Aniara: Mankind’s Self-Destruction and False Hopes Xu Ke ABSTRACT A review of the film Aniara, placing it in conversation with science fiction works released between the original 1956 poem and the 2018 film adaptation. Introduction the death of the Earth? What does Aniara is originally an epic poem technology bring us? Is it certainty written by Swedish author Harry always effective? What’s human’s Martinson from 1956, a response to position among the universe? What is the hydrogen bomb test at that time. killing our future? The story is set in a time when the Man’s Eternal Instinct for Destruction Earth has been destroyed and One of the most shocking scenes humans migrate to Mars. One of the in Aniara is when Mima, a high-tech transport spaceships, Aniara, is forced product which can access human’s off course by a piece of space trash memory banks and transports the on its way to Mars and loses all of its humans back to their most beautiful fuel. It then carries passengers to drift memory of Earth, blasts itself by toward the vast darkness of space poetically pouring out its sorrows: without any way of returning. Hugo “My conscience aches for the stones, Lilja and Pella Kagerman adapted it I’ve heard them cry their stonely cry, into a film and released it in 2018. The seen the granite’s white-hot weeping, film version of Aniara is delicately I’ve been troubled by their pains. In constructed into nine chapters all of the name of things, I want peace.” which are marked by timestamps, Mima is a substitute for the Earth— allowing spectators to observe how the lost paradise. According to time changes the passengers on Martinson, “Mima” is derived from board. The passengers suffer several the Latin word “Mimus,” which is the rounds of false hope “attacks,” when name of the mockingbird. It they think they can return to Mars, to represents human’s conscience— reunite with their families, but reality bringing comfort. However, when the soon puts out the flame of hope. In spaceship is off-course, passengers such a desperate situation, Ariana flock in to greedily use it, not even elicits the introspection of humans, thinking for a second about whether questioning humanity: what caused this will overstretch Mima. Without Screen Studies Quarterly 51 Xu permission to rest, Mima (through its Defend the Uncertainty: Ambiguous human agent) kills herself. Memory and False Hope In Aniara, we learn that humans Eric O. Johannesson reviews destroyed their home planet once, Harry Martinson’s original epic poem and through Mima’s death, they Aniara and states: destroyed the Earth again, which The great enemy of life is the hints at the dark ending of human tendency to encompass life in a extinction on Aniara. The formula...The picture it paints of the accentuation of human’s desire to universe in which man lives is cold and destroy themselves is so prominent mathematical, a world of concepts in that it can be further reflected in one which human wishes and dreams have of the characters—the astronomer. no place. The airplane has given man Notably, she has her own a contempt for the art of travel and desperation, as spectators first know robbed him of anticipations that her as a divorced woman who does slower means of locomotion afforded. not have a care in the world. She is Thus, the sense of adventure is lost: a always the first one to spread bad journey is a mere routine (1960). news, which then causes panic and Johannesson notes that exactness, suicides on the spaceship. She is an precision and clarity have alienated us alcoholic, which can also be seen as a from life and the world, we humans way of self-destruction. A similar have no mysteries, no imagination, as concern is delivered in the film everything is being explained. In Annihilation (2018), when the Aniara, it is only when the Earth psychologist discusses with the becomes a lost paradise do humans protagonist Lena that human realize the wonder of it. They cherish behaviors such as smoking, their memory of the Earth, partly alcoholism, and being unsettled in a because “memory” itself is indeed an relationship (like marriage) are the unreliable source. As it is interwoven most common representations of with various subjective feelings, it mankind’s desire towards self- becomes unclear and can be destruction. Based on this, later on, modified to some extent. The we consider the pursuit of high intellectuals on Aniara have to suffer technology, the search for scientific more as they are educated to believe exactness as another part of human’s in the data, and they trust in the desire for self-destruction. certainties instead of their own feelings. So, we see the astronomer 52 April 2021 Vol. 1.4 Aniara suffering a nervous breakdown and the future can bring hope. The becoming an alcoholic, as she is controversy is mostly placed in the unable to forego expectation, and is character, Captain Chefone. He is haunted by the “nightmare of clarity.” described as the darkest thing on A similar concern is displayed in Earth, the most evil person in Ted Chiang’s short story The Truth of Martinson’s original epic poem, as he Fact, the Truth of Feeling (2013), keeps lying to the passengers, giving where the characters live in a not so them false hope to maintain his far away future where they wear absolute control in Aniara. The “Remem” to keep lifelogs. The captain’s actor Arvin Kananian jokes equipment records all the things they in an interview saying that: “I thought see and hear, and when one of the about, say, Trump or Putin.” “memories” is mentioned, Remem (Kananian, Ross) brings up relevant videos. With the On the one hand, the equipment everything seems certain, uncertainties do bring hope. A similar but in fact, people lose their feelings, scene can be seen in the film Ikarie XB which is maybe the most precious 1 (1963), when the spaceship crew part of memory. For instance, suffers unknown radiation from a someone may have a blurry, warm mystery black celestial body, falling memory from their childhood, when into a state of unconsciousness one their mother held them tight in her by one; they have no idea whether arms while singing lullabies with a they will awake after the spaceship warm smile. However, with the auto-navigates them away from the equipment recording the “correct black star. The captain expresses his past” like Remem, upon reviewing optimistic attitude stating: this memory, he may find that his “Fortunately, man is not as perfect as mother was simply holding him, while a machine. Therefore, he has nothing she was busy doing other things. left than to hope and believe.” He Perhaps, the weather that day was praises “uncertainty” as the bad, which makes the scene look peculiarity of mankind, as it reminds grey, so his warm feeling about his us that there is always a bright side. mother is destroyed. On the other hand, the uncertainties Besides representing the benefits allow false hopes to slip in. In Aniara, of the memory’s uncertainty, the film Captain Chefone keeps making up Aniara also attempts to elicit the lies to maintain order on the question of whether uncertainty of spaceship, in doing so, he even kills the astronomer. The passengers who Screen Studies Quarterly 53 Xu are being given false hope are in human’s abilities. Meanwhile, she is cheered up for a short time, but they subdued by the vastness of the then fall into deeper desperation universe and considers human’s again and again, and some even existence to be meaningless. When commit suicide. Similar false hope is she explains to Mimarobe about the commonly seen in our daily life, these impossibility of relying on a celestial are the propaganda slogans, the body’s gravity to turn them back on advertisements, and the perfect the original track, she says: “It’s so images on social media. Lost in the peripheral, what we’re doing, It’s so abundant information on the Internet, futile, so meaningless. You see this people in this era keep losing their bubble? If you think of it as Aniara, ability to admire uncertainties. There maybe you will understand the is a formula of being beautiful, vastness of space. Even if we move at successful, and happy, and they are an incredible speed, it’s as if we’re so concrete that all we have to do is standing perfectly still.” When they follow them. Humans have become encounter a possible fuel probe, and more like machines, who are neat and it later turns out that it is some alien uniform, however, we have lost a technology that humans are too wider sense of what exactly happens backward to understand, it further around us. There are weather crises destroys her beliefs, and causes her to on the news discussed on the have a breakdown. It is like two Internet, but take-out service pop-up possibilities of The Fermi Paradox are advertisements seem closer to us. combined in this one character. This is also a pivotal theme in Aniara A similar transition process can be as we see the horrible scenes of the seen in Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Earth being destroyed in the Problem Trilogy (2008-2010). Liu’s passengers’ memory and how first and second books depict a mankind laments the Earth’s death. variety of dazzling advanced Powerful or Impotent: Two Poles of technologies that future mankind Future Human Imaginations creates as a means to defend the In terms of uncertainty, the Earth from the threat of a belligerent desperate astronomer in Aniara is a extraterrestrial civilization.