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An infinite amount of hope, but not for us: posthumanism and beautiful post-apocalyptic landscapes in The Last of Us

by Mah Xiao Yu

We can arrange post-apocalyptic landscapes on a spectrum of beauty: grim images of desolation on one end, and vibrant restored natural landscapes on the other. At large, “ugly” landscapes seem to imply pessimism and despair, while beautiful landscapes are associated with awe and hope. For instance, the vast and barren desert in Mad Max: Fury Road immediately inspires despair through its dark colours and the audience’s own associations of the desert with a lack of life and a struggle to survive. Hence, the oppressive wasteland enhances the film’s violent plot and overall pessimistic portrayal of the post-apocalypse as hostile to human life. On the other hand, the city landscape overrun with colourful flora and fauna in The Last of Us (TLOU) fuses the familiarity of the city and the utopian dream of an Edenic world. Read at surface level and in the current context of environmental deterioration, such a landscape gives us a beautiful, optimistic vision of a more hospitable post-apocalyptic world.

However, the assumption that beautiful post-apocalyptic landscapes, which typically feature large-scale natural restoration, offer a simple message of hope and optimism misses their posthumanist undertones. Hope in the post-apocalypse typically means the main character surviving yet another day, survivors rebuilding society, or in general, the world as we know it eventually being restored. These are humanist ideas of hope that put humanity at the forefront. However, beautiful natural landscapes in post-apocalyptic media express a unique type of hope: hope for natural restoration. This shift in focus from humanity to nature and the environment is characteristically posthumanist. While the idea that such beautiful natural restoration coincides with humanity’s tragic demise is recognised by most viewers, the full extent of the landscapes’ posthumanist message is largely overlooked. In discussing the empty streets and abandoned houses now overrun with nature in TLOU, the game’s developers wanted players to “reflect about how much we’ve built […] and what we’ve lost” (Druckmann and Wells 1:16-1:22). The gameplay reflects this decision: stories uncovered through the landscape, such as letters and diaries, are mostly about people. Hence, it can be said that the posthumanist hope for natural restoration is superseded by the humanist despair at humanity’s demise.

Therefore, using TLOU, which is representative of the trope, I argue that beautiful post-apocalyptic landscapes are more than just aesthetic backgrounds for the plot to unfold, and instead deliver a thoroughly posthumanist message of humanity’s insignificance and the irrationality of its survival, an idea that runs directly counter to the plot of most post-apocalyptic texts—humanity’s struggle to survive against all odds. This is because the resilience of landscapes as well as their peaceful beauty juxtaposed with human agency and human nature reveals how transient, terrible, and tiny humanity is.

The landscape as a storyteller

To understand how beautiful landscapes convey posthumanist narratives, it is important to examine how landscapes in general have narrative power. Viewers understand landscapes intuitively based on their emotive effect. So, when presented with a landscape that makes them feel awe or comfort, viewers interpret the landscape in optimistic ways. Hakon Heimer’s theory of “restorative” natural environments can then explain for us why the natural landscapes in TLOU inspire feelings of hope and, as a result, optimism (117). Heimer identifies four environmental features that are closely associated with positive feelings: “ecodiversity,” “synesthetic tendency (a commingling of colors, smells, and other sensory stimuli),” “environmental familiarity,” and “cognitive challenge (which includes structural complexity and texture)” (117). In TLOU, flora and fauna have overtaken cityscapes, and, in an iconic scene, giraffes peacefully roam free, demonstrating restored ecodiversity. Synesthetic tendency and cognitive challenge come through the vibrant colours and textures in the game’s graphics, which have only become more realistic as game development technology improves. Finally, the landscape still retains environmental familiarity even with drastic ecological restoration since TLOU takes place in recognisable cityscapes. Hence, the natural environment brings viewers relief and peace in between moments of stressful violence in the game and also gives viewers the hope that once Joel and Ellie, the main characters of TLOU, fend off all dangers and find a cure for the “zombie” infection, they will one day be able to live such a peaceful life.

Amid their violent journey of survival, Joel and Ellie encounter a herd of giraffes. The video’s comments show how the scene emotionally affected players—how it made them feel calm, tranquillity, and hope.

TLOU, as a video game, further empowers its landscapes to not only provide brief respite to pace the plot, but also deliver their own narrative. Regardless of writers’ intentions, video game landscapes have gained narrative independence from the plot since viewers are not passive but rather active players who move around and explore the diegetic world with much more freedom than in other media. Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton argue in Landscape Narratives that spatial (as compared to textual) narratives empower the viewer to examine and experience the landscape with their own direction and pace, and hence interpret the narrative in their own way (10). While TLOU limits the landscape open for exploration according to players’ progression, players are encouraged to explore beyond what is strictly necessary for the plot, as doing so helps them uncover clues for how to proceed and acquire upgrades for the player’s equipment. But beyond bonuses that help with gameplay, the landscape also reveals narratives not directly related to the plot. For instance, the graffiti on walls not only reinforce the atmosphere of societal collapse, but when actually read also reveal nuances in the post-apocalyptic world such as the desperation of the survivors or civilians’ cynicism towards the government.

Cynical graffiti encountered within TLOU.

It is interesting that while the game’s plot unfolds through human actions and dialogue, the story of the larger world is left to the landscape to tell—through graffiti, unread letters, and abandoned diaries—which points to the absence of other storytellers, namely human storytellers. I argue that the landscape’s resilience and beauty, which gives it its position as the storyteller, hence demonstrates a posthumanist shift in power that is examined in Leif Sorenson’s The Apocalypse is a Nonhuman Story where the “indifference [of non-human objects] to events that are cataclysmic for humans suggests that representing the apocalyptic requires a break from human scale and an acknowledgement of nonhuman modes of agency” (526). In stark contrast to the landscape, humanity is transient, terrible, and tiny.

The posthumanist landscape

Even with stories about humanity and society, humanity has lost its agency as its own storyteller to the landscape and is hence unable to fully possess even its own narrative. While most post-apocalyptic humans cannot speak for themselves simply because they are dead, this nonetheless demonstrates how human agency is undercut by humanity’s frailty and transience. In contrast, the landscape is resilient—the graffiti people paint onto walls will remain to tell their tale, long after they are dead. However, the landscape is far from passive in this transfer of power. In TLOU, nature proves humanity’s transience by actively encroaching on and taking away humanity’s power and agency. Unlike in many other zombie apocalypse texts, the “zombie virus” in TLOU is not an escaped man-made virus that demonstrates humanity’s destructive greed but is rather a fungal infection (inspired by Cordyceps) that originated from crops. The infection that possesses and mutates millions of human bodies in gruesome ways can hence be read as nature forcibly taking back its space and agency from humanity.

Jackson, the town that Joel and Ellie come to live in, is distinct from its surroundings, already beginning to disrupt the natural landscape.

However, far from being an unreasonably cruel and vengeful force, nature and its beautiful restoration prove that humanity should not be given power or agency due to its inherently terrible and exploitative nature. Most players recognise that the deterioration of humanity does not simply coincide with the restoration of the natural landscape, but it is only because of humanity’s catastrophic demise that such restoration is possible. Yet, players still hope that the characters will persevere and find a way to rebuild society, even if this naturally means rebuilding towns and eventually wrestling the environment back from nature, tarnishing the very beauty players are appreciating now. To take the posthumanist message to its full logical conclusion, humanity has not only been a disruptive force but what we consider the cornerstones of humanity—civilisation and technology—are antithetical to the landscape. The humanist hope that the world as we know it can be restored and the hope that the beauty of the natural world can be maintained are mutually exclusive.

Players who are optimistic about human nature may reject this out of the hope that a post-apocalyptic society will cherish the environment more. However, post-apocalyptic texts like TLOU, which are more concerned about the immediate survival of its human characters, do not offer any evidence for why that would be the case. Rather, TLOU presents a largely pessimistic picture of human nature. In contrast to the beautiful landscape, humans are visually associated with gory violence and atrocities they commit. But in an almost paradisiacal landscape, where there is enough shelter, food, and water for the small population of survivors, the responsibility for most, if not all, the terrible violence and pain characters must suffer is set squarely on humanity. Humans are solely responsible for the “every man for himself” chaos that gives rise to groups like the cruel Hunters, who lure other survivors into their territory before killing them and stealing all their supplies. Hence, even when TLOU affords these characters agency, it is only of the worst kind.

The premise for the sequel, The Last of Us Part II, is less about survival against the Infected and instead focuses on Ellie’s quest for revenge against those who brutally murdered Joel.

Ultimately, post-apocalyptic landscapes inherently overwhelm all else with their non-human scale, such that it seems humans never will or never had any real power or agency to begin with. While characters’ stories start and end, and the plot’s events begin and conclude, the landscape remains unchanged and outlasts the entire story and all other actors. Rarely do we have a post-apocalyptic text that ends with a large-scale revival of humanity, who goes on to reclaim the landscape from nature. Rather, the personal, local stories of the characters conclude without any impact on their larger surroundings, regardless of how dramatically life-altering their experiences and actions may be. This makes beautiful post-apocalyptic landscapes not so different from their “ugly” counterparts. Although less overtly grim, they are still overwhelmingly vast in comparison to humans, who are tiny in their isolation and dispersal.

Hence, beautiful landscapes present us with an irony within post-apocalyptic texts. The main point of these texts revolves around humanity’s struggle to survive by whatever means necessary, and yet the landscapes point to how insignificant humanity is and how the struggle is not only ultimately without any lasting impact but also destructive to humanity itself.

Conclusion

The posthumanism of beautiful post-apocalyptic landscapes tells us that there can be hope for nature to recover and even prosper after apocalyptic events, but there is no point in humanity’s struggle to survive, as all it would only tarnish the beauty of the world and bring about its own suffering. As Kafka once said, “there is hope, an infinite amount of hope, just not for us.” Yet, despite the irrationality and futility of it, as humans, we cannot deny our desire to live. There is no hope for us—but just as being transient, terrible, and tiny is in our nature, it is also in our nature to hope, and it might be the only form of agency we have that cannot be taken away from us.

Works cited

#505. Image. Evan Richards. The Cinematography of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). https://www.evanerichards.com/2016/4687.

Heimer, Hakon. “Topophilia and quality of life: Defining the ultimate restorative environment.” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 113, no. 2, 2005, pp. 117.

Jackson. Image. Jackson. https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Jackson.

Joel and Ellie watch giraffes. Image. Pete Nikolov. My Thoughts on The Last of Us 2. 1 Jul. 2020. https://medium.com/@pete.nikolov/my-thoughts-on-the-last-of-us-2-9dd3233d675f.

Mad Max: Fury Road. Directed by George Miller. 2015.

PlayStation. “The Last of Us Development Series Episode 2: Wasteland Beautiful.” 2013, April 9, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZJ2C6wAVpg&feature=youtu.be.

Potteiger, Matthew, and Jamie Purinton. Landscape narratives: Design practices for telling stories. John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

@softorzabal. “the last of us + graffiti.” Twitter, 15 Jun. 2020, 6:38 a.m. https://twitter.com/softorzabal/status/1272297472057057280?s=20.

Sorenson, Leif. “The Apocalypse is a Nonhuman Story.” ASAP/Journal, vol. 3, no. 3, 2018, pp. 523-546.

The Last of Us Part II. Image. Jade King. 12 Jun. 2020. https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/the-last-of-us-2.

ViceyVERSUS. “The Last of Us – Giraffe Scene.” 2013, June 18, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMjdl_uYXgE&feature=youtu.be.

Categories
Opinion articles

The Passive Protagonist: Assessing the agency of trains as opposed to the human protagonist within the narrative of Train to Busan

by Sum Hung Yee

Wallpapers ID:791096

Trains have, for a long time, played a significant role in cinema. In this essay, I seek to analyse Train to Busan, a 2016 South Korean action horror film directed by Yeon Sang-ho. Train to Busan centres around a small group of survivors as they travel on a train towards Busan during a zombie apocalypse. The main protagonist is Seok-woo, a Korean businessman who devotes little affection to his family. At the point of the zombie outbreak, he takes his daughter on a high-speed train ride to Busan to visit his ex-wife. The story of Train to Busan largely takes place on two trains: The high-speed train and the small locomotive near the end of the film.

In “The Apocalypse is a Nonhuman Story”, Leif Sorensen argues that “nonhuman agencies and energies, as well as their unpredictable effects on the humans with whom they are entangled, emerge as crucial to any effort to understand our present moment” (524). In essence, Sorensen makes the claim that these texts portray nonhuman objects as possessing an undeniable degree of agency, and that “both human and nonhuman agencies and scales demand attention” (530). Sorensen concludes that the texts he examines, such as Okorafor’s Who Fears Death (2010) and Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991), “theorize—that is, give speculative form to—the constellations of human and nonhuman agencies that emerge as readers, writers, and characters grapple with apocalyptic scenarios that expose the frailty of the human and its codependence on the nonhuman” (542).

Conventionally, the train is seen as an inanimate object, one which lacks consciousness. The train thus seems unimportant in comparison to the human characters within films. On the other hand, protagonists, are usually expected to be “at the [centre] of a decision making process that causes the story to progress” (146). As such, one might conclude that protagonists are key drivers of their narratives, while inanimate objects like the trains are of secondary, or even negligible, importance. However,this line of reasoning within Train to Busan may not be correct. Firstly, the film’sprotagonist, Seok-woo, does not survive to the end of the film, yet the diegetic world of the film does not end. This observation hints that the film’s protagonist may not be the sole focus within the film, and that the film’s narrative may not be completely dependent on his agency. Secondly, the incorporation of the train is a practice often witnessed in many films today, such as Snowpiercer. As stated by Taïna Tuhkunen, “Since the onrushing locomotive speeding towards the audience became one of the founding myths and iconic shots of film history, cinema has not ceased to exploit the dramatic, diegetic and symbolic potential of trains” (1). Reinforcing Tuhkunen’s view, Snowpiercer’s train, rather than serving as a mere mode of transportation, also symbolises the “progress of capitalism” (O Croidheain). Thus, within similar films, the train serves a more significant role within their narratives than previously thought. This leads me to the suspicion that the trains within Train to Busan are not simply inert, insignificant objects, subject to the agency of the protagonist.

In this essay, I wish to extend Sorensen’s argument regarding the presence of nonhuman agency. I will argue that within Train to Busan, the agency possessed by nonhuman entities – the trains in the film – are not only present, but at times, eclipse the agency possessed by the protagonist. As with the texts examined by Sorensen, where “humanity is exposed to and irreversibly reshaped by nonhuman forces and modes of agency”, the trains in Train to Busan not only affect the narrative, but also, at times, supplant the protagonist as primary actors within the film, with their interactions with humans affecting the trajectory of the film’s narrative.

The high-speed train and small locomotive within Train to Busan serve as nonhuman agents that the human characters depend on. Seok-woo, as a human character, is also reliant on the trains, regardless of his role as the human protagonist. In a way, Train to Busan introduces a relationship of dependence between the train and the protagonist. By serving as an enclosed environment, these trains protect the human survivors, including the protagonist, from the external threat of zombies, a task that the protagonist himself is unable to accomplish. To illustrate this point, when the train passengers alight at Daejeon station and are attacked by the zombies, they instinctively escape to the high-speed train. Seok-woo, the protagonist, also presents himself as helpless in this instance, choosing to escape into the high-speed train along with the other remaining survivors. The high-speed train is thus an entity that provides for the safety of its human passengers. Similarly, the humble locomotive ferries the remaining survivors towards their destination, shielding them from zombie attacks. This idea is emphasised in a scene where a large horde of zombies chase after the locomotive, but are unable to climb on board.

Train to Busan on Twitter: "fun run hahaha zombie https://t.co/2UqHO3dr7m"  / Twitter
The locomotive ferries the remaining survivors away from danger.

Interestingly, the agentic role of the locomotive is further illustrated in the events near the end of the film. When Seok-woo is bitten and will be converted into a zombie, he chooses to jump off the train, sacrificing his life. This instance signifies Seok-woo’s acknowledgement of the locomotive’s agency, and in turn, the diminishment of his capacity for agency. Due to being infected, Seok-woo understands his threat to the remaining survivors and that he will no longer have the capability to ensure their safety. At the same time, he recognises the locomotive’s agentic capacity in ensuring the survival of the remaining passengers as it ferries them towards the military base at Busan. As a result, he accepts his fate and willingly sacrifices his life. This attitude is a stark contrast to his initial confidence in securing the safety of himself and his daughter, seen in the instance where he uses his connections in an attempt to receive special treatment and protection, which signifies his strong belief in his human agency.

As a consequence of relying on the high-speed train for safety, the human survivors, including Seok-woo, also depend on the circumstances surrounding the train when making their decisions. As a result,  the human characters, including the protagonist, are subservient to the agency of the nonhuman train, which is seen in the train’s establishment of particular circumstances within the narrative. A particular instance of this observation is when a group of characters, including Seok-woo, decide to rescue several passengers who have been trapped within the zombie-filled cars of the high-speed train. During their passage through the train’s dangerous cars, Seok-woo and his group realise that the zombies are unresponsive in the dark and decide to capitalise on the train’s passage through several dark tunnels to rescue the trapped survivors. The human characters’ rescue plan hinges on the train’s passage through the tunnels, which only the train is fully in control of. In this instance, Seok-woo, the protagonist, is seen to surrender control of the narrative’s circumstances to the nonhuman agent: the high-speed train.

Additionally, as the high-speed train and the locomotive operate as the environment in which the human characters have no means of escape and are forced to interact, they function as nonhuman agents within the background of the narrative, surpassing the protagonist in agentic importance. Throughout the film, these trains serve as protection from the dangers of the zombie apocalypse, inevitably forcing the human survivors to be confined within them. As the human survivors encounter zombies within the highspeed train, they are forced to engage with not only these zombies, but also one another. This engagement then allows for the character development of the protagonist as he transforms from a somewhat selfish character into a more compassionate individual. In specific instance of the film. Seok-woo and another character, Sang-hwa, decide to rescue their loved ones who are trapped in another car, separated by other zombie-filled cars. Yet, as they proceed on their return trip, they realise that Yong-suk, the human antagonist, has selfishly barricaded the doors to his car, out of fear that they have been infected. This act of cowardice reasonably disgusts Seok-woo, who is established to be selfish himself. The high-speed train confines Seok-woo within its premises, allowing Seok-woo no means of escape. It forces Seok-woo’s interactions with Yong-suk and thus aids Seok-woo in his moral transition. Similarly, the humble locomotive’s cramped environment enables the final confrontation between Seok-woo and the partially zombified Yong-suk, and also forces Seok-woo to come to the decision of self-sacrifice upon being infected. In both cases, Seok-woo himself plays a passive role by being subject to the confines of the train’s environment. Within this aspect of the narrative, Seok-woo’s agency is eclipsed by that of the high-speed train.

Moreover, the high-speed train’s agency can even be felt in Seok-woo’s brief moment of heroism, when he decides to sacrifice himself. While we may expect the protagonist to be the key decision maker of the story, as observed by Duncan, it becomes apparent that this may not always be true. On the one hand. the key decision of Seok-woo to sacrifice his own life is superficially a product of his own volition, and thus, Seok-woo appears to possess some degree of agency. On the other hand, however, this decision is also a result of his moral transition throughout the entirety of the film, which is, in turn, a consequence of the train’s agentic role. It thus becomes apparent that Seok-woo does not have complete control over this decision, which receives some degree of influence from the various catalysts for his character development. The high-speed train which is responsible for this thus reveals itself to be a nonhuman agent whose agency trumps that of the protagonist himself.

I put 'Best Day Ever' Spongebob over Seok-Woo's Death - YouTube
An infected Seok-woo smiles as he recounts happy memories of him and his daughter, moments before taking his own life.

Furthermore, these trains in Train to Busan are nonhuman agents that at times supplant the human protagonist in their degrees of agency, simply due to their roles as nonhuman protagonists within the film. These roles are not all-too dissimilar from Seok-woo’s and are a implication of the trains’ function as symbols within the narrative. By symbolising not only the physical journey to Busan, the trains also represent the narrative of the journey in Train to Busan — perhaps even in a more significant manner than the protagonist himself. The representation of the journey to Busan is conducted through the representation of the trains’ physical states throughout the journey. Initially, the journey begins on the high-speed train. Its interior is in pristine condition, and its occupants behave in a civilised manner. As the survivors continue their journey, the interior of the train becomes caked in blood, and the train itself gradually becomes occupied by zombies. The remaining human occupants, who fear for their lives, also behave frantically and irrationally. Towards the end of the journey, the high-speed train is destroyed, and the few who survive travel on a small locomotive to get to the military base at Busan. In a way, the physical state of the survivors’ mode of transportation serves as a reflection of the protagonist’s struggles throughout their journey, not only serving as a representation of the physical journey, but also reflecting the narrative progression of the film. The humble locomotive stands in contrast to the majestic and pristine high-speed train in the beginning of the film, emphasising the long and arduous journey undertaken by the survivors. Framed within this scale, the trains are the nonhuman protagonists of the film, and are central characters within the journey to Busan. Considering this perspective and Duncan’s claim that about the protagonist’s importance within a story (146), the previous points in this essay, which reveal that the trains play agentic roles within the film, also appear less surprising.

Train To Busan On Netflix: Ranking The Korean Zombie Movie's 12 Most  Shocking Scenes - GameSpot
A locomotive, engulfed in flames, rushes towards and collides with the high-speed train

While this discussion largely revolves around the tiny locomotive and the high-speed train, a third train also displays its hegemonic agency within the film, if only for a brief moment. In contrast to the protective roles of the humble locomotive and the high-speed train, this train’s agency lies in the threat it presents to the protagonist, human characters, and the nonhuman high-speed train. In other words, this train serves as an antagonist. Engulfed in flames, this third train speeds towards the high-speed train and collides with it, derailing the high-speed train and unleashing a horde of trapped zombies onto the remaining survivors (1:31:50). In this instance, this train progresses the narrative by presenting a threat to the human and nonhuman actors. Seok-woo, who is powerless to affect these events, is forced to escape from the zombies unleashed by the collision. Where the humble locomotive and the high-speed train serve protective roles, this train derives its agency through its role as an antagonist.

The trains within Train to Busan are nonhuman agents that play a significant role in the film’s narrative. In the case of the high-speed train and the humble locomotive, the trains are central characters within a different scale of the narrative, symbolising the journey within Train to Busan. Their interactions with their human passengers present the human occupants, including the protagonist, as powerless, and dependent on them. Due to this dependence, the human occupants’ decisions are greatly influenced by the trains, and which serve as the immediate environments the humans operate within. On the flip side, the flaming train serves an antagonistic role, posing a direct threat to other actors, including the protagonist. When it appears, the other actors of the film are subject to immediate danger, and its interactions with these actors drive the narrative forward. In both cases. the human protagonist, regardless of his glorified role, is subject to the whims of the nonhuman agent, and his agency can be said to be diminished and even eclipsed by the trains of Train to Busan.

Works Cited

Duncan, Stephen V. A Guide To Screenwriting Success. Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, p. 146.

Leger, Shewonda. “What Is Character Agency?”. Spartan Ideas, 2021, https://spartanideas.msu.edu/2014/06/13/what-is-character-agency/. Accessed 20 Oct 2021.

O Croidheain, Caoimhghin. “Snowpiercer (2013): The Fate of Capitalism as a Globalist Runaway Train (Eco-Nihilism, Supra-Nationalism, and Societal Collapse)”. (2020).

Sorensen, Leif. “The Apocalypse is a Nonhuman Story.” ASAP/Journal, vol. 3 no. 3, 2018, p. 523-546. Project MUSEdoi:10.1353/asa.2018.0038.

Tuhkunen, Taïna. “Railway And Locomotive Language In Film: Introduction”. Film Journal, vol 3, 2016, http://filmjournal.org/fj3-introduction. Accessed 20 Oct 2021.

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Opinion articles

Human and Nonhuman Agency in WALL-E: The Role of Posthumanism in the Resolution of the Post-Apocalyptic Crisis

by Chong Shin Ee

In Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E (2008), humans have migrated from an inhabitable Earth to live on a giant spaceship. Meanwhile, in the post-apocalyptic landscape, the robot named WALL-E is forced to roam around Earth to clean up the remaining trash left behind by the humans. Interestingly, the traditional roles between humans and robots have been reversed, representing a post-apocalyptic environment that has removed humanity of its importance. Humans are stripped of their agency as they embody mindless remnants of their past selves, idly wasting their days away under the control of machinery aboard the spaceship, the Axiom. In contrast, robots are the ones who arguably possess the highest degree of agency at first glance – they can make decisions, fall in love, and most importantly, they can control the fate of humanity. Hence, WALL-E presents the removal and transference of agency from human to machine. 

However, it is interesting to note that such agency is not fixed, and it is arguably always changing or in flux. Both the humans and the robots seem to achieve a certain degree of agency, but in different points in the film. From a narrative standpoint, some degree of agency has been conferred to the humans, however, this agency is only consolidated or regained by the humans at the end of the film.  This is because humanity finally manages to break free from a state of stasis or of being under the control of the robots, by actively taking charge of their fate to secure a place on Earth at the end of the film. The pivotal moment where the Captain destroys the artificial intelligence (AI), the robot AUTO, is also highly representative of moments where the humans have regained agency by actively rejecting the control of the robots. While WALL-E demonstrates some instances of human agency, other elements of independent agency cannot be overlooked either, which can be seen in the robots. From a critical standpoint, the robots are conferred more narrative agency to direct what happens in the film and to influence the fate of humanity. The narrative being told through WALL-E’s perspective allows the audience to witness how he exercises his individual agency, which is demonstrated through his curious demeanour, his self-awareness, as well as his desire for romance. In addition, WALL-E exercises his agency most critically by disrupting the state of stasis that the humans are living under, acting as the saviour of humanity. While the humans are a simple, undifferentiated group, the robots in WALL-E demonstrate how their individual agency has allowed them to reorganise their society into complex social groups.

Therefore, the humans and robots possess varying degrees of agency at different points in the film. How then do we reconcile the negotiation of agency between the human and the robot? Who has more agency?

Alex Murray’s notion of conjoined agency reconciles the shifting degrees of agency between humans and robots. Murray explains that agency is shared between humans and nonhumans, where both parties work together to achieve a set of goals, in order to allow for the progress of humankind (2020, pp. 10). However, WALL-E does not fully fit into this notion of ‘conjoined agency’ due to the increasing agency of the nonhuman. Instead of the more humanist perspective suggested by Murray where the robots are still largely subject to the will of the humans, we can see that WALL-E presents robotic agency that has transcended from being subordinated by the human to acting independently of humanity.

Therefore, I will argue that WALL-E subverts this notion of a conjoined agency, as it appropriates this idea to better suit the environmentalist context of the film, and also reflects post-humanist ideals about the increasing need to recognise both human and nonhuman potential in our organisation of society. Through this posthuman perspective, we can see how robotic agency is derived from the need to solve the environmental problems created by humanity. Since the role of the robot is elevated to that of the human, this suggests that both robotic and human agency is crucial to the progress of society as a whole.

Conjoined agency is defined by Alex Murray as the ‘shared capacity between humans and nonhumans to exercise intentionality’ (2020, pp. 10). In other words, it is the ability of robots and humans to work together to achieve a set of goals. This idea is useful for WALL-E, as it explains the shifting degrees of agency which is negotiated between the humans and the robots. Murray states that technology can be considered as ‘agentic since they themselves possess a temporally-embedded capacity to intentionally constrain, complement and/or substitute for humans in the practice of routines’ (2020, pp. 3). This is evident in the film, where the robots largely dictate and facilitate huge processes that formulate part of human life. For example, everyday human routines are under robot control, where the robots decide everything from the time that they sleep to what the humans wear. This ability to proceed with routine is also seen in the division of labour within robot society, where different robots are tasked with different routines. For example, WALL-E is a dedicated trash collector, whereas EVE belongs to an entire class of robots whose sole purpose is to seek out hints of life on Earth. In addition, the relationship between the Captain and the AI AUTO is emblematic of such a notion of conjoined agency. More specifically, it is what Murray coins as ‘conjoined agency with automating technologies’, where technology is so advanced that it can optimise decision-making without human intervention, and can ‘intentionally substitute for humans in a routine practice’ (2020, pp. 16). Intended as an assistance device for the Captain, we can see that AUTO has clearly substituted for the Captain’s role in many aspects. Agency is thus conjoined and shared between both parties – while the Captain is able to dictate the actions of AUTO, it is AUTO that fulfils the tasks of a traditional captain. Therefore, we can see conjoined agency in WALL-E in the division and even substitution of labour between humans and robots, where both parties work together to sustain life aboard the Axiom.

While conjoined agency can be seen in WALL-E, it must be acknowledged that WALL-E contains elements that subvert this idea. While Murray’s notion of conjoined agency deals with the division of labour between robots and humans, it is still arguably human centric, conferring more agency to human actors, who use these technologies to increase their ‘efficiency and/or effectiveness in the practice of routines’ (2020, pp. 9). Murray argues that technology exists in order to make up for human deficiencies ‘while still allowing humans to exercise intentionality over a routine’s practice’, meaning that while conjoined agency divides responsibility between human and nonhuman actors, ultimate power is still conferred to humanity who use these forms of technology to enhance their lives (2020, pp. 9). However, this notion of human centrism is challenged in WALL-E, as the film seems to dismantle the hierarchy of agency with the humans possessing the most power. This is because the robots in WALL-E are representative of technology that is so advanced that the robots are able to function independently of humanity. Since the denouement of the film seems to highlight both the role of the human and the robots, WALL-E subverts Murray’s more anthropocentric take on conjoined agency – rather, it seems to suggest that agency should be accorded to both humans and robots, with neither being subordinated by the other.

Post-humanism explains the rise of robotic agency in WALL-E. According to Nick J. Fox, post-humanist environmentalism seeks to nurture a societal climate where both human and nonhuman capacities are embraced to achieve the sustainable development of Earth’s resources (Fox, 2019). Applying this to WALL-E, we see that the abilities of the robots and humans are harnessed to save humanity from the post-apocalyptic destruction of the Earth. Most ironically, while the invention of robots has created the problems of consumerism and the loss of human agency, it is only the very same robots that have the capacity to solve the problems that they have created. The endless consumption of goods by the humans is also perpetuated by the robots, even on the Axiom, where the robots help to advertise for consumer goods such as drinks, and even clothing.  Since the humans are dependent on the robots to fulfil their everyday routines, they have completely surrendered most of their agency to the robots. However, due to the rise of robotic agency, only the robots possess the power and autonomy to break the cycle of consumerism that the humans are entrapped by. Therefore, we can see that the responsibility lies with the nonhuman in the environmental apocalypse. Following Fox’s argument, he states that the ‘unusual capacities’ of nonhuman Others are ‘essential to address anthropogenic environmental challenges’ (Fox, 2019). This is most evident in EVE’s role throughout the film, as a robot, her ‘unusual capacity’ to find signs of life on Earth is harnessed, and is even essential for the restoration of life back on Earth. Hence, this explains why WALL-E subverts Murray’s notion of conjoined agency: the robots possess overwhelming amounts of agency comparable to that of a human. 

However, this does not mean that responsibility for the apocalypse is only conferred to the robots – in fact, Fox clearly argues that human and nonhuman agencies must be merged in order to achieve their fullest potentials (Fox, 2019). Hence, we see that the responsibility does not merely fall upon either the human or nonhuman, but upon the collaboration of both parties to achieve apocalyptic resolution.  In this post-humanist arrangement, the agency of the humans and nonhumans are both heightened. Fox argues that the posthuman perspective means that the potential of posthuman Others – nature, technology, the female, should be acknowledged as part of the world (Fox, 2019). In addition, rather than privileging the human over the nonhuman (humanism) or vice versa (anti-humanism), posthuman environmentalism ‘aims to enhance the capacities of both non-human and (post)human’ (Fox, 2019). Through this post-humanist lens, we can see how both parties are accorded with more agency when their potentials are recognised. This is evidenced in how both the humans and the robots undertake a journey of self-realisation and growth throughout the film, uncovering their potential for agency as well as to enact positive change. For the robots WALL-E and EVE, their increasing emotional connection with one another helps them to become more ‘human’ – to embody human traits such as love and empathy, and to lose their robotic traits of order and rationality. In a final act of agency, WALL-E sacrifices himself in an act of expression of his love for humanity. His potential for humanity, as well as agency, is uncovered as he becomes the saviour of the human race. For the humans, their potential is fully recognised through the act of memory. For example, the captain’s curiosity about the Earth, which he was previously nonchalant about, was immediately sparked off when he learns about the human tradition of dancing. By remembering the intricate details about human society, the desire to repopulate the Earth was ignited within its displaced citizens onboard the Axiom. The denouement further highlights the realised potential of both species, where the robots and the humans cooperate harmoniously to improve their lives on Earth. Therefore, post-humanism not only explains the heightened role of the robots, but also the necessity of human-robot cooperation to take charge over the climate crisis.

Stanton’s WALL-E initially presents agency that shifts from human to nonhuman and vice versa. Although conjoined agency explains how agency is divided between both actors, it does not explain the heightened role of the nonhuman in WALL-E. Post-humanism thus encapsulates how WALL-E subverts this conjoined agency, instead suggesting environmentalism and robot-human cooperation. As robots have the same capacity for agency as humanity, WALL-Ecomplicates the traditional hierarchical relationship between humans and robots that is represented by conjoined agency, blurring the clear dichotomies of human and machinery. WALL-E therefore suggests to us that all parties have the responsibility to harness one’s agency to save the world from an apocalypse of our own making.

Works Cited

Murray, A. “Humans and Technology: Forms of Conjoined Agency in Organizations.” The Academy of Management Review 46(3) (2020).

Alldred, P., Fox, N. “Sustainability, feminist posthumanism and the unusual capacities of (post)humans.” ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY, 2020, Volume 6, No. 2 (2019): 121-131.

Stanton, A., Morris, J., Lasseter, J., Reardon, J., Docter, P., Newman, T., Eggleston, R., … Buena Vista Home Entertainment (Firm). (2008). WALL-E.

Categories
Opinion articles

Reimagining (Human) Nature in the Apocalypse: Negotiating Agency through Posthumanism in Mockingjay

by Rachel Eng

The revolution: Resolution of the political apocalypse?

Initially, The Hunger Games novel trilogy appears to be at the forefront of an anti-humanist movement in post-apocalyptic fiction. The dystopian authoritarian regime depicted seems to signal a form of political apocalypse in itself, alluding to several common anti-humanist concerns: the death of freedom and equality of rights, and the myth of attaining peace without war. Throughout the trilogy, the rebels become increasingly convinced that countering state violence with bloodshed of their own is necessary for attaining peace and ending violations of human rights, compared to a pacifist approach. Proletarian revolution against the state’s structural violence and material subordination, as well as the consequent violence of revolution (through war atrocities committed by both the state and the rebels) thus generates a political apocalypse that is distinct from the post-apocalyptic setting of ecological desolation. In the conclusion of Mockingjay, the third and final installment of the trilogy, the political apocalypse is depicted as imminent and recursive, due to mankind’s innate tendency towards avarice and self-destruction — predetermined characteristics of human nature that direct individual human actions and override individual human agency. This globally immanent threat of self-annihilation evinces anti-humanist beliefs about humanity’s downward spiral of morality and finite existence. 

However, Mockingjay’s conclusion is not overtly anti-humanist like the rest of the trilogy. Upon closer examination, it seems more ambivalent in incorporating both humanism and the aforementioned antihumanism. Katniss’ cynicism about humanity’s depravity does not diminish her agency in reclaiming power through memorialisation of loved ones lost to violence and in destabilising the immanent authoritarian regime of incoming President Coin. As such, Mockingjay’s resolution is not devoid of notions of humanist progress, because it addresses both mankind’s capacity for self-destruction and for self-renewal. How do we reconcile the seemingly contradictory elements of antihumanism and humanism, especially when Mockingjay appears to elude the anti-humanist fictional conventions of cynicism about human morality and about infinite progress?

I argue that Mockingjay’s conclusion defies the anti-humanist conventions of post-apocalyptic fiction, because it allows us to understand the nexus between humanism and antihumanism, which is posthumanism.

Traditionally, antihumanism and humanism have shared a disjunctive space in narratives due to their conflicting views on human morality (optimism/cynicism) and the finity/infinity of human existence. In Mockingjay, human agency at the individual scale (in ameliorating the political apocalypse) is contingent upon anti-humanist fatalism about mankind’s moral deterioration (due to seemingly superorganic forces of human nature that seem to work beyond the human scale). Katniss’ acknowledgement that the apocalypse is imminent and recursive due to mankind’s predisposition towards self-destruction empowers her to mitigate the apocalypse through memorialisation and political resistance, which also demonstrates mankind’s capacity for self-renewal. Katniss’ empowerment is also enhanced by her liminal identity as adolescent and as the cross-species Mockingjay, which mirrors the post-dualistic imperative in posthumanism to move beyond limiting dichotomies of child-adult and pawn-revolutionary. Hence, posthumanism in Mockingjay entails blurring the boundaries between human and nonhuman agencies to reveal their interdependence in mitigating the political apocalypse.

When examining the intersection between anti-humanism and humanism in Mockingjay, we must understand why they have traditionally been seen as oppositional in post-apocalyptic fiction. Firstly, anti-humanism involves existential angst about moral deterioration, arising from how violence and self-annihilation is encoded into the human condition. This form of predeterminism implies that individual human actors have no agency against the forces of human nature, which is beyond human control. Human nature is thus seen as superorganic and even nonhuman, with its semiotics reflecting the binary of human/nature in which nature is the Other. In contrast, humanism presumes a ‘sense of humanity’ — ‘the capacity of humans to be “humane”’ and to experience empathy, which seems diametrically opposed to the cynicism of human nature espoused by anti-humanists. In anthropocentrism that espouses human primacy, human free will also reigns supreme and dominant over various forces of nature, including the transcendence of human limits, which diminishes the nonhuman agency that antihumanism amplifies. 

To understand Mockingjay’s extraordinarily wary yet hopeful anti-war message, I will provide a conceptual framework for understanding agency through posthumanism. In response to anti-humanist criticism, humanism has reconfigured its human-centric roots into a new paradigm, namely posthumanism. Posthumanism challenges the dichotomies set up by humanism via post-dualism, blurring the boundaries of human/nature and suggesting that both are ‘part of the posthumanist self’. As such, agency is ‘distributed, porous, and relational, existing not in subjects but in assemblages’. Within Barad’s framework of ‘agential realism’, agency does not involve the unidirectional exertion of influence of one entity over another, but exists as ‘intra-action’ by premising the existence of ‘entangled materialities’ upon their interconnectedness. Applied to posthumanist fiction, ‘human survival is [thus] contingent on an acknowledgement of the interdependence of the human and the nonhuman’. Furthermore, this reconceptualisation of agency that decentres the human does not exonerate mankind of responsibility, because posthumanism does not ‘dissolve humans as identifiable agents and thereby absolve them of the crises that mark the Anthropocene’. There remains an ‘underlying hope’ to ‘reshape the self and its interests’ through posthumanism.

Firstly, Mockingjay illustrates how predetermined depravity is inherent in human nature, via the distinctively imminent and recursive political apocalypse. Peace is seen as volatile and transient due to mankind’s innate tendency towards avarice and self-destruction. President Coin, as the de facto leader of the rebels, is deliberately not heroised but rather painted more morally ambiguous in her orchestration of her rise to power over all of Panem through the rebellion. She already reflects the notion of inherent human greed in the semantics of her name. Her power-hungry nature is even acknowledged by the usurped President Snow, who claims that ‘she was intending to take my place right from the beginning’. As the rebels make inroads into conquering the Capitol, we see glimpses of her nascent authoritarian regime where she intends to reproduce state violence through holding another Hunger Games involving the Capitol’s children, and cruelly sacrificing the rebels’ own medics to annihilate Snow’s human shield of children. The portrayal of Coin’s violent means to an end suggests that power handover in the regime will not entail a resolution of the political apocalypse, but perpetuate the same systems of oppression and ‘totalitarian terror’, rendering the apocalypse cyclical.

President Coin, the leader of the Rebels yet disturbingly similar to President Snow in their authoritarian regimes

More broadly, the belief that self-destruction is encoded into the human condition is espoused by Gamemaker and war strategist Plutarch Heavensbee: “Collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”. He expresses cynicism about permanent political stability even in Panem’s newfound democracy, attributing the impermanent nature of peace to political amnesia and self-annihilation as a predetermined event. Altogether, Mockingjay’s conclusion seems to suggest the impossibility of permanent amelioration of chaos and disorder in the external apocalyptic world, namely the politicised stage of Panem. The imminent threat of self-destruction amplifies the sense of moral deterioration and the finity of human existence. Hence, nonhuman agency is articulated through the predetermined forces of human nature, which direct human actions towards violence and self-annihilation. Human actors, particularly Snow and Coin, are vectors through which nonhuman agency is manifested.

In response to these nonhuman forces, Katniss recuperates some human agency, initially through political resistance against authoritarianism and its associated state violence, and later through the memorialisation of those lost to the violence. Immediately following her revelation of Coin’s involvement in the bombing that maimed her and killed her sister, Prim, Katniss publicly assassinates Coin in vengeance, thereby symbolically ending the nascent return into the political apocalypse (induced by the depravity of human nature) for the time being. Ironically, murdering Coin (the vessel through which superorganic self-destructiveness is conveyed) highlights Katniss’ own alignment with predetermined violence that is incompatible with the ‘humanity’ of humanism. Nevertheless, even while condemning the use of ‘direct violence’ by both sides in the war, Mockingjay seems to allow for a ‘tolerance for ambiguity’ by drawing focus to the ‘human cost’ of violence in determining its necessity. Katniss also resists the clear dichotomy of community-centred freedom fighter (as typical of humanist fiction) and power-hungry dictator using violence to tyrannise, instead toppling Coin’s regime for her personal agenda of avenging Prim’s death, exercising her agency in relation only to her loved ones. 

Katniss assassinating President Coin

As the dust settles in Panem, Katniss seems to be able to reconcile humanity’s inherent nonhuman inclination towards self-annihilation and mankind’s capacity for self-renewal, via memorialisation of loved ones lost to the violence of the authoritarian regime and of revolution. She and Peeta embark on a project of creating a book, within which they enshrine photos, paintings and paraphernalia, ‘saving evidence of the existence of those lost to violence’ and humanising the otherwise faceless and eventually forgotten death toll. The memory book becomes ‘the place where we recorded those things you cannot trust to memory’, protecting against the political amnesia mentioned by Plutarch and guarding against self-destruction by serving as ‘lessons against future war’. In the epilogue, looking upon her children who play in the meadow that doubles as a ‘graveyard’ after the firebombing of District Twelve, Katniss ‘mourns the inherent transience of their innocent state’ as she anticipates their eventual awakening to the horrors of the adult world. However, the epilogue deviates from the cynicism of anti-humanist endings, because it is this very disillusionment with the recursive nature of the political apocalypse that allows Katniss to regain a sense of purpose in anti-war advocacy. Her agency is recuperated through ‘everyday peace’, the ‘ongoing negotiation with war memory and trauma and with anxiety about the future’. Peeta echoes this, confident that they can explain the imminence of political dystopia and violence to their children, ‘to make them understand in a way that will make them braver’. Plutarch espouses similar sentiments, since it would be incomplete to look at his cynicism about a predetermined self-destruction without also acknowledging his sceptical hope: “Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss. The time it sticks. Maybe we are witnessing the evolution of the human race. Think about that.”. The mitigation of a relapse into the political apocalypse then seems to be contingent on education about the value of life, through the memory book. This memorialisation allows for the recuperation of human agency in the face of nonhuman energies that attempt to predetermine mankind’s fate.

Katniss looking on at Peeta and their child in the meadow

Lastly, most crucial to understanding this ambivalent agency is Katniss’ own liminal and post-dualistic identity as an adolescent and as the Mockingjay. The lack of resolution in the external apocalyptic world ‘keeps precisely with both her experiences of violence and trauma, and perhaps more positively, her experiences of power and agency’, unlike the anti-humanist notion of nonhuman supremacy. Mockingjay seems to reinterpret the bildungsroman format typical of young adult literature by disrupting the linear transition from child to adult: her catalytic role in the revolution contests the hegemony of adult society and the structural violence they impose upon the Districts’ children through the Hunger Games. Her identity as the titular Mockingjay (a hybrid bird that crossbred between state-sanctioned genetically-modified jabberjays and wild mockingbirds) also blurs the binary between political pawn and autonomous agent. These liminal identities allow Katniss to embark on a journey of transition, movement and growth. The young adult fiction genre therefore renders her a post-dualistic figure with the capacity for evolution and transformation, based on an ‘enmeshment’ of human and nonhuman agencies. To read Mockingjay through posthumanism is to trace Katniss’ ‘perpetual becoming’, and thus understand that posthumanism is ‘as much posthumanist as it is posthumanist’.

In conclusion, Mockingjay moves beyond limiting dichotomies to reflect that anti-humanist cynicism about moral deterioration and mankind’s finite existence, and humanist agency are not mutually exclusive. Rather, recuperation of humanist agency in mitigating the political apocalypse can be contingent upon the very nonhuman forces that induce the apocalypse via predeterminism. As a dystopian young adult novel whose adolescent protagonist is a liminal figure, Mockingjay is remarkably posthumanist in its post-dualism that reconciles human and nonhuman agencies. Hence, Mockingjay reinterprets the post-apocalyptic genre, with its anti-humanist conventions, disrupting our understanding of human nature and its consequences on the finity/infinity of human existence.

References

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