Undead Ends: Stories of Apocalypse

211 Pages·2019·5.719 MB·English

by  S. Trimble

UNDEAD ENDS

U N D E A D EN DS
Stories of Apocalypse
S. Trimble
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Trimble, S. (Sarah), author.
Title: Undead ends : stories of apocalypse / S. Trimble.
Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018035884 | ISBN 9780813593654 (cloth) | ISBN 9780813593647 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Apocalyptic films— United States— History and criticism. |
Apocalyptic films— Great Britain— History and criticism. | Apocalypse in motion
pictures. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / Ca rib bean & Latin American. |
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Black Studies (Global). | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism &
Feminist Theory.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.A64 T77 2019 | DDC 791.43/616— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2018035884
A British Cataloging- in- Publication rec ord for this book is available from the
British Library.
Copyright © 2019 by S. Trimble
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106
Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition
is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
www . rutgersuniversitypress . org
Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca
For my family

CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction: Storytelling and Survival 1
1 Telling Other Tales: Rememory in The Road 23
2 Adaptations and Mutations: I Am Legend’s Double Helix 46
3 Revolting Reanimations: The 28 Films 69
4 Maternal Backgrounds: Children of Men 95
5 Myth and Metamorphosis: Beasts of the Southern Wild 119
Epilogue: After Man, or, Death by Story 142
Acknowl edgments 147
Notes 151
References 169
Index 181
vii

PREFACE
A friend once asked me why this book begins with The Road. We were writing
together and I was wrestling with a draft of my first chapter, so she invited me to
walk and talk. The prob lem with The Road, I tried to explain, is that it works hard
not to notice how haunted it is. I have to bring in another story to crack it open.
But while Toni Morrison’s Beloved helps me get at the ghosts The Road can’t
admit, reading the two together prompts methodological questions that, at the
time, I was struggling to think through. And that brought my friend to a question
of her own: Why is it impor tant for you to start with this film? The answer took
months to arrive. Fi nally I realized that of all the characters in the films I explore,
the unnamed boy in The Road is the one whose predicament feels most familiar to
me. He’s caught between parental perspectives that locate hope and horror in
dif er ent places, which means he’s negotiating two very dif er ent ways of seeing
The End. And that’s something I understand. So I start with The Road because if I
have an avatar in this book, it’s him. Before we get to his story, then, h ere’s one of
mine.
As 1999 drew to a close, I was finishing high school and my dad was preparing
for Y2K. In anticipation of disruptions to our digitized, networked society, the
nooks and crannies of our wide white bungalow were stufed with bulk goods.
Closets held boxes of mac and cheese, canned tuna, bottled w ater, acetamino-
phen. Plastic fifty- five- gallon drums of gasoline w ere stacked b ehind an aluminum
shed in the corner of our backyard. Gold and silver bars were on hand, too, though
I preferred not to know where they were stashed. They made me uneasy, as if their
presence alone conjured cutthroats and marauders. The blue barrels of gasoline
had a similar efect on my mom, who laid awake at night imagining explosions
ripping through the dark. But these things represented security to my dad. If our
computerized world went on the fritz when the clocks ticked into a new c entury,
we’d have a little store of food, water, fuel, and currency to get us through the disor-
der. And when the dust settled—w hen the frailty of the global economy and the
impotence of big government had been exposed—we might even be f ree to pursue
a simpler way of life.
My mom wasn’t so keen on any of this. Where my dad saw a fresh start emerg-
ing from the ruined world, a chance to reinvent himself even, my mom saw the
dystopian underbelly of this fantasy. She d idn’t share my dad’s belief that the end
was nigh. But if widespread collapse ever did occur, she was pretty sure she knew
what would happen: men with guns would reclaim the world. A feminist and a
film buf, her view of The End was refracted through the hopelessness of On the
Beach (1959), the sexual vio lence of Mad Max (1979), the woman who becomes
ix