How to Survive the Apocalypse
Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
Incisive insights into contemporary pop culture and its apocalyptic bent
The world is going to hell. So begins this book, pointing to the prevalence of apocalypse — cataclysmic destruction and nightmarish end-of-the-world scenarios — in contemporary entertainment.
In How to Survive the Apocalypse Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson examine a number of popular stories — from the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica to the purging of innocence in Game of Thrones to the hordes of zombies in The Walking Dead — and argue that such apocalyptic stories reveal a lot about us here and now, about how we conceive of our life together, including some of our deepest tensions and anxieties.
Besides analyzing the dsytopian shift in popular culture, Joustra and Wilkinson also suggest how Christians can live faithfully and with integrity in such a cultural context.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Just turn on the television... Today, apocalypse sells like mad," write Joustra (The Church's Social Responsibility) and Wilkinson (chief film critic at Christianity Today). Instead of lamenting secularized versions of the end times, however, the authors engage with them through an in-depth theological critique of popular culture. They note that the idea of future chaos followed by restoration has been a religious theme for millennia, starting with the first apocalyptic text from ancient Egypt. After a fascinating, breakneck rundown of utopian versus dystopian notions from biblical times onward, Joustra and Wilkinson zero in on recent movies and especially TV shows that reflect our vulnerability and suspicion of metanarratives. Beware plot spoilers! Moving from the "postmodern fairy tale" of Game of Thrones and the antiheroes of Breaking Bad and Mad Men to Scandal's "moral apocalypse," they skillfully derive lessons about power and significance. It is refreshing to see a willingness to find the best in secular art, rather than a blanket dismissal of it. Some critical jargon and a heavy debt to philosopher Charles Taylor mean this will likely appeal to academics more than lay readers.
