Tuesday 8 February 2011

Disaster attraction

Why crave apocalypse tales? Why watch Charlton and Mel grapple doom-spawned vampires and leather-clad crazies? Why pursue the ash-strewn trails of Viggo and Don (Tiger too), only to end up hunkered down in a craterish bed sitting room waiting to thumb a lift from Ralph in his horse-drawn Rolls?

If all is truly lost, why seek perverse delight in this end of all ends? Is our hope to hang out with Ish, that Last American? Do we seek an audience with the Walkin' Dude? In planning our odyssey, what route should we map across the Cursed Earth? Damnation Alley looks likely enough, but if you want to get along after the bomb be sure to watch out for Hoppy. And, however hungry you are, don't patronise the Delicatessen.

Why then the lust for liquidation? Why the delight in demise? Why count the days, all the way down to the day of days? Armageddon, Ragnarok, 2012 ... have you made your choice? Is it redemption you seek? Catharsis? Is that a bang I hear or a whimper? Do you hail the great tearing-down for mere gratification, or in the hope of seeing all rebuilt? After the end, the beginning?

Or could it be that the broken world is simply simpler than this muffled reality through which we roam eternally confused? Might it be not the grey-ash wasteland we ache for but pure black and and its companion white? Is the apocalypse, after all, dream or despair?

Discuss.

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