Doomsday

Here’s the information on the film festival I mentioned in class:
http://doomsdayfilmfest.com/

This is a response to Daniel, but I want everyone to take note of it.

Frykholm discusses this issue in a chapter called “Witness to the Apocalypse” in a far more nuanced way than this quote taken out of context might imply. She is critical of the publishing house’s claims for conversion, because they indicate that it is a sudden epiphany experience that their books foster. But her point is that conversion is far more gradual and complex an experience of transformed identity–and she indicates that reading the Left Behind books can indeed be a part of that–but not in the way Tyndale wants to claim, which is a one to one correlation. She says, for example, that the “stories of readers’ conversions teach us that while Left Behind can serve as a means to conversion, it can only be a part of a much larger process of conversion that involves a richer social context than being handed a book on a street corner might suggest” (172). She concludes her chapter this way: “For nearly all readers of Left Behind, the books leave them with an urge to action–to witness to the strange truth of the rapture, to share their faith with the lost. They share this truth in their social networks with those who agree and with those who resist the message” (174).

In “Glorious Appearing” there is an interesting use of technology to spread the word of both Christ and the Antichrist.

Nicolae Carpathia, the embodiment of the Antichrist, creates the Global Community News Network to control the information the masses receive about the war between good and evil. He withholds information about the backlash of the world leaders and the fall of Babylon. He also takes advantage of his control the media to create media moments that schew the truth. For example, when he has all of his delegates follow him on horseback into battle for the cameras but he actually takes an aircraft. This plays into Satan’s notorious role as a deceiver but in a much more modern way.

The good side also uses media to get the message out about the fight for heaven and earth. Cheng hacks into the GCNN to allow Chaim to speak to nonbelievers in hopes of converting them before the coming of Christ. He also uses it to keep tabs on the battle around the world.

Jesus Christ is the only person who communicates with everyone on a personal level without the use of technology. In his infinite power, he is able to send messages to everyone on earth, first there is the cross in the sky and then later when he revisits earth. He becomes clearly visible to everyone no matter their locatio. He speaks to everyone, using his or her name, simultaneously. It is here LaHaye and Jenkins set Christ apart from Satan.

My dear mother suggested this link for the class: http://news.aol.com/article/world-wont-end-in-2012-mayans-insist/713074?icid=main|main|dl6|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fworld-wont-end-in-2012-mayans-insist%2F713074

(It’s also under links.)

It totally sucks to be Mayan right now.

I enjoyed the after-film discussion with you and want to thank you for your industrious ability to forge for food. I’ve written to ask Michael about the pizza, so I hope that next time the plan will go smoother.

In the meantime, I continued to ponder our discussion on Angels and also things not yet discussed–especially the theme of love, as manifest between Prior and Louis initially as lovers and later as friends, for example, or Roy’s declarations of fatherly love for Joe, or how Harper’s love for Joe was debilitating since unreturned in the way she wanted and needed, or Belize’s love for Prior, which Louis had misread. These are reflected in themes of God’s love, or lack of it, for human beings, and Joe’s father’s lack of love for him. Also, the play develops the theme in terms of how love makes us vulnerable to manipulation by another. This connects as well with the importance of death rituals that Angela wrote about, since they are a communal act of public love for the one who has died.

So, any thoughts on these themes?

Hi everyone, I thought I would write a general blog to comment on some of your entries for this week, which are already prompting (maybe provoking!) lively discussion.  For class, I think it would helpful for each of you to choose a scene (or part of one) that you want to read in class—you can ask others to play certain roles, but you should prepare at least one character to do and indicate what is important about that scene and character. 

Ariana raised the interesting point about what constitutes an apocalypse in terms of scale of suffering.  I was intrigued by this in part because she also made a clear set of designations for how Angels fits with the 5 component parts of Apocalypse.  The argument for strict labeling has been made by Amos Funkenstein, a biblical historian, who indicates that “apocalypse in the full sense of the word, a balance of myth, method, and way of life, existed only for about 200 years, and formed a unique mentality.”  Most historians say this is too narrow an understanding and even he concedes that its “captivating” story has “remained a constant theme.” (I’m drawing these quotes from my discussion of this issue in my book Anti-Apocalypse).  Remember that Rosen distinguishes between apocalyptic myth and narrative (xxi) and is interested in pointing out the ways that apocalyptic narrative has evolved over time.  In other words, to say that a “local” calamity is not sufficient to qualify is to miss the way that apocalypse is drawn on to tell a certain kind of story.  Moore used it to characterize Cold War nuclear rivalry, for example.  So, rather than disqualify the US AIDS epidemic and Angels as not sufficiently apocalyptic, it’s more to the point to ask what the effect is of using the apocalyptic narrative to relay a certain set of messages. John of Patmos was writing at a time when the yet to be Christians of the Jesus sect were persecuted—but the numbers of that group were not so great either.  The question of “local” scale is one that we should discuss further in class, and for information about numbers of people who died from AIDS and living with AIDS or HIV, here is a website: http://www.avert.org/usa-statistics.htm

Angela has raised the issue of great journeys and how the opening scene functions in this regard.  What I was struck by was her rethinking the message of the Rabbi—which is what I think Kushner prompts us to do in precisely the way Angela points out.  And Leah’s insight about the pun on the Rabbi’s name and the Polish city of Chelm is part of that too, since the city is a shorthand way of poking fun at the Rabbi who thus becomes associated with the “fools” of that city. 

Jahneille has opened up for us one of Kushner’s primary themes, by way of David Savran (I saw him last evening at Macaulay and he seemed pleased when I told him that she had read and used his essay): “One resounding theme in Theses, according to Savran, is the binary of the future vs. the present. He refers to progression of the painful and imperfect reality that is now while comparing it to the hope provided by the future.”  This insight will help guide us toward the implications of millennialism, a key part of the history of apocalyptic thought.  Here is the quote from Walter Benjamin’s essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History” that inspired Kushner:

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

Leah’s entry takes up this theme of millennial hope beautifully to show how the quest for a new kind of citizenship is the struggle of the play.  For class, let’s discuss the traits of this new citizenship, which is to be a different way of seeing the world from the perceptions of Reagan’s America that the play challenges, but also distinct from the apocalyptic certainty of the World’s Oldest Living Bolshevik at the beginning of the second play.  Priya has also pointed to Joe’s struggle as wrestling with angels and demons and this gets to—along with the character of Roy Cohn—the plight of being forced into the closet as gay men.  What happens when that struggle turns inward into self-loathing, and/or in Cohn’s case to hatred so intense that he sees himself above the law—and humanity?

Daniel’s entry has already elicited several responses and it will be useful to raise these issues in class for further discussion: the uses of humor and caricature and/or stereotype, the role of guilt in personal and collective actions (or inaction), and oppositions between individualism and communalism.  Be sure to read Kushner’s afterword, which touches on some of these.  

See you Tuesday!

Angels in America was truly a difficult and depressing read for me. In order to help explicate the many themes and issues that arose in the play I consulted a compilation of essays written about the play. One particular essay that I read was David Savran’s: Ambivalence, Utopia and a Queer sort of Materialism: How Angels In America Reconstructs the Nation. He explores many of the issues that surface in both of Kushner’s plays but I focused largely upon his take on the approaching millennia and the utopia envisioned by the characters. First, Savran argues that the inspiration for Angels’ utopia was taken from a twentieth century philosopher (Walter Benjamin) Theses in the Philosophy of History.  I have not read Theses but I am sure that it could only provide greater insight into the thinking that went into writing this play. One resounding theme in Theses, according to Savran, is the binary of the future vs. the present. He refers to progression of the painful and imperfect reality that is now while comparing it to the hope provided by the future. One such representation of the future appears in the form of the angel at the end of the first play. Another example is provided by the character of Prior Walter who is called as a prophet at the end of the play. Prophets see into the future and reveal its secrets to others. But even with his higher calling I wonder how long will he be mired in the pain and eventual death of the present. In spite of a grasp of the future and his gifting, his name is Prior. He is constantly visited by his forefathers reminding him of what was without alluding to what will be. This is of course a very brief summary of the author’s argument and his take on the borrowed philosophy behind the play. Once again the play was a heavy read and at times the issues raised in this essay were even heavier. However, I received some insight into the play that I would have largely overlooked during my own exploration.

Creative Project Proposal

The following is a working plot for my short story. This plot will, very likely, change through out the course of this semester:

In the year 2015, Islamic fundamentalists gained access to the atomic bomb. However, as the whole world waited for a nuclear explosion nothing happened. The American CIA developed and deployed (just in time) a neurotoxin that affected their capacity for emotion (positive or negative). With their passion for martyrdom gone, the terrorists were harmless.
Governments around the world see the potential for such a compound and, soon enough, the medication has begun to creep into the food supply (disguised as essential vitamins and minerals). The only capacity that humans are left with in this world is that of pleasure because “pleasure” is the result of much more primitive brain mechanisms. People do things because it feels good and not because they can anticipate long-term goals. Society is kept in line with severe punishments since humans since perceive pain very well.
This concept of the “normal” becomes the intellectual goal of the individuals in this society. In this constant search for normalcy, people have no time to consider any other philosophical problems. The only goal of academia is to make people more “normal.” There are no artists in this world because the chemicals make creative expression much more difficult.
However, despite the fact that humans do not have emotion, they do seem to want something other than this mundane life. A very small minority yearned for a Messiah to bring them into a world where thoughts and life was not so structured.

Recommended Readings for Research and Projects

Boyer, Paul. When Time Shall Be No More, Harvard UP, 1992

Cohn, Norman. Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come

The Pursuit of the Millennium, 1957

Frykholm, Amy Johnson.  Rapture Culture, Oxford UP 2004 (on Left Behind Series)

Fuller, Robert.. Naming the Anti-Christ, Oxford UP 1995

Gould, Stephen Jay. Questioning the Millennium, Harmony books, 1997

Guyatt, Nicholas. Have a Nice Doomsday. Harper Perrennial, 2007

Keller, Catherine. Apocalypse Now and Then, Beacon Press, 1996

God and Power, Fortress Press, 2005

Kermode, Frank. The Sense of An Ending, Oxford UP, 1967 (reissued 2000)

LaHaye, Tim, and Jerry Jenkins.  Novels from the Left Behind Series

Lifton, Robert Jay.  Super Power Syndrome, Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003

Long, Thomas.  AIDS and American Apocalypticism, SUNY Press, 2005

Kirsch, Jonathan,  A History of the End of the World, HarperOne, 2007

Manley, Roger, et al. The End is Near, Dilettante Press, 1999 (artwork and essays)

MacDonald, Andrew. The Turner Diaries

O’Leary, Stephen. Arguing the Apocalypse, Oxford UP 1994

Pippin, Tina. Apocalyptic Bodies, Routledge, NYC, 1999

Pinchbeck, Daniel. 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.  Penguin,2007.

Quinby, Lee. Anti-Apocalypse, Minnesota UP, 1994

Millennial Seduction, Cornell UP 1999

Vaughan, Brian K. Y: The Last Man, Vertigo Series

Weber, Eugen. Apocalypses, Harvard UP, 1999

John Wallis, “Celling the End Times”

Weissman, Alan. The World Without Us. St. Martin’s Press, 2007

Wojcik, Daniel. The End of the World as We Know It, New York UP

Selected Online Sites

Countdown to Armageddon, http://www.countdown.org/

Journal of Millennial Studies (Special Issue) http://www.mille.org/publications/summer99.html

New Internationalist Magazine, issue on Anti-Semitism and Conspiracism

http://www.publiceye.org/antisemitism/newint.html

PBS Frontline on Apocalypse,

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/

Rapture Ready, http://www.raptureready.com/

Vice Magazine Survival Guide, http://www.viceland.com/int/guide_apocalypse/htdocs/survivalism_az.php?country=us

Journal of Religion and Film, http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/

From Professor Quinby, Please take a look at this video from the Daily Kos: