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WARRIOR WOMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE: THE ROLE OF THE FEMALE IN SOME APOCALYPTIC FILMS TINA PIPPIN

Agnes Scott College

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale. William Shakespeare, King John (1597)

Introduction to the World of Fairy Tales Let me state from the beginning that, strictly speaking, the Apocalypse of John is no fairy tale. Sometimes it acts like a fairy tale though. Magical creatures are everywhere, on earth and in heaven. Instead of fairies, there are armies of winged creatures, angels, who work devastating magic. There are evil tricksters and femme fatalesJezebel, the Whore of Babylon and beasts and the devillaying wait at every turn. There is a great wizard/king (God) who orchestrates the whole deadly business while he sits on a great throne. Sure, there is a happy ending for some (the 144,000 virginal males) and they (supposedly) live happily ever after. But for the Earth and the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants there is only doom and gloom. Actually, gloom is not quite correct: the aftermath is a charred landscape with a fiery lake. Then the glorious palace and city-state of God, the New Jerusalem, comes down from Heaven. The wicked witch (the Whore) is stripped of her power and magic and destroyed eternally with fire. And the multitude in Heaven cry, Hallelujah! The smoke goes up from her forever and ever! (Rev. 19:3). Still, the Apocalypse of John is not a fairytale, even though it might share elements of fantasy with the genre of fairy tales. Apocalypses have their own otherworldly, cosmic sense of destruction that moves outside of the space of the family. Perhaps, for the few destined for salvation, the Apocalypse is a fairy tale on a cosmic scale. For example, the Left Behind series, from premillennialists Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, plays out themes of heroic struggle and redemption. The Tribulation Force of new believers after the Rapture must face the Antichrist in a

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Biblical Interpretation 14, 1-2

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struggle for the future. Both Good and Evil use supernatural power in this final fight. In the end the faith of the few leads them into triumph. In many ways, the plot is similar to Tolkeins The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings epic fantasy. The character of individuals (especially Frodo) determines the fate of the ring. There are trials, then transformations, common themes in fairytales. But unlike the Left Behind fantasy, the created order (Middle Earth) is left intact. There are further reasons that the Apocalypse of John is not a traditional fairy tale, even though I find the conversation between the two genres instructive. Its tale of death and destruction of the Earth and most of its inhabitants is global. Fairy tales are centered on the family unit and its dissolution and ultimate survival (often in a different form). These very different genres do have something to say to each other, though, with their bids for proper values and actions. Marina Warner explains, More so than the presence of fairies, the moral function, the imagined antiquity and oral anonymity of the ultimate source, and the happy ending (though these factors help towards a definition of the genre), metamorphosis defines the fairy tale (Warner: xx). In fairy tales the protagonist children often step outside the realm of virtue to gain the prize, save the family from poverty, and so on. According to Maria Tatar, the real magic of the fairy tale lies in its ability to extract pleasure from pain. In bringing to life the dark figures of our imagination as ogres, witches, cannibals, and giants, fairy tales may stir up dread, but in the end they always supply the pleasure of seeing it vanquished (Tatar: xiv). Warner asserts that fairy tales not only tell tales of struggle but also of utopia visions (410-11). The protagonists live happily ever after in an Edenic garden space, full of light and good weather, and minus the presence of evil-doers. In the Apocalypse of John the happy-ever-after ending continues to chill. I have argued that this text is best described as another part of the fantastic genre, as a text of horror (1999), for a sense of dread settles in over the vision of the new city. For example, where have all the women gone in this fantasy of the future? As Jack Zipes relates in the title of one of his fairy tale collections, You cant bet on the prince. In the case of the Apocalypse, if you are an aspiring (female) princess, you can marry the prince, but you cannot sit in the throne room with him. You are not even allowed to live happily ever after in the

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palace. Even though the Bride in this apocalyptic tale marries the Prince, she becomes the great, utopian city that the 144,000 sanctified men enter into. She is a passive recipient of the pure, male believers, and then she disappears. Fairy tale women refuse to disappear, even if they are submissive wives of a prince, or have to be rescued by a hunter. With Madonna Kolbenschlag (Kiss Sleeping Beauty Goodbye) and Colette Dowling (The Cinderella Complex), Zipes argues that fairy tales do not cause women to be passive, submissive to men, always dreaming of Prince Charming and a life restricted to his castle. He relates, Rather they are the symbolical forms which reinforce self-destructive social and psychological patterns of behaviour in our daily livesthe fairy tale is only important in so far as it reflects how women are oppressed and allow themselves to be oppressed (1987: 8). In more contemporary rewritings of the major fairy tales, the princesses-to-be perform all manner of subversive actions, like choosing to live full, contented lives alone. The Apocalypse does its own clever gender-bending, with the 144,000 men becoming the Queens of Heaven. The Prince has multiple wives in this story. Their prize is Paradise. Or are they prisoners for eternity in a loveless marriage? This biblical story of the end of the world has many rewrites. Apocalyptic films are numerous, from disaster films about nuclear and biochemical warfare, and disease to invasions by powers from outer space to more subtle psychological thrillers with vampires and other monsters. I have decided not to choose the popular Hollywood disaster films such as Independence Day, Armageddon, Deep Impact, and The Day After Tomorrow, in which women are, at best, secondary characters. These films offer depressing roles for women; the main female characters wait behind for the brave male adventurers to rescue the planet. Nor am I choosing to discuss films in which strong women work in partnership (and sometimes also as love interests) with men to ward off the apocalypse, such as Strange Days, Outbreak, and The Matrix Trilogy. And in the Left Behind films the main woman character will (eventually, as in the books) meet her end in a tortuous death, leaving behind a hero husband and young son. Her Christian witness into martyrdom is supposed to be exemplary; she sacrifices all but does not get to experience the thrill of Armageddon or life in the New Jerusalem. There is a fascination in many of these apocalyptic films with the end and with the one male who can

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miraculously stop the evil, in suave and bold James Bond fashion. I want instead to converse with the women in some lesser known films, Last Night and The Book of Life, against a better known silent film, Metropolis. How do these films help us understand biblical apocalyptic? I do not want to make the claim that women in independent films (Last Night or The Book of Life) or classic films (Metropolis) on the apocalypse and/or utopian future fair better. In these films the roles of women are complex and against type. The women are more interesting, more nuanced characters. They carry with them the burdens of scriptural apocalyptic women (and always Jezebel) and patriarchal Western society. But they also alert us to the possibility of different readings of apocalypse. To turn the Shakespearean phrase, apocalypse is as tedious as a twice-told tale. How does a conversation with fairy tales help us negotiate the tedium of the seemingly endless retelling of the apocalypse? Gods Twisted Fairy Tale New Years Eve, December 31, 1999, is the magical time of the turn of the millennium. Anything could happen; Y2K computer crashes, along with the collapse of the infrastructure of Western culture are the main apocalyptic contenders. But what if God decides to end the world and break open the seven seals of the Apocalypse? Director Hal Hartley was chosen to submit the U.S. film entry for the international 2000 Seen By series. Each film is an hour long and represents the directors take on the turn of the millennium. Hartley chose a literalist, biblical approach to his film, The Book of Life. Jesus (Martin Donovan) appears exiting JFK airport in New York City, with Magdalena (P.J. Harvey) in tow. There are hints Magdalena also is eternal. Jesus comes to town on New Years Eve to meet with Gods lawyers (Armageddon and Jehosophat) and break open the last of the seven seals, seals five through seven. Jesus and Magdalena check into a hotel as Mr. and Mrs. D.W. Griffith. Jesus also meets a very disgruntled Satan in a bar and engages in a lengthy conversation about human life, souls, and theology. Satan stations himself in the hotel bar, anxious to retrieve the Book of Life when it finally emerges. He engages the kindhearted Asian, Buddhist bartender (Edie), who listens to Christian radio evangelists, and her down-on-his-luck, gambler, atheist friend

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(Dave). Satan arrives with an eye shiner, as if he had been in a fistfight. Ive been misunderstood is Satans mantra. The couple befriend him, even as Dave offers Satan Edies soul in return for a winning lottery number. The philosophical debate, along with urban loneliness, leads this little group to begin to form a friendship. Edie represents the innocence of compassion, making happy sense of the world on what is perhaps its last day. Jesus and Magdalena obtain a bright silver key from a safety deposit box in the hotel. Then they retrieve the seven sealed scroll in a locker in Grand Central Station, locker 666. This scroll is loaded onto a Macintosh Powerbook. Jesus climbs the stairs of an abandoned building to the roof where he opens the computer and clicks on the icon, The Book of Life, and then the fifth of the seals that appear. The message says, Do you want to open the fifth seal?, followed by the blocks for okay and cancel. Jesus moves the cursor uneasily between the two choices. In the Apocalypse of John the Four Horsemen make up the first four seals (Rev. 6:1-8). When the Lamb opens the fifth seal, the souls under the altar plead, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth? (Rev. 6:10). During these proceedings Magdalena waits quietly below, nervously smoking a hand-rolled cigarette on the street. Meanwhile, back on the roof, Jesus is having second thoughts about the whole apocalypse idea. The first four seals had brought war, famine, and suffering. A tormented Jesus reacts as he sees one of the souls under the altar:
It was the darkest hour of the long, dark night of the soul. The chill center of divine callousness. What twisted fairy tale had I allowed myself to be tangled up into? What misplaced gratitude had I believed to be awe? Why had I let these souls believe there was anything other than sacrifice? Why were they comforted with dreams of vengeance? Why hadnt I interfered more, agitated more, questioned, revolted?

Jesus tells the souls to wait a little longer until the number of witness is complete (Rev. 6:11). After much soul searching and anguish, Jesus decides not to follow through with Gods plan for the end of creation. The heavens thunder, and Jesus is officially, like Satan, an exile from Heaven. He is the disobedient son, refusing to bring more pain and destruction into the world. Jesus meets Satan in the bar to discuss their differences. They have a philosophical debate about God and the struggle of good

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and evil. There is a certain remoteness to this God, and the accompanying contingent in Heaven, not only for the fallen angel but also for the only son. Jesus says, My father he is a jealous god. To him the law is everything. Even today lawyers are his favorites. Satans main concern is keeping his job of winning souls for Hell. Satan argues, I just happen to think this is a good system, this tug-of-war between good and evil. It keeps people honest. He further philosophizes, Let God have his eternity. My precincts are the seconds and the minutes of the everyday. As long as there is a future, well, I have my work to do. Satan is very convincing, for with the apocalypse comes his unemployment, no way to win souls for Hell. This Jesus is addicted to humanity, but so is Satan. Magdalena and Edie serve as the representatives. In many ways Magdalena serves as a sidekick to the superhero Jesus. She gets Jesus wine, calls Gods lawyers to set up their appointment with Jesus, calls Rome (the Vatican) to alert them of their arrival, channel surfs in the hotel room. She understands Jesuss ambivalence in his role to judge the living and the dead. Magdalena does more than wait in the wings in this film; she appears as a beacon of reason and compassion. She retrieves the Powerbook from the trash and then lies to the lawyers, claiming that the book has been thrown out and lost. Although Hartley characterizes Magdalena as a strong but sullen assistant to Jesus, he relies on the connection with the woman caught in adultery in John 7:53-8:11. Magdalena relates her first meeting with Jesus to one of Gods lawyers who responds, A likely story. She tells the receptionist of her relationship with Jesus, I thought he had fallen in love with me, to which the receptionist replies, Hes that kind of guy. She hangs out in a record store listening with headphones and singing along to To Sir with Love. And she accompanies Edie and Dave on a shopping spree with their newly-won lottery money. Magdalena obviously opts for life and the small joys of being human. She has no direct control over Jesus decision, but she knows the best choice. She is not directly responsible for his downfall, or rather his exile from Heaven. She supports Jesus as a close associate and friend. Hartley leaves a lot of questions unanswered, perhaps knowing that most viewers will fill in the gaps with their own ideas about Magdalena anyway. She is a fairy tale princess with a purpose, but Hartley leaves that ambiguous.

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Ultimately there is enchantment here in Hartleys film. He infuses the normal world of urban grit, sleazy lawyers, and downon-their luck barflies with the eternal contest between good and evil. The supernatural invades the natural. Who will triumph? Will Jesus fulfill Gods plan to bring on the apocalypse? Will Satan be out of a job? And what about Magdalena? When the new year arrives, Jesus announces that each day[is] crowded with possibility: the possibility of disaster and the possibility of perfection. Jesus throws the Powerbook in the Hudson River. The group (Jesus, Magdalena, Satan and the others) make a champagne toast. Life goes on. The End of Nostalgia The supernatural stays largely out of Canadian director Don McKellars take on the End of Everything. In his film, Last Night, McKellar plays Patrick Wheeler, a man who is dealing with the immanent end of the world. Wheeler declares to his family, Its not the end of the world theres still six hours left. The film follows several people through these last six hours in Toronto, Canada. Some people have already left the city in order to spend their last hours in natural surroundings. Of the United Church of Canada group that have decided to be on canoes in the middle of a lake at the end, Patrick comments sarcastically, Imagine ending it all singing Kum Ba Ya. There is no explanation given about the cause of the apocalypse; there is only certainty that the End will occur at midnight on the night of the summer solstice. The film opens with a Christmas celebration scene, or at least a reenactment of a traditional Christmas in Patricks family. His neurotic mother sets up a tree with presents for her two grown children; the presents are rewrapped toys from their childhood Christmases stored in the attic. In a desperate attempt to cram all family memories into the last day of existence, Patricks mother cooks an elaborate holiday dinner, with expectations of a replay of a time past. She weeps when she is unsuccessful at changing Patricks mind about spending the end alone in his apartment. There is a desperation in her tone and actions, a sad attempt to hold onto the past. Last Night mainly explores the traditional connection of eros and thanatos, sex and death. Many of the characters are engaging in one last sexual fling or fantasy before the End. Patricks

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friend Craig explains, Women these days are right for the picking. The woman employee at the gas and electric company is unable to express her true feelings to her boss. They work almost to the end calling customers, assuring them that the company is doing everything possible to keep the utilities running up to the end. At the other extreme Patricks friend Craig has sex with as many categories of women as possible in the two months leading up to the end. He keeps a tally of his escapades on his kitchen wall: a list of all types and forms of his sexual fantasies he wants to experience before he dies. Patrick decides to abstain from sex and responds, I dont want to risk having bad sex today. I dont want it to be the last thing on my mind. He makes a judgment on Craigs activities, What I do find pathetic is people who, as soon as they hear that the world is ending, they rush out and try to hook up with someone like it was closing time at Studio 54. But Craig answers cavalierly, If you gotta goyou might as well be coming. The central female character, Sandra, is played by Sandra Oh. She is a woman who stops in a grocery store to pick up some wine to take home for the ending ceremony that she and her husband plan. The almost empty store has already been looted, but Sandra examines two bottles of wine and puts one back on the shelf. When she emerges from the store her car has been overturned in the anarchy on the streets. She meets up with Patrick as she is trying unsuccessfully to get across the city to spend the last hours with her husband. Patrick decides to curtail his plans of spending the last minutes alone and to help her. Sandra and her husband have decided to commit suicide together before the End at midnight. She wants some control over the uncontrollable events and explains, I am not just going to let this earth take my life away. But the last hours prove to be chaos, and the only way to negotiate the anarchy is by real human connection. Female characters in this film express the desperation of the last day and night on earth. They experience the anxiety of unfulfilled desires and plans. One of Craigs sexual partners, Lilly, offers, I just wanted to have an orgasm today. Many of the characters spend their final hours in lonely wandering around the city. Sandra and Patrick decide to spend the last minutes together. Sandra desperately asks, Tell me something to make me love you. Each character brings the tragedy of their lives to

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lay upon the altar of the End. There is a certain equalizing of sin and redemption distributed among the sexes in this film. The women are as or less desperate than the men as they face the last hours: they despair, they loot, they choose strangers for sexual encounters, they maintain long relationships, they form last-minute friendships. Neither a man nor a woman can save the planet, so they live out their lifetime joys and sufferings and desires (for good and bad) until the bitter end. Fairy Tale Endings The world never ends in fairy tales. There might be personal struggle, wars, dire poverty, family dysfunction, dangerous animals, even more dangerous monarchs, poison, death, trickery, magical transformations, and the like, but the world goes on in more just ways at the end of the tale. Only the unjust suffer or die. Some of the tales are based on unjust premises: the good mothers (or fathers) often die, leaving evil stepmothers to lord it over only stepdaughters. The good female characters are too often passive recipients of male rescue. It has taken the rewriting of traditional fairy tales into feminist tales to disrupt the sexism and misogyny of the old tales, even though the old tales continue to have staying power in Western society. The twisted fairy tale of apocalypse does tell the end of the world, with great bravado and repetition. The numerous versions of this biblical tale often tell of an averted apocalypse, the end of the world postponed by human actions. Even the biblical apocalypse is postponed, held off by the need to tell the story, and the teasing waiting game of God. The Book of Life and Last Night both tap into a human need to fixate on beginnings and endings. Some current examples of this need include the ongoing debates of intelligent design versus evolution in schools, and nuclear stockpiling and testing for a possible future war to end it all (aka Armageddon). But these are examples of the quest for power by controlling the knowledge of firsts and lasts, and these films shake up such a firm apocalyptic ideology. Also, the radical Christian right does not consider the Apocalypse of John a fiction or fantasy of the end. Even the twice-told tales lose their fictional hearts; the trials and final victory of the Tribulation Force are so close to the premillennial Truth that the believer can have a realistic pre-

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view. Psychoanalyst and historian Charles Strozier notes that Christian fundamentalism, energized by the apocalyptic, has moved the endist impulse into the center of our culture, where it works directly on large numbers of Christians and spills over in unpredictable ways into other cultural forms (159). These two films upend such connections by re-reading the End, biblical or not, as unreasonable and unethical. Any deity caught in the cross-fire of their endtime vision (as in The Book of Life) is destined to receive bad reviews. Fairy tales lack deities but retain the supernatural through the world of fairies or magic. There exists what Tatar calls the pedagogy of fear in fairy tales, as well as in apocalyptic literature. The stories lure the reader into scary territory before pushing them out into life again. Strozier calls the Christian visions of finality a remarkable myth of violence, revenge, and renewal (2). Like fairy tales, apocalyptic fantasies offer a mythic journey into and through violence. The hop over the final violence and eternal punishment is only promised if one is obedient to the values described in the tale. With Jack Zipes (following Fredric Jameson), fairy tales are social acts, and the tales are full of ideology and possible interpretations. The directors of these two apocalyptic films lead us down a more complicated road, with more complex social realities. Even with the mimicking of the good versus evil narrative of the Apocalypse of John, The Book of Life shows how even the supernatural characters break the divine social and supernatural boundaries. In my evaluation, no one, male or female, fares well in any apocalyptic narrative. Because of biblical apocalyptic, and especially the monolithic Apocalypse of John in Western culture, I do think women bear the worst of this twisted fairy tale. MarieLouise von Franz offers in her Jungian reading of fairy tales: We have, then, to start with a paradox: feminine figures in fairy tales are neither the pattern of the anima nor of the real woman, but of both, because sometimes it is one, and sometimes another (3). Perhaps there is hope in stepping outside of the heterosexual formulations of apocalypse and getting a different view of womens roles.

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Part of my commitment in my course, The Politics of Apocalypse, is to include a study of utopias and utopianism. I take the students on a quick tour of historic utopiasboth social movements and literary utopias. A few times in the past I have used as examples of utopia Charlotte Perkins Gilmans feminist utopia, Herland, from the early twentieth century, the film Metropolis, and Monique Wittigs lesbian apocalypse/utopia, The Lesbian Body. This tour of twentieth century apocalypses and utopias is chronological and ends with the more difficult and controversial utopian vision. Students enjoyed reading Herland, and the book generated feminist discussion even among the reticent in the class. This novel and the film Metropolis are fairly straight-forward (pun intended) ways into discussion of the interstructured oppressions of race, class, gender, religion, and sexualities. Twice I have taught the class I have used Wittigs book, and we struggled through reading and discussion. I used Wittig last in the term, as a way to introduce a different kind of apocalyptic and utopian vision. The discussion of this book began even before the semester, as students stand in the bookstore contemplating what texts to purchase. The response is mixed; my openly lesbian and bisexual students are thrilled with having the L-word in a title; some other students are sure there has been some mistake, and a few may be convinced this book is a sign of the apocalypse. Wittig offers her own twisted fairy tale. The Lesbian Body (Les corpes lesbien, 1973) is a postmodern lesbian apocalypse of sexual difference (see McGee 1992). It sets the readers on edge and does not fit into neat categories of meaning in the common apocalyptic sense of the dualities of male and female. For Wittig, lesbian is not woman and is a third gender which does not fit into the categories determined by man and patriarchal culture. Her materialist lesbian approach to understanding sexual difference leads her to abolish the category of sex and think outside of it, since sex is a prison-house of language and women (see McGee 1992:1-8). She states boldly, Lesbians are not women, because for her woman has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual economic systems (McGee 1992:32). Lesbianism survives because it provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely (McGee 1992:20). The lesbian voice is I (J/e in French).

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For Wittig, J/e is the symbol of the lived, rending experience which is my writing, of this cutting in two which throughout literature is the exercise of a language which does not constitute m/e as subject. J/e poses the ideological and historic question of feminine subjects (1986:10-11). The subject is split, loosened from its mooring in patriarchal dualistic thought to become its own subject, its own gender. Wittig sets up a world in which the lesbian body is central. The body is described graphically in its fragments, and these parts are liberating. Wittig is rewriting a feminist Song of Songs and myth of Osiris (see McGee 1992:196). Certain pages scattered throughout the book explode with body parts:
THE LESBIAN BODY THE JUICE THE SPITTLE THE SALIVA THE SNOT THE SWEAT THE TEARS THE WAX THE URINE THE FAECES THE EXCREMENTS THE BLOOD THE (1986:28)

These dissective hymns to the body appear throughout, circling back to the beginning:
INSTEPS THE GROINS THE TONGUE THE OCCIPUT THE SPINE THE FLANKS THE NAVEL THE PUBIS THE LESBIAN BODY. (1986:153)

At one point a body is reassembled: Your body is in fragments here, I pick up your hair in handfuls, your nose is at some distance, your face is all dispersedI yearn for you with such marvellous strength that all of a sudden the pieces fall together, you dont have a finger or a fragment missing. Then I begin to breathe into your half-open mouth into your nose your ears your vulva (1986:114-15). I used this novel as a way into the topics of postmodern apocalypse. I set up the discussion with a mini-lecture on poststructuralism: with Roland Barthes idea of the plural text, Julia Kristevas understanding of language and revolution, and Jacques Derridas deconstruction and the concept of diffrance. Then I gave some background on Wittig, especially on her previous utopian novel, Les Gurillres. There is also a rejection of hierarchy and dualism in this novel. Women do violence and overthrow in order to rebuild:
THE WOMEN AFFIRM IN TRIUMPH THAT ALL ACTION IS OVERTHROW (1985:5).

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In other words, Wittigs goal is deconstructive. The body is also central, providing the geography and space of the action. But there is a commonality in this novel that turns toward an individuality in The Lesbian Body. I use the comparison of her two novels to enter into a conversation with feminist postmodernism. I also use a chapter in Jennifer Burwells Notes on Nowhere (1997) entitled, Acting Out Lesbian: Monique Wittig and Immanent Critique, for my background notes on the debate over Wittig. The comparisons of Wittig with Hlne Cixouss criture feminine and the critiques of Judith Butler and others are too numerous and complex to spend much class time evaluating. Instead, I have students read two short selections: one from Burwells chapter where she discusses The Lesbian Body (1997:195-202) and Patrick McGees chapter on Wittig, Apocalypse and Sexual Difference: Monique Wittig in the Poststructuralist Context (1992:187, beginning with the last full paragraph, to 203) as they read Wittigs novel. Even though the course is an upper-level course, for most students these readings are their first encounter with feminist critical theory. The common dictum is that utopias (and apocalypses) are always exclusive along some lines; the classic ones are racist, classist, or (hetero)sexist. The future vision is always ideological, a marked text of political and cultural agendas. By subverting the patriarchal claim on present and future life, Wittig creates a new vision, a new language. As McGee notes, every language explodes when its apocalyptic tone is heard (1992:200), and Wittig explodes language and bodies and subjects and genders. Her book is very problematic, hard to read, difficult to understand. Wittigs rather graphic and obscene fragmenting of the body shakes the foundations of the normal apocalypse. Exploding Underworlds In the 1927 film Metropolis director Fritz Lang creates a science fictional vision of the future class divide. The year is 2026 and Lang tells the tale of two cities. The wealthy city lies above ground and is a mixture of high tech urban wonders and pleasure gardens for the rich. The other city is underground and is the dwelling place of the drone workers, the underclass who keep the city of light lit. The noir plot and scenery pit good versus evil, except this time the city avoids total destruction and evil is

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transformed. Evil is represented by the CEO of Metropolis (Joh Fredersen) who keeps the class divide firm until a teacher in the underground, Maria, begins preaching non-violent revolution. She has seen the garden, and Fredersens playboy son Freder, and knows there is something else to their life below ground. In many ways Metropolis is both a dystopian and utopian fairy tale. Both cities seem eerily cold and dangerous in different ways. The underground world comes close to total destruction by flood when the workers revolt and refuse to work. By connection the above-ground city loses power (in several ways) when the power plant floods. We watch the heroes, Freder and Maria, enter the depths before emerging. Transformation comes especially to Freder, who in his pursuit of Maria finally sees the injustices of the class struggle and grows to respect Marias teaching. Maria has the knowledge of a just society, but in the end it takes a man to front the movement for societal change. At the heart of Marias prophetic message is her critique of those who built the unjust system:
We shall build a tower that will reach to the stars! Having conceived Babel, yet unable to build it themselves, they had thousands to build it for them. But those who toiled knew nothing of the dreams of those who planned. And the minds that planned the Tower of Babel cared nothing for the workers who built it. The hymns of praise of the few became the curses of the manyBABEL! BABEL! BABEL! Between the mind that plans and the hands that build there must be a Mediator, and this must be the heart.

Here she announces the coming Mediator; he must descend into and be (re)birthed from the womb of the underground city. In many ways this Maria (named for the Virgin Mary) is a Cinderella waiting patiently for her Prince. At least that seems to be her role when we first encounter her as a schoolteacher. She exudes virginal purity, the opposite of the corrupt, tainted, aboveground world. But her lesson plan includes class consciousness; Maria looks with both desire and disdain on the playboy antics of Freder. Maria is more than a potential rich girl in this film. She is a prophet and leader, or at least the forerunner to Freder as he goes through the process of converting to the cause of justice. Maria is a stable character as she gathers her fellow workers in secret in the catacombs. She is portrayed powerfully when she preaches with crosses behind her. Yet she is rendered so pure that her evil twin has to be produced. As in the Apocalypse of John, the male gaze extends to the dual fantasy of virginal and whoring women.

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The evil twin is a cyborg, created by the evil scientist Rowang at the direction of Joh Fredersen. They capture Maria and hook her up to a machine that copies her flesh and voice to the cyborg. Maria has become too powerful and wise; they almost destroy her to create their own vision of woman. The artificial Maria looks real and fulfills the male fantasy of appealing to their worst, destructive instincts. In her exploration of cyborgs Donna Haraway explains, The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential (150). Haraway sees more positive potential in cyborgs in a postmodern context: Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia (181). Haraways cyborgs transgress the boundaries of the human and animal. They can hold utopian possibilities. Like Wittig, Haraway reveals the masculinist domination over women that can be reimagined by re-forming and re-dreaming the female body. However, Langs cyborg vision of 1927 was grounded in misogynist visions of scientific re-creations of woman. Evil begets evil, and the Maria cyborg is the ultimate femme fatale, stirring the crowds of men, above and below ground, into a destructive, orgiastic frenzy. When the crowds burn her at the stake, her flesh melts off revealing the machine, and thus her connection to the capitalist controllers. Mans ultimate fantasy woman has to be destroyed by man in the end. She is much too dangerously seductive in her Salome-like dance. The hope for the future for Lang lies in overturning the systems of dehumanizing labor; unfortunately, the symbol is ultimately the female body, and it has to be burned at the stake to rid the world of these demons. The rich mans son emerges as the Mediator, usurping the role of the more knowledgeable female prophet. Langs cyborg shows domination and difference, but gender and identity can be burned away, leaving only an android machine in the end.

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Conclusion: Once Upon a Time, Again

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Once upon a time, there was a world that only dreamed of beginnings. Whenever any part of this world suffered or was threatened, everything in this world joined together to think through solutions for improvement. When there was natural death, they mourned. At such times they met to retell their own myths of beginnings. Stories of a chaotic end to their world did not exist; thus, they did not have the need to build instruments toward that destruction. They desired a future that continued in even better ways, towards more new beginnings. In this start of an anti-apocalyptic fairy tale, I am sounding a bit social gospel movement and more than a bit Marxist utopian. I have also knocked a main feature out of fairy tales and apocalyptic literaturethat of the descent into hard times and struggle before the ultimate transformation. Will the world come to an end before what cosmologists call the big crunch? And if so will it end by human (nuclear war or other environmental destruction), natural (e.g. asteroid hit), or supernatural (deity-induced apocalypse) activity? These are the questions that plagued the directors of these films. Unlike the Apocalypse of John, these films offer open-ended explanations; some even offer hope that the world will survive the near-apocalypse. The warrior women of the apocalypse are a mixed groupsome idealized male versions, some independent, others in between. They all bear the violence, visible or not, on their bodies and in the twice-told stories and twisted apocalyptic fairy tales.

Abstract
The roles of women in the Apocalypse of John have been much debated in recent years. Even the good women do not triumph. Contemporary apocalyptic films vary in their presentation and involvement in warding off the End. In most of these films women have secondary roles as love interests, even if they are able to participate in stopping the violence. In utopia or dystopia women are usually left to sexual and reproductive roles, and women who try to rise above their status are portrayed as evil or are neutralized. It is interesting to observe some of the stereotypes of women in these films with the imaging of women in childrens fairy tales, especially for those women who try to exercise their power. As with fairy tales, in the acts of storytelling there are openings for empowerment.

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tina pippin
Bibliography

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