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Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse
 Stephen Joyce

Transmedia
Storytelling and the
Apocalypse
Stephen Joyce
Aarhus University
Aarhus C, Denmark

ISBN 978-3-319-93951-3    ISBN 978-3-319-93952-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950237

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
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tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Johan Swanepoel / Alamy Stock Photo

Cover Design: Tjaša Krivec

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 To my grandmother,
who started calling me “professor” at age ten;
looks like the nickname stuck
 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues at Aarhus University for their invalu-

able feedback on rough drafts of the book, especially Susan Yi Sencindiver,
Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, and Matthias Stephan, as well as the Cultural
Transformations research group for organising writing retreats with plenty
of cake.
Thanks also go to my students in the BA project course “American
Apocalypse: Visions of Armageddon in Modern American Culture,” the
MA course “Old, New, and Transmedia Fictions of Disaster: Modern
Media and the Apocalypse,” and the BA elective “Media Convergence.”
They were unfailingly knowledgeable, patient, and articulate in explaining
what was wrong with my concepts, how the way people engage with media
has changed, what social media is, the most revolutionary changes in
major narrative media, and why I should get rid of my old Nokia and for
the love of God get a smartphone. I hope they also learned something.
Thanks finally to Lina Aboujieb and Ellie Freedman at Palgrave
Macmillan for their encouragement, professionalism, and tactful remind-
ers that those deadlines I had blithely agreed to a few months back were
arriving on Friday. I would still be doodling in the margins of a half-­
written Chap. 4 if it weren’t for their support.
Elements of certain chapters in this book have appeared in different
articles and are here reprinted with kind permission:
Parts of Chap. 5 previously appeared in:

Joyce, Stephen. 2016. The Last Non-Judgment: Postmodern Apocalypse

in Battlestar Galactica. In The Last Midnight: Essays on Apocalyptic

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

­ arratives in Millennial Media, eds. Amanda Firestone, Leisa A. Clark,

N
and Mary F. Pharr, 60–68. Jefferson: McFarland. By permission of
McFarland & Company, INC., Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640.

Parts of Chap. 6 previously appeared in:

Joyce, Stephen. 2015. The Rapture at the World’s End: Non-optional

Choice and Libertarianism in New Media. Synthesis 6: n. pag.

Parts of Chap. 7 previously appeared in:

Joyce, Stephen. 2016. The Double Death of Humanity in Cormac

McCarthy’s The Road. Transatlantica 2: n. pag.
 Contents

Part I Portal   1

1 Doomsday Dreaming   3

2 The End of the Media as We Know It  15

3 The Appeal of the Apocalypse  37

Part II Post-apocalypse  55

4 The Endings of I Am Legend  57

5 Battlestar Galactica’s Post-9/11 Apocalypse  77

6 Worldbuilding and World Destroying in BioShock and

The Last of Us  99

ix
x Contents

7 Convergence Publishing and Prestige Niches 121

8 Antichrist Obama and the Doomsday Preppers 143

Part III Paradigms 163

9 The Many Deaths of The Terminator 165

10 The Many Lives of The Walking Dead 185

11 Epilogue: After the End 207

Index 213
PART I

Portal
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 CHAPTER 1

Doomsday Dreaming

On screen the stark images. The sun pale in the dusty sky. The streets
overgrown with grass. A lone survivor peering up at the infinite rows of
blank windows, fragments of our world at her feet. A perfectly functioning
and useless television. A game controller tossed to one side. A faded comic
book asking us to believe in Captain America. “Bedrock, this. The cold
and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and tem-
poral winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried
forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the
ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief” (McCarthy 2006,
12). These the words our time chooses for entertainment.
If cultural historians of the future were to look back at the early twenty-­
first century, they would observe that we were unusually obsessed with the
end of civilisation as a form of amusement. Films lure us with spectacular
images of global destruction, television series broadcast gritty post-­
apocalyptic dramas, and video games offer devastated cityscapes and
wastelands to explore. Even the venerable novel has embraced the mania
for post-apocalyptic destruction, while across every platform the zombie
shuffles triumphantly. The ubiquity of these images may blind us to their
fundamental strangeness: we don’t decorate our homes with images of the
house burning down and our loved ones dying, so why do we relish enter-
tainment that shows our cities in ruins and humanity nearly extinct?
The post-apocalyptic is also a relatively new genre. While the apoca-
lyptic is at least as old as the Book of Revelation, the post-apocalyptic is a

© The Author(s) 2018 3

S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_1
4 S. JOYCE

distinctively modern fear. The idea that someone might survive the end
of civilisation really only enters the English language with Mary Shelley’s
The Last Man in 1826. You are probably wondering why you never heard
that Mary Shelley didn’t just invent Frankenstein but also the post-apoc-
alyptic genre. Truthfully, the book is hard to read and was critically
panned in its own time. Yet here we first find those staples of post-apoc-
alyptic fiction, the deadly plague that brings global panic with the “streets
of Ispahan, of Pekin, and of Delhi … strewed with pestilence-struck
corpses” (vol. II, ch. IV) and the marauding gangs of the post-apocalyp-
tic wasteland as desperate American pirates attack the British Isles (vol.
II, ch. IX). As civilisation breaks down, we are treated to now familiar
scenes of survivors amidst the ruins of plenty. It is a sign of just how new
the post-apocalyptic genre is that it feels odd to read such passages in
Shelley’s early nineteenth-century diction and syntax:

As the rules of order and pressure of laws were lost, some began with hesita-
tion and wonder to transgress the accustomed uses of society. Palaces were
deserted, and the poor man dared at length, unreproved, intrude into the
splendid apartments, whose very furniture and decorations were an unknown
world to him … when the boundaries of private possession were thrown
down, the products of human labour at present existing were more, far more,
than the thinned generation could possibly consume. To some among the
poor this was matter of exultation. We were all equal now. (vol. III, ch. I)

The novel ends as the title suggests, with one lone survivor, an Ishmael to
the world’s Pequod, left to narrate the tale of destruction. However, it
didn’t spawn any significant successors as audiences were lukewarm about
a narrative in which the world ends.
The post-apocalyptic only began to gain a mass audience after World
War II, when fears of nuclear war permeated popular consciousness. Books
such as Earth Abides (1950) by George Stewart or Walter Miller’s A
Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) grappled with the aftermath of apocalyptic
events. Films such as Planet of the Apes (Franklin Schaffner 1968) or Dr.
Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick 1964) took seriously (or perhaps not so seri-
ously) the possibility of nuclear war. The shadow of the bomb helped drive
the post-apocalyptic genre, but surprisingly, when the Cold War ended,
the number of post-apocalyptic films, novels, TV series, comics, and video
games significantly increased.
In cultural studies, this rise in post-apocalyptic media is almost always
linked with social anxieties: climate change and eco-apocalypse (Wright
 DOOMSDAY DREAMING 5

2015; Traub 2016), nuclear war (Brians 1984; Hendershot 1999), pan-
demics (Gomel 2000), descent into political dystopias (Knickerbocker
2010; Murphy 2013), a crisis in masculinity (Sugg 2015; Kelly 2016),
rampant capitalism (Christopher 2015; Schleusener 2017), and that’s
without even getting into zombies, which are often “seen as stand-ins for
racial and ethnic Others” (Balaji 2013, 10) or, indeed, any of the above
problems. As Andrew Williams argues, “the zombie has become a flexible
cultural signifier with a seemingly limitless range of significance” (2016,
51), making it the perfect tool for the apocalypse. It can stand in for what-
ever you fear or hate the most.
What is common to virtually all scholarship on the post-apocalyptic is
the assumption that it reflects some kind of contemporary fear. Yet what
bothers me about this reading is that it implies we are possibly the most
cowardly generation ever to walk the earth. Previous generations faced
down plagues, genocide, imperial conquest, world wars, famine, and fas-
cism without embracing the post-apocalyptic genre or the modern zom-
bie. Instead, somehow, they gave us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
the music of Mozart, the Romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich,
Modernism, Catch 22, the cinema. Our ancestors confronted severe
threats to civilisation with none of our resources; why are we the ones who
return repeatedly, obsessively, to visions of global annihilation? Every era
has its own troubles. Suffering certainly isn’t unique to our time, but the
fascination of the post-apocalyptic is. What is it, then, that fuels our dreams
of doomsday?

* * *

Instead of psychoanalysing modernity or offering jeremiads against con-

temporary culture, this book is going to make a completely different kind
of argument. In truth, I am not temperamentally suited to the role of doom
prophet, crying out in the wasteland that our civilisation has sown the seeds
of its destruction and we are on the verge of reaping the bitter harvest of
capitalism/patriarchy/imperialism/racism/eco-devastation/artificial intel-
ligence/genetic engineering/[insert your particular evil here]. I am wary
of how cultural critics seem to be susceptible to the Morpheus complex, the
belief that you are one of the select few who can see the Matrix that entraps
the masses. It is, perhaps, a dream of many cultural critics to live the scene
in The Matrix (The Wachowskis 1999) in which Morpheus strides through
the urban throng while explaining the truth to a bewildered Neo:
6 S. JOYCE

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy, but when you’re
inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers,
carpenters, the very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we
do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our
enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be
unplugged and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the
system that they will fight to protect it.

The belief that one is opening people’s eyes to the truth and calling them
to action is a powerful drug. If I could balance Morpheus’ frameless sun-
glasses on my nose, I might be tempted to try it myself.
My thesis in this book is more prosaic but perhaps more consequential.
The primary reason our media have started mass-producing post-­
apocalyptic works is because something has changed in the mass media.
This transformation has created a demand for a new type of product. The
post-apocalyptic genre has risen in prominence because it is ideally suited
to be such a product.
The rest of the book tries to unpack that short paragraph.
Two questions immediately arise: what is this transformation in the
mass media and why is the post-apocalyptic perfectly suited to it? The
obvious answer to the first question is the rise of the internet, but that
doesn’t do justice to the complexity of the transformation that has been
wrought. It is useful to think of a media eco-system, a complex network
of relationships between industrial agents, technological platforms,
government regulation, and audiences that is in a continual process of
adjustment and rebalancing. Small changes can have unforeseen ripple
effects, but the mass adoption of the internet is like the arrival of a big
new beast that has profoundly affected the entire eco-system. However,
it should be stressed that the internet has not, as yet, produced a signifi-
cant indigenous narrative form. Its importance for media genres, there-
fore, is the effect it has had on narrative media. Financial models have
been upended, creative possibilities expanded, and audience expecta-
tions transformed, but these have happened unevenly on different plat-
forms. Therefore, this book devotes chapters to the four most significant
narrative media—film, t­elevision, video games, and the novel—to see
the forces pushing each one towards producing post-apocalyptic
fictions.
Perhaps the most significant change is the desire to share storyworlds
across media. In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins used The Matrix as
 DOOMSDAY DREAMING 7

a case study to define a new tendency for narratives to be spread across

multiple platforms, a process he termed transmedia storytelling:

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a

fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the
purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.
Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of
the story. (2007)

For example, the success of the first Matrix film launched a transmedia
franchise, with a series of animated shorts collected in The Animatrix,
video games that filled in key narrative gaps, and a series of comics explor-
ing the world of The Matrix that accompanied the release of the second
and third films. Transmedia storytelling also requires new audience habits,
with fans working together to build knowledge of the narrative universe.
“To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role
of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media
channels, comparing notes with each other via online discussion groups,
and collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and effort will
come away with a richer entertainment experience” (Jenkins 2008, 21).
Since Jenkins’ influential study, numerous books and articles have been
published on transmedia storytelling as it becomes ever more prominent
in our mediascape. Yet no one has wondered about the connection
between The Matrix as transmedia narrative and The Matrix as part of the
post-apocalyptic genre. Perhaps this is because transmedia is a storytelling
technique, a method of dispersing narrative information across platforms
that can theoretically work in any genre. However, fragmented narratives
often frustrate the demand for closure. A common complaint about mod-
ern film franchises is that many movies now feel like trailers for future films
rather than complete works in themselves. Each text is also a paratext,
pointing the way to other entries in the franchise. Transmedia thus favours
infinitely suspended fictions, narratives that can forever be denied a conclu-
sion. Given long-standing conventions regarding narrative closure in tra-
ditional media, not every genre is immediately suitable for such tales.
Because of this, transmedia has developed most fully in genres such as
science fiction or fantasy that are concerned with worldbuilding. As
Jenkins explains, “More and more, storytelling has become the art of
world building, as artists create compelling environments that cannot be
fully explored or exhausted within a single work or even a single medium”
8 S. JOYCE

(2008, 114). Matt Hills refers to this as the hyperdiegesis, “the creation of
a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly
seen or encountered within the text, but which nevertheless appears to
operate according to principles of internal logic and extension” (2002,
137). Mark J.P. Wolf notes that transmedia storytelling is highly effective
at worldbuilding because “transmediality implies a kind of independence
for its object; the more media windows we experience a world through,
the less reliant that world is on the peculiarities of any one medium for its
existence” (2013, 247). Hence, the multi-platform successes of Star Wars,
Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Marvel Universe are partly because
our current mediascape enables the worldbuilding that is central to these
franchises.
Yet the post-apocalyptic has an inherent advantage over science fiction
and fantasy in terms of franchised worldbuilding. Wolf argues that imagi-
nary worlds depend on invention, completeness, and consistency. The lat-
ter two are always a problem in extended imaginary universes.
“Completeness … refers to the degree to which the world contains expla-
nations and details covering all the various aspects of its characters’ experi-
ences, as well as background details which together suggest a feasible,
practical world” (2013, 38), while “consistency is the degree to which
world details are plausible, feasible, and without contradiction” (43). Fans
of imaginary worlds scrutinise details for consistency and completeness
and are quick to decry any violation of the world rules or contradictions in
its history. The post-apocalyptic genre, however, usually has a simple
worldbuilding formula: our world + a specific apocalyptic event. Thus, a
film like The Matrix could achieve miraculous levels of tight exposition
because our world provides the vast bulk of the completeness and consis-
tency required, with an additional layer of future history on top. This also
makes life easier for creators in other platforms. Anyone who wants to
work on a transmedia expansion of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars needs to
absorb a huge amount of world information to avoid angering fans with
basic errors in completeness and consistency. An apocalyptic event, how-
ever, just requires taking our world and adding zombies or a new ice age
or hostile robots bent on our destruction. One does not have to learn all
the world lore of The Walking Dead to create a story in The Walking Dead
universe. Of all the worldbuilding genres, the post-apocalyptic is the easi-
est for different creative teams on different platforms to participate in
without violating the integrity of the narrative universe.
 DOOMSDAY DREAMING 9

The post-apocalyptic also has the advantage of being, by nature, an

infinitely suspended narrative. In other genres, it can be a challenge to
keep the protagonist’s goal endlessly out of reach; someday the Rebels
must defeat the Empire, and Harry must defeat Voldemort, but in the
post-apocalyptic the goal of restoring civilisation can never fully be accom-
plished. No matter what progress the characters make, the world will
never be what it was. There is no logical, inevitable conclusion to a post-­
apocalyptic narrative. It ends whenever creators or audiences decide they
have had enough.
A third aspect of the genre that it makes it ideally suited for transmedia
storytelling is how it activates audiences as hunter-gatherers of informa-
tion. One of the genre’s archetypal scenes is the moment when the pro-
tagonist enters a deserted city without any explanation as to what has
happened. Both Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) and The Walking
Dead rely on a character who has been in a coma and thus is as bewildered
as the audience is. (The comedy show Community’s parody of the genre
in “Modern Warfare” (2010) takes place after the main character takes a
one-hour nap in his car and wakes up to discover the campus a ruined
mess.) As viewers of a post-apocalyptic drama, we often spend our time
scanning the frame for clues about this uncanny environment. The post-­
apocalyptic is thus perfectly adapted to forensic fandom because a major
question is always “what happened to our world to turn it into this?” This
technique of embedding narrative information in the mise-en-scene has
been particularly important for video games, which must strike a balance
between narrative and gameplay, with the player’s agency competing with
authorial control.
You may be wondering how I am defining the post-apocalyptic genre.
As with any genre, it is difficult to provide a list of qualifying criteria with-
out inviting problematic exceptions. For example, the TV series The
Leftovers begins with 2% of the world’s population simply vanishing, a
traumatic and mysterious event that draws on evangelical teachings of the
Rapture, but does the series belong to the post-apocalyptic genre if civili-
sation doesn’t actually end? The plethora of post-apocalyptic worlds
almost guarantees that any definition will engender dispute. Nevertheless,
I should briefly explain the features that have guided my selections. First,
the vast majority of post-apocalyptic narratives involve worlds that are dif-
ferent (if usually derived) from our own. They typically involve stories of
survival by individuals or small groups, often in extreme conditions.
10 S. JOYCE

Hence, they bear a strong family resemblance to the Robinsonade or cast-

away narrative, in which independence and survivalist expertise are bal-
anced against the travails of social isolation and precarious micro-societies
that experiment with different forms of order. These micro-societies offer
audiences a chance to see the social contract rewritten from scratch, often
becoming utopias or dystopias. Technology features as both threat and
saviour, often being the source of the apocalypse (e.g. AI, nuclear war)
even as characters repeatedly scavenge for or construct tools that help
them survive. My working definition of the genre is thus: The post-­
apocalyptic is a portal fantasy in which the apocalyptic event functions as a
portal to an alternate world defined by the central narrative tensions of
independence-dependence, progress-regression, utopia-dystopia, and the
dominant motif of ambivalence about technology.
I expand on these aspects in Chap. 4, but of greater importance is how
certain narrative features have risen to the fore because they are better
suited to transmedia storytelling. For example, the good versus evil bina-
ries of The Matrix and I Am Legend have gradually yielded to the moral
complexity of Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead. This is partly
for cultural reasons but also because the TV series were designed to be
infinitely suspended narratives and moral complexity creates a greater
range of potential narratives than a binary scheme. The post-apocalyptic
genre isn’t simply suited to transmedia storytelling; it has adapted to fit
this new form hand-in-glove, while the form of transmedia storytelling has
been significantly influenced by the successful examples of post-­apocalyptic
franchises such as The Matrix and The Walking Dead.
We may call this process genre-medium coevolution, the co-development
of a genre and new narrative platform through a symbiotic relationship
that promotes both. The film critic André Bazin once wrote, “The Western
is the only genre whose origins are almost identical with those of the cin-
ema itself” (2005, 142) and speculated that the Western possessed “a
secret that somehow identifies it with the essence of cinema” (143).
Perhaps we may describe the Western as a new genre that was not only
ideal for a medium that emphasises action and movement but whose open
spaces helped inspire such techniques as crosscutting, showcased by
D.W. Griffith in the ride to the rescue that concludes the silent classics The
Lonedale Operator (1911) and The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (1913). The
connection between the post-apocalyptic genre and transmedia storytell-
ing is of a similar type: a new medium (or use of multimedia) for telling
stories develops in tandem with a new, relatively flexible genre that adapts
to the platform’s distinctive qualities.
 DOOMSDAY DREAMING 11

This approach does not eliminate the cultural angle. The rise of apoca-
lyptic imagery is affected by the influence of evangelical Christianity on
American culture, especially when George W. Bush became president. As
we shall see, shows such as Battlestar Galactica developed a vision of the
post-apocalyptic that was partly a counterpoint to the apocalyptic rhetoric
Bush used to describe 9/11 and the War on Terror. Understanding the
traditional appeal of apocalyptic rhetoric is important to understanding
how the post-apocalyptic developed as a genre. Nevertheless, cultural
products do not spring directly from the collective dreams of a people.
Mass media products are part of a complex industrial process that filters
the narratives creators try to tell to audiences. Understanding this process
is at least as important as comprehending cultural trends.
The challenge in this book, therefore, is to keep a balance between
understanding transformations in the media eco-system, the co-­
development of a particular set of genre conventions, influences on the
broader culture such as 9/11, and the rise of a new participatory culture
among audiences. Braiding these strands into a coherent overall narrative
means this book will not follow the standard academic structure of an
introductory theoretical overview followed by a number of case studies.
Instead, the argument will unfold throughout the book to mirror the
complex process of genre-medium coevolution, especially as it intertwines
with cultural pressures external to the media eco-system.
The first part of the book, “Portal,” lays out the nature of the problem.
Chapter 2, “The End of the Media as We Know It,” looks at the major
structural changes in technology, regulation, and media economics that
have transformed our mediascape. The puzzle, however, is why these
changes have coincided with an explosion of apocalyptic images in mass
entertainment. Chapter 3, “The Appeal of the Apocalypse,” considers
apocalyptic culture in the USA, the influence of evangelical Christianity,
and the source of apocalyptic rhetoric’s appeal, whether in religion, envi-
ronmentalism, or political critique. However, this cultural perspective
wraps the riddle in an enigma as the ancient and enduring appeal of apoca-
lyptic narratives does not bear any significant relation to the characteristics
of post-apocalyptic entertainment. The “Portal” section thus functions as
the gateway to thinking about the curious rise of the post-apocalyptic
genre across media by both explaining the grounds from which it emerged
and the inability of those pre-conditions to explain its current popularity.
The second section of the book, “Post-apocalyptic,” illustrates the
process of genre-medium coevolution by showing how the genre devel-
oped across multiple platforms to emphasise those aspects best suited to
12 S. JOYCE

transmedia storytelling: infinitely suspended narratives, moral complexity,

worldbuilding, forensic fandom, and participatory audience cultures. The
five chapters look at how convergence culture is affecting film, television,
video games, print, and fandom respectively. The sequence does not
reflect the importance of each medium to our mediascape or a chronol-
ogy of the genre; instead, the case studies in each chapter provide a par-
ticular genre-­medium balance that allows the book to show the complex
evolution of the post-apocalyptic in shifting production environments
and cultural contexts. Chapter 4, “The Endings of I Am Legend,” uses
the two radically different endings of the 2007 film to discuss the differ-
ences between the traditional apocalyptic narrative, explained in Chap. 3,
and the emerging post-apocalyptic. I Am Legend is also instructive
because it sits astride the paradigm shift between self-contained narratives
in a single medium and transmedia storytelling, in that it almost launched
a major transmedia franchise but then chose an ending that foreclosed
any such opportunity. Chapter 5, “Battlestar Galactica’s Post-9/11
Apocalypse,” looks at the rise of seriality in contemporary TV dramas, as
well as how the post-­apocalyptic began to reshape itself as a cultural
response to the apocalyptic rhetoric the Bush administration used to
frame 9/11. In contrast to film’s hesitation about open endings, televi-
sion has embraced infinitely suspended narratives and brought seriality
into the mainstream of popular entertainment. Chapter 6, “Worldbuilding
and World Destroying in BioShock and The Last of Us,” examines the
influence video games are exerting on our mediascape in terms of both
industrial power and aesthetics. Video games are the medium that deals
most directly with interactive audiences and games’ preference for intri-
cate storyworlds to explore rather than linear plots has strongly influ-
enced transmedia aesthetics. Chapter 7, “Convergence Publishing and
Prestige Niches,” looks at how convergence culture is transforming print
and why these changes have encouraged post-apocalyptic fiction. The
final chapter (Chap. 8) in this section, “Antichrist Obama and the
Doomsday Preppers,” looks at the differences between audiences for
apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives and argues that the differ-
ences between the genres manifest themselves in the different experiences
they offer. Although the media studied in this s­ ection have been affected
differently by structural changes in our mediascape, the net result of these
changes has been to make the post-apocalyptic a highly attractive genre
for creators in all major narrative media, while the experiences the genre
provides have tapped into current trends in popular culture.
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 DOOMSDAY DREAMING 13

The final section, “Paradigms,” provides an integrated analysis of two

transmedia franchises, The Terminator and The Walking Dead. In Chapter 9,
transmedia concepts developed in the first two sections are applied to
explain why The Terminator has consistently failed to establish itself as a
transmedia franchise, while Chapter 10 examines The Walking Dead as a
paradigm of transmedia storytelling that seems to enjoy critical and com-
mercial success on more platforms than almost any other franchise. The
book concludes with an epilogue that discusses the transmedia concepts
that have been developed during the study. With this overall scheme for the
book in mind, it is time to begin our exploration of the complex reasons
why our culture dreams obsessively of doomsday.

References
28 Days Later. 2002. Directed by Danny Boyle. Burbank: 20th Century Fox.
Balaji, Murali. 2013. Thinking Dead: Our Obsession with the Undead and Its
Implications. In Thinking Dead: What the Zombie Apocalypse Means, ed. Murali
Balaji, 7–15. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Bazin, Andre. 2005. What Is Cinema? Vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brians, Paul. 1984. Nuclear War in Science Fiction, 1945–59. Science Fiction
Studies 11 (3): 253–263.
Christopher, David. 2015. The Capitalist and Cultural Work of Apocalypse and
Dystopia Films. CineAction 95: 56–65, January.
Community. 2010. Modern Warfare. Season 1, Episode 23. Directed by Justin
Lin. Written by Emily Cutler. NBC, 6 May.
Dr. Strangelove. 1964. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Burbank: Columbia Pictures.
Gomel, Elana. 2000. The Plague of Utopias: Pestilence and the Apocalyptic Body.
Twentieth Century Literature 46 (4): 405–433.
Hendershot, Cyndy. 1999. From Trauma to Paranoia: Nuclear Weapons, Science
Fiction, and History. Mosaic 32 (4): 73–90.
Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge.
Jenkins, Henry. 2007. Transmedia Storytelling 101, March 21. henryjenkins.org.
Accessed 20 May 2018.
———. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.
Fredericksburg: New York University Press.
Kelly, Casey Ryan. 2016. The Man-Pocalypse: Doomsday Preppers and the Rituals
of Apocalyptic Manhood. Text and Performance Quarterly 36 (2–3): 95–114.
Knickerbocker, Dale. 2010. Apocalypse, Utopia, and Dystopia: Old Paradigms
Meet a New Millennium. Extrapolation 51 (3): 345–357.
McCarthy, Cormac. 2006. The Road. New York: Knopf.
Miller, Walter. 1960. A Canticle for Leibowitz. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
14 S. JOYCE

Murphy, Amy. 2013. Nothing like New: Our Post-Apocalyptic Imagination as

Utopian Impulse. Journal of Architectural Education 67 (2): 234–242.
Planet of the Apes. 1968. Directed by Franklin Schaffner. Burbank: 20th Century
Fox.
Schleusener, Simon. 2017. The Dialectics of Mobility: Capitalism and Apocalypse in
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. European Journal of American Studies [Online]
Online Since 18 December 2017, Connection on 27 July 2018. http://jour-
nals.openedition.org/ejas/12296; https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.12296.
Shelley, Mary. 1826. The Last Man. London: Henry Colburn.
Stewart, George. 1950. Earth Abides. London: Gollancz.
Sugg, Katherine. 2015. The Walking Dead: Late Liberalism and Masculine
Subjection in Apocalypse Fictions. Journal of American Studies 49 (4):
793–811.
The Matrix. 1999. Directed by The Wachowskis. Burbank: Warner Bros.
Traub, Courtney. 2016. Ecocatastrophic Nightmares: Romantic Sublime Legacies
in Contemporary American Experimental Fiction. The Arizona Quarterly 72
(2): 29–60.
Williams, Andrew P. 2016. Apocalyptic Absurdity: Dale Horvath, Raisonneur of
The Walking Dead. Midwest Quarterly 58 (1): 51–68.
Wolf, Mark J.P. 2013. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of
Subcreation. New York: Routledge.
Wright, Laura. 2015. Vegans, Zombies, and Eco-Apocalypse: McCarthy’s The
Road and Atwood’s Year of the Flood. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in
Literature and Environment 22 (3): 507–524.
 CHAPTER 2

The End of the Media as We Know It

What is fascinating about early writings on the internet is both how quickly
its central properties were identified and how unwarranted the utopian
optimism turned out to be. Nicholas Negroponte argued in Being Digital
that “the monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of
cottage industries” (1995, 57). Clay Shirky announced the death of the
media consumer: “The Internet destroys the noisy advertiser/silent con-
sumer relationship that the mass media relies upon … in the age of the
Internet, no one is a passive consumer anymore because everyone is a
media outlet” (2000). Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis heralded the
arrival of “We Media” and participatory journalism: “the act of a citizen,
or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting,
reporting, analysing, and disseminating news and information. The intent
of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-­
ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires” (2003, 9).
Yes, the internet was going to take down media corporations and con-
sumer capitalism and create real democracy. It was easier to believe this
before the 2016 presidential election revealed the extent to which demo-
cratic publics, heavily influenced by media giants like Fox, can choose to
live in their own partisan information bubbles.
Yet all the writers above quickly perceived that the key change was the
greater participatory power of audiences. Shirky was correct to note that
“mass media’s role has been to package consumers and sell their attention
to advertisers, in bulk” and that empowered audiences would destabilise

© The Author(s) 2018 15

S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_2
16 S. JOYCE

the mass media’s financial structure. Bowman and Willis accurately

described how traditional journalism was being challenged by “networked
communities that value conversation, collaboration, and egalitarianism
over profitability” (2003, 12). As Henry Jenkins notes, “consumer partici-
pation has emerged as the central conceptual problem: traditional gate-
keepers seek to hold onto their control of cultural content, and other
groups … want to give consumers the skills they need to construct their
own culture” (2008, 204). Yet predictions about where this might lead
tended to be utopian. One of the implications of thinking about media as
an eco-system is recognising that actions in one niche have complex effects
on the overall system. New technology enabled more active audiences;
this, in turn, destabilised the financial basis of the mass media; but this did
not mean that media corporations would throw their hands up and say,
“Well, it was good while it lasted” and abandon their empires to the scra-
pheap of history. Actions in an eco-system spark complex chains of reac-
tions until a new equilibrium is found.
One way of thinking about the mediascape is in terms of four interacting
spheres: technology, economics, law, and culture. The mass media are depen-
dent on technology for production, broadcast, and reception. The arrival of
a new technology, such as the personal computer, can initiate a major shift in
what is technically possible. Such technologies also need to be mass-pro-
duced, which means creating a demand and an acceptable cost for satisfying
it. Generally, desire to access cultural products creates the demand and pro-
ducers determine a source of funding, such as advertising or subscriptions,
to finance the medium. However, new media also create various legal issues.
Producers usually want to safeguard copyright on their products, while gov-
ernments and some sectors of the public want inappropriate material con-
trolled. The final aspect is both the most important and the hardest to define:
culture. This embraces both how users respond to the new medium and how
creator expectations evolve once they realise the capacities available to them.
These expectations are dynamic and hard to predict. A striking feature about
early theorising on the internet is the absence of any mention of cats. Instead,
theorists seemed obsessed with the internet’s implications for democracy and
art, when most people just wanted to share amusing cat videos. It turns out
that television, with its procession of dramas, sitcoms, and reality shows, has
been denying people what they really want for decades.
The interplay of these four factors plays a critical role in determining
the topology of our mediascape. Each one is in constant evolution and
 THE END OF THE MEDIA AS WE KNOW IT 17

impinging on all of the others. One of the key purposes of media the-
ory from this perspective is to distinguish periods of relative equilib-
rium, in which the mass media create a relatively consistent range of
products, and periods of relative flux, in which the overall system is
evolving in unpredictable ways. These are not binary states. Periods of
equilibrium are always drifting at the edges, while periods of flux may
have clusters of stability amidst the broader uncertainty. Nor do periods
of equilibrium require all four factors to work in harmony; eco-systems
may be dynamically balanced between forces that are competing
viciously with each other or facing internal crises. The challenge with
media studies is attempting to perceive how all four factors are interact-
ing at any given time.
Media theorising is often impeded by a default assumption arising from
the Marxist tradition that the economic sphere is paramount and any
media system with an economic foundation in capitalism is by definition
a social evil. Henry Jenkins has criticised some of the effects of this tradi-
tion: “Too often, work in critical and cultural studies sees a narrow con-
ception of critique as the only goal of theory-making and often seeks to
protect its independence from commercial interests at the cost of making
meaningful interventions in public debates” (2014a, 289). Typically, the-
ories drawing on Marxist critiques of hegemony emphasise the power of
cultural producers over audiences, whereas Jenkins emphasises the power
audiences have to interpret and rework the material broadcast by mass
media. My sympathies here lie with Jenkins, who emphasises the clash
between culture and economics and sees the law, particularly copyright
control of fan art and fan fiction, as a crucial battleground in the current
mediascape.
While scholars in the Marxist tradition have done invaluable work illu-
minating how mass media shapes society, their theorising also has to be
seen in the light of the lingering intellectual anxiety about why the long-­
anticipated proletarian revolution has not happened. Every radical politi-
cal movement needs to explain why the majority has not embraced its
programme and the obvious target is media bias. Ironically, and perhaps
alarmingly, this leads many influential media thinkers to sound like far-­
right conspiracy theorists. As an example, the following quote from
Adorno and Horkheimer’s famous essay “The Culture Industry” requires
only one additional word to become a fascist conspiracy theory. I have
inserted the word in parentheses below:
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or moral. You feel that way. Your friend Clotilde loves in her way, and
she finds it beautiful, believe me."
"All the same! All the same, there is an almost general consent to
consider that love superior which is adorned with sentiment, and
does not consent to be short-lived."
"Yes; and this is in conformity with the morality which has ruled us
thus far. This morality is all delicacy. But, reduced to this degree of
purity, will it suffice to keep alive a struggle as ardent as the one
which we are now witnessing, for the possession of a part of the
outside of the world, or even for the supremacy of certain ideas? It
must concede provisionally a preponderance to material, mortal life,
since it is evident that the morality of the just will triumph only on
condition that it has force on its side. Do you follow me, my poor
friend? All this is very dry. But this is my way of telling you that these
crystalline sentiments, that are an 'ornament' in ordinary times,
become a luxury in our age of iron and fire. Luxury is no longer
permissible. The time has come when all refinements must give way
to a very stern reality. As you have been very well told: 'We are not
our own.' General consent? It should be given to the best good of
the cause which unites us all, and carries us all away with itself.
Forgive me, my very dear friend. I am going to commit a rudeness
which gives me pain—and you know that only the extremity of an
unheard-of calamity could bring me to that—yes, your sentiment,
with its persistence, is beautiful in itself, most beautiful; but we are
no longer at leisure to look at things 'in themselves.' Well, if your
friend Clotilde had lost her husband in your place and at the same
time, and if she were to-day the wife of another who had made her a
mother, for example, we ought really to hold her case in higher
esteem than yours!"
A sob choked Odette. They were walking along the Champs-
Elysées. She sought for a chair and sank upon it.
"I am not vexed with you," she said as soon as she could speak;
"something in my inmost being understands you— It has already
been said to me— But it is hard!"
"The time is exceptional."
 XXIX

Odette spent much of her time in consoling poor Rose. Her

husband's death had passed almost unnoticed. But other and very
dramatic deaths had also passed unnoticed. When men were
brought home in fragments it made a sensation, but once they were
dead the sad equality of the earth obscured their memory.
Indescribable episodes had attained such a character, and had
reached such numbers, that people hardly dared speak of them.
Minds were saturated and automatically closed against any new
sensation. Many were unable to endure any story of the war,
whether in the newspapers or in books. Odette recalled to mind the
impression which the wounded had formerly made. They were
already saying "formerly" when speaking of the present war! Now
there were wounded everywhere. It was rather the unscathed men
upon whom one looked as if to say to them: "See here, you! what
are you doing with your arms, with your legs?" Certain persons, with
a strong revulsion of the instinct of self-preservation, refused, like
Clotilde, even to think about the war; others, on the other hand,
buried themselves in it with passionate intensity.
Mme. de Blauve, who had become fond of Odette and
occasionally came to see her, now came to announce the marriage
of her eldest daughter. She told the news almost as if saying: "At
last!" as if it were the case of an old maid whom she had despaired
of marrying off. Mlle. de Blauve was barely sixteen, she was
attractive and endowed with much charm, had been most carefully
educated, and promised to be really beautiful. She was to marry a
wounded sublieutenant.
"Ah!" said Odette; "does she love him?"
"He is a young man of good family," said Mme. de Blauve, "and
he has behaved admirably."
 "But he will return to the front! You will be in perpetual anxiety!"
"Not that," replied Mme. de Blauve. "To be sure, my daughter
would have liked to be the wife of a soldier who remained a soldier,
like her father. But soldiers in active service will always find some
one to marry them, and wives must be found for those less favored,
who have been checked in their career——"
"Has her fiancé been retired?" asked Odette. "Don't tell me that
he is badly——"
"Oh, this is not the time to think about things that girls used to
care for; the question is to save our men by giving them wives, so
that they may be in a position to found a family. This young man is
from the devastated regions. He has lost all his family—some of
them have been shot, others have died during the occupation of the
enemy—and it is entirely impossible for him to earn a decent living.
We ourselves have sacrificed more blood than money; my daughter
will still have a certain amount of fortune, therefore——"
"But what is the matter with him? What has he lost?" asked
Odette, thinking only of that absolute union of two beings which had
illuminated her own life.
"Oh, it is very sad," said Mme. de Blauve; "my future son-in-law is
one of those most deserving of interest, who have received face
wounds. His face—how can I tell you?—lacks almost everything
except the passages that are necessary for eating and breathing
——"
Odette uttered an inarticulate exclamation and rang the bell. But
she did not faint until Mme. de Blauve was gone.

The case of Mlle. de Blauve evoked more criticism than

admiration. According to some it was absolutely too terrible and not
to be thought about. In most cases, however, sensitiveness had
been so dulled by the constant hearing of war-stories that very little
attention was paid to this act of superhuman devotion. Some said:
"The mother is crazy and the young girl does not realize what she is
doing. One may do violence to nature, or may dupe it for a short
time; this is a time when we ought to resolve upon any sacrifice,
even to throwing ourselves into the arms of death; but death is either
the end or the beginning of the unknown. The idea of marrying a
superb girl of sixteen to a man without a face!"
Yet every one knew that far from bringing pressure to bear upon
her daughter, Mme. de Blauve had made every possible effort to
prevent her marrying another wounded man, an unlucky fellow who,
approaching a trench with a grenade in each hand, had had both
eyes burned at the very moment when a bursting shell had set off
the two grenades and shattered both hands. What she was now
doing was a slight thing in comparison with the thing that she had
prevented.
Odette felt that she must know La Villaumer's opinion on this
matter. They had no regular engagement for meeting, and met only
by chance. She decided to go to his house shortly before the
luncheon hour. An old servant ushered her into a room where, to her
great surprise, she heard the tones of a harmonium mingled with a
man's voice entirely untrained. It proceeded from the neighboring
room, separated from her by a glass door partly screened by a
curtain of Chinese silk. The thing was so unusual and so puzzling
that she could not refrain from peeping around the edge of the
curtain. She saw at the instrument an organist whom she knew, and
standing beside him a man bereft of both arms, and the pose of
whose head was that of a blind man trying to catch the notes which
the teacher was patiently repeating. All around them were soldiers
wearing black glasses, with closed eyes or with bandaged faces, and
Villaumer in his dressing-gown coming and going among them. He
suddenly disappeared and came into the room where Odette was
standing.
"I have caught you!" said she. "Try now to convince me that what I
have been told of you is not true! You are no longer in your own
home!"
"My good friend," he replied, "I am having lessons given to the
most unfortunate of those unhappy ones whom evil fortune and
inaction are driving to despair. They are being taught the rudiments
of music; they are trying to sing; it occupies them."
"I knew that you were kind——"
"I am not kind; I am generally severe upon men. But the sight of
misfortune is intolerable to me; and for men like these, who have
been three-quarters destroyed for the sake of saving us, yes, I
confess that I could give my last shirt; I would wait upon them at
table— Will you take luncheon with us?"
Through the half-open door into the dining-room she could see a
table spread for twelve.
"Do you take lunch with them?" asked Odette.
"I permit myself that honor— It is my last self-indulgence. Well,
will you take advantage of it?"
"I cannot, my friend, I cannot. I should weep through the whole
meal. That is not what they need."
"No. One must have the courage to bestow upon them the gayety
—which we don't possess. Social hypocrisy has not been practised
all this time in vain, if it has taught this to some of us."
"I am ashamed of my weakness," said Odette. "I should not flinch
before any sort of wound, but the thought that the war has deprived
a man of the light of day forces me to ask myself whether I myself
have a right to look upon these beautiful silks, this sunlight——"
"Take pleasure in the silks, in objects of art, and in sunlight, you
who are made to charm that portion of humanity that remains intact.
You would not, on the pretext that millions of men have been
plunged into darkness or death, irritate them gratuitously by an ill-
regulated sympathy? Innumerable lives have, alas, been shattered,
but life remains, the light is brilliant, plants are growing, animals and
even men still swarm upon the earth. Recall to mind the tragic and
paradoxical truth that human life, which is the highest work and
appears to have been the purpose of the creation of the world, is that
for which, on the whole, that great work appears to care the least.
Whatever part man may be called to play, his destiny is to pass
away. That horror of war with which we are inspired by the
extermination of men is in the long run kept up and perpetuated by
material depredations; the memory of an illustrious building
destroyed will last longer than that of a hundred thousand young
men mown down in their youth."
"And meanwhile you are throwing overboard all you possess to
rescue men who are only half alive. That is all that I wanted to
know."

XXX

Odette spent several days in bed as a consequence of the

marriage of the little de Blauve girl—which took place in the strictest
privacy, and which she had not attended. But her imagination was
lively, and she pictured things to herself.
She sought out her friend La Villaumer, as it were, now that she
had detected him in an act of kindness. As for him, in her presence
he took less pains to conceal his acts, now that she understood him
better.
"I have always loved men," he said. "Why should I not love them
since I have always professed to criticise them? Have I
misunderstood them? Remember how indulgent I was for all that in
them is so far removed from the only thing that I really prize—
intelligence. How vulnerable I have been to their instincts! How I
have smiled at their innumerable follies! I simply enjoyed studying
them, without the slightest partiality, notwithstanding my secret
reverence for reason, which seems to me to be a torch lighted at the
altar of a god and carefully transmitted by certain privileged beings to
certain privileged beings, while yet the chain that they form never
succeeds—no one can tell why—in producing an illumination.
Therefore, I have never believed that the world belonged to what we
have learned to venerate under the name of intelligence. Intelligence
is a divine part which no doubt gives us notions of what there is on
high, but which has almost no application to things here below. The
world is not governed by intelligence. Sometimes intelligence makes
converts, and we believe that its reign has come. Illusion! It is
precisely then that we are upon the point of falling again into blessed
ignorance, and going back to the age of barbarism. Do you know, I
am tempted to believe that the age of barbarism is the normal period
of humanity! We probably need cruelty, absurdity, injustice,
superstition, torrents of bloodshed, in order that the mystery which
we admire under the name of life may exist and perpetuate itself.
Our bodies can be fed only by offensive means. The majority of
human pleasures are unfathomably stupid. The great masses obey
certain elementary formulas, sayings of which they have never
weighed the meaning, and which often have no meaning.
Governments are not carried on by luminous reasoning, but by the
allurement of sounding words that flatter the senses. In order to hold
our own in a large and influential social group, my poor friend, are
we going to be called to admit the timeliness of belief in prophets, in
wonder-workers, in ghosts, in the platitudes of 'apparitions,' in the
genius of simple minds? Is a torrent of puerility about to inundate the
surface of the globe? May it be that this is the indispensable element
of reparation? Intelligence, reduced to its own resources, has in fact
no power of expansion, no means of action. It is enough to make
one die of shame and vexation! Law, justice, liberty—we can imagine
men shrugging their shoulders when they hear the words, for the
words are efficacious only when they are emptied of their
significance and travestied into elementary ideas which naturally
lead to the violation of law, liberty, justice. In the matter of ideas men
believe only in their tutelary virtue; they are protecting divinities; and
the idea is nothing but a word that men symbolize on their flagstaffs,
like a fetich. We are as credulous as Homer's warriors. Minerva
fights with us. For that matter, I do not think that there ever was a
better opportunity for adopting the theocratic conception of the world,
for men are at this moment given over to the elements, and the
greatest political genius imaginable would probably be powerless so
long as the convulsions with which the world is attacked are not
quieted of themselves. In these conditions there is no room in the
home of a poor fellow for any but the virtues of pity and affection. I
confess the fact, my dear Odette, I can no longer control my heart."
"To be moved to compassion is to be weakened, I have been
told."
"There is truth in that opinion so far as those persons are
concerned who are more especially called by circumstances to act,
and especially to direct the actions of others; such must put on
blinders and look only to the immediate purpose which demands all
their energies. But it is desirable that in the midst of this tempest-
tossed world a few contemplative persons shall devote themselves
to pity as to the conservation of a 'precious blood'; if only for the sake
of the efficacy, or at least of the beauty of the thing. And the
worshippers at this altar will need to contend—do you know with
whom?—with humanity itself, which has little remembrance of its
own ills, and which, like a kitten, hastens to play with the first ray of
sunshine. It is true that the dead keep a great silence."

XXXI

Odette was at home one evening, and alone. Stretched out upon
a lounge, she was gazing at the photographs of Jean on little tables
or within her reach upon the walls, hypnotizing herself with the sight
of them, kissing them as she always did.
Amelia came in saying that the next apartment was "crammed
full."
"Madame, if there aren't twenty men six feet high in that room, my
own poor husband isn't a prisoner with the Boches!"
In fact there was a great commotion on the other side of the
partition. Furniture and chairs were being moved about, and as all
sounds penetrated through the cracks of the door, the syllables of an
unfamiliar language could be heard, perhaps Rumanian or Russian.
The neighbor was a foreigner.
Suddenly there was silence. Amelia had withdrawn. It was an
imposed, perhaps a concerted, silence. "It is a musical recital," said
Odette to herself. In fact she almost immediately recognized the
sprightly touch of the pianist, mellow, languishing, melting into the
keyboard as into a tender flesh, by turns nervous, light, cruel as a
hammer, heavy as a pile-driver, seeming to crush the instrument,
then suddenly soft, fluttering on the keys like the wing of a dying bird.
Though the woman often played for herself alone, this was not the
first time that many people had gathered around her to hear her
music.
A chorus of men's voices burst forth. It was strange, weird,
enough to make one catch one's breath. Odette listened. That
sensitiveness to music which often reached depths in her unknown
to herself, was suddenly wrought up to its utmost pitch. She did not
know the chorus, and sought in vain for an author to whom to
ascribe it. It might be a popular song, perhaps very ancient, to judge
by its artless simplicity, its pure rhythm, and its wild, sweet accent. At
times a soprano voice uprose in a solo, and the chorus, a third
below, responded softly in whisperings that grew nearer and nearer,
quickly spreading like oil upon the sea, or as if transmitted from man
to man over immense plains and endlessly flowing rivers. Suddenly
two or three raucous or strident cries gathered up all the voices to a
sharp point directed toward the heavens. Then all sound ceased,
and one felt as if falling from a superb altitude into the depths of an
abyss.
Then the fingers of the enchantress executed a ballad of
Balakireff, or Dvorak's hymn, "On the Death of a Hero." And then,
after a pause, another chorus broke forth.
There was in it all a melancholy which no words could so much as
suggest, in which amid the uniformly plaintive murmur one discerned
such lifelike wailings that one could have stretched out the hands to
succor these vague, unrecognized, and multiplied sufferings. They
swelled, spread abroad, took on so mighty an extension that in spite
of oneself one saw the surface of the suffering world, heard the
feeble and resigned voice of man, of man always the sport of fate,
always in leading-strings, always sacrificed like cattle to gods whose
secret he could not fathom. It was the lament of the ancient earth of
humanity, timid, uncouth, and despairing, issuing from bruised
hearts, from torn flesh, from souls robbed of their innocent ideals, a
disturbing lament issuing from the borders of marshes, from forests,
from glacial plains, from desert steppes, from nameless villages,
prisons, palaces, battlefields, tombs, and stoically, pathetically, and
yet childishly addressed to—no one!
Odette had often been on the verge of sentiments corresponding
to this music, primitive, barbarous, perhaps divine, but when music
comes to be mingled with our sentiments it reveals them to
themselves and amplifies them without measure. Odette saw what
she had never dared to see; for the first time she was transported
outside of herself, or at least she felt the conviction that she was. It
produced in her such an overturning of her points of view as almost
to make her dizzy. She suddenly discovered how completely she had
considered everything with reference to herself, even in her
seemingly most generous moments. At this instant she thought of
herself in relation to the incalculable number of persons who were
not she. It was not that the moans of humanity were now reaching
her for the first time, but it was the first time that the sobs of others
came to her ears with a tone of majestic sadness which forced her to
grovel upon the earth, saying: "I no longer count; I am only the
servant of grief."
It was a painful sentiment if there is one, and yet, by a curious
contradiction, a sentiment in the same degree joyful. A boundless
commiseration caused her heart to throb and tears to come to her
eyes, and yet this painful sympathy, far from being cruel or
depressing, wrought in her soul an unsuspected outflowering, like an
outburst of inconceivable elation in which was mingled bitterness
and pity.
There is no compensation for the personal suffering that we may
experience. On the contrary, in a close and complete union with the
sufferings of others is hidden a joy of mutual pain; an active desire to
give aid impels to the beginning of a helpful act, provokes to so
fervent a prayer for heavenly mercy that the heart no longer knows
whether it lies prone in utter distress or has attained to a radiant
phase of existence incomparably higher than its paltry estate as an
isolated being. The word "love" presents itself to a soul thus
irradiated without any sustaining form which might limit its character;
it is without extent as without form; as to the source that feeds it,
springing up no one knows where, one is convinced that there is no
fear that it will ever be exhausted.
Odette often wept, but to-day it was with other tears. She took up
one of Jean's photographs and found but one word to say to it:
"Forgive me!"
She understood neither what she felt nor what she was doing, but
she was conscious of failing Jean. Not of failing Jean in favor of
another, but for the sake of a multitude of others among whom no
one man could be discerned. When she was able to formulate a
thought, she said to herself: "I was pitying." She might have said:
"Charity has taken possession of me."

XXXII

There was no sign that any event had occurred that evening.
Odette had spent it alone in her little drawing-room. The chorus in
the next apartment was stilled. But that evening was made up of the
most important hours which the young wife had experienced since
the death of her husband.
Odette was aware that something had been revealed within
herself, but she was ill adapted to analyze herself, and the
phenomenon was still wrapped in mist. It had manifested its reality
only by a single act of hers—an act which she remembered, which
abode with her: the prayer for forgiveness addressed to the picture
of her beloved Jean. She returned continually to this material fact;
she had seized the photograph and had kissed it as if she had been
at fault. Thanks to this fact, the spiritual operations of which it was
the conclusion were not arrested, did not vanish like smoke, and
pursued her that night, on the morrow, and during the following days.
So sudden a burst of light might indeed have been ephemeral in
character. We are all subject, especially under an exterior influence
acting upon the senses, to similar spasms of enthusiasm, or to
dreams of a like generosity which may be only a passing impulse.
They die away and we return to a condition which we call
reasonable, that is to say, lucid, calm, well-balanced, and tame.
With Odette this illumination had not the character of a sudden
impulse, but was rather the outcome of a long and almost
unconscious preparation. How many words, how many tidings, how
many hints registered in her memory, how many puzzling
suggestions, how many dramatic scenes, how many ideas had been
as so many arrows of direction, guiding her toward the place where
she had received the divine spark! How many books read, how many
musings, apparently without result, had determined the direction that
had brought her here! Odette was like a clay which during two and a
half years had been continually receiving the touches of a thumb or
chisel, powerless to give her the form which an invisible artist
desired her to take, and the last touch, removing an encumbering bit,
had produced precisely the shape desired.
Odette awoke next morning in the same condition in which she
had fallen asleep, with the one difference that she no longer wept.
But the tears of the evening had had their sweetness. She found
herself in an almost grateful tranquillity. She went and came in the
midst of Jean's photographs, and Jean did not reproach her for her
new state of mind. His memory seemed to be in nowise outraged.
And yet Odette did not forget that she had begged his forgiveness,
as if it had been possible that she had failed him. This fact marked a
well-determined date in the perturbations of her soul. But it seemed
to her that she had received to her "Forgive me!" a gentle, calming
reply, a loving approbation.
 XXXIII

Yet the moment came when it seemed to her that she was losing
her reason. She had seen many cases of cerebral disturbance since
the war; they had been more or less apparent. Some persons of her
acquaintance had been duly shut up in insane asylums, but there
were many at large who showed the almost imperceptible wound by
which the microbe had penetrated.
By way of discovering whether or no she was mentally affected,
she imposed upon herself the test of behaving for a while like a
woman who has decided to lead the usual life until the end. She said
to herself: "I am not insane, for I think it requires more courage to
adopt, every day and every hour, the attitude of ordinary life, as if the
war did not exist—seeing that the majority of people who act thus
have been crushed or tortured by it—than to give oneself up to the
monster bound hand and foot. I am the less strong in not being able
to endure the commingling of both interests and throwing myself into
these horrors. I should be senseless if I deemed my own actions
alone to be good, beautiful, and worthy. But I am judging myself. I
am therefore not demented."
Out of curiosity she went one day to see Clotilde, still by way of
test. "To measure myself," she said to herself.
Clotilde's undue self-satisfaction made her friends really
uncomfortable, a discomfort which from the first they had sought to
hide or refused to recognize, which until now such a friend as Odette
had even refused to admit, but which to-day she could not endure.
Clotilde, surrounded by flowers, bathed in a perfumed atmosphere,
talked only of a change she had made in the decoration of her
rooms, of her clothes, or of matters so utterly foreign to current
events that it seemed as if for her the latter had no existence. She
never went out, lest she should be obliged to see or hear
disagreeable things, and yet never had she bought so many hats
and gowns as since the war. On her earlier visits Odette had slightly
shrugged her shoulders as if amused and not wholly displeased. By
degrees, the disproportion between such interests and the wound
with which the whole world was bleeding overmastered her ability to
make allowances.
Odette reminded her friend that she had not of late called upon
her for help, and asked if she had lost her blind man. Clotilde was
amazingly frank in her reply:
"My darling, 'my blind man,' as you call him, continues to exist and
to charm my husband. But what would you have? It is not that I am
lost to all sense of humanity, but you can imagine how the presence
of this man annoys me. He cannot see me, I am nothing to him, and
it is necessary for me to please——"
"But one may please even those who don't see us. One can try to
amuse these unfortunates, to make time pass pleasantly for them
——"
"You speak as if you possessed some gift in which I am lacking. It
is only that you like them, and know how to please them——"
"Oh!"
"You succeed in pleasing them! This man who visits us, with
whom you took lunch, is always asking for you. He never so much as
speaks of me. And yet it is I who permit him to come!"
"A man who cannot see you in your place at the head of the table,
and to whom you never give any proof that you are there, may
naturally forget you."
"You find it all right because he doesn't forget you. He dotes upon
you, by what George says; he asks for news of you, he longs to hear
your voice! He annoys me. In fact, child, it was precisely on your
account, I admit, that I was obliged to turn him away; he was falling
in love with you. Can you imagine it? You ought to thank me!"
"In love with me! If that were true I should be all the more sorry for
him, poor man! But he must have heard about me? He knows that I
am not to be had?"
"He hasn't gone as far as that; he only feels happy in your
company. When you are not there he misses you. That is all."
"Well, where is the love in that? He is like the wounded men
whom I have nursed; they were happy in my company; when I went
away, I suppose they missed me. If I had concluded from that that
they were in love with me——"
"You didn't conclude it, on your part, but as for them, what do you
know? Perhaps you broke their hearts!"
"You are romantic and think only of love! Men who have suffered
as they have, prefer to think of their own comfort, and of those who
make them comfortable. I knew a nurse seventy years old for whom
her patients clamored like children. Were they in love with her?"
"That proves nothing. A blind man feels very clearly whether the
woman near him is one who charms."
"Then he ought also to feel the compassion that he inspires, and
that does not lead to love."
"Are you uncomfortable in the presence of a blind man?"
"It is an undefinable emotion; my head turns. I lose my self-
command."
"You didn't seem to, here."
"One does almost involuntarily the thing that costs the most, if one
is determined to comfort those whose misfortunes arouse your
emotions."
And they talked of other things.

XXXIV
 Odette would no doubt have forgotten "her" blind man if a visit
which Mme. de Blauve paid her had not recalled him to mind in the
most unexpected manner.
Mme. de Blauve, whose calmness had always impressed every
one, from the time when she was living under the bombardment of
Rheims through the days in which she had made the sacrifice of her
husband, her two sons, and, one may say, her daughter, now
appeared unnerved. She had grown thin; her eyes were sunken; she
was evidently suffering.
With her habitual resolution she opened to Odette the purpose of
her visit. She had heard—it was rumored—that her dear friend,
having amply and worthily overpassed the period of her widowhood,
was purposing—not by inclination, but in order to accomplish a great
act of charity—to become the wife of a blinded officer. People were
talking about it. She herself had been extremely moved by the news,
and all the more because she feared that she had incurred a certain
responsibility in the matter, having probably been one of the first to
urge upon the young widow the duty of a second marriage.
Odette was amazed. What were people about? Never had she
had the slightest idea of such a thing. Startled at first, she went on,
almost laughing, to hear what Mme. de Blauve had to say.
"It is untrue, you say," said Mme. de Blauve; "but, my little friend,
experience has taught me that there is always a grain of truth at the
bottom of a wide-spread rumor. Whether good or bad, such plants do
not grow out of nothing."
Odette told her upon how slight a fact this rumor might possibly
have been based. She had lunched at Clotilde Avvogade's with a
blinded officer, and Clotilde insisted that she had pleased him.
"Nothing more would be needed!" said Mme. de Blauve, "and your
friend has probably told the story all around. It must be so, for I have
heard the name of the man, the institution where he has been re-
educated; I even know all about his circumstances; he is a widower
without fortune of any sort, and father of two little children about
whom he feels great anxiety."
 "Well," said Odette, "for my part I knew nothing of these last
particulars, and this is surely a proof that my romance has not gone
very far."
Mme. de Blauve was lost in apologies. Nevertheless, she did not
go so far as to regret the step she had taken. If it proved to have no
reason in the present case, an analogous case might arise; she
knew Odette's susceptibility, the noble impulses of her soul, and it
was her duty to warn her against impressions and impulses——
"What!" interrupted Odette; "you, madame, whose daughter——"
"Yes, yes, precisely I, 'whose daughter'—It is because my
daughter has made a marriage—beautiful, surely, from the moral
point of view, but, after all, a marriage—how shall I say it—somewhat
daring, that I believe myself to be authorized to say to you: 'My very
dear child, be careful, reflect!' Understand me; I regret nothing that
has occurred; I congratulate myself on the happiness which my
daughter is assuring to a victim of the war, who is a hundred times
deserving of it. Let me tell you, by way of parenthesis, that my
daughter has hope of a child, and I trust that God will bring
everything out right, although——"
"Although," repeated Odette anxiously.
"Although—oh, the dear child is lacking neither in love nor in
admiration for her husband, who is a hero; but our poor human
nature has strange revulsions—I tell you, you alone, in confidence;
since my daughter has reason for hope of becoming a mother, she
feels—alas! it is frightful, let me whisper it to you—she feels a sort of
apprehension at the sight of her husband, whose terrible affliction
you know of!— We must, at all costs, prevent her husband having
the slightest suspicion of the—temporary—feeling that he inspires,
and the young wife is obliged to put the strongest restraint upon
herself in order to show nothing. Just how far this incessant
constraint is consistent with the happy maintenance of her condition,
and with hope for its normal outcome, who shall say? This is what
we are asking ourselves, this is our anxiety."
"Oh, dear, dear madame, how sorry I am for you!"
 "You understand that I would not wish to have to be sorry for you,
in my turn, for a reason like this. It was to avoid it that I came here,
as much humiliated by my apprehensions as I was proud on the day
of the marriage. You have no plan of the sort, you tell me, my child?
So much the better! But I have become excessively apprehensive; I
am afraid of characters like yours, which may be inclined to do too
well. Sometimes a little pride enters into the good or the noble things
that we do. Do you understand?"

XXXV

Mme. de Blauve had taken her leave with these words, and
Odette, still breathless at the thought that there could be any
question of her marrying, a little ruffled, even, remembered only the
secret discomfiture confessed to by the mother of the poor little
bride. It was one more cause of horror added to all those of which
she was the daily witness. Her calamity had doubtless shaken Mme.
de Blauve's spirit to the point of causing in her mind a sort of
hallucination as to the fate which might be threatening the young
widow. Or else Mme. de Blauve had made the most of slight rumors
with no basis of truth, as a pretext for coming to confess her own
anxiety. Or else—a conjecture which barely touched Odette's mind—
Mme. de Blauve, as she had herself intimated, always erring through
pride, felt a frightful satisfaction in the dangers with which she and
her family were perpetually menaced, jealously guarding this bitter
eminence, lest it might be seized upon by others! For one can come
even to such a point.
What analogy could there be between the marriage of the little de
Blauve girl, an ignorant child, with one of the most horribly mutilated
of soldiers, and an imaginary marriage between her, Odette, who
was going on to her thirtieth year, with a blinded man who was not
disfigured? Young girls, women, were marrying blinded men every
day; many more of them would do so, one must hope! The case
might indeed be peculiarly delicate for her, a widow still in love with
her husband, and who was peculiarly sensitive to blindness; but if
the case ever occurred it was she alone who had the right to judge of
it. No one knew either the lasting nature of her grief or her personal
repugnances; the matter in no slightest degree deserved attention.
In fact, at the point that Odette had reached, she could imagine no
limit to devotion. In the marriages now in question, there was no
mention of anything that had formerly been called happiness; the
only thought was of kindliness toward most deserving beings who
were suffering under the greatest of misfortunes, and the greater
their misfortune, the greater, it appeared, ought to be the pleasure of
alleviating it. She did not approve of Mme. de Blauve, if it was she
who had urged her daughter to a marriage of charity, but she could
perfectly understand the daughter's having made such a marriage. If
a temporary check now and then occurred, it was due to a
pathological condition which would eventually cease. She recalled to
mind one of her friends, a perfectly well-balanced girl, married to a
very fine man whom she adored, who had taken a dislike to her
husband during the whole period of her pregnancy, without in the
least knowing why.
A few days later Odette received a letter from Mme. de Calouas,
still in Surville, alluding to the prospect of her marriage to a blinded
officer. So the utterly unfounded rumor had made its way to the
depths of Normandy! And Mme. de Calouas, who was wisdom itself,
and utterly removed from any suggestion that might have acted upon
Mme. de Blauve, wrote to her as Mme. de Blauve had spoken: "Yes,
dear friend, marry; I have never concealed from you that it is almost
your duty. But beware of an excess of zeal! Take care not to
undertake more than a woman of your temperament, brought up as
you have been, attached to a beloved memory as you still are, will
be able to endure. Remember that many of us can be heroic for a
few seconds, a few hours, a few days, but that is very different from
a whole lifetime."
Odette smiled, not only at the thought of what people were
thinking of her, but at the solicitude which they expressed for her,
and that sort of obsession for heroic acts which every one seemed to
cherish. Odette had not the slightest intention of performing a heroic
act. Nothing in her character had ever inclined her in that direction.
Her heart was made for loving. She loved, she was sure that she
loved. The one whom she loved was her husband—her Jean. She
could ill analyze the character of the tenderness which at the same
time she felt for every suffering creature on earth. And that was all.
What would they have of her?

XXXVI

Nevertheless she continued to be disturbed by the strange rumor

which had been set afloat, which was still afloat, and she promised
herself to speak about it to Clotilde, who without doubt had been the
cause of its diffusion.
On drawing near to the house in which Clotilde lived, she met
Lieutenant Avvogade guiding his blinded man by the arm. She had
not so much as thought of avoiding such an encounter.
When the blind man recognized Odette's voice his whole face
was transfigured. He turned pale; he hardly had courage to speak.
But she felt the effort with which his closed eyelids were directed
toward the point in space from which her voice had come; her
perfume had been wafted to him. This blinded man was looking at
her, was seeing her in his imagination; perhaps he was seeing her
much more beautiful, more alluring, than he had dreamed! He had
been disturbed because opportunities to be with her had no longer
been afforded him, and he did not know that it was not she herself
who had prevented them. But an inward instinct, stronger than he
had yet known, filled him with ecstasy in that moment of the young
woman's presence. He inhaled her like a flower, he listened to her,
was saturated with her. Believing himself to be behind the veil which
hid the daylight from him, as behind a screen, he neglected to keep
a watch on himself, to impose constraint upon himself. His emotion