Page - 39 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

high degree of mediation:23 “Jimmy’s mother said it was all artificial, it was just a theme park and you could never bring the old ways back.”24 The rich people’s compounds are full of fake replicas and would-be authentic architecture and furniture, such as the family’s Cape Cod-style frame house. In an account of his childhood memories Jimmy recalls: “The furniture in it was called reproduction. Jimmy was quite old before he realized what this word meant – that for each reproduction item, there was supposed to be an original somewhere. Or there had been once. Or something.”25 As Jimmy’s comment expresses, the situation is reminiscent of Beaudrillard’s perfect simulacrum, meaning a copy without an original and nothing but signs referring back to each other – floods of informa- tion, but nothing “real” or actually meaningful.26 This feeling of inauthenticity of compounder lifestyle is shared by the second narrator and focaliser of The Year of the Flood, Ren, who moves into the compounds as a child: “nothing felt right. All that faux marble, and the reproduction antique furniture, and the carpets in our house – none of it seemed real. It smelled funny too – like disinfectant.”27 The children in the compounds grow up immersed in digital technologies and the virtual realities of internet-based computer games: “[Jimmy/Snowman] lets himself drift back to those after-school times with Crake. […] They might play Extinctathon or one of the others. Three-Dimensional Waco, Barbarian Stomp, Kwiktime Osama.”28 Confined to the relatively narrow space of their compound, young people have very little else to do that is considered “safe”, which dimin- ishes the range of unmediated physical experiences for them and in the long run produces feelings of alienation. As a result of this very artificial lifestyle, de- pression seems to be frequent among the compounders. To keep up the toxic status quo, the problems of this future society are individualised and psycholo- gised. Hence, the solution Jimmy’s dad proposes to his mother who, as a result of seeing through all of these problems is constantly in a low, trance-like mood, is: “Take some pills if you’re so fucking depressed!”29 To ensure its socio-eco- nomic stabilisation, the compounder society furthermore requires collective anaesthetisation of its citizens through entertainment that can hardly ever be extreme enough, be it in aforementioned apocalyptic TV shows or live execu- tions and child pornography. 23 I use “mediated” here as a kind of antipode to “authentic/natural”, referring to the gradual alienation from unmediated physical/corporeal experience to more and more mediated forms of experience, ranging from simple representation in language to experiences that are several times removed, for example in the consumption of digital media or copies of copies. 24 Atwood 2004, 34. 25 Atwood 2004, 33. 26 Beaudrillard 1994, 6. 27 Atwood 2010, 248. 28 Atwood 2004, 47. 29 Atwood 2004, 68. Just Popular Entertainment or Longing for a Posthuman Eden? | 39www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 31–50