"Watching, as the world ends"

I just traveled ten thousand miles, from downtown Los Angeles to the coast of Brazil, only to kill myself and my party of three by answering questions incorrectly. It seems the apocalypse does play fair. This is my real-world experience as gifted by Sony Pictures and the movie 2012. If you visit their website, they’ve enlisted a team of writers to write blogposts about the how to replace the end in the end of the world, ‘corruption theories’ detailing how it happened, and Woody Harrelson comparing himself to Isaac Newton. Its quite impressive the scale of both content—there’s an immense amount of writing starting at its release date of November 13th—and the theme of apocalypse, corruption, human interference. Survivors and post-world theorists even have facebook pages.

I cannot say I disagree with the concept of surviving via facebook. At most, my emotions remain intact, I can survive a nuclear holocaust and still find time for jealousy: It’s the quaint desensitization that this marketing scheme does so virally. In fact it’s the quaint desensitization that the ‘2012’ meme enacts that makes it so curious to me. I am happy to hear of people legitimately scared about the prospects of ‘the end’ and happier that they’ve received this information via big budget films. NASA was swamped with emails from worriers asking pleading questions about the validity of the 2012 theory. There’s even a “2012 for dummies.” This is a joke. I say quaint because while our fears pervade us, consume us in the middle of night, our neighbors dog is still trying escape, the closet of the girl across the hall still, probably, holds a corset which I may or may not see, and this conversation to the left of me will end, inevitably, in “dude.” Today I drank a bottle of water and a cup of coffee brewed from beans shipped from New York, and if this tangent is tiresome I suggest you consider yourself privileged for having the audacity to believe in entertainment.

What ‘2012’ does is give us the apocalypse as a pillow, as a gift, as a conversation topic. John Cusack never left “High Fidelity” for me and thus, I have trapped myself in the referential pyramid that is big business entertainment. How do I experience the apocalypse without one of his mix tapes or the memory of considering the fine art of compilation as a 16 year old? When I see Cusack running from a crumbling downtown L.A., am I really going to ask myself what play list would be suitable? Yes, I will. And rightfully so. Whether I believe the apocalypse will come in my lifetime or not, the co-modification of the end of ends seems relentlessly callous. How do I interpret the apocalypse when its juxtaposed with Doritos? First, that I want nothing to do with cheese powder when I’m fighting for my life; second that the chips dry my mouth out. Try creating an “end of the world” play list on the 2012 website. Notice the existing play list for sale. Is this the apocalypse? Yes, as the third order of simulacra it exists as a copy of something yet to happen. So when the apocalypse realizes itself is their anyway for the signified to outpace its sign?