Apocalypse is contemporary when the catastrophe is felt as already underway rather than imminent
Evidence
Firstly, the film is dominated by the sense that the damage has been done. The catastrophe is neither waiting down the road, nor has it already happened. Rather, it is being lived through. There is no punctual moment of disaster; the world doesn’t end with a bang, it winks out, unravels, gradually falls apart. What caused the catastrophe to occur, who knows; its cause lies long in the past, so absolutely detached from the present as to seem like the caprice of a malign being: a negative miracle, a malediction which no penitence can ameliorate. Such a blight can only be eased by an intervention that can no more be anticipated than was the onset of the curse in the first place. Action is pointless; only senseless hope makes sense. Superstition and religion, the first resorts of the helpless, proliferate. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 556
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The ‘damage has been done, being lived through’ apocalypse — no punctual disaster, but a long unwinding where action is pointless and only senseless hope makes sense — captures a zeitgeist structure that resists one-sentence summary.
- XREF: connects to: Millennium and apocalypse differ yet usually interlock in catastrophic millennialism — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 1063; The sixties apocalyptic sense of imminent upheaval is now barely accessible — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 672; Late-capitalist dystopia depicts catastrophe as an ongoing lived condition rather than a punctual event — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 7 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Passive drift toward disaster can feel seductive rather than frightening
#qualifies(0.80) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 293 - People can simultaneously dread and desire the catastrophic events they anticipate
#expands(0.80) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 509 - A foreshortened temporal perspective blinds people to accumulating catastrophe
#corroborates(0.75) - Enframing the present with futures-forecasting habits defuses the shock of imagined catastrophe
#complicates(0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 624 - Catastrophe etymologically means curvature, not annihilation
#complicates(0.72) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 285 - Even pragmatic acceptance conceals unconscious existential dread about global catastrophe.
#complicates(0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 351