Facing Annihilation: The Personification of Nihilism in Four Film Figures

Abstract

This dissertation examines the dehumanizing trends of modern history through a close analysis of four contemporary film narratives and the psychology of their central characters. Together these narratives form what can be called a “postmodern eschatology.” It is postmodern in that it relies on methods of analysis associated with the postmodern style, particularly critical theory, film studies, archetypal psychology and contemporary philosophy, as well as appropriating images and ideas from a variety of cultures and disciplines. It is eschatological in that it is concerned with the “death, judgment and final destiny of humankind” as well as drawing on eschatology from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. The goal of the dissertation is to figure the nihilistic trends of recent history into a single imaginal narrative, in order to bring these trends to psychological awareness.

The first part of this narrative analysis is explored in the film There Will Be Blood directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film dramatizes the collapse of Christian consciousness and its re-appropriation through industrial capitalism in the first half of the twentieth century. The narrative continues with the film Apocalypse Now directed by Francis Ford Coppola. This film depicts the transition of cultural consciousness from one of industrial capitalism and cultivation, to one of domination through violence. The third act of this descent into nihilism is portrayed in the film American Psycho directed by Marie Harron. American Psycho illustrates the movement from a pathology of violence to a pathology of denial, and finally, madness.

The final act in this narrative is a meditation on the future of human being, explored in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey directed by Stanley Kubrick. An analysis of this film speculates on the logical ends of western civilization’s pursuit of power, by analyzing the tyrannical potential of Artificial intelligence and mass surveillance. Together these film narratives and the figures central to them, allow one to personify and interrogate the darker motivations of what Oswald Spengler called, our “Faustian” civilization. A civilization that would ultimately end in tragedy.