abstract
Author: Christine Hoff Kraemer
Title: The Creative Apocalypse: Post-WWII Narratives of
Death, Rebirth, and Transformation
Supervising Professor: Betty Sue Flowers, Ph.D.
The existence of the atomic
bomb has made humanity keenly aware of its own ability to shape its destiny
or at least to choose its end. This has problematized traditional apocalyptic
narratives, which often focus on the subjugation of humanity to forces beyond
its control. In response, poet Gregory Corso ("Bomb"), animation
director Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis
Evangelion), and comics writer Alan Moore (Watchmen) have co-opted the apocalyptic narrative to explore the
existential consequences of humanity as a self-defining, self-destroying
entity. In all three works, apocalypse serves to rip away existing structures
and identities. Unlike the Revelation of St. John, where ultimate destruction
reveals the divine order beneath, however, apocalypse in these works reveals
only a yawning emptiness, an absence of meaning and order. Rather than
dissolving into nihilism, however, these works offer strategies for living a
fulfilling life in a universe where there is no underlying metaphysical
structure. Through taking responsibility for our role in creating meaning and
structure in our lives, our ability to collectively and individually
self-define becomes empowering. In this sense, apocalypse becomes a creative
process, a metaphor for the constant destruction and new birth of our
identities and self-narratives. Finally, apocalypse serves to dramatize and
exaggerate this process, helping us to become aware of the cycle of
self-definition so that we can more deliberately take part in it.
introduction: deconstruction
"Nothingness
lies coiled at the heart of being." Sartre
Gregory Corso called it the
"brake of time." This evocative description of the atomic bomb,
penned just a decade after World War II ended, only hints at the paradigm-shattering
effects the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have on the
apocalyptic imagination of both its Japanese victims and its American creators.
As the only country ever to have had the bomb used against it and the country
that dropped that bomb, Japan and the United States represent perhaps the two
most apocalypse-obsessed cultures in the world. Visual media provide perfect
vehicles for the terrible yet fascinating spectacle that is such an important
component of apocalypse, and so it not surprising that the pop culture
(particularly the film) of both countries is rife with apocalyptic narratives
and images, from Godzilla and the
animated Akira in Japan, to Dr. Strangelove and Terminator 2: Judgement Day in the U.S. Yet this apocalyptic urge,
though intimately tied up with technology in the post-WWII era, did not
originate with the bomb. Both cultures have apocalyptic traditions that date
back thousands of years the Christian apocalypse drawn from the book of
Revelation resonates oddly with the Buddhist account of the slow decline of the
"latter days," at the end of which Buddha will come to save all
believers. Perhaps more important for the Japanese than this legend, however,
is the concept of mono no aware, a
kind of elegiac awareness of the world's transience that is woven into everyday
life.[1]
The atomic bomb has problematized both of these
apocalyptic traditions even as it has been accommodated and absorbed by them.
Though both traditions represent humanity as helpless in the face of forces
greater than itself a judging God, or merely unforgiving time the existence
of the bomb has served to empower humanity, if not to save itself from
annihilation, then to determine in limited fashion the moment and method of its
death. The possibility of utter self-destruction, of no longer being subject to
the whim of forces beyond humanity's control, is both tantalizing and chilling.
Though some writers, in responding to this new awareness, have chosen to focus
purely on the possibility of a literal nuclear holocaust, the post-bomb
narratives that allow themselves to explore the ontological and metaphysical
consequences of an entirely man-made apocalypse tend to be far more
interesting. In the case of Gregory Corso's "Bomb," Hideaki Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Alan Moore
and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen, the
creators have embraced the very traditional structure of the apocalyptic
narrative,[2]
but in the process come face-to-face with the postmodern existential crisis.
In his article
"Narrative," J. Hillis Miller postulates that one of the primary
functions of all narrative is to experiment with possible selves and
identities, whether these be individual or cultural.[3]
This seems particularly relevant to apocalyptic narratives, which often show an
awareness of Nietzsche's idea that the nature of a thing can be seen in its
end. Many narratives use their respective ends of the world to interpret and
give additional significance to certain elements of history or society, much as
director Stanley Kubrick highlights the hypermasculinity and sexualized
aggression of Cold War culture in Dr.
Strangelove in order to show the probable downfall of a society of that
nature. In this way, apocalypse can serve as a critique of culture, but it can
also express hope for renewal. In the destruction of old identities and
structures, there lies an implicit opportunity for a new beginning, just as the
bloody Armageddon of the Christian apocalypse is a preparation for the coming
of the Kingdom of God. To reverse Picasso's famous saying, every act of
destruction is also an act of creation; apocalypse can be transformative and
redeeming, a catalyst for the regenerative cycle of death and rebirth.
The nature of the place that
lies between death and rebirth is tied to the original Greek meaning of
apocalypse, which has been all but forgotten in the modern era: revelation.
Though most readers of the book of Revelation (Gk. Apocalypsis) tend to focus on its epic vision of annihilation at
the hands of divine forces, the intended theme of the book is preserved in the
English title, which emphasizes St. John's privileged glimpse into the workings
of the metaphysical world beyond the mundane. Like the book of Revelation,
written by an inspired member of a persecuted and disdained Jewish sect, all
three of the works that are addressed in this thesis have a heavy visual
component. All are also the product of subcultures that either were or still
are considered to be somewhat on the fringe "Bomb" emerged from the
iconoclast Beats and Evangelion and Watchmen from the artistic communities
devoted to the scorned "kiddie" mediums of animation and comics,
respectively.[4] Yet these
superficial similarities are negligible next to the intimate and terrifying
revelation that they share the experience of having the world as we know it
utterly ripped away to reveal the nothingness beneath. Finally the
all-important symbolic influence of the bomb as the "brake of time"
becomes clear it is the emblem for a man-made experience of revelation, an instrument
of deconstruction and discontinuity. In a world where mass suicide is possible,
where God is no longer needed to deal the final judging blow, where the
challenge of science has already shaken religious belief to its core,
revelation becomes not an ecstatic experience of divine spirit but rather a
vertiginous and terrifying experience of emptiness. Even when the bomb is not
dealt with specifically, its devastating presence can be felt in the warring
senses of responsibility and powerlessness that are expressed in all of these
works. In true existentialist tradition, these creators face the absence of God
and the terrible arbitrariness of meaning and implicitly ask the question, How
does one live with the awareness of underlying chaos? As we shall see, the
mechanism of apocalypse is central to the answers that "Bomb," Evangelion, and Watchmen attempt to articulate, and in some cases, may even offer
the possibility of redemption.
conclusion: a light of meaning
NEWSVENDOR: I see the world didn't end yesterday.
KOVACS: Are you sure?
Watchmen, III.22
Uncertainty. Madness.
Isolation. Violence. "Bomb," Watchmen,
and Evangelion form a dark trio
that flirt with nihilism and present chaos rather than order as the essential
nature of reality. Yet this fascination with the void is only part of what
makes these works so compelling. The spiralling path into darkness that these
works follow does not leave the reader hopeless and helpless at the mouth of
the abyss; instead, each creator provides a light, a ray of hope and stability
that is not merely compensation for the difficulty of the journey, but is in
fact unattainable without it. Though the nature of the journey and knowledge gained
as a result is subtly different in each work, there is a redemptive quality to
each rebirth, a sense that salvation from despair can be found only when the
troubled older self, individual and collective, is allowed to die.
The redemptive quality of apocalypse is emphasized by the
complicated and often problematic God/Christ figures that appear in all three
works. Evangelion's use of religious
and occult imagery is scattershot and imprecise, but as in all art, symbols
have a life of their own and often convey far more powerful and deeper meanings
than the creating artist may have intended. Shinji is explicitly identified
with Christ when he is crucified on the combination cross/Tree of Life during
the film ending of the series. Though Shinji is hardly the compassionate,
self-sacrificing Christ of the gospels, the ending nevertheless explicitly
states that because of the apocalyptic process of death and rebirth that has
just been completed, humanity has gained the ability to consciously self-create
through will. Yet Shinji is not simply a sacrificial lamb, subjected to massive
trauma for the good of humanity. In many ways, Shinji also functions as a
substitute for God, a vengeful, jealous, and angry force that must annihilate
both humanity and himself in order to save them. "Bomb" contains a
similarly problematic God/Christ figure in the bomb itself. Corso's poem paints
the bomb as the substitute for a dead Judeo-Christian god: a goddess of chaos
and destruction suitable for a world gone unrecoverably mad. Yet Corso also
includes images of Christ-like origins: the bomb will be
"madonna[ed]" by the earth, recalling the Virgin Mary; its coming is
hailed with prophetic language reminiscent of Isaiah ("into our midst a
bomb will fall") and with hosannahs and hallelujahs as the animals,
plants, and the wind itself celebrate it as a divine child. Finally, Watchmen contains a number of both
Christ-like and God-like figures, from Jon with his power to rearrange atoms in
any way he chooses to Veidt, who arbitrates humanity's fate through destruction
but is also its Christ-like savior.
The implicit or explicit absence of a pre-existing
creator god in these works seems to be a natural consequence of the
fundamentally chaotic reality they depict. Considering this fact, it is
interesting that God-substitutes appear in all three works, and may lead the
reader to recall Voltaire's famous statement that, "If God did not exist,
it would be necessary to create Him." For what purpose, however, does
mankind need gods? In terms of these works, the function of their individual
gods is best couched in terms of the nature of the apocalypse they set in
motion. In Evangelion, apocalypse and
revelation are achieved through fusion; the slate of human possibility is wiped
clean by Shinji's decision to return humanity to a state of undefined
potential. Of the three works, Evangelion's
apocalypse is the one most clearly undergone for the sake of new creation.
Humanity is empowered by its experience of divine nothingness to self-create
with new awareness and understanding. In this way, Shinji's experience as
godhead becomes emblematic of humanity's awakening awareness that humanity
itself is God self-creating, self-destroying, an emergent consciousness that
arises from chaos through fragmentation and interaction. Evangelion's God-substitute, then, seems to function primarily to
make humanity self-aware and to enable it to take control of its own
development.
"Bomb"'s God, on the other hand, functions more
as a symbol for the way reality already is than as a catalyst of change. In
Corso's poem, the bomb functions to fragment and blow meaning apart, serving as
both the spirit of a chaotic era and as a continuation of the ancient image of
the destroyer goddess. By constructing the poem as a love song to the bomb,
Corso encourages acceptance of chaos and represents it as a source of beauty
and meaning. Unlike Watchmen, where
chaos is a terrifying reality that casts a grim pall over the efforts of the
characters to do good in the world, the chaos represented by the bomb has a
playful, carnivalesque side that balances its more frightening qualities.
"Bomb" suggests that acceptance and celebration of the chaos caused
by the death-rebirth cycle may be superior to the directed consciousness-change
portrayed in Evangelion.
The functions of Watchmen's
God-figures are less straightforward, possibly because there the storyline
contains multiple apocalyptic events of different orders of magnitude. Veidt's
function as a God-substitute is similar to Shinji's in that he causes humanity
to undergo directed consciousness-change, but he is the architect and designer
of this change whereas Shinji is merely an instrument in the process. In many
ways, therefore, he is a much more traditional God-figure than the two described
above; his will is more imposed upon humanity than emergent from it.[5]
Like Rorschach, Veidt is empowered by the arbitrariness of meaning to paint a
pattern that he chooses upon the face of reality. As a God-figure, he is a
source of order and meaning for billions of human beings. Veidt's apocalypse,
however, does not function to reveal the nature of reality to humanity as the
apocalypses in "Bomb" and Evangelion
do. The mechanisms of apocalypse are transparent to the human beings who are
affected; though Veidt understands the role of narrative in shaping the
behavior and experiences of humanity, humanity itself radically changes its
narrative without ever becoming aware of its ability to consciously do so.
Unlike in Evangelion, humanity
remains unconscious of its power throughout its transformation, never taking
responsibility for its own role in shaping its reality. Revelation in Watchmen is confined to the apocalyptic
experiences of individuals, whose encounters with the void empower them to take
control of their destiny in a way that unconscious humanity cannot.
The connecting thread between these God-substitutes is
their role in creating sources of meaningful narratives of cultural and
individual identity. Shinji functions to empower himself and humanity as a
whole as conscious self-creators; Veidt imposes a new and hopefully
longer-lasting cultural narrative on the world; "Bomb" serves as a
concrete symbol through which humanity might come to terms with and even
rejoice in its disordered and chaotic condition. Though all three works
confront the horror of the discovery that meaning is arbitrarily created, all
also propose ways to live fulfilling lives despite and sometimes as a result of
that knowledge. In essence, that is the redemptive nature of these apocalypses.
In all these works, destruction functions to trigger willful psychological
change, thus saving humanity from a double dose of despair: the despair of
being unable to change the self and thus being limited, and the despair of
living a meaningless existence. In all three works, change is portrayed as the
only constant, an eternal dance of shifting meanings and identities, the
inherited lot of the human race. Yet this revelation becomes a source of power.
For the narrator of "Bomb," change itself becomes a source of joy and
fulfillment; Shinji and the other characters of Evangelion escape from their confining and inadequate identities
and wield the power to self-define; Veidt remakes the world of Watchmen in his own image and even the
detached and disillusioned Jon comes to recognize the unlikely beauty of
mutable human life.
The function of apocalypse in these narratives is to make
obvious the constant change that we as individuals and as a collective
experience every day. As the Watchmen quote
at the beginning of this conclusion suggests, the world is constantly in the
process of ending and beginning again, putting on new masks and removing old
ones, redefining itself and its identity and telling itself new stories. This
process, however, is often a subtle one; just as a child's growth can seem
invisible to a parent who sees that child on a daily basis, the evolution of
our identities is often invisible as well as unconscious. The dramatic and
destructive transformations triggered by apocalypse, however, create the
opportunity for awareness, allowing us to harness that destructive power to
consciously and directedly form new selves. Apocalyptic transformation
temporarily frees us from those sculpting forces in our environment that erode
us slowly into shape day by day, like water flowing over rock; change becomes
conscious, destruction and re-creation deliberate acts of will. Just as the
bomb puts the literal ability to choose collective death into our hands for the
first time, symbolically it represents our new awareness that our fate is in
our hands, that through technology we have claimed a piece of divine power for
ourselves.
Despite the darkness of these pieces, in living with them
almost daily for the past year I have found myself instead blinded by their
light. Though they speak of an absent God and the terrifying emptiness of the
void, they also speak of responsibility, of empowerment, of limitless
possibilities. They are most comforting, I think, because theirs is not an
unrealistic optimism. The process of self-creation is a stomach-churning
tightrope walk over an abyss; despite our hunger to tell ourselves a fulfilling
story, to make all of our experiences coalesce into a pattern, there is always
something that refuses to fit, leading us to question the validity of the
entire enterprise. As the characters of Watchmen
in particular discover, life is characterized by a deep-seated uncertainty
that we must put aside in order to live. Oddly, however, perhaps the most
unrelentingly optimistic sentiment of the novel comes from its grimmest
character: as Rorschach writes in his journal, "Nothing is hopeless. Not
while there's life" (II.25). This is, above all, what I believe these
pieces offer. From their unwillingness to ignore the contradictions that lie at
the center of the human condition, there arises a ray of hope that is doubly
bright for the fact that it shines in such darkness.
Copyright (c) 2000 by
Christine Hoff Kraemer
[1] Much of this background material was drawn from lectures given by Professor Susan Napier at the University of Texas at Austin in her undergraduate Asian Studies courses "Cinema of the Apocalypse" and "The World of Japanese Animation," offered respectively in the Spring and Fall 2000 semesters.
[2] I use the word "narrative" in J. Hillis Miller's sense here for the sake of convenience; he defines the basic elements of narrative as "an initial situation, a sequence leading to a change or reversal of that situation, and a revelation made possible by the reversal of situation." Though "Bomb" consists entirely of a single narrator addressing an unseen other, it does fit Miller's definition of narrative. Miller, J. Hillis. "Narrative." Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 75.
[3] Ibid, 69.
[4] Evangelion hails from Japan, where animation and comics have come to be considered respectable art forms. This development, however, has taken place in perhaps only the past 15 years with the release and favorable critical reception of more and more sophisticated animated works, Akira being one major milestone in this category.
[5] This is not to say that Veidt is not also a part of the collective consciousness. The echoes of Veidt's apocalypse in the recurring image of the smiley button/doomsday clock suggest that strictly separating Veidt's individual will and consciousness from that of humanity would be setting up a false dichotomy. Veidt is significant, however, in that he is consciously aware of patterns that remain subconscious in humanity as a whole.