Jo Walton, in her review of favorite sf, WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT?, posits that middle- and upper-class (especially British) writers after WWII didn't like the new social order where attention had to be paid to working- and poorer-class citizens and this in turn created a plethora of 1950s/1960s sf where the troublesome proles were dispatched en masse via bombs, plagues, or aliens, leaving plucky, middle-class white men (or boys) to save what was left of the depopulated Earth.
/A provocative premise, even if I'm not 100% convinced that it's completely accurate.
I think it was a meeting about the rough cut of Hitchcock's "Lifeboat." One of the studio people asked about the music, something like, "Where is that music coming from?" Hitch answered, "You tell me where the camera is coming from, and I'll tell you where the music is coming from." At least that's a story I once heard.
So...in the "last man on earth" movies, where's the camera coming from...and who is operating it? (I might not want to know.)
Apparently, those aren't all *literally* the last person on earth movies...
7 comments:
Miracle Mile
Last Night (Canadian, 1998)
Any list that includes WATERWORLD is suspect.
One of these days I'll have to confess my enjoyment of WATERWORLD.
Jo Walton, in her review of favorite sf, WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT?, posits that middle- and upper-class (especially British) writers after WWII didn't like the new social order where attention had to be paid to working- and poorer-class citizens and this in turn created a plethora of 1950s/1960s sf where the troublesome proles were dispatched en masse via bombs, plagues, or aliens, leaving plucky, middle-class white men (or boys) to save what was left of the depopulated Earth.
/A provocative premise, even if I'm not 100% convinced that it's completely accurate.
I can see how she could make a case for that easily enough.
I have always failed to see the attraction of post-apocalyptic, last person(s) on earth books/films. Like noir, they're all doomed.
I think it was a meeting about the rough cut of Hitchcock's "Lifeboat." One of the studio people asked about the music, something like, "Where is that music coming from?" Hitch answered, "You tell me where the camera is coming from, and I'll tell you where the music is coming from." At least that's a story I once heard.
So...in the "last man on earth" movies, where's the camera coming from...and who is operating it? (I might not want to know.)
Apparently, those aren't all *literally* the last person on earth movies...
Some are more like post-apocalypse movies.
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