourse of “Malinchismo”, this being a reference to the Indian woman Malianali (Malinche), the woman who accompanied the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and who proved invaluable to his pursuit of conquest by serving as a translator and allowing him to lie to the Aztec leaders and deceive them.

In the movie, then, we see a reversal, one that is predicated on the discovery of a hidden symmetry. And this ushers in a new phase, as he returns to Pakistan and becomes a teacher who is known, rightly or wrongly (the audience is held in doubt), as a fiery advocate of fundamentalism. Has he become the ultimate turncoat? Is ne now collaborating with those who have kidnapped an American professor from a local Pakistani university, and is he inciting his students to join fundamentalist movements?

But all of this is predicated on the understanding of the term, “fundamentalism”, and in this way, the film draws a striking parallel. The mercenary capitalism of his investment firm isn’t that different from the fiery return to first principles that is espoused by the leaders of fundamentalism Islamic groups. They both are predicated on abstractions, on an inability to perceive the meaning and value of individual human lives. This comes as a revelation, and it is demonstrated in powerful speeches as well as in lyrics to songs and in images that have both a powerful symbolic logic as well as emotional appeal. The mercenary impulse is revealed at its core, one that bodes protracted conflict because, at its very root, these ideological schemes mirror each other.

There is an accidental shooting that occurs at the end of the film, one that was foreshadowed from the very beginning and that furthermore underscores the employment of a scheme of parallelism. The kidnapped American professor, who was not so innocent after all, is killed, but so is the friend of Changez, he who did seem to be more of an innocent bystander. Losses are symmetric, and it is the cycle of expanding and asymmetric violence that threatens to spiral out of control that seems to be the result of this new rise of fundamentalist values.

The last speech that is given by the Changez as he buries is friend is also a powerful speech, and it leaves us perhaps with an inkling of hope. As a movie, it is an exhausting journey, suspenseful and lyrical but also, one that we have seen before. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, a city that is currently enmeshed in a violent civil war in Syria that shows no sign of being settled and grows more brutal by the day, we also experience a moment of paralysis that leads us to question our fundamentalist impulses. We have our own encounter in the desert, and this movie serves to affirm our most basic humanistic impulses. 

 

 

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Review of "Los niños invisibles" (Colombia)

“Los niños invisibles” is a charming Colombian film from 2001 about adolescent love and a more innocent time. It details the adventures of Rafael, a portly nine year old, who harbors a crush on his neighbor, the seemingly unobtainable Martha Cecilia. While his quest to gain the attention of this girl seems to obsess him, in reality, what is most charming about this film is not a story about first love, but the evocation of an idyllic upbringing in a small Colombian town, even if not lacking in social unrest. It is not as peaceful a period as it may seem, but nonetheless, there are certain timelessness that evokes not only the adventure of comradeship, but also, the quest to prove oneself.

It seems as if the inhabitants of this village out in the provinces are consumed by beauty pageants. They have a local representative who apparently has been chosen to compete in the national contest, and this mirrors the quest that the little boy has to gain a certain amount of recognition. The beauty pageant is, of course, an exercise in national unity, a reflection of the need to create rituals to unify the people. It is a coming-out party for this small town on the edge of a river.

The fantasy life of these adolescent boys is typical for all youngsters at that age. Desire propels them to believe in ghosts, in spirits, in the more dogmatic elements of a Christian theology that is both charming as well as repressive, in witches and in the hucksterism of a small-town itinerant trinket seller who has a ready supply of potions and elixers to combat all manner of diseases, amulets and pamphlets that promise, wonder of wonder, to provide a means to achieve invisibility! This is, of course, part of an oral tradition in which succumbing to the spell of the snake-oil salesman as he sang the praise and virtue of his wares was part of the enchantment, a willing part that bespoke a world filled with marvels, with the promise of novelty, with a recognition and temporary refutation of the anxieties that beset us all.

Rafael is seduced by the possibility of achieving invisibility, and he sets out to buy this pamphlet, one that he needs to acquire through trickery because it is ostensibly “not for children”. It contains spells, after all, one requiring the acquisition of a cat’s heart, and a hen’s liver, and the throwing of a scapulary with the image of the Virgin Mother, all done at midnight in a cemetery. It, of course, enchants the boys, who challenge each other to carry out their part of the bargain. But it is no modern-day parable of Glaucon, to recall that found in Plato's book about the man who finds a magic ring that confers invisibility to him, only to find himself becoming a murderous despot (a theme reprised in H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man).

The children do seem to be a little too stilted in their delivery. They take too much time, more than seems natural, to respond to each other in a prose that seems plodding. Martha Celeste, the girl in question, seems to be particularly wooden in her delivery, but the same could be said of the actors who portray the parents. There seems to be a lack of natural rhythm, as if the prose of a short story had been too faithfully reproduced, and not the vivacity of ordinary dialogue.

This movie does charm the viewer, however, I found it in the way in which the town gathers at night to greet the arrival of the first television station that, appropriately enough, is broadcasting the national beauty contest. It also is evident in scenes such as the storefront where a group of old men gather, caught as they are in immobility, not moving a muscle as the little boy circulates among them, a Mercury too fast to be detected, or in the effeminate shopkeeper who can’t help but tease the boy who inquires as to whether or not it might be possible to buy an “unblessed” scapulary. The town has its charms, even those evident in the revolutionaries who are just getting word of the message of labor agitation, the barber who incites the theater projectionist to strike because he is being exploited. If the movie is, indeed, meant to be a portrayal of life in Colombia in the 50s, we can’t help but be reminded of the fact that there was a civil war raging at the time, one known popularly as “La violencia”.

Enough to say that the children succeed, after a fashion, in achieving invisibility. Who can deny them their dream? As with any quest, however, perhaps it delivers to them treasures that they hadn’t suspected were there, ripe for the taking. The child lacks self-confidence, and while able to inquire about “radiographies” and about what makes him separate from little girls such as Martha Celeste (something he no doubt knew about in the narrowest sense because of his voyeuristic episodes watching the bathing woman), he finds that, rather than achieve invisibility, what he craved rather was to become precisely the opposite, to be awarded with the attention of someone whose affection and love he might win.

On a final note, the pace of the film seems a little plodding. It is slow, and at times it delves into a form of slapstick humor that doesn’t seem to accord with the idyllic nature of small-town life where, in a jarring element, we are greeted with the murder of the small-town revolutionary. (This seems much in line with the typical mode of a García-Márquez novel, in which strange outsiders arrive to disrupt and inject an element of violence that signals an intent to control.) “Bajo al Centralismo”, Down with Centralism!, yell the town dwellers at the end of the pageant whose broadcast they are all watching, as they greet the return to a familiar form of control, where the beauty queen from the capital wins.

The boys are of an age in which they yearn for their own form of autonomy. It is a reflective film in which the adult muses on what has been lost, because at the end, we are left with the impression of something that has disappeared.

¡Juventud, divino tesoro,
ya te vas para no volver!
Cuando quiero llorar no lloro,
y a veces lloro sin querer

(Canción de otoño en primavera, Rubén Darío)




Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Review of "The Quiet Earth"

The Quiet Earth is a thoughtful and slow-moving movie about a future apocalypse. It was released in 1985, during a period of heightened cold-war tension, and on one level (a very superficial one) it can be interpreted as a cautionary tale. In such an interpretation this critique would be directed above all against the United States, and the insatiable and paranoid demons that besiege a superpower in an age where its empire is being threatened. In a similar line pioneered almost two hundred years ago by Mary Shelley and her novel Frankenstein, it also represents a long-standing critique of scientific hubris and of humans who, as one character expresses it, would play “God”.

The premise of this movie is that human civilization has come to an end. It wasn’t the slow and drawn-out process we fear, those gradual and terrifying scenarious that involve plagues or environmental destruction. It was a sudden and abrupt end that was thoroughly unanticipated and yet logical. It is like falling over a cliff while sleepwalking. (Sleep represents a powerful motif, a living death that seems to consume the characters.)

Apocalyptic endings seem to be an long-standing and enduring motif in our culture. From a narrative standpoint they are compelling, for they signify that final element in a story in which significance and meaning are assigned to the prior sequence of events. A conclusion is the necessary precondition for the engagement of a new story, for a new beginning, and as such, these apocalypses are always transition points. What will come after?

Currently, one of the most popular television series is one that represents an adaption of Robert Kirkman’s comic The Walking Dead. As with the stories of alien invasion that were so popular in the 1950s and were parables of Cold War angst, or the genre of future and culminating war novels popular in the late 19^th century (there must surely have been many other instances), these would seem to reflect period of heightened angst.

Perhaps these cultural narratives of decline and decrepitude or extinction reflect the anxieties that accompany periods of change. Whether it be the onslaught of the Industrial Revolution or the fear of decolonization or the supposed perils of demographic bubbles that are being shattered, or the rise of alternative and competing systems or just the bewildering nature of economic bubbles that are shattered as with the Wall Street meltdown of a few years ago, the groundwork for these narratives has already been laid and they are, indeed, memes that find fertile terrain.

How else can we explain the appeal of zombie movies or the element of darkness and pessimism that seems to characterize so many contemporary series? It is an apocalyptic sensibility that has been stoked, and we are fascinated by the assorted retinue of compelling figures, such as those of the anonymous zombies (we are they, after all) that have relentless appetites and aggressive impulses that, rather than seem bewildering, seem all too recognizable.

 

It is my contention that we are not as frightened by the unknown as we proclaim to be. The unknown produces paralysis, perhaps, or wonder, or maybe, boredom that leads to its dismissal. We are frightened, instead, by what we know and what we find familiar, and in zombies and in the vision of a self-destructing social system, we find a logic that seems compelling.  It is our pretensions that are being shattered, the illusions we so carefully cultivate.

However unpleasant we may find cadavers, and however much they may remind us of our susceptibility to disease as well as all the many material and social ailments that befall us, it is nonetheless the case that they represent a circumstance against which we have developed powerful defenses. Whether it be euphemisms or the ethical narratives that help us to accept them, we can and always have adjusted to them. But what proves to be much more compelling, however, in the case for example of zombies, is the spectacle of a self-feeding mechanism that resists ethical judgement. There is no meaning in zombies other than to posit that we are always in the process of devouring ourselves, in all the metaphorical ways in which we elaborate our social behaviors. It is the urge for power as an appetite that can never be fulfilled.

Returning to the movie under consideration, it was released at a moment in which bluster and increased confrontation seemed to characterize the conflict between the two superpowers. The Soviet Union was undergoing a series of succession crisis, while the United States seems to be pursuing a policy of increased confrontation with a president who seemed unable to strike a conciliatory note. It was a period of provocative actions, and it contributed to much worldwide anxiety. This was reflected in our popular culture.

In this classic movie almost all of humanity has suddenly disappeared. The teeming life of our cities, the struggles and dreams of all those vulnerable masses, the conflict between different world systems and different corporate groups, between different institutional subjects, has all been superseded by the fact that everyone is gone. We have what seems to be only one individual left, a middle-aged scientist by the name of Zac who slowly discovers his new circumstances.

Why he should be the only person left, we don’t know. He seems to be surprised and even a little disappointed to wake up (we find out later that he had taken an overdose of medicine, planning as he was to commit suicide), but old habits die hard. (Life is a habit, is it not?) He leaves his house and is slowly made to confront the fact that only objects have been left behind, and the world has been depopulated in a sudden flash. This is most aptly illustrated by the fact that he encounters kitchen appliances that are still running, showers flooding buildings and houses that are going up in fire, as well as cars that have been abandoned and the remains of crashed airliners smoking on the ground. It is a mystery that, for all its terrifying implications, doesn’t seem surprising to him.

What caused this catastrophe? It all seems to be the result of a top-secret project named “Flashlight”, only the latest of a continual series of examples of technological hubris that produced other calamities such as the mustard gas or the atomic bomb.  The protagonist knows this and seems to accept it, seeing it as a logical culmination at the same time as he seems almost mesmerized by what he finds. We are mesmerized as well, these scenes of an uninhabited city, of untended property, of the detritus of modern consumer society but without the most necessary element that gives it meaning, namely, consumers. What was consumerism all about, then?

When society has disappeared, all those physical as well as ideological restraints that were the source of so much conflict and confusion seem to evoke nostalgia. As much as behavioral scientists have pioneered the development of an analytical framework that traces human institutions and behaviors to evolutionary impulses (a form of economics that has accumulated biological trappings and that serves as a continuation of the materialist trend of analysis), much of social behavior and our own neurotic impulses seem to be rooted in irrational and at times whimsical impulses. Much of it is absurd, and that is part of the appeal of movies and novels and themes and motifs and our fascination with the uncanny and the macabre, for they work to peel back layers of artifice and point to a more primal level of existence. We aren’t as complex and civilized as we proclaim ourselves to be.

Zac discovers that all animal life seems to have disappeared. There are no animals left, no birds, no dogs, no life other than vegetable life. The destruction has been total and complete, and there is a grand and majestic spectacle in these scenes where he wanders from one building to the next, walking or driving along lonely avenues, unimpeded, broadcasting his existence to an indifferent world. The entire world has become Robinson Crusoe’s island. Perhaps survival is an economic proposition, and this will serve to give this narrative its veneer of comprehensibility.

He is not alone, however, and he will encounter two other individuals who have similarly survived under unique circumstances, a young and acerbic woman and a Maori man. It turns out that they had all died at the precise moment in which the experiment was run. Are they, then, leftover spirits?

 

There is little hope for reversing this experiment and bringing back what has been lost. We have, now, only fragile relationships that seem all the more precious because destruction has been so complete. Which is not to say that there is no conflict, no jealousy, and that the hidden demons of the prior age are not still active. They are, legacies that have not been purged, or as the Maori Agi proclaims, people still “lie”.

The pace of the film is languid, for the most part, and despite the vast and empty spaces of these landscapes, seems psychologically claustrophobic. We yearn for closed spaces, by which we take it to mean, those artifices and customs that regulate human society and help to provide boundaries. It is all the more revealing for the fact that consumption is not enough, but it can help substitute for what is needed. Most people never question this, because it does open up vast and threatening spaces that might similarly swallow them.

In the end, we have a film that offers us parables not about endings, but about beginnings. The protagonist is continually divested of human company, and perhaps this helps to explain the way in which his isolation finds its culmination in an act of sacrifice. The sun has been stabilized, at the price of having fear purged. There is no fear at the end, only wonder, and a new landscape, a vast placenta (the ocean) with eerie clouds that loom like white anvils, and above it all, Saturn rising in the twilight.

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Migration as fairy tale (Review of "Viva Cuba")

Political repression has always been accompanied by migration. The two are inextricably tied together, and understandably there is always an economic dimension as well. Political groups that are banned or outlawed are cut off from institutional support, and thus, are forced to scramble In circumstances that are already quite difficult. I am thinking, of course, of cases such as North Korea, which is once again in the news with threats directed against its neighbors to the south and east, and to Cuba.

Migration from Cuba has been an ongoing response not only to economic uncertainty but also to political repression. Cuba has been undergoing what would seem to be a long-overdue transformation, and there has supposedly been an opening up of the economy. Market reforms are being introduced, and while this has the potential of being destabilizing, it might in the long run insure the survival of the current political regime.

North Korea is another matter. The news stories seem always to highlight the results of repression and mismanagement, and there were stories recently of supposed cases of cannibalism in the face of a renewed, hidden famine. The new leader, Kim Jung Il, seems ready to follow the lines of his father, and to engage in exercises in bellicosity while maintaining a secretive power structure and a closed society. Were those borders to open up, one wonders how many millions might pour out of North Korea. It is a prospect that supposedly alarms China, their one last ally.

Recently I had a chance to see the 2005 film “Viva Cuba”. The dynamics of migration are featured in this film, but in an underhanded way. One of the positive reviews highlights that this work supposedly “depoliticizes” the phenomenon of migration, but it certainly doesn’t lend any more clarity to the issue.

The film details the exploits of two children, Jorgito and Malú, who are about to be separated. It seems that Malú’s mother has married a foreigner in a bid to escape the island, and that she now has the perfect opportunity to enact this plan when her mother dies. One wonders at the dynamics of families that are, as ever, on the verge of separation, with adults who seem unable to get along.

The contrasts between the families are drawn in broad strokes. Jorgito’s family are stalwarts of the revolution, with photos of the revered leader, Fidel, in their house. Malú’s mom, on the contrary, seems to despise the revolution, and considers herself to be part of the hidden and aspiring middle classes. This leads to comical contrasts, but ones which are, as ever, too broad and easy to be really enjoyable. A little more subtlety would have been appreciated.

It seems as if the children have grown attached to each other, and they represent the two halves of Cuban society, waiting for what should be a natural reconciliation. The kids don’t want to be separated, as would happen if Malú’s mother succeeds in her plan to leave the island and take her daughter. And so, they embark on a quest to find the girl’s father, inform him of the situation, and hopefully prevent this separation.

The journey is filled with mishaps, but also, with adventure and magic. I appreciated the views of this Cuban landscape that seems almost too idealized. I say this because it almost seems like a middle-class vision, with little exploration of the restrictions and hardships involved in having to deal with a faltering economy that is being refashioned. Now, this is not to say that the children don’t experience hunger, or that they don’t fall sick, or that they don’t experience fear. They do, in episodes that recapitulate fairy tales, such as Hansel and Gretel (in their encounter with a blind woman in the forest who puts food out on the window sill, then hopes to imprison them) or the Little Red Riding Hood singing episode, but this is very much a children’s point of view. We don’t see the shortages and the grinding poverty that afflicts so many adults, the need to scrape while also trying to preserve a little bit of dignity.

This film seems like a wild caper that is very innocent, and in that way, deflects consideration from the true dynamics and consequences of migration. The children are, supposedly, meant to be together, and their loyalty to each other is touching, but this is ultimately an exercise in escapism that fundamentally tries to present an idealized Cuban landscape. Even the old icons are reaffirmed, as in the sequence at the end where the children encounter a bearded young man in the forest, one who takes them in and helps in their “subversive” plan to evade detection by the authorities so that they can reach Malu’s father who lives in a lighthouse on the other end of the island. The young bearded man furthermore rides a bicycle, and the comparison is inevitable to the film “The Motorcycle Diary” which details the voyage of Che Guevara as a young man through South America before he joined the Cuban revolution.

Perhaps we could all use a little more escapism. This film is certainly a far cry from the films of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea that were released in the 60s, films such as “Memorias del subdesarrollo” that were such seminal works in dealing with the psychological and social impact of revolution. Those films were instant classics, and they linger in my mind and memory as testaments to the Latin American condition, if it could be said that there is such a thing. They capture transformation and desire, but also, despair and anxiety.

Now we have films that present innocent capers by children in the form of modern day fairy tales, dressed up in modern clothing. This one also addresses a crumbling society, but there is no excitement that is implicit in the idea of a grand revolutionary project. It is, instead, perhaps a nostalgic view, and nostalgia also is an exercise in idealism. It creates its subject, because memory is also creation anew. We will never recapture the past as it was, because our vantage points have changed, as have our needs.

The film, this, is a little unfulfilling for me. The ending is meant to be somewhat poetic, and I won’t describe it here, but is also strikes me as enigmatic, because it leaves the two children as abandoned as they ever were. Their viewpoint is, as ever, limited and characterized by excessive sentimentality. And the acting seems at times too over-the-top. But the film does provide a view of how a modern day Cuban director has left behind the legacy of Alea to produce what are hopefully more commercially-accessible films. I’m just not sure that this approach will be any more successful in bridging the divisions that characterize Cuban society.

 

Viva Cuba is a 2005 Cuban film, directed by Juan Carlos Cremata and Iraida Malberti Cabrera, and written by Cremata and Manolito Rodriguez


Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Apocalypse as Release

Review of After the Apocalypse

“Outside she checked her hair. She wasn’t on fire or anything, but she had blister on her arms and they hurt. God, she was stupid. She hadn’t known that was going to happen. She looked back at the house. Had it gone out? Part of her kind of wanted it to have gone out, like the grill did sometimes. But not really. She wanted to see fire. She wanted to see it burn.” (The Effects of Centrifugal Forces, p. 166)

“After the Apocalypse” is a title that sounds in keeping with our times. One can imagine it referring to the most recent and sordid episode of discord, that of the wrangle over reaching an arrangement to avoid the much ballyhooed “Fiscal Cliff” that hung like a noose over our collective heads during Christmas of 2012. For the past several months, ever since President Obama’s reelection, we have heard of little else, and the conservative sectors in particular have hunkered down and engaged in their perpetual mode of bluster and outrage to sabotage any possible agreement.  Doom was spelled out in earnest terms by newscasters and economists who reflected on the possibility of a world-wide slowdown and a renewed recession. What had been started by W. would be completed by the Tea Party, a group that represented only the latest reincarnation of our biblical prophets of doom.

The title in this case, however, refers to a collection of short stories by Maureen McHugh. They detail a variety of possible scenarios that can be constituted as signaling the putative end of the world. They describe various visions of possible apocalypses, with the consequent slow unraveling of the world. Strangely, perhaps because of the frustration and futility that comes with the experience of a poisonous political culture during the last few presidential terms and the lingering effects of a recession that have cast a haze on our collective sensibility and traditional optimism, these scenarios don’t sound in any way extravagant.

We have, for example, visions in which plagues figure prominently. For example, a mutation of the Avian Flu that kills hundreds of millions of people, leading to a culture in which people earnestly hope to collect mementos of their past lives. Things substitute for people and for missed affection as we all become collectors, but I ask myself, are things any different now in our material culture? In other stories we have references to another disease (perhaps the same one describe in other scenarios?), one called Avian Prion Disease (APD), one that eats away at the brain and incapacitates and ultimately kills those who are infected in five years.  And there is another scenario that is described in the first story and that harkens to the contemporary popular craze over zombie apocalypses, one in which zombies have been isolated in forbidden zones and in which they come to constitute a natural order that is, ultimately, more suited to the protagonist, an uninfected prison convict.

These scenarios are explored artfully, and we are treated to stories that are noteworthy for their psychological complexity and for their poetic grace. They are not one-note scenarios, nor melodramatic and hysterical narratives that are heavy on action with little reflection. We see instead the description of difficult social scenarios, in which scientists and those agents who we would presume would be addressing these problems never appear and instead we see ordinary people struggling to cope. There is no Deus ex Machina, no miraculous antibody or world order to set things right.

The scenarios are familiar, and they don’t seem entirely unfamiliar. We have all been struggling during these past years, dealing with a culture of poisonous political paralysis, with a strong note of paranoia and suspicion that, as eluded to before, has given rise to a narrative of American decline. We fear what is happening to our economy, and we fear as well the loss of our place in the world. Was it all an illusion, this culture of greed and inflated real estate prices, this binge that inevitably gave rise to a bust, with soaring foreclosure rates, a stubbornly high unemployment rate, a scaling back of expectations, a never-ending crisis in Europe and the Middle East and the recognition that yes, we are as vulnerable as we ever were to natural forces, those forces that seem to have become more destructive than they have ever been, as seen in the recent episode with Hurricane Sandy and the longstanding drought in the Mid West? Are these signs in a climate of impending doom? It is almost as if we have been recapitulating what we have been seeing, but in accelerated form.

Our societies are, indeed, fragile and the economic and social processes at play can be, as always, predatory. But even in the face of the apocalypse, we are subject to the same universal urges and the same responses. Perhaps an apocalypse is a reset, an opportunity for escape, a certain wish fulfillment that can be interpreted as a corrective, as a purging or cathartic experience. Perhaps that is part of the reason why we find them so compelling, although one must admit that they do seem to usher in a heightened dramatic note.

I am taken by stories such as “Useless Things”, a narrative of loss and futile substitution, told from the point of view of a middle-aged woman who has moved to New Mexico to fabricate dolls that she sells online and that she speculates are meant as substitutes for loved ones lost during the recent plague. There are, indeed, many “useless” things, but these dolls are certainly among that class of items, and the title is in the end ironic.  When so much of material culture is disappearing, when water has become as scarce as work and when people have taken to living in RVs out in the desert, we need to find those things that are still useful, and in this case, perhaps those things that are “useless” or those that serve to remind of the veneer of a past culture that is disappearing.

There is an urgency in this story, for the protagonist is forced to confront the evidence of the continuing existence of domestic squabbles, among those fortunate classes that still cling to a past lifestyle, out in the civilized cities that are in reality reservations. There are migrants trekking through the desert from down south, then as now, and they trace out the pattern of economic systems that continue to survive, even under duress. We are nothing if not flexible, and we cling to useless things, to the dogs that the protagonist keeps as pets even though they are unable to provide protection against strangers, or the tools that recall a past life for the character, or to family bonds such as that evident between the old man and his deranged, violent nephew who seems to lack any capacity for affection for his family. We cling to emotions and attachments and affection, because ultimately they are not luxuries, and this is part of the grace and satisfaction of the stories that explore these human sentiments and urges.

There are also stories that seem more genuinely marvelous in their scenarios, such as the one that narrates the possible arrival of what we can term artificial intelligence. It seems as if in the near future programs are fashioned that are able to create subroutines that are tested and that evolve into organic entities, and one of these is a program called DMS that is fashioned to analyze disease indicators and data that is fed to it by a network of sensory inputs. It is a fascinating story that deals, once again, with a readjustment in social relationships, as we become privy in this instance to the social contract that is in place between two programmers. Having been a programmer myself in a past incarnation, the dynamic sounds familiar and convincing, and I found myself identifying with the position of the protagonist who, as I was, is an outsider. She is an overweight female programmer who struggles under the shadow of a fellow worker who seems to be much more brilliant, but in reality, is unable to recognize his own limitations.

DMS, the nascent intelligence, is living as it is in the “Country of the Blind”, and seems to be unable to take cognizance of the existence of other intelligences.  It would seem to be “blind”, but in this instance, who is to say that we are any different? After all, aren’t we also living in a similar environment, one in which we are forced to reflect on whether we can give credence to the date that we receive from our own sensory apparatus? How do we distinguish ourselves from our bodies? It recalls the thought experiment formulated by Rene Descartes, that of consciousness taking the form of a brain in a vat, subjected to external stimuli and unable to tell whether our material sensations are not illusory, fed to us by some exterior agency running an experiment. The protagonist is herself insecure and unable to perceive the illusions that characterize her own relationships, and it is perhaps inevitable that she would come to identify with the DMS and seek to save it from being erased.

Another story feeds into this conceit of life as a simulation. It is called “Going to France”, and it deals with a dream-like scenario in which the fantastic combines with the everyday. It recalls the idea that is being explored by certain cosmologists who speculate that the universe is, indeed, a computer simulation being run by some higher entity. In this story we have people who are suddenly overcome by an urge to go to France, an irresistible urge that is shared by the protagonist, once again an unattached, middle-aged woman. Some people are able to fly by their own means, by which I’m not actually referring to their being able to piloting their own craft, but instead their ability to flap their arms and take flight across the Atlantic.  Others are unable to share this ability, but nonetheless drop everything they are doing in order to purchase airline tickets and succumb to this mysterious compulsion that almost seems to symbolize the way in which we are also subject to strange whims and compulsions that we can’t resist. Is it the power of the simulation?

Memes, like biological agents and viruses, are units of meaning that circulate freely within a culture and that control the way we think and perceive our world. It is a concept that was first formalized by the biologist Richard Dawkins, and has taken a place in the analysis of popular culture. If our material bodies are mediums for the transmission of DNA, then memes transmit the DNA of culture, and they represent elements that condition our perception and control to a certain extent our actions. Who doesn’t feel that we are all subject to hidden compulsions that belie the illusion of independence and control?  We are left with a reflection of what is it to be provoked and stimulated to act in strange ways, strange at least for the reader until he or she reflects on similar crazes that have characterized their own actions.

The stories frequently have notes of melancholy and confusion but they are describe processes in which our worlds are reordered. There is, after all, an atmosphere of ideological coherence even in these doomsday scenarios, and we see the protagonists expressing a very rational need to adjust. Some even thrive, such as the Chinese teenager Jieling in “Special Economics”, who finds an opportunity to benefit from a situation in which predatory capitalism and repressive labor policies have given rise to an indentured labor force. We are adaptable, after all, and the slow unraveling of the world will be met with attempts to compensate, to adopt strategies that, in the end, are familiar. It is all curiously rational, and in this way, the scenarios in this collection contrast with the apocalypses that were envisioned in J.G. Ballard’s novels, works such as “The Drowned World” that unfold at a lethargic pace, and that show their protagonists strangely unable to adjust to these processes of decline and transformation. Humanity in those novels finds itself in an evolutionary dead-end.

In McHugh’s stories we find a common thread. We are invited to question the conditions in which we find ourselves, those conditions that constitute the seeds of these future apocalypses, and to admire protagonists, frequently middle-aged women but also younger females, who are unattached and who, one must repeat, find a certain emancipatory potential n these situations. Perhaps we revert to our truest essence, a need to adapt and move on, and in this way, there is no real gloom in these scenarios.

We are left to wonder and ultimately admire the energy of the woman in the final story (“After the Apocalypse”), she who along with the remnants of American society are left to trek to the north, to Canada, as they attempt to escape the collapse of a society that has been hit by further dirty bombs wielded by terrorist forces. This escape is hair-raising, and she is trudging across a dangerous landscape with a curiously innocent daughter, one who she comes to recognize as a rival as well as burden. She abandons this teenage daughter to the protection of a young man they meet and joins up with a group of soldiers.

Her governing urge is escape, and her mode is to give in to her automatic impulses. “She doesn’t know where she is going. She is in motion.” And this motion seduces us all, even in these apocalypses.




Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013