From disaster to dystopia to post-apocalypse

It is worth recalling that the Post-Apocalyptic television genre that culminates in the present began in literature as one describing utopia with Thomas More setting its prototype in a book by the same name and that utopia’s latter day “presiding theorist” was Ernst Bloch, whose three-volume archeology of The Principle of Hope was written in the darkest days of World War II.

Such a text in which “political institutions, social norms, economic systems, and ways of life [that] are superior” to the present could serve to call attention to the injustices and oppressions of that present. With Bloch comes the idea that “imagination is forward-directed, a call to action (Paik).” Now, as Fredric Jameson (2004) says, “the waning of the utopian idea is a fundamental historical and political symptom.” A similar trajectory in terms of affect regarding climate change parallels changes in this genre.

In the ‘70s came the disaster films, limited but horrible images of natural or human constructed devastation, including Earthquake (Mark Robson, U.S., 1974), The Poseidon Adventure (Ronald Neame, U.S., 1972)dealing with a tsunami, and The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974)apocalypse but in a single building and with lots of stars, mostly A list but some B list. This happened as fossil fuel companies were commissioning  and then suppressing studies that showed that their continued drilling could cause planetary destruction.

As the consciousness of this potential devastation began to grow, public opinion went through first a questioning and then a period of greenwashing, where it appeared that technical solutions within global capitalism could alleviate the problem. In this era, roughly the 1990s to the early 2000s, the apocalyptic impulse tended to decrease, with fear allayed, and with occasional dystopic series where the world, ala 9/11, is threatened but where, for example, those fleeing the earth in Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, US, 2004-9)still retain the image of an abundant earth on which to return. Conversely, the Netflix film Don’t Look Up (2021), a scant decade later, in an answer to Battlestar Galactica, has the elites who fled the earth in a space shuttle land on what at first looks like an even more verdant version of their home planet before the nuclear catastrophe, only to have a pterodactyl-like predator sweep away one of the landing party.

With the dawning in the last decade of the full weight of climate catastrophe and the rapid acceleration of these crises over even the last few years, there’s been a tendency toward throwing up one’s hands and deciding there is nothing to be done but submit passively. In this cultural climate, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic series, many of which simply see the end as inevitable, have increased in tempo as the apocalyptic imaginary has also penetrated other genres. These series depict several “endings” of the world where the script deals with the adaptive strategies of those who survive with little left to them but their own resourcefulness—The Leftovers (HBO, US. 2014-17), Jericho (CBS, US, 2006-8), The Rain (Netflix, DK, 2018-20), War of the Worlds (Canal+, UK, 2019-22), Silo (Apple TV+. US, 2023-). However, capitalism, and its part in global war, climate destruction, and a relentlessly unequal economy, are barely cited as culpable in this situation. The genre itself is a combination of science fiction, fantasy and horror, with the latter, in this later stage of planetary destruction, now coming to dominate.

A post-apocalyptic imagination is also projected into the past. AT&T/HBO’s Game of Thrones (US, 2011-2019) and House of the Dragon (US, 2022-) languish in a primitive dog-eat-dog world that could be read as “post-Neoliberal” where all the boundaries and protections of the state have been overturned. Other series take up the near future. For example, there’s a splitting of an employee’s consciousness between work and leisure in Apple’s Severance (Apple TV+, US, 2022-)that in effect denies the real-world struggle of Apple workers to organize in a series that is not green- but “work washing.” In these series, what was once an archelogy of hope has transmuted into an archeology of despair, with the affect mobilized being a later stage of what Jameson identifies as the chief post-modern emotion, irony. That irony is delivered in the form of Elvis Costello’s “I used to be disgusted but now I try to be amused” where “what hurts” is transformed into “what smirks.” Being above the fray and superior to it short-circuits any attempt at activism, but increasingly the smirk, the attitude du jour still of much of the intelligentsia, cannot conceal the hurt.  

An exception to these late-stage post-apocalyptic series is The Swarm (ZDF, DE, 2023). Instead of the post-apocalyptic series, The Swarm takes place in the “near” present as the ocean is ruined and where  the characters are mobilizing its defense—that is, at the onset rather than after the apocalypse. This narrative can be read as a call to action before the oceans are destroyed from the heart of what still remains of European Social Democracy. And its production is multinational, financed by public television stations in Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland as well as private streamers in Scandinavia and Japan.

These series are replete with sentiments echoing this resignation from the Last of Us’ timid claim that as long as “there is one person worth saving” it is possible to “live a fulfilling life” or Station 11’s (HBO Max, US, 2021-2) reckoning by the actress who survives a holocaust and finds a memoir of the time before: “I don’t care that the world was ending because it was the world.” Such views are endorsed in the press, for example as The New York Times' lead television reviewer James Poniewozik describes the latter series glibly as “the most uplifting show about life at the end of the world you are likely to see.” The critic praises Station 11 as a series that celebrates humanity’s drive to create,. Such neo-liberal mumbo jumbo about the indomitability of the human spirit conceals the fact that creation here is refashioned as a device not to save humanity but to divert it. Poniewozik concludes that this show is for you “if you want catharsis and a surprising laugh,” with the implication being that if you’re concerned with actually changing the world or forestalling the disaster this (and much of what passes for disaster series) is not a show for you.

Apocalyptic alternatives —
The Walking Dead and its critique of
the neoliberal order

“If we…strip away the abundance and expansionism of the liberal capitalist order, we find waiting beneath the disguise of peaceful competition and meritocratic incentive the cruelty and repression to which modern liberalism has become oblivious” (Paik).

Oddly, this statement could be the tag line for Season 11, the final season, of The Walking Dead. In it, the survivors take on their most deceptive opponent, The Commonwealth, a seemingly utopian community blessed with abundance and locked behind sturdy gates that walls its residents off from both the zombies and the viciousness of the bands that contend with them. Pamela Milton, this blonde aging leader who looks and even talks like Hilary Clinton, proclaims she only wants what is best for her people. Above ground, the mood is calm and tranquil but below ground the prisons hold those who resist the Commonwealth’s abundance. Pamela tells an underling, “Not that it isn’t, but it can’t feel like a police state,” in perhaps a nod to contemporary U.S. patrolling of black and Hispanic neighborhoods. The Walking Dead survivors find that beneath this utopian veneer of a new world lurks the same old class distinctions; two of the survivors sent to a labor camp are told that their work “will benefit those better than you.” Pamela’s son, a privileged Hunter Biden/Eric Trump type, betrays the truth of the place: “The reality is the poor stay poor so the rich can do whatever we want.” All of which is reminiscent of Clinton’s characterization of the working class as “deplorables” in the 2016 election.

The Commonwealth’s “foreign policy” is one of dominance not benevolence as its security forces attempt to turn the other camps outside their purview into outposts or labor camps operating for the good of the Commonwealth, here reminding us of Clinton’s destroying Libya, the oil-rich African country with the most developed health care system and the highest literacy on the continent, and then boasting about it. Anecdote: the weekend before the bombs started to fall, the Financial Times ran a detailed map of where oil was drilled, refined and shipped in Libya to remind NATO to bomb schools and hospitals but take care to leave the oil routes alone. Ten days before NATO took over what had been more sporadic bombing, the FT ran a story about Western companies fearful that the leader Gaddafi would nationalize the oil (Pfeifer and Blas).

Finally, Milton reveals her true self as she exiles her people outside the gates of the Commonwealth as the zombies approach. She does this to save a small cohort of her and her associates. The final shot of her, after her rule is overturned, is in prison. That shot compares her—though she still has an aura of reasonableness—to the imprisoning of the most vicious monster the survivors had faced, Negan, after his more openly brutal order was defeated.

The original Walking Dead has now splintered into 3 series with only one of them suggesting a critique of the post-apocalyptic world. Dead City (2023-) simply plays up the antagonism of the two leads, the killer Negan seeking redemption and his unforgiving counterpart Maggie. Confronting the catastrophe then becomes simply a clash of personalities.

The Ones Who Live (2024-) focuses on the love story of Rick and Michonne and returns to the earlier quasi-philosophical concerns of the original series such as “how moral can you be in a deteriorating world” while raising almost no questions about the role of the power structure and its contribution to this disaster.

The actual continuation of Season 11 of the original is Daryl Dixon, which has the lead transported to a ravaged Paris and the North of France and doing battle with the Le Peniste Marion Genet whose demagogic diatribes to her soldiers laud as inevitable the harsh reality of an imposed fascism. The critique of this series is not a mistake. It owes at least in part to the season 11 showrunner Angela Kang, executive producer here, who makes the series more than just a landscape of carnage.

The Last of Us’ communal alternatives

More problematic is another zombie apocalypse, The Last of Us, adapted from the game with its showrunner Craig Mazin having visualized the real apocalypse of Chernobyl (HBO, US, 2019). The series, after it quickly jumps 20 years beyond the onset of a virus, or fungus, posits first in the North, in Boston, Fedra, a broken-down police state, after a mycologist has proposed as a solution, since there is no vaccine, to “bomb everyone in the city.” Joel—The Mandalorian’s (Disney+, US, 2019-) Pedro Pascal— and the teenage Ellie —Game of Thrones’ Bella Ramsey— then go on a cross-country tour to find a group of scientists since Ellie, who survived a bite, may hold the cure.[7] [open endnotes in new window] Initially, Joel belongs to a rebel group called The Fireflies, a nod to Josh Whedon’s series (Fox, US, 2002-3) about opposing the empire after 9/11.

On their tour they encounter in St. Louis populist fascists who hunt their African American guide. He explains to them that their viciousness is the product of the police state government’s “torturing and killing people for 20 years.” The dialogue seems to offer an admission that the brutality of these Trump-like survivors partly derives from their being brutalized by a system in the United States that for the last 50 years has continually attacked their wages and lifestyle.

Finally, Joel and Ellie find an alternative in Wyoming in a collective where leaders are democratically elected and ownership is shared.[8] It is here that they are offered hope, a chance as Joel’s brother says to “figure out what they want to do with their lives.” But this actual utopia is simply a resting spot they might hope to return to because they must press on to get Ellie to a hospital where she can be examined, which proves again to be part of the nightmare of modern science, where curing and killing are synonymous.

Snowpiercer and the return of the utopian impulse

“It will then turn out that the world has long dreamt of that of which it had only to have a clear idea to possess it really.”— Karl Marx, 1843

The most class-conscious apocalyptic series, and ultimately the most hopeful, is Bong Joon-ho’s adaptation of his film of the same name. Bong Joon-ho, the most class-conscious director working in film and television today, is currently adapting his Academy Award winning film about class divisions and income disparity in South Korea Parasite for television. In Snowpiercer, the train the survivors of a nuclear winter cling to as it circles the earth is, as they describe it, “a fortress to class” with the “tailies” are at the back in cramped quarters, called “unticketed passengers” to stress their illegitimacy, while the ultra-rich in the front of the train enjoy fine dining. “The Revolution,” with the tailies, led by a stalwart leader Andre Layton, prevails in season 1 but is beaten back in Season 2 by the return of the train’s “engineer-entrepreneur” founder Mr. Wilford, a Richard Branson/Jeff Bezos/Elon Musk type whose contempt for equality drips from every corner of his mouth onto his fur coat.

Season 3 ends in a truly startling moment. Mr. Wilford has lost control of the train and is imprisoned but attempts to regain power when the train’s original leader Melanie Cavill and Layton disagree on how to proceed over the possibility that there may be a spot on the earth warm enough to sustain life. The traditional method of control, divide and conquer, though does not prevail as Melanie, whose loyalty is to the engineers, and Layton, the representative of the workers, agree to disagree on what path to follow but come together to oppose the capitalist retaking the train. Wilford is offloaded with enough supplies to survive but has lost his place in this now more equal class structure. Thus, technology and revolutionary esprit de corps join to defeat the capitalist but diverge on how most effectively to promote the best interests of humanity. The two factions then come to a mutual agreement where each takes a principled stand which sees them dividing the train. The point is clear though. With the capitalist gone, they are then able to hash out a compromise that has each doing what they think is best for the train and for what is left of humanity as a whole.

Season 4 has the two factions separated with the train taken over by the fascistic Admiral Milius, whom the passengers eventually defeat. There is a glimmer of hope in the end in their settlement outside named New Eden. However, in the scripting Milius (Clark Gregg, the stalwart protector of the team in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.-2013-20) dominates much of the season. The (in fact sleight) transformation of Gregg’s persona from intelligence chief to open fascist still marks a social movement away from any belief in the righteousness of the law to its transmutation into the type of martial law, or strongman, that menaces the post-apocalyptic world, as, with Trump and his neo-con cohorts, it menaces ours.

The final lesson of Snowpiercer in its supreme collective moment at the end of season three is that if the world is shorn of its capitalist billionaires, its various and diverse peoples will find compromises that could yet save humanity. So, working from the presupposition that the world has ended, this series posits a way forward that begins with the overthrow of the controlling leader who puts his own interests ahead of everyone else on the train and the planet. The reward for season 3’s bold proclamation? Warner Bros. or now Warner Bros./Discovery, still ruled by the very conservative Texas company AT&T which owns over 70 percent of the company’s stock, refused to air the final season—shot and ready to go—on TNT. The company preferred a tax write off to airing a show whose season is about how groups cooperate to learn how to retake the planet. AMC finally rescued the season from limbo, airing it many months after it was completed. It’s a grim scenario but we are in a grim place right now.

In the wake of a second Trump reign though, aided by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, the Wilfords and Milius’ are again running the train and it will take all of us “tailies” to put it back on track.

AT&T, still running Warner Discovery from the shadows.	Contesting the charismatic entrepreneur by putting the people in the forefront.