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Text//Ian Clayton
The End is Nigh
Picture this: a ghost in a cloth sack mask is beamed down from a spaceship during a solar eclipse. Meteors hit the rising tides at sunset and I’d call it breathtaking but for the super-virus that’s already taken your breath. Scared yet? This is a slice of media that particularly interests me. People love to feel fear. As one of our innate emotions, fear has always been close at hand, but it has recently taken a new face. When I say recently I do not mean the face of the approaching job interview or deadline, I mean recently on the timeline of humanity; we have rid ourselves of a number of primal fears that used to dominate life. Bears are scary, doubtless, but unless you’re Timothy Treadwell you don’t have to face that fear on a daily basis. Paleolithic man had many such worries—the howling of a wolf at night, the scent of infection, poisonous plants and of course death itself. With the advent of modernity we have escaped many of these physical dangers and, therefore, the fear that they foster. Death remains the ultimate fear and, arguably, the basis of all others—but let’s leave that topic aside for a moment. Today our fears have moved further into the realm of the abstract: economical and social anxieties (public speaking is terrifying to many). What I see in the media today is a desire to reclaim these carnal fears, to feel them without the danger present and be reminded that we are, after all, mortal. Horror movies. That’s too easy. More compelling is the rising tide of documentary style television shows that play upon our innate fears: Armageddon, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Finding Bigfoot, Ancient Aliens, or even When Vacations Attack. These shows seem to cheat towards the nonfiction end of the spectrum. Freddy vs. Jason they are not, but neither are they NOVA documentaries. These shows inhabit a niche wherein minor suspension of disbelief can allow for fear based in “fact.” The apocalypse is coming—we all know that. When science tells us our galaxy spirals a black hole, this conclusion is inevitable. But given that the the Mayans predicted that it’s coming in a few short months, though, the news is a bit more arresting.
march
Apocalypse Island is an episode in the History Channel’s Armageddon series. This show attempts to provide some believable (note my avoidance of the term “credible”) analysis of history, geography and archeology in order to make us jump and gasp. The first and most important technique is the narrator, Robert Davi who has acted in such films as Verdict in Blood, The Butcher, and Game of Death. Following the dramatic narration, any show about the apocalypse must have a terrifying, drum-heavy soundtrack with plenty of unsettling ambient drone. Mentioning such lofty and indisputable concepts as the cosmos, ancient civilizations and the Mayan calendar lends the show its authority. Jargon is carefully chosen: the word “final” is used as often as possible, as well as the phrase “before it’s too late.” Add in a mystery element to the whole thing; it’s a puzzle to be solved. The Mayans left us (Americans) a message to decode so that we might save ourselves by purchasing freeze-dried beef and canned corn. With such dire predictions being aired on national television, I am left wondering who is cashing in. The first and most obvious answer is the television networks. It seems a contradiction to me that the History Channel would air shows about the future (impending doom), but as evidenced by the recurrence of these shows, they clearly bring viewers. The Travel Channel has started to hop on board the disaster train, as well as National Geographic with its new show Doomsday Preppers. Herein I see the most obvious exploitation of doomsday fears. According to their website, in this show we see a number of “otherwise ordinary Americans” (just like you) “preparing for the end of the world as we know it” by purchasing survival equipment. The message I’m getting here is “BUY”. Not surprising in our capitalist society, but I have to wonder what I’ll do with all those rations, guns and oil lanterns once January 2013 rolls around. The same thing I did with all those water sanitation tablets after Y2K, I suppose. The end of times is trendy, no doubt about it. After General Motor’s Super Bowl ad featuring a post-apocalyptic city dominated by their vehicle, it’s clear that no area of media resists cashing in on this phenomenon. If people want to be afraid, what better way to do so than to herald the coming destruction? If they happen to buy some things along the way, all the better. Perhaps Nostradamus was more marketing wizard than prophet.
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