Transmuting unimaginable power into its opposite

Just as the Cold War turned the power that the U.S. gained after World War II against itself, climate change continues turning power against ourselves (and the rest of the world). Better dead than red, once an anti-communist slogan, takes on a new meaning as impacts from climate change grow while a sizable portion of the U.S. population denies or ignores the signs. We would rather die than suffer from being in the red (in the accounting ledger). It’s the economic equivalent of a drunken man ordering one more for the road.

We go to battle every day, spewing more carbon into the atmosphere, allowing more heat to be trapped. Unlike the Cold War, with its threat of instant annihilation from nuclear weapons, climate change is war on a much longer time scale, taking centuries (maybe only decades), to wreak similar amounts of havoc upon the world. Politically, few of the ruling elite want to make any concessions that they feel would place them in a short-term disadvantage. We have dug ourselves into trenches of apathy, not willing to take an offensive, unaware of the reeking stench of death from within.

Humanity cannot imagine what it created

As the dust slowly settled after World War II, an even heavier cloud began to gather over the world. The United States emerged as a clear victor, having developed and used the first atomic weapons while suffering little destruction on its home turf. The U.S. rise to a superpower was primarily built on its ability to destroy anything and everything in a moment’s notice. In a short time, however, that ability was matched by the Soviet Union.

Elsewhere, cities were rebuilt, trials were held, and monuments were erected to the fallen. Humanity not only survived, but by many accounts, truly began to prosper after the second world war. Technological innovation exploded. Space exploration, computing technology, and medical advances all boosted the health and economies of the nations of the industrialized capitalist world for the most part.

Firestorm (documentary)

A site of infinite fantasy

Where do we turn knowing that the world we have inherited may not support our continued existence? It is much too late to go back and take a different path, one that might have seemed unbearably difficult to navigate at the time. The path we did take, however, led right into what we thought was a walled garden. Vines covered the bars on the windows, masking the garden’s real function. We’ve been locked in for so long, we now mistake the vines for the bars.

Having time to reflect on our situation, however, we can begin to understand our imprisonment. We are imprisoned not only by our choices but by the existing systems that we are brought up with. We can change personally but still can’t shake the feeling of being imprisoned, knowing that our own refusal to accept the system that runs the prison does not affect its continued operation. That often leaves us only one place to turn.

“…links between mythology and vision make for mechanisms of remembrance and prediction, fiction and representation, repression and categorization, which are at the core of humanity’s self-perception and sense of identity. Materially nowhere, utopia fills the mind; a site of infinite fantasy, it can also trigger limitless destruction.” (Bartov, p. 148)

Back into the history of nature

What happens when humans bombard the planet into an entirely different state of being? Do we own up to our participation in the destruction or do we go on with our lives under the new circumstances, adapting to our changed environment? What is the defining factor of our response: powerlessness, guilt, shame?

Germany Year Zero (1948)

We only have to go back as far as World War II for some answers. It marked a turning point in human history when our ability to destroy each other became absolute. In a matter of hours, we could undo billions of years of biological life striving to adapt to an ideal planetary environment. The stage was set; we were just waiting for the play to begin.

Rumble Fish (1983): nowhere to go

It’s not surprising that Rumble Fish was booed at its premiere during the 1983 New York Film Festival, but such a start can serve as a mark of distinction, placing a film in welcome company. Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura was booed at its premiere at the more influential Cannes Film Festival over twenty years earlier. At the San Sebastian International Film Festival in 1984, Rumble Fish was redeemed by winning the Golden Shell award. By that time, however, the film had died a miserable death at the box office.

The Motorcycle Boy Reigns

For the most part, critics panned Rumble Fish. The primary criticism of the film was that it focused too much on style, leaving the story obfuscated by liberal amounts of smoke and painted shadows. For example, Janet Maslin, writing in the New York Times, said: “…the film is so furiously overloaded, so crammed with extravagant touches, that any hint of a central thread is obscured.”