Doom and Gloom Guaranteed

In this provocative, passionate, and uncompromising brief book, professor of English Gwendolyn Audrey Foster does not mince words: humanity is definitely doomed, and it’s a good thing. The currently unfolding ecological catastrophe is bound to eventually wipe us off the face of the planet, and Foster, a self-described radical environmentalist, hopes that, once depeopled, the earth will be able to eventually heal itself. But before all this comes to pass, it is (presumably) still worthwhile to analyze the cultural foibles of a human civilization on the eve of destruction, and so Foster sets out in this book to examine what she calls the “apocotainment” pervasive in the American(ized) culture that is morbidly, tellingly fascinated with death, suffering, and its own impending demise.Given the (rather puzzling) absence of an introduction, the first of the book’s five thematic chapters, titled “Disposable Bodies,” begins by briefly explaining that the author’s aim is to explore “some of the themes that circulate around our apocalyptic obsessed culture, which has grown to the point that both permeates and informs our lives” (2). To begin the review on a structural note, the organization of this exploration is fairly fluid and amorphous; the boundaries of the five chapters (there is also no conclusion) appear almost as an afterthought imposed upon the often meandering prose. (On occasion, Foster momentarily relaxes her focus on the culture of the apocalypse to indulge side conversations on topics close to her heart, such as the inhumane—or all too human, for her—treatment of animals like the “Blackfish” orca Tilikum, to whom the book is dedicated.) To compensate for the lack of a more formal structure, each chapter is prefaced by an abstract composed of a list of keywords and keyphrases, but many of these, it seems, could easily be moved around and still apply, since Foster leaves behind themes and texts to pick them again in later chapters, in different contexts. Subheadings would have been helpful.The book’s main themes—hyperconsumption, gluttony, and above all, a cultural preoccupation with death and torture—are examined primarily in relation to recent reality TV shows, starting with I Was Impaled and 1000 Ways to Die. According to Foster, these shows appropriate tropes from horror films, but unlike those films, the shows lack a clearly defined narrative structure and well-defined heroes and villains, hence they lack “any moral complexity, emotional richness, or resolution” (7). The deaths they depict are exploited for “sick kicks,” a form of “gallows humor” that Foster clearly disapproves of (though she admits at one point that 1000 Ways to Die is so absurd and over-the-top that it might be “a self-reflexive parody”). Ultimately, for Foster, such “family friendly torture porn” or “apocotainment” is nothing but “televisual excrement” produced by and for a culture obsessed with death, not life, “dominated not by Eros, but by Thanatos . . . one of brutal fascistic pleasure, a culture at home with genocide, pain, death, torture and the destruction of the planet and all forms of life” (5).Above all, Foster laments that such shows normalize and trivialize the death and suffering of others. But this is not the only critique she levels; in later parts of the book, Foster condemns the gluttony advocated by Paula Deen on her cooking shows; the media’s exploitation of communal grief following the deaths of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston; and the exploitation of children such as Honey Boo Boo and the young girls on Toddlers and Tiaras. These shows do not easily fit into the category of “apocotainment,” but for Foster, they are all “repellent,” “ghoulish,” and “astonishingly exploitative.”It is certainly hard to disagree that today’s reality TV is often appallingly exploitative; however, Foster’s broad-based critique of these shows as “mindless and formulaic” and “depraved” sometimes veers into preachiness; perhaps more importantly, it is not very original and does not tell us much that is new about the “apocalyptic mindset” and associated culture. Critiques of the cultural debasement promoted by reality TV abound amid this postmodern condition; what is more, the cultural “appetite for cruel amusement” (8) to which Fosters so ardently objects can be dated back to the bloody circuses of antiquity. Moreover, in her critique of media’s role in promoting this appetite, Foster succumbs on occasion to crude media behaviorism, as exemplified by her belief that the “lack of empathy that is generated by one show is only multiplied exponentially when the show is presented for hours on end in these marathon family friendly events” (11). As critical communication scholars recognized long ago, the media’s influence on audiences is never so direct and straightforward.Another show Foster analyzes is National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers, which profiles individuals gathering supplies and readying their families for selected end-of-times scenarios. This show represents, to Foster’s mind, “a decided return to Cold War values” (26). Shifting into a psychoanalytic mode, she relates the Cold War fear, hysteria, and paranoia to a crisis of masculinity experienced by the collective American unconscious (when America felt emasculated and had to prove itself a strong, manly nation in the world). She finds evidence of this by analyzing “Atom Age hysteria films,” such as Invasion U.S.A. and Red Nightmare, which demarcate “the through-line to prepping as a form of overcompensation around the fear of emasculation of the nation” (21). The rise of the prepper “lifestyle” makes sense, she argues, given American culture’s roots in fear and lack of empathy, indoctrinated during the Cold War and the rise of the military-industrial complex. Unsurprisingly, Foster is critical of doomsday prepping, as an activity “demonstrably related to a lack of empathy for others as much as it is related to the pathology of ethnocentrism. It is by nature selfish, macho, reclusive, and paranoid; the inverse of the hippie commune lifestyle” (27).Foster is also critical of hoarding as a related activity motivated by fear, but she is clearly and properly sympathetic toward the victims of the show Hoarders, which applies a thin veneer of concerned helpfulness to its representation of hoarders as disgusting freaks. Foster offers an effective anticonsumerist reading of Hoarders that contains one of the most interesting discussions in the book. Among her insights is the observation that images of consumption—of actual shopping—are invariably excluded from the show, since “these might be construed as a critique of capitalism; but more importantly, such shots would allow us to identify with the hoarders” (34). To be sure, much of the argumentation presented is not really original, as writings on the multiple ills of consumerism have become widely available for intellectual consumption, yet Foster’s reading of Hoarders, presented as a scathing indictment of American-style pathological hyperconsumption, is passionate, on-point, and perhaps the most politically salient among the themes discussed in the brief volume.In the book’s final two chapters, however, a politics of pessimism in the face of capitalist hyperconsumption and ecological devastation comes strongly to the forefront. The author recalls knowing as a child that “we are very destructive animals” (52) and recounts her journey to becoming a radical environmentalist. She was deeply influenced by the 1964 “eco-critical” (52) film Red Desert, and the film’s supposedly mad heroine, Giuliana, is analyzed in terms clearly indicating the author’s self-identification with this “siren of apocalyptic revelation” (54). At this point comes the bombshell revelation of the book: while the first three chapters made no explicit gestures in this direction—indeed, if anything, they set up an expectation that Foster might critique, in order to disavow, the anticipation of a looming apocalypse in the shows she examines—the author now announces that the end of civilization is inevitable and, indeed, underway. Moreover, she views this as “a positive thing since it would entail the eradication of the most destructive species, humankind” (48). Contrary to competing doomsday scenarios, she argues that “what will be ‘left behind’ after the demise of people during this apocalypse is neither ‘sinners’ nor a Lake of Fire, but an Earth that could hopefully heal itself over many centuries, even many millennia” (48). Such a vision, she continues, “leaves the reader transported and brightened with the good news that perhaps the planet may heal itself long after we are gone . . .. I see this as a very positive apocalyptic vision” (49). After a passing reference to Alan Weisman’s book The World without Us, she discusses the shows Aftermath and Life after People. Surprisingly, however, she refers neither to the activism of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement nor to the writings that heavily influenced it by Derrick Jensen, the well-known radical environmentalist whose series of books titled Endgame (2006) is widely regarded as the most authoritative case for the “willful extinction” program.Despite this surprising omission, the book’s conclusion makes clear that Foster subscribes to a similar variant of “left-wing catastrophism” (see Lilley 2012), one that eschews a return to a hunter-gatherer society recommended by associated primitivists in favor of the total eradication of human beings, deemed to be the most destructive of the planet’s species and, therefore, deserving of death. In my opinion, this standpoint is rather inconsistent, if not somewhat hypocritical: after chastising the producers and viewers of shows like 1000 Ways to Die for being insensitive and believing that the depicted victims deserved to die for their stupidity, Foster goes on to condemn all humans. Since humanity is “the most destructive animal” and stupid enough to poison its habitat, she views it as deserving of elimination. If those individual victims deserve some sympathy, doesn’t humanity as a whole deserve some, too?Despite such reservations, it is hard to deny that while the narrative sometimes reads like a cathartic and depressing rant, it is an articulate and engaging one that resonates deeply. As a fellow environmentalist and academic, I decided years ago to keep up the “optimism of the will” demanded by Antonio Gramsci; however, 2014 was a very trying time for optimism—a veritable year from hell, full of horrific mass shootings and terrorist attacks, an astounding series of plane crashes, and a deadly Ebola outbreak—plus there were the increasingly commonplace and severe droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes. Portents of the end-times? It is hard to avoid that way of thinking, especially with scientists ringing the alarm bells, too, including a new major report from Stanford, published in Science, pronouncing that, due to “defaunation,” the earth is entering a new “mass extinction event” (Dirzo et al. 2014).So what is to be done? While most scientists urge action, for Foster (and many fellow doomsayers), the answer to the classic question is clear: it’s too late to do anything. While this book will resonate with the readers who, like myself, tend to succumb to pessimism (despite any prior commitments to Gramsci’s credo), its resigned, depressing conclusion promotes a defeatist, paralyzing attitude that is ultimately a futile and politically dangerous one. Is it a fool’s errand to keep trying to change things for the better when faced with evidence that things will only get worse—for the planet and for us humans? Is it pointless to mitigate the growing harm and injustice in the midst of what may well be an unfolding civilization collapse? The answer has to be in the negative; therefore, while many readers will find themselves sharing all too much of Foster’s dark outlook, I wish to conclude by insisting that it’s vital to work each day to get over it and on with it, because refusing to give up, refusing to give up hope, is, frankly, just about the most radical thing we can do right now

Aesthetics · Demise · Environmental ethics · Face (sociological concept · Gloom · Humanity · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Environmental, Ecological, and Cultural Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology

• Defaunation in the Anthropocene

  Open Access•Rodolfo Dirzo, Hillary S Young et al.•Science•2014

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