Summary of Sontag's "Imagination of Disaster"

You may find this helpful in thinking about the question #2 on the first assignment. All quotes taken from Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” in Against Interpretation, (NY, Picador, 1966), pp. 209-25.

Sontag sees the essence of sci-fi films as the vivid representation of catastrophe precipitated directly or indirectly by the misuse of science and technology. The perils of science are magnified by the spectre of the Bomb. Almost every aspect of “futuristic” calamity might be seen as a metaphor for the bomb or evil parties involved (alien invaders).

She is only interested in sci-fi film in this essay. “The movies are, naturally, weak just where the science fiction movies (some of them) are strong—on science. But in place of an intellectual workout, they can supply something the novels can never provide—sensuous elaboration. In the films it is by means of images and sounds, not words that have to be translated by the imagination, that one can participate in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more, the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself.” (p. 212)

“Thus, science fiction film is concerned with the aesthetics of destruction, with the peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, making a mess.” (p. 213)

The lure of disaster films is explained in terms of their providing viewers with a a) “release from normal obligations” (p. 215) as well as b) depicting stories that are “strongly moralistic” (p. 216).

a) In the aftermath of the obliteration of civilization, she writes, “the whole movie can be devoted to the fantasy of occupying the deserted metropolis and starting over again, a world Robinson Crusoe.” (p. 215)

She points out how sci-fi films engage in extreme “moral simplification,” by which she means that the expectation that civilized adults will approach others with ethical sophistication, understanding, and sympathy, where appropriate, is suspended as they provide “outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings… This is the undeniable pleasure we derive from looking at freaks, beings excluded from the category of the human.” We pride our superiority over the freak, while simultaneously enjoying our aversion and fear of it. “[S]cruples can be lifted, for cruelty to be enjoyed.” (p. 215)

“Science fiction films invite a dispassionate, aesthetic view of destruction and violence—a technological view.” (p. 216)

b) Scientific advancement, experimentation, with its technological implementation is often the basis of the disaster depicted. Here we find so often the evil or mad scientist versus the good scientist or good people around him. So often such films belabor the moral necessity of working as team, cooperating with others, as opposed to the “obsessed or misguided scientist.” (p. 216)

She also point out that these films also tend to replay collective society’s distrust of intellectuals..”The most ingrained contemporary mistrust of the intellect is visit, in these movies, upon the scientist as intellectual.” (217) In fact, Sontag notes that in these films, “the antithesis of black magic and white is drawn as split between technology, which beneficent, and the errant individual will of a lone intellectual.” (223)

We live with the “mass trauma” over the “use of nuclear weapons and the possibility of future nuclear wars.” (218) It is not surprising that many of the sci-fi films betray a “hunger for a ‘good war’, which poses no moral problems, admits of no moral qualifications.” If there is war, we need to vindicated in our righteousness. Other films depict the more steady and rational “yearning for peace, or at least peaceful coexistence.” (219) Often, this rational side is transformed into the world united collectively to fight the hostile invaders. (220)

You might say that this doesn’t really answer the attraction as much as express commonplace moral viewpoints. Fairy tales instruct on us on how the world should be, but they receive no big budget productions for the big screen. Sontag turns to darker aspects of our engagement with ‘imagined disasters,” in variety of fears we suffer that are borne of “technocratic” modernity. In the past, horror fictions often focused on our fears over the loss of our humanity, especially exemplified in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the age of technologized modernism, all of our fears of life in the age of machines (Modern Times, with Chaplin) coalesce into great anxieties about the fragility of our humanity. Sontag writes, “[S}cience fiction films may also be described as a popular mythology for the contemporary negative imagination about the impersonal.” (220-1, my emphasis)

For example, we are often invited to witness not simply death and destruction, but obliteration of any trace of that former existence. (221) I am not sure why this is so fascinating and horrifying to us. In death, we remain as the remains of our bodies, of the memories others have us. It is hard to imagine this as a fate worse than death (and I can imagine plenty of such fates), but this does seem to be worst thing imaginable. On Star Trek, phasers set to “kill,” are reserved for the worst threats and they are vaporized in the process.

Sontag’s more profound insight concerns our anxieties about the dehumanizing, depersonalizing aspects of modernity. In many films, we see a victims who has “not been converted from human amiability to monstrous ‘animal’ bloodlust as in the old vampire fantasy. No, he has simply become far more efficient—the very model of technocratic man, purged of emotion, volitionaless, tranquil, obedient to all orders… Now the danger is understood as residing in man’s ability to be turned into a machine.” (222)

Thus, much of our fascination/fear arises from our ambivalence over the fruits and dangers of technology. She writes that these films “can be looked at as thematically central allegory, replete with standard modern attitudes.” Thus, such films provide a sort of mythological template for “accommodating to and negating” perennial fears about our sanity, humanity, and mortality. She notes parenthetically, “Myths of heaven and hell, and of ghosts, had the same function.” However, in the case of sci-fi, such fears are intensified. “[T]he trauma suffered by everyone in the middle of 20^th century when it became clear that, from now on to the end of human history, every person would spend his individual life under the threat not only individual death, which is certain, but of something almost insupportable psychologically—collective incineration and extinction which come at any time, virtually without warning.” (224)

In relation to this world wound, she laments “What I am suggesting is that the imagery of disaster in science fiction is above all the emblem of an inadequate response.”

Nevertheless, she notes that in this age of extremity, these films play an essential role. “[W]e live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large ration by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters. For one job that fantasy can do is to lift us out of the unbearably humdrum and to distract us from terrors—real or anticipated—by an escape into exotic, dangerous situations which have last minute happy endings.” (224-5)


	Summary of Sontag's "The Imagination of Disaster" You may find this helpful in thinking about the question #2 on the first assignment. All quotes taken from Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” in Against Interpretation, (NY, Picador, 1966), pp. 209-25. Sontag sees the essence of sci-fi films as the vivid representation of catastrophe precipitated directly or indirectly by the misuse of science and technology. The perils of science are magnified by the spectre of the Bomb. Almost every aspect of “futuristic” calamity might be seen as a metaphor for the bomb or evil parties involved (alien invaders). She is only interested in sci-fi film in this essay. “The movies are, naturally, weak just where the science fiction movies (some of them) are strong—on science. But in place of an intellectual workout, they can supply something the novels can never provide—sensuous elaboration. In the films it is by means of images and sounds, not words that have to be translated by the imagination, that one can participate in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more, the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself.” (p. 212) “Thus, science fiction film is concerned with the aesthetics of destruction, with the peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, making a mess.” (p. 213) The lure of disaster films is explained in terms of their providing viewers with a a) “release from normal obligations” (p. 215) as well as b) depicting stories that are “strongly moralistic” (p. 216). a) In the aftermath of the obliteration of civilization, she writes, “the whole movie can be devoted to the fantasy of occupying the deserted metropolis and starting over again, a world Robinson Crusoe.” (p. 215) She points out how sci-fi films engage in extreme “moral simplification,” by which she means that the expectation that civilized adults will approach others with ethical sophistication, understanding, and sympathy, where appropriate, is suspended as they provide “outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings… This is the undeniable pleasure we derive from looking at freaks, beings excluded from the category of the human.” We pride our superiority over the freak, while simultaneously enjoying our aversion and fear of it. “[S]cruples can be lifted, for cruelty to be enjoyed.” (p. 215) “Science fiction films invite a dispassionate, aesthetic view of destruction and violence—a technological view.” (p. 216) b) Scientific advancement, experimentation, with its technological implementation is often the basis of the disaster depicted. Here we find so often the evil or mad scientist versus the good scientist or good people around him. So often such films belabor the moral necessity of working as team, cooperating with others, as opposed to the “obsessed or misguided scientist.” (p. 216) She also point out that these films also tend to replay collective society’s distrust of intellectuals..”The most ingrained contemporary mistrust of the intellect is visit, in these movies, upon the scientist as intellectual.” (217) In fact, Sontag notes that in these films, “the antithesis of black magic and white is drawn as split between technology, which beneficent, and the errant individual will of a lone intellectual.” (223) We live with the “mass trauma” over the “use of nuclear weapons and the possibility of future nuclear wars.” (218) It is not surprising that many of the sci-fi films betray a “hunger for a ‘good war’, which poses no moral problems, admits of no moral qualifications.” If there is war, we need to vindicated in our righteousness. Other films depict the more steady and rational “yearning for peace, or at least peaceful coexistence.” (219) Often, this rational side is transformed into the world united collectively to fight the hostile invaders. (220) You might say that this doesn’t really answer the attraction as much as express commonplace moral viewpoints. Fairy tales instruct on us on how the world should be, but they receive no big budget productions for the big screen. Sontag turns to darker aspects of our engagement with ‘imagined disasters,” in variety of fears we suffer that are borne of “technocratic” modernity. In the past, horror fictions often focused on our fears over the loss of our humanity, especially exemplified in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the age of technologized modernism, all of our fears of life in the age of machines (Modern Times, with Chaplin) coalesce into great anxieties about the fragility of our humanity. Sontag writes, “[S}cience fiction films may also be described as a popular mythology for the contemporary negative imagination about the impersonal.” (220-1, my emphasis) For example, we are often invited to witness not simply death and destruction, but obliteration of any trace of that former existence. (221) I am not sure why this is so fascinating and horrifying to us. In death, we remain as the remains of our bodies, of the memories others have us. It is hard to imagine this as a fate worse than death (and I can imagine plenty of such fates), but this does seem to be worst thing imaginable. On Star Trek, phasers set to “kill,” are reserved for the worst threats and they are vaporized in the process. Sontag’s more profound insight concerns our anxieties about the dehumanizing, depersonalizing aspects of modernity. In many films, we see a victims who has “not been converted from human amiability to monstrous ‘animal’ bloodlust as in the old vampire fantasy. No, he has simply become far more efficient—the very model of technocratic man, purged of emotion, volitionaless, tranquil, obedient to all orders… Now the danger is understood as residing in man’s ability to be turned into a machine.” (222) Thus, much of our fascination/fear arises from our ambivalence over the fruits and dangers of technology. She writes that these films “can be looked at as thematically central allegory, replete with standard modern attitudes.” Thus, such films provide a sort of mythological template for “accommodating to and negating” perennial fears about our sanity, humanity, and mortality. She notes parenthetically, “Myths of heaven and hell, and of ghosts, had the same function.” However, in the case of sci-fi, such fears are intensified. “[T]he trauma suffered by everyone in the middle of 20^th century when it became clear that, from now on to the end of human history, every person would spend his individual life under the threat not only individual death, which is certain, but of something almost insupportable psychologically—collective incineration and extinction which come at any time, virtually without warning.” (224) In relation to this world wound, she laments “What I am suggesting is that the imagery of disaster in science fiction is above all the emblem of an inadequate response.” Nevertheless, she notes that in this age of extremity, these films play an essential role. “[W]e live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large ration by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters. For one job that fantasy can do is to lift us out of the unbearably humdrum and to distract us from terrors—real or anticipated—by an escape into exotic, dangerous situations which have last minute happy endings.” (224-5)