Document Type
Article
Language
eng
Publication Date
2014
Publisher
Delta Productions
Source Publication
Paradoxa
Source ISSN
1079-8072
Abstract
Applying Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism” and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee’s “necrocapitalism” to the study of sf, this article reads the post-apocalyptic French comic Le Transperceneige (1982) and its film adaptation Snowpiercer (2014) as critiques of necrofuturist visions of the future. Necrofuturism posits a future that is doomed to continue modern capitalism’s unsustainable and immoral practices even as those practices become more and more destructive and self-defeating; films such as Snowpiercer interrupt this well-rehearsed vision of a world of universal death to open the mind to new possibilities for alternative futures. Key to Snowpiercer’s critique of necrofuturism is its depiction of necrocapitalism as a deliberately constructed thing, rather than a law of nature, reminding us that someone chose to build this world of unhappiness and prompting us to recognize that other sorts of worlds might be built instead.
Recommended Citation
Canavan, Gerry, "“If the Engine Ever Stops, We’d All Die”: Snowpiercer and Necrofuturism" (2014). English Faculty Research and Publications. 298.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/english_fac/298
Comments
Published version. This article first appeared in Paradoxa no. 26 which was published in 2014. For further information concerning Paradoxa and its publications, please see www.paradoxa.com. © 2014 Delta Productions. Permalink. Used with permission.