Seite - 33 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 05/02

Atwood’s depiction of the apocalypse in the MaddAddam Trilogy does not offer a fixed moral universe but remains ambiguous, leaving the final judgement of good and evil to the reader. The aesthetic projections merely offer opportuni- ties for reflection which, as I see it, is the essence of ethics. At the same time, the trilogy is very unambiguous, with references to global capitalism and its future consequences revealing how, in order to soothe its alienated subjects, late modernity brings forth anaesthetic forms of popular entertainment. Rep- resentations of the apocalypse in popular literature and film can therefore also be read as an expression of the self-alienation of late capitalist societies, whose members flee into the aesthetics of their own destruction for the apparent lack of any pragmatic alternative to the depressing status quo. The MaddAddam Tril- ogy offers a playful meta-comment on these two readings in its address of the ecological crisis of the present. IMAGINARIES OF HUMAN EXTINCTION – NEW UTOPIA OR COLLECTIVE DEPRESSION? In the light of hard evidence of the anthropogenic destruction of the world ecol- ogy, manifest in climate change and its effects, the sixth great wave of species extinction, soil degradation, enormous amounts of micro-plastics in the sea and elsewhere, it is not surprising that the frustration with our own species has grown to the point where one might hope for its extinction for the sake of all other life forms. Mark Jendrysik notes: “Reflecting this vision, a new genre of popular films and books asks us to consider how the Earth and the natural world might fare in the total absence of human beings. In doing so, they foresee a new sort of posthuman future, one in which nature survives the extinction of the human race.”4 According to Jendrysik, the possibility of our own extinc- tion has become a new utopia – one in which nature manages to survive us and flourishes in a “world without us”.5 The phenomenon is comparable to a depression on a large social scale: the self-esteem of the human species is so low that it considers itself worthless and dreams of its own suicidal death. At the end of the last century, the “Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” was formed, proposing that we should “live long and die out” peacefully, simply by refraining from reproduction.6 The prerequisite for such self-hate is a profound alienation of human beings from themselves and from the natural and material 4 Jendrysik 2011, 35. 5 Cf. Alan Weisman’s non-fictional book The World without Us (2007), in which he imagines nature reclaiming the Earth after humankind has vanished. There is also a novel with the same title by Mireille Juchau (2015) that belongs to the previously discussed end-times/cli-fi genre. 6 This is the slogan of the movement as proposed on its official website: http://vhemt.org/ [accessed 15 October 2018]. Just Popular Entertainment or Longing for a Posthuman Eden? | 33www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 31–50