Critique of disaster films, praise for Kim Stanley Robinson [Media Notes 54]

Peter Baker has an interesting piece in the NYTimes: We Live in Disastrous Times. Why Can’t Disaster Movies Evolve? It opens with a discussion of George Clooney’s The Midnight Sky, moving briskly to:

The story, in the end, uses the same dramatic conceit as just about every other disaster movie: The decimation of Earth becomes a backdrop that lends weight to the choices of a few individuals, which are meant to point to bigger truths about humanity. [...] Most disaster movies aren’t much interested in disasters in and of themselves. The disaster sparks the action and makes its resolution feel momentous, but when it comes to considering where it came from — why it unfolds one way and not another — things tend to get hazy.

These films gloss over the collective nature of the events and ignore the decisions that brought them about. It ends on a note of praise for Kim Stanley Robinson:

By starting with Earth’s fate already settled, “The Midnight Sky” gives itself a pass on this line of inquiry, and an excuse to dwell instead in the pathos of small moments of loss and acceptance. It reminded me, discomfitingly, of figures like Elon Musk, who often seem more interested in triumphant dreams of life in space than in any effort to help address the earthbound problems that would send us there in the first place. [...]

If our planetary crises were the same as conflicts negotiated between small groups of individuals, they would be much more straightforward to resolve. But they’re not. Could we start telling disaster stories that reflect this fact, and grapple with it? The most powerful recent example comes not from film but from literature: Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel “The Ministry for the Future,” which cuts between — to give just a partial list — scenes of climate disaster, government and financial bureaucracy, geoengineering experiments, street protests, refugee camps and eco-terrorism. Each strand takes meaning not just from the experiences of its characters but also from the reader’s awareness of their deep interconnections.

I’ve only begun reading The Ministry for the Future, but I’ve read and thought quite a bit about New York 2140. By that time the planet has already absorbed two global floodings and the sea has risen by 50 feet. Then a massive hurricane floods the east coast of the United States.

Whatever New York 2140 is, it is not an exploration of the psyches of one, two, or three individuals. Yes, there is a core collection of nine people whose lives meet and intertwine during the course of the book, and we do learn a bit about the past of each. But these characters are thinly sketched, at least by the standards of the traditional novel. It’s not about them and their psyches. It’s about the world in which they live. It’s about the collectivity.