Dissertation: Research

"Even though these films are secular (save The Rapture) in their depiction of the End, their reactionary, often hysterical vision of moral dissolution ironically makes Hollywood's version not far from the dire predictions contained in a 1958 World Wide Church of God tract: "Science, technology and industry are producing more and more frightful weapons of mass destruction. Already they have produced the means to erase human life from the earth! Meanwhile, immorality, crime, violence, poverty, sickness and disease, famine and starvation stalk the earth, in fast-increasing acceleration.""


"While the notion of world's end figured in a thousand-year span is rooted in Biblical record, which prophesies a future epoch of a thousand years ending in a battle and final judgement, the moral landscape of these films is indebted to a similar Christian fundamentalist thinking. The end of the world in many of these films of the literal apocalypse is a chance for reaffirming family values and pitting America as promised land, against a threatening, but ultimately impotent foreign assassin."
---- 2012 - reaffirms family values. Jackson Curtis saves his wife, her husband and his children from the apocalypse and regains their respect and trust, winning them back (after the new husband has died) and they look to the future as a family once again.
---- Independence day, America is the promised land, other countries wait for America to do something to save the world. They show british army men exclaiming 'at last' when it is announced that America are forming a plan. The aliens are the foreign assassin and are proved impotent.

" In films of the moral apocalypse, society's crumbling is so absolute and inescapable, so ingrained in the modern psyche, the idea of transcendence seems ludicrous."
---- Very much true of Melancholia. The idea of attempting to stop the apocalypse isn't even mentioned or touched upon. It is merely accepted that it will happen and Justine welcomes it. To her, the end of the world is her transcendence.