The Unspoken Gender of Apocalypse: Patriarchal Realism and Ecofeminist Hope in Twenty-First-Century Post-apocalyptic Cinema

Martín, Mónica

En : Post-Apocalyptic Cultures: New Political Imaginaries After the Collapse of Modernity
2024
Palgrave Macmillan Cham
ISBN: 978-3-031-50509-6
Pp: 253-269

Abstract: This chapter seeks to spotlight the big elephant in the room of cinematic apocalypse—patriarchal culture—one that only replicates the pachyderm presiding over our apocalyptic drifting offscreen in the so-called, deceptively gender-neutral, Anthropocene. Drawing on utopian scholarship, contemporary sociology and film studies, this chapter looks closely at collapsing patriarchal-capitalist imaginaries and promising ecofeminist alternatives in twenty-first-century post-apocalyptic films such as Children of Men, Interstellar and Mad Max: Fury Road, among others. In the light of Ruth Levitas’s Utopia as Method (2013), film analysis prompts reflection on how the archaeological evaluation of apocalyptic rubble must help emancipate utopian architectural speculation and the future from patriarchal realism.

Nota: Postprint. Research towards this chapter was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant PID2021-123836NB-100).

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-50510-2_15