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Dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies from 1968 to 2021 usually conclude with optimism, with a window into what is possible in the face of social dysfunction – and worse. The infrastructure that peeks through at the edges of the frame surfaces some of the concrete ways in which dystopian and post-apocalyptic survivors have made do with their damaged and destroyed worlds.
If the happy endings so common to mass-audience films do not provide an all-encompassing vision of a better world, the presence of infrastructure, whether old or retrofitted or new, offers a starting point for the continued work of building toward the future.
Film imaginings energy, transportation, water, waste, and their combination in the food system reveal what might be essential infrastructure on which to build the new post-dystopian and post-apocalyptic communities. We can look to dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies for a sense of where we might begin.
'Long's book fits into [the] recent tradition, where the science of filmmaking meets the aesthetic depiction of technologies. [However], Long's interest is not exactly in how the film understands our current relationship with infrastructure technologies; instead, Long argues that post-apocalyptic film can offer us a roadmap toward making a "better, livable world" (p.3)... By searching for small gems of optimism in what seem, at first glance, to be depicitions of hopelessness, Long marries technological pragmatism to cultural imagination and racks focus from nihilism to possibility.
One of Long's ingenious methods is to cite the production designer of each film, rather than or in addition to the director. For Long, not only is production design where infrastructure appears on-screen it is itself a kind of cinematic infrastructure in that it creates the technological horizons of the world and does so ambiently rather than overtly.'
— Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, Technology and Culture
Christian B. Long lives in Meanjin Brisbane, where he works at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is the author of The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema, 1960-2000, and the editor of ReFocus: The Films of Albert Brooks and Film and the American Presidency.
List of Images
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Infrastructure in Dystopian and Post-apocalyptic film, 1968-2021
Chapter 1 Energy: Power is Power, Renewable or Not
Chapter 2 Transportation: Filling Potholes at the End of Humanity’s Road
Chapter 3 Water: Privatization Against Public Good
Chapter 4 Food: Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Food Systems
Chapter 5 Waste: The Social Relations of Trash and Recycling
Chapter 6 Conclusion
Works Cited