Jeg havde set, at Alex Garland (den glødende cool A.I.-thriller
Ex Machina, som jeg dvd-anmelder i det nye nummer af Ekko) ville filmatisere Jeff VanderMeers
Annihilation (første bind af en trilogi kaldet
Southern Reach) og så forleden opdaterede skrivende maler Christian Schmidt-Rasmussen forsiden på samme roman, der pludselig virkede obligatorisk:
Passer
udstilling på x and beyond i dag. Læser jeff vandermeer southern reach.
Det er længe siden at jeg har kunne identificere mig så meget med
fortælling der så knaldet som denne. Min udstilling er på så mange måder
i samklang med denne fortælling at det føles som jeg allerede har læst
den
- og så kunne jeg ikke lade være at gå ind ind på VanderMeers
hjemmeside hvor jeg fandt en skarp blogpost, "
Redefining Utopia and Dystopia or Post-Apoc", meget apropos postapokalyptikken i
Fjer og
Mitose - et klip (og så må få læst den roman, den hele trilogi, på min iPad (dig og den redder jeg med på monstertruck-dækket, når syndfloden kommer)):
In this context, one possible solution to what fiction can do to
portray the world—as it is and is becoming—is to avoid certain kinds of
simplicity. One easy way to do this right now is to avoid what I call
the Two-Percent Solution. In the Two-Percent Solution some plague or
virus twenty to fifty years from now has reduced the world’s population
down to almost nothing (usually white, with some exceptions) and
characters in a gutted human environment soldier on. And the reality of
the situation, no matter how horrific, is still containable,
manageable, easily understood, because the context is past real plagues
that humankind has survived. These scenarios thus aren’t realistic but
escapist, especially in that they tend to side-step the impact of global
warming almost entirely. (No matter what you think of Atwood’s
Oryx & Crake, and personally I think it’s great, that novel doesn’t side-step the issue.)
The
other simplification going on is the expectation of some version of the
hackneyed try-fail, try-fail, try-succeed structure that may make for
effective storytelling, but also reflects the innate human arrogance of
ultimate success in any situation. There may come a time when telling a
traditional type of story seems like a betrayal of reality, but right
now, we tolerate this approach, even celebrate it at times, because we
live in a transitional state, in the middle of this slow apocalypse.
Neither cooked nor raw.
What may be required is that we redefine
Dystopia and Utopia, perhaps not so much along the lines of “do we have
things or do we not have things”—less about a middle-class idea of
happiness—and more along the lines of what do we need to do to be less
intrusive on the landscape and to be more adaptive to it. If that
lessening is “dystopia” then maybe dystopia isn’t a bad place to be.
(Or “Post-apoc”—if you think I’m confusing dystopia/post-apoc, they’ve
been tossed in a blender across so many media outlets it hardly matters
any more.)
Desolate is not depressing. Empty is not depressing.
These are human constructs, values we apply to the diminishment of human
beings or the thought of the diminishment of human beings. Any
reasonable human being as the law defines reasonable may think this way,
and that’s understandable. But what’s coming in terms of the slow
apocalypse is not reasonable. It cannot be reasoned with. It doesn’t
understand reason because it exists at a geologic level—at earth
magnitude as the “dark ecology” philosopher Timothy Morton would say.
I
state this, too, in the context that there’s a distinct possibility
that there is no other exit strategy from our current situation than to
find a way to halt global warming and ride out the effects of warming
already in play and coming into play. And, to be honest, if I could be
uploaded tomorrow into some AI version of the internet or become a
nascent Mars colonist, I would reject both options as morally, ethically
wrong. You cannot trash an entire planet, kill billions of organisms
(often for no reason at all), and then simply take up elsewhere with no
change in thinking or accountability.
No matter how remote that
kind of choice might be, other sorts of related decisions may be forced
upon us soon enough, in the realm of life, that render fiction a very
secondary concern. It is therefore not giving in to despair to say
that, while we’re able to, we should look the apocalypse in the eye or
the snout. When we conflate dead with alive, we wind up in purgatory. We
need to choose. Do we want dead. Do we want alive. If we do not choose
we will live in dead town, thinking we are alive. It is always better to
live in dead town knowing we are dead. At least then we’re not living a
lie.
