Monstrosity of Nature -- Monstrosity of the Future
Today, one of the most salient concerns facing humanity is climate change. Global warming has the potential to inflict massive changes upon our daily lives, and some of these changes could very well be seen as monstrous in their own right. Increased instances of massive storms around the world, drought, and negative impacts on food production could cripple our societies and economies. Hunger could become a very common phenomenon, as climate migration forces ever growing populations onto smaller and smaller areas viable for sustaining human life.
While some of these fears are perhaps outlandish in today's world, they have the potential to be very real in the decades and centuries to come. These fears are represented in a genre of thriller and horror films colloquially referred to as "disaster flicks," spanning topics ranging from climate change, earthquakes, hurricanes, to even nuclear apocalypse. Humanity's fears of the future are presented in these films. Despite their outlandish and larger than life representations of the changes facing humanity in the years to come, they are just close enough to the truth to hit home and terrify audiences.
Films such as 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, and San Andreas are examples of some recent, extremely commercially successful disaster films that have been popular at the box office. The truth of the matter is that we don't really know what will happen when our world dramatically changes in the years to come. Perhaps modern society could fall apart entirely, leaving us in a situation such as the ones presented in popular films like Mad Max, The Book of Eli, or Cormac McCarthy's The Road. These dystopian images of a future society run directly contrary to the images of an advanced future represented in many science fiction films from decades past.
Whereas previously we believed that the future would be full of advanced technology, prosperity, and peace, our conceptions have changed. Today, we see the future as a much darker place, one where humanity has few options in the face of growing struggles. The true kicker, however, is that we have perhaps brought these struggles upon ourselves. Our inner struggles with guilt and fear of natural reprisals against our species are writ-large in these blockbuster films depicting the fall of humanity, ripped apart from the inside out. Despite projecting monstrosity upon the outside world for the better part of human history, perhaps we are heading to the final realization that humanity is inherently monstrous in and of itself, and that our monstrosity exists within. Our experiences with monstrosity in the outside world are perhaps simply representations and reactions to our personal, inward struggle with the monstrosity of the human.