End of the World Movies: Does the PTB Know Something?

[brainpanhandler]

Thus the people looking desperately to deny this.

Or repress it you mean? and maybe that explains wombat's vision:

I know I've already seen it, I've been dreaming about Teh End for as long as I remember my dreams. My first journal has an entry about it on the first page. I am not even remotely unique in this, not even among my friends. I think it's a fairly common vision in my generation.

That and the fact that our generation has been exposed to so much disastotainment. Despite the obvious mythlogical antecedents I wonder if what is unique to the preceding few generations is the frequency with which and the way we dream about the end. I mean we have so many more choices and they are embedded so vividly in our noggins compared with pre-mass media saturated generations.

I have a recurring nightmare about dozens of tornadoes descending upon whatever building am in. I run from window to window watching these tornadoes as they bear down upon me. I'm usually desperately trying to get everyone into the basement, but they don't believe me. I've had this dream since I was a kid. I think the Wizard of OZ had something to do with it.

Confronting repressed fears in some fashion, even an ersatz celluloid version, is cathartic and releases tension.

[Nordic]

I think the Wizard of OZ had something to do with it.

Man, I had recurring tornado nightmares my whole life. From The Wizard of Oz. And possibly from a few tornado warnings from when I was a little kid in Oklahoma, which I don't consciosuly remember.

Then I had nightmares about losing my mother, where she would be killed, for which I blame Walt Disney and Bambi. Those assholes. I have deliberately kept my son away from that movie.

Interestingly my tornado nightmares stopped for good when I finally saw some real tornadoes. One day on a street corner in Denver, I could look east and see one really big-bad monster one tearing things up in that direction, and to the south a long skinny one probing down onto Broadway. It was fascinating and beautiful and the dreams stopped.

Growing up a lot of people had nuclear war nightmares, but for some reason I never did. I've had plenty of awful dreams about other things, hellish visions of a future where everybody is dead, or crushed in rubble. Then again I was born in Germany not long after WWII and I can't help but wonder if those are some sort of past - life memories I'm picking up on. I have a real horror about having to pick bodies out of rubble and dust, and finding their hair. I don't even like lifting clumps of sod out of my yard when I'm digging on the edges of the garden because of this.

I've also had some extremely vivid WWII dreams, like I was there.

But back to subject, I don't know if the recent spate of end-time movies are really anything unusual considering the times we're living in. When I was growing up we had a lot of post-apocalyptic movies about nuclear war and hell, there was even that big TV miniseries about it. What was the name of that?

[82_28]

Interestingly my tornado nightmares stopped for good when I finally saw some real tornadoes. One day on a street corner in Denver, I could look east and see one really big-bad monster one tearing things up in that direction, and to the south a long skinny one probing down onto Broadway. It was fascinating and beautiful and the dreams stopped.

Was this in like '86 possibly '88, Nordic? I know it was an even year.

This isn't it, but I was looking for some tornado footage that I thought existed from what I believe you were referring to.



Tornadoes as big as the one in the above video used to be unheard of so close to the front range. But that tornado above wiped Windsor CO off the map. Especially in May! I remember because my dad was here in Seattle and I got some updates or some shit as I was surfing the web. So I go tell my dad and we begin to flick through the "news channels" and there was NOTHING! No news at all. Even "headline news" had some show about that polygamy Texas thing they were talking about back then. No tornado news at all. Windsor gets sucked up and not even worth covering.

But I do believe I remember the day you are referring to. My pops worked for Mountain Bell. His garage was just off Broadway and Evans. His car was the only car that didn't get thrown. Trucks, cars and everything else were sucked up into the air and thrown everywhere. If I remember that day correctly there were numerous funnels and tornadoes. In fact it is the only time I ever witnessed one for myself. It was in the south end of town and we had family in from out of town. We all gathered on the driveway and watched this thing, maybe a mile or so away threaten to come all the way down and begin its thing. Tornadoes, when they begin, LOOK ALIVE! They look like they are deciding on something. Creepiest shit to watch on Earth.

I too have had many a nightmare of tornadoes.

[Nordic]

82, yeah, I think that was the same tornado, the one I could see to the South. It was either 88 or 89, I can't remember. Probably 89, actually, but that's a guess.

Yes, there were funnels all over the place that day, but none actually hit the downtown, where I happened to be. I was on the corner of 17th and Broadway and could see this big monster one, the kind that looks like it's made out of a big ragged cloud itself, and it came down, then sideways, then back to the ground, nasty-looking. Fortunately it was in a pretty uninhabited area east of town, then the skinny one just south on broadway that was tearing things up like you said. The one on Broadway looked less evil than the one out to the East, but I think it did more damage because it hit right there like you say.

When I was in Oklahoma, in high school, we had a killer one that hit our town the same day that huge one hit Wichita Falls and killed scores of people. I could almost see that one, but not quite, there was a big half-moon shape of cloud hanging down over the city that the tornado dropped out of. My buddy and I got to where it hit just moments later. An unforgettable scene. It killed one or two people, then actually ripped a baby out of some mother's arms who was running for shelter. Awful.

I actually came close to dying twice that day, not from the tornado itself but from sheer human stupidity (but both times related to the storm).

[82_28]

Yeah. Definitely same day. There were so many funnels everywhere that day! All over the city was funnel report after funnel report. I don't think '89 though, because I hadn't even started high school yet. I wanna go with 1986. There used to be some 9news footage of it on the web, but I can't find it. I'll call my dad later just to set the record straight for both of our minds.

[Nordic]

I don't think there's any way it was 86. 86 was the year I moved to Denver, and the reason I was downtown there was because I was working with a company in one of those business towers on the corner of 17th and Broadway and I didn't start working with them until 88.

[Twyla LaSarc]

Personally, I think one of those Phil Dickian P-AW's wouldn't be too bad: who wouldn't want to just head up to Marin and live relatively peacefully if a little technologically backwards?

I think the ultimate winner is going to be JG Ballard; I suspect that between 'The Drowned World' and 'The Burning World' he scored a two-fer.



It wouldn't be so bad if there weren't humans out there who would be happy to start the whole process with the hope of either riding it out in a box and ruling the world after or being raptured up to relish the punishment of the damned and then ruling the world after. If it's gonna happen, I hope nature gets us before ego-driven devils with some kind of plan for their own 'salvation' do.

[justdrew]

well, now we're even past peak Proton. That's right, the god damn protons are shrinking now. At this rate we and the rest of everything will just evaporate into loosely bound clouds of sub atomic particles. Sometime between next week and 10 billion years from now.

The world ends everyday for, on average, 153,400 people, or a little more than 100 per minute. Mostly I think 'end of the world' is about processing our own mortality without actually having to focus on it.

[brainpanhandler]

It would be a teeny, tiny, hardly worth mentioning at all bit less bad if there weren't humans out there who would be happy to start the whole process with the hope of either riding it out in a box and ruling the world after or being raptured up to relish the punishment of the damned and then ruling the world after.

I've taken the liberty of rewriting this bit above for you, which you should feel free to be incensed about if you wish, mainly because even though I share your dislike of those who wish to rule the world and by extension wish to force the survivors of the great holocaust to live as they believe humans ought to, nonetheless, a mass extinction of the human species would be a truly terrible thing. I don't think we should burn the whole house down to get rid of a few cockroaches.

[Joe Hillshoist]

well, now we're even past peak Proton. That's right, the god damn protons are shrinking now. At this rate we and the rest of everything will just evaporate into loosely bound clouds of sub atomic particles. Sometime between next week and 10 billion years from now.

The world ends everyday for, on average, 153,400 people, or a little more than 100 per minute. Mostly I think 'end of the world' is about processing our own mortality without actually having to focus on it.

I can live with my own death. Everything dying tho? Thats kind of hard to process.

[stefano]

The world ends everyday for, on average, 153,400 people, or a little more than 100 per minute. Mostly I think 'end of the world' is about processing our own mortality without actually having to focus on it.

Yes. Slacktivist is very good on this; an evangelist Christian who spends a lot of time criticising the Rapture crowd for its wilful misunderstanding of the Bible's injunctions to live a good life, because you could die at any time. I read him especially for his review of the Left Behind books.

We readers have more than seven years -- maybe -- before our deadlines arrive, but probably not much more than seven decades. The urgency of limits facing these characters could have served as a nifty metaphor for helping readers to think about the urgency of limits facing us all and what that means for our use of that limited time.

But of course LaHaye and Jenkins don't really do metaphor. And especially not that one. That one threatens their whole scheme. Once you open the door to that idea, the whole foundation of End Times "prophecies" and of Rapture mania begins to crumble. Allow readers to think, "Maybe I'm not facing the End of the Universe, but someday I will be facing the End of the Universe as far as I'm concerned ..." and they might begin re-reading all those supposed "prophecies" with that idea in mind. And then they might begin to realize that there's only one prophecy that really matters and that it will surely come true within, at most, a generation.

LaHaye's Rapture-obsessed "prophecy" scheme exists primarily to prevent readers from entertaining such thoughts. His whole framework is concocted from Bible passages about that very thing remixed and re-edited into a denial of it -- escapism in the most literal sense. "Live watchfully," the Bible says, again and again, "for no one knows the day or the hour."

Howzit, Joe, nice to see you.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Cheers.

Survive the WC all right?

[Twyla LaSarc]

It would be a teeny, tiny, hardly worth mentioning at all bit less bad if there weren't humans out there who would be happy to start the whole process with the hope of either riding it out in a box and ruling the world after or being raptured up to relish the punishment of the damned and then ruling the world after.

I've taken the liberty of rewriting this bit above for you, which you should feel free to be incensed about if you wish, mainly because even though I share your dislike of those who wish to rule the world and by extension wish to force the survivors of the great holocaust to live as they believe humans ought to, nonetheless, a mass extinction of the human species would be a truly terrible thing. I don't think we should burn the whole house down to get rid of a few cockroaches.

Hell, I hardly get incensed over anything anymore- a few weeks spent dancing with /b/tards thickens the ol' skin a bit.

I hold no ill will toward the human race, in fact I think we have the potential (assuming we don't blow ourselves up) to be so much more than we are even now, but it pisses me off when certain ideological members of it take advantage of our cultural (and I mean worldwide cultural, both religious and real-politik) troika with death and act on it for their own selfish gain. I DON"T want the end of humankind and it pisses me off that these bastards are forcing me to contemplate it.

Nature, meh, doesn't bug me so much, not much I can do about that. I remember being about 6 and losing sleep because someday the sun would go supernova and burn this planet into a Post-Toastie. Early lesson in futility there...

I found a snippet by Harlan Ellison from his '74 introduction to 'Approaching Oblivion' which sums it up well for me vis a vis our situation:

As for the future, I'm brought in mind of a quote by Albert Camus:

"Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present."

And the present is being ripped-off and screwed-over by the omnipresent philosophy of I'm all right, Jack, which is a working-class Englishman's term for screw, you, baby, I've got mine. It's your future and you don't seem to give a royal damn what happens to it.

So the Ellison who writes this is a little more calloused an tougher than the one who went to Selma with King in March of 1965, less hopeful and prone to sweeping gardyloos. The Ellison sitting here now is an older version of the kid from Painseville who stopped trying to buck the tide of bigotry and stupidity and merely cut out to find the rest of the world.

Had I done this book back in 1970, as originally planned, you find in this space a clarion call to revolution, a resounding challenge to the future. But it's four years later, Nixon time, and I've seen you sitting on your asses mumbling about impeachment. I've gone through ten years waiting for you to recognize how evil the war in the Nam was. I've watched you loaf and lumber through college and business and middle-class complacency, pursuing the twin goals of "happiness" and "security".

What fools you are. Happy, secure corpses is what you'll be.

You're approching oblivion and you know it, and you won't do a thing to save yourselves. As for me and you in this literary liasion, well, I've paid my dues. Now I'm merely going to sit on the side and laugh my ass off at how you sink into the quagmire like a tricerotops...

...And if you hear me sobbing once in awhile, it's only because you killed me too, you fuckers.

I'm stuck on this spinning place with you, and I don't want to go, and you've killed me, and I resent it, and the best I can do is tell my little tomorrow stories and keep laughing as the wind whips the dirt in the playground at Lathrop grade school into an ominous dust-devil.

I've had thirty years of awareness in which to watch the approaching oblivion. Thirty years of watching those who have been invested with power do the most incredibly asinine things to hasten it. I really would love to see it pass by our doors, but I'm pretty sure that there is probably some motherf@#$%r out there flagging down the goddamn Angel O' Death (TM) because they have some fantasy to get what they always wanted out of it, even if it's just a few more of those soon-to-be worthless greenbacks. Shit, the poison is so ingrained in our culture that there are freaking pacifist New-Age hippies who have built concrete bunkers in the California Sierras for the occasion. The sheer numbers of those who unquestionably accept this scenario will do us in. I'm a little tired of fighting the current and trying to tell people that 'it doesn't have to be this way'... and mother Earth is making some pretty ominous noises of late...

I don't want to die. I don't want any of us to die. I give my all to my present- my family, friends and I've put my money where my mouth is and made a conscious choice to live a simple life years ago. But I don't have much say one way or t'other what happens in the future. All I can do is bitch about it. The internet is at least good for that.

May our future be brighter than our present.

As for End of the World movies, are they playing with a sturdy cultural meme, or are they reinforcing it?

[brainpanhandler]

As for End of the World movies, are they playing with a sturdy cultural meme, or are they reinforcing it?

I guess it's not really either/or, but that's a good question. It's been suggested in this thread a number of times that the proliferation of End of the World movies in the last decade or so or perhaps going back as far as vietnam is by design and serves various propaganda purposes for the pbj. Not much actual evidence of that offered but I don't find it hard to believe. Nature/nurture? Eros/thanatos? I dunno. We really have been fantasizing about the end of the world for a very long time. It's an abiding and morbid fascination. Perhaps it's like McDonald's exploitng our intrinsic craving for salt, fat and sugar. There's a discussion to be had about the gender differences in this context. I've occasionally thought of creating a companion to the Art with girls and Birds thread in the lounge titled, Art with boys and their Toys.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Perceived threats evoke conformity and compliance.

From 1993 Army Field Manual FM33-1 Psychological Operations, page 6-7:

Target Audience Vulnerabilities
.....
Common needs exist despite wide individual and cultural differences in people.
This common core includes a need for order, predictability, understanding, and security.
.....
Especially in times of severe stress and crisis, individuals have a need for a feeling of belonging.
.....