Identity and Community in Postapocalyptic Science Fiction After 9/11 Jeremy J
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University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 12-2014 Monsters in Common: Identity and Community in Postapocalyptic Science Fiction After 9/11 Jeremy J. Burns University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Burns, Jeremy J., "Monsters in Common: Identity and Community in Postapocalyptic Science Fiction After 9/11" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 2138. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/2138 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Monsters in Common: Identity and Community in Postapocalyptic Science Fiction After 9/11 Monsters in Common: Identity and Community in Postapocalyptic Science Fiction After 9/11 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Jeremy Joseph Burns Arkansas Tech University Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and English, 2003 University of Arkansas Master of Arts in English, 2009 December 2014 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. __________________________ Dr. M. Keith Booker Dissertation Director __________________________ __________________________ Dr. Robin Roberts Dr. Lisa Hinrichsen Committee Member Committee Member Abstract In the aftermath 11 September, 2001, postapocalyptic science fiction has offered a way to make sense of the events of that day, as well as the years of social, cultural and political upheaval that have followed. In many ways, 9/11 began immediately to take on apocalyptic significance in the American national narrative, seemingly marking the end of one period and the beginning of another, entirely different one. To think of 9/11 as a kind of apocalyptic break with the past, however, does not tell the whole story. Moreover, such thinking denies key historical linkages between the American response to 9/11 and to earlier moments of crisis or catastrophe, particularly during the latter half of the twentieth century. After 9/11, conversations about security quickly turned to discussions of the concepts of identity and community—discussions that recall the social, cultural and political pressures of the 1950s and the Cold War. Within this horizon, this study explores the ways in which postapocalyptic science fiction after 9/11 examines the limits and consequences of social, cultural and political definitions of identity and community in the dominant American narrative. Looking at the close symbolic relationship between masculine identity and the figure of the hero in postapocalyptic science fiction, I argue that postapocalyptic science fiction after 9/11 represents a cultural space dedicated to imagining new ways of thinking about identity and community, predominantly by deconstructing the traditional relationship between the twinned figures of man and monster. Indeed, such a focus is also evident in postapocalyptic science fiction from the 1950s onward, such that, when considered from a historical perspective, postapocalyptic science fiction after 9/11 participates in a rich tradition of using vampires, zombies and other monsters to explore the dangers of holding too tightly to a single definition of identity, as well as to promote the value of community. Acknowledgements I am deeply thankful for everyone who has supported and sustained me during the writing of this dissertation. I owe a debt of gratitude to my exemplary committee. M. Keith Booker is without equal in his knowledge of science fiction and in his commitment to his students. I could not have found a more inspiring advisor. Likewise, I am especially honored that Robin Roberts took me in as a doctoral student the very first time we met—a kindness that I have always thought amounted to a professional leap of faith. Finally, Lisa Hinrichsen is, without doubt, faster on the draw than anyone I’ve met. I have lost count of the number of times that a seemingly simple remark from her has opened new lines of thinking and inquiry in my work and sent me to live among the library stacks for days on end. I could not have asked for a better community of scholars than these three. I also wish to thank Emily Bernhard Jackson for her tireless belief in me, her kindness, her wit and her uncanny sense of what makes good prose. Though she does not know it, this whole project started in one of her classes. I also owe thanks to my fellow travelers Jacob Lewis, Grant Bain, Mary Leigh and Sam Daily. To my father, mother and sister—I wouldn’t have ended up doing what I do without the many evenings we spent together watching re-runs of Star Trek. Especially to my dad, who never hesitated to bring home rentals of Flight of the Navigator or The Last Starfighter—thanks for letting me have my head in the stars when I was a kid. And, most of all, I simply would not be here without Elizabeth Burns, my remarkable wife, who valiantly suffered through an endless parade of B movies and zombie flicks while never failing to challenge my thinking on any film we watched (I still think you’re wrong about A Boy and His Dog, though). For a guy who has spent his whole life dreaming about other worlds, I never once imagined I would end up living in one quite so good as the one you’ve given me. Dedication For Liam and for Elizabeth. Table of Contents I. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….1 A. Chapter One: Living in the Wasteland: The Limits and Promises of Community…………………………………………………………..…………………..24 B. Chapter Two: Dissonant Heroics and (Un)Learned Identity in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend………………………………………………………………………………..….47 C. Chapter Three: Return to Normal: Negotiating Risk and Connection in the Zombie Apocalypse…………………………………………………………………………….…78 D. Chapter Four: “Because You are Different”: Dystopian Suffering and the Apocalyptic Body……………………………………………………………………………...……..107 E. Conclusion: The Truth(s) of the Other: Escaping the Boundaries of the Same in Neill Blomkamp’s District 9………………………………………………………………….129 F. Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….146 INTRODUCTION “Risk and adventure must be re-invented against safety and comfort.” —Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love Since 11 September 2001, postapocalyptic science fiction has served as a way of making sense not only of the events of 9/11, but also the cultural and political aftermaths of that day that have gone on to shape the fabric of everyday life in America. Popular representations of 9/11 have consistently borrowed imagery from stories of the apocalypse, images mined as much from the Christian tradition as from science fiction. Such a postmodern mediation of disaster is typical in the American imagination, in which fiction and religious myth often serve as the closest analog for historical events (Quinby 2).1 On the level of popular culture, however, works of science fiction have repeatedly engaged debates over the political, cultural and social meaning (and memory) of 9/11, and, in so doing, many of these texts have drawn into sharp relief the inadequacies and dangers of the apocalyptic imagination that so often underwrites the dominant American perspective on identity, difference and the practice of community. If, as Darko Suvin once argued, science fiction offers “a mapping of possible alternatives” (12), then science fiction after 9/11 has often imagined alternatives to a political, cultural and social status quo that seems unable to move beyond an apocalyptic reckoning of America’s place in the world. The apocalyptic imagination that has suffused American politics after 9/11 is not a recent development but is deeply imbricated with a Christian tradition oriented toward a (political) desire to elaborate clear distinctions between the righteous self and the abject other. In the 1 Fredric Jameson argues that the experience of viewing the events of 9/11 recalled, for many, a similar experience of watching special effects in a film. For more, see Jameson, “The Dialectics of Disaster.” 2 For an extended discussion of the apocalyptic imagination in 1950s American science fiction, 1 languages of religious eschatology as much as conservative political rhetoric, such distinctions are invariably cast in a binary of good and evil (Berger 5; Cohn, Cosmos 227; Quinby 2). In the wake of 9/11, the American apocalyptic imagination resurfaced in the rhetoric of the war on terror and in the political abstractions that have often served to legitimize violence against others who do not fit an idealized image of civilized identity (Butler, Precarious 1-15). In addition to reinscribing the Christian apocalyptic tradition into contemporary politics and culture, the atmosphere of post-9/11 America recalls the more recent cultural miasma of the 1950s and the Cold War—a historical period itself deeply concerned with the rhetoric of apocalypse and with overarching questions about the role of American identity in a global community. In each cultural period, conservative iterations of national identity have remained oriented toward the idea that, in resisting the threats facing America (whether commies or terrorists), the goal has seemingly been not only defense, but also the protection of a particular way of life. Within this perspective, postapocalyptic science