Armageddon porn 2012 style

Don't worry, this isn't a review of the soon to be released blockbuster 2012, as that pretty much seems unnecessary. Having sat through the trailer for the movie a couple of times now, I feel like I've already seen the whole thing. What interests me more is the current fascination we have with what I would call "Armageddon porn", that is images which fetishize the beauty of destruction, and not just your everyday garden variety catastrophe, but rather "it's the end of the world as we know it" type of destruction.

Director Roland Emmerich, now a veteran of the genre, shows us just how sexy world destruction can look through a Hollywood lens, giving us this interpretation of the end of the Mayan calendar, following his apocalyptic takes on a new ice age (The Day After Tomorrow - 2004) and alien invasion (Independence Day - 1996).

Each movie ups the ante visually, with the latest one pushing sequences that embody the complete annihilation of everything we as humans hold onto for meaning, comfort and security, that is the end of all civilization, through a complete overturning in the balance of the natural order.

Cities are upended through combined earthquake/tsunami forces, towers topple with more dramatic intensity than any memories conjured up by 9/11, St. Peter's Cathedral slams down onto praying hordes of pilgrims at the Vatican, tidal waves reach and demolish mountaintop Himalayan monasteries, all as an hyperactive camera follows John Cusack on the quest to save his family from this cataclysm.

So, just what is it that fascinates us so about this topic? There is a strong current of apocalyptic thinking in America, one that's been with us for a long time. It runs hand in hand with evangelical fundamentalism and it's belief in a linear historical timeline that's always in the last stages of its end game.

But, there's more to it than that. This genre seem to function as a cathartic way for us to confront a collective fear of death and dissolution. In our America, death as a subject of public discussion and experience is something that is continually avoided, or dealt with only in ritualized, symbolic terms.

What these movies present us with is a variation of this theme, that of the heroic death, or at least that of a hero facing the threat of death against impossible odds. And this is where it gets interesting: what if just once, we had a character who approached the imminent threat of death with acceptance as part of the natural order, rather than with abject terror (i.e. slasher genre) or bare-knuckled resistance (action hero style).

It's possible there are roles like that in the 2012 movie, though I won't know because I don't plan on spending the two hours of my life to sit through it. Maybe it's the solitary monk ringing the temple bell as the tidal wave engulfs his mountain. Or maybe John Cusack's character finally stops running and comforts his family as they face the inevitable.

Probably not, but who knows? The hope to see a role in which the lead actor recognizes and approaches the concept that death is a natural process which follows birth and life, something which eventually happens non-heroically to each one of us, would be a welcome departure from the standard fare Hollywood shovels our way.