Filmpocalypse #6: On the Beach

The cool embrace of sudden death.

When I moved to Los Angeles, the hills were alive with the sound of inferno.

Forest fires raged, and consumed subdivisions whole. Smoke covered the smog that covered the city, and on several occasions, my friends from the Valley evacuated and crashed with me. Darkness never blotted out our sky, but if the wind hit just right, you could smell the embers. One morning my car was covered in soot — a surreal image I'll never shake.

In an op-ed piece which ran at the time, a coastal contrast was highlighted. New Yorkers had to deal with 9/11, taxi drivers, extreme weather, and other New Yorkers on public transit. Los Angeles was jealous of this threatening lifestyle, but overcompensated. Our people proved we could hang by fully embracing the Apocalypse, in whatever form it took that week. Californians never ran from their own burning homes, but stood out front in sunglasses, gin and tonic in hand, smiling and humming "Light My Fire" as the flames took control.

What the op-ed writer drew attention to was a city-wide inferiority complex, but the image remains cool because it personifies exactly that: an acceptance of that which we cannot change, and the mildest of revelry in the face of doom. Maybe LA refused to accept the emotional undercurrents of the moment, but at least that one homeowner opted for a sense of humor over pitiful rebuke.

Directed by a pre–Inherit the Wind Stanley Kramer, On The Beach (1959) broached the subject of nuclear Armageddon with nary a degree of hope. resigned to the unbeatable of the inevitable. The same gin would fill our glass, we'd hum a different song, but we'd also been the ones burning.
Continue reading...

Author: Brock Wilbur