Post-apocalyptic memes for transit-oriented teens

[bloodygranuaile]

On Sunday the DSA Artists, Musicians, and Creators Caucus is having a reading group for Snowpiercer: Volume 1, in preparation for its screening of the movie Snowpiercer on Thursday night. Even though the reading group is on a Sunday evening, I am still planning to go, because graphic novel reading groups are cool and we should do more of them. 

 

I am not a big graphic novel reader and one of the things that always manages to surprise me about them is that they are so short?? Like, I picked up this book from the library at 1 pm and read it on the bus and had finished it by the time my meeting started at 2:30? That doesn’t happen with regular word books, or at least not the regular word books I read. 

 

Snowpiercer is about a big train, unsurprisingly named Snowpiercer, that runs continuously on a track to nowhere, and which is one thousand cars long and houses the entire remaining human population. The rest of civilization has been wiped out in a climate event that covers the entire world in unlivable ice and snow. The train had been originally designed as a self-sufficient leisure cruise, although not the whole train is luxurious—the cars toward the front of the train, closer to the engine, are nice, and conditions deteriorate as you get further back along the train. The last batch of cars, an overpacked ghetto tacked onto the train at the last minute, is the home of a hellishly destitute underclass known derisively as “tail-fuckers.” (There is a lot of swearing in this book. I don't mind swearing, but there is a level of swearing in graphic novels specifically that reads as a bit tryhard, especially if they were published after Transmetropolitan.)

 

Our plotline involves a refugee/prisoner from the tail who somehow has made his way up into the respectable classes of the train, where his presence causes a big fuss and a lot of people are worried that he is spreading filthy hazardous tail-car diseases, and a second-class activist lady who is part of a group advocating for the tail folks to get humanely resettled in the civilized parts of the train. The two have a romantic relationship that just sort of happens with absolutely no development whatsoever and that adds exactly zero to the plot, it's just there, because French media is like that sometimes. They have very little characterization, to be honest, especially the woman, whose character is basically "woman." There are secondary characters, who are almost entirely gruff military types, with some set dressing of drunk obnoxious rich people. Truly, this is just not a character-driven work; probably the most interesting character in the whole thing is Olga, the engine.

 

That said, I can see how this story would be very filmable; the high-concept, highly stratified world of the train is visually striking even in the black and white of the graphic novel, and there are a lot of obvious and highly relevant political themes to hammer on. It'll certainly be interesting to have a political discussion about, assuming I can actually drag my ass from my cozy warm house allll the way to the DC on Sunday.