We're all gonna DIE!!!

That's the message of a new movie, SuperVolcano, coming out on the Discovery Channel this Sunday. I had the chance to see a
sneak preview of it, and I wasn't the only one there a little shaken and stirred. Much like Day After Tomorrow, which came out this summer, SuperVolcano depicts a cataclysmic nature event with enough science to make it sound plausible and enough bureaucratic sclerosity to ensure that a few of the important characters aren't provided for in time and don't survive. The thesis is that there's a giant pocket of magma under Yellowstone National Park (which is true), and when it issues forth, well,
see above.

Folks in the previous century were obsessed with death in a way that strikes us now as creepy and weird. In Huck Finn, Mark Twain writes about a young woman who was always embroidering poetry about bereaved lovers weeping by coffins, making her sound like one of an army of like-minded young ladies. If you've read The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton
(which is a cut above his normal output), or anything by Edgar Allan Poe, you know that Edwardians and Victorians were also obsessed with people who sicken and fall into trancelike states or for some other reason are buried alive by accident.

This summer, I visited the Catacombs in Paris, an underground series of tunnels where the contents of several graveyards were deposited in 1786, when Parisians ran out of room to bury their dead. Probably because it had to be open to mourners, the place became a tourist destination and folks are still strangely fascinated with it - one young woman installed a webcam there, and urban legends of wanderers dying in the passages (like Injun Joe - Mark Twain again!) persist. Walking a mile underground, surrounded on either side by
three-century-old bones piled to chin height, with no way to get out or to tell how far you've gone, is crazy-making. It's not helped by the carved verses in French and Latin that point out how you, the viewer, are soon going to be one of these images of death. Maybe, they elaborate, if you repent now and make yourself miserable and are really lucky, the crushing weight of your sins will be lifted and the best part of your life won't have preceded the dust-and-ashes stage.

All of this business smacks of another culture, another time, another place. Teachers (and Michael Crichton) explain to you how Edgar Allan Poe suffered from clinical depression, and how eras subject to cholera and typhoid had to accustom themselves to death and loss. But I think that action movies, and the pornographic over-coverage of tragic events
on the news, are simply our cultural moment's unique way of wallowing in death, facing the possibility of losing our home and family. Everyone in SuperVolcano and Day After Tomorrow confronts that fear of loss, and viewers confront it with them. It can be strengthening to mentally place ourselves in a position of danger. In the safe space of a movie which we know will end in a few hours, we can reassure ourselves that we'd know how to tell our families we love them and to put ourselves right with God.

Both of these movies happen to depict Americans throwing themselves on the mercy of neighboring countries much poorer than the US. In Day After Tomorrow, there's a heavy-handed Presidential message about how "what we call the Third World is now our host and our greatest hope". In SuperVolcano, Americans aren't so lucky - Mexico closes the border
to Americans fleeing the volcano's path. The authors use these movies, when we're already nervous about the safety of Americans, to slip in the message that many in the developing world confront life-or-death situations we have the power to prevent. I expect SuperVolcano to get lots of attention, and I hope this point won't be lost in the thrall of flashy effects and heightened emotions.

One of the scariest elements of nature-emergency movies is that often people find themselves trapped, conscious that death is coming and powerless to stop it. This is a sped-up and dramatically heightened portrayal of the situation we all find ourselves in. Like those creepy messages in the Paris catacombs, action movies remind us that we'll die someday, and that we'd better be ready. One of my usual imaginings when I'm watching certain-death movies is that I wouldn't be scared in a fatal situation. Of course, that's mostly a nice dream - you can't predict how panic will work on your spirit. But I hope I would remember that death isn't the worst thing that can happen to a person. For someone who believes in God's mercy, death is only a change that will bring her closer to God.

My companions through the Paris catacombs were a family with two young boys. While I was nearly hysterical after a while in the grisly setting, the kids couldn't have been calmer if they were trained doctors. They were asking their parents to name the different varieties of bone and generally seemed to be having a fine time. I don't mean to imply that children have a greater spiritual understanding than the rest of us - I have a lot of problems with such an argument, so this is just a metaphor. It occurred to me that children don't really have any reason to fear death. They haven't lived long enough to entertain the illusion that they are somehow irreplaceable to the world, the sentiment that makes adults think "I'd be sorry to die before accomplishing X." The best thing they know, their parents' love, is something they can't imagine ending, and in fact it's
true that you don't love a person any less because they are no longer with you.

I've often had the experience of watching a movie, or reading a story, that didn't faze me when I was young, and thinking, "Wow, this is really creeping me out. Why wasn't I more bothered by this as a child?" For those of us who've lost that childlike faith in the future, media that make us think of death can give us a good sense of perspective on life. If a volcano were about to hit your house, amusing as I realize that is, what could you do but love your family and trust in God? What else are you going to do tomorrow and the day after?