One aspect of genre cinema which has always captured my curiosity and imagination, is that of the Post-Apocalypse sub-genre. The idea of the end of the world as we know it, not so much the complete total destruction and blowing up of the earth, more the idea of the isolation, loneliness and desperation that comes in aftermath and the people who survive such cataclysmic and apocalyptic events.
How would a person or group of people would survive without the creature comforts afforded to us by the 20th century? Just these past 3 years, we all seemed to be living out one such scenario with the Covid -19 Pandemic, millions of people sadly died and millions of people showed their true colours and humanity. It seemed, and this is just from my POV, that when the proverbial shit, did indeed hit the fan, people went crazy, panic buying, looting, hardcore religious nuts and the rise in what appeared to be full on, hardcore privilege abusers in regards to the wearing of masks and the so-called Social Media scientists, false news spreaders and a total disregard for the safety of others. At the early stages of Covid, I found myself in a panic, not much information was available to the public, because not a lot of information was available full stop. It was a new virus, something we as a collective species were ill equipped to manage. The world quickly got into the swing of things in regards to a vaccine and now, 3 years later, while covid is still an issue, it’s an issue in the same way that the common flu is. It’s unfortunately something we just have to live with.
Movies and TV on the other hand, always portray a virus or pandemic as an end of the world type scenario, completely ignoring the fact that modern medicine and scientists, can and will do anything to save us as a species, no praying to god, just a bloke or a woman or whatever people like to identify as these day, in a lab, working tirelessly to discover a new miracle cure. Films always opt for the more depressing and alarming outcome. 99% of the earths population gets wiped out, leaving the surviving 1% left on our little space rock, to fend for ourselves.
So why does this idea of complete isolation, loneliness and desperation appeal to me so much? That is a question that I find extremely hard to answer. It could be something to do with my social anxiety, finding it hard to be around large groups of people, maybe it’s to do with my fascination with self sufficiency, living off the land, off grid and away from people. People are, for the most part the primary instigators of the total world wide destruction of the planet, with the exception of mother nature and giant space rocks crashing into the earth. Be it nuclear war, man made viruses, complete economical, social and political collapse, zombie apocalypse, these tropes of PA cinema tend to happen due to the shenanigans of man, and while an asteroid or natural disaster are scary thoughts, nothing is scarier than the idea of some people messing about in a lab, making stuff that could, in a very real way, wipe us off the face of the earth.
This brings me to the reason for this insanely ambitious, not so much blog, but more an essay on the history and cinematic journey the end of the world has taken since Mary Shelly wrote The Last Man in 1826, a novel which most regard as the first “post-apocalyptic” fiction, and all the way up to our current day films and shows like HBO’s brilliant adaptation of the Naughty Dog video game, The Last Of Us (2023) and last years farewell to the cultural phenomenon and comic book adaptation, The Walking Dead (2010-2022).
This essay is broken up into parts or chapters, each focusing on a specific decade but starting pre-1930s with some well known and influential fiction books.
So if you fancy learning something new and discovering a lot of new and maybe under seen or “lost” PA movies and shows, I invite you to follow the progress as this is a massive undertaking for me, something I’ve always wanted to do and now feel I have the so-called knowledge to deep dive into an often derided but definitely underrated sub-genre.
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