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PIIGS to the Slaughter II

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Contemporary European Science Fiction Cinemas

Part of the book series: Palgrave European Film and Media Studies ((PEFMS))

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Abstract

Continuing Chap. 4’s examination of the fallout from the Eurozone crisis, this chapter turns to sf films from the two remaining so-called PIIGS: Greece and Spain. Starting with an analysis of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster (2015), a film, it will be argued, that is both an industrial endorsement of European integration and an onscreen evisceration of the EU’s austerity policies, the focus then shifts to Spain. There, particular emphasis will be placed upon Àlex and David Pastor’s The Last Days (2013), which substitutes a deadly virus called ‘the Panic’ for the Eurozone fear of contagion, ultimately imagining a supposedly utopian post-capitalist Barcelona that is nevertheless, it will be argued, fatally undermined by an inability to see past an obsession with male privilege and suffering.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Speaking to The Guardian, Lanthimos was sceptical about the use of ‘weird wave’ as a descriptive aesthetic term arguing instead that the main commonality between contemporary Greek directors is a lack of funding: ‘It’s not quite a coincidence, but I’m afraid there is no foundation for this. There is no common philosophy, which is a good thing, I think. The common thing is we have no funds, so we have to make our own very cheap, very small films’ (Rose, ‘Attenberg, Dogtooth and the Weird Wave of Greek Cinema’).

  2. 2.

    Brody writes: ‘Greece and Portugal are in deep shit, but Greece is in slightly deeper shit because its leading younger filmmaker, Yorgos Lanthimos—whose film “The Lobster” is now playing here—makes movies that shed no light whatsoever on the country’s troubles’ (‘The Petty Laments of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster’).

  3. 3.

    In an article on Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2013) published in Paradoxa, Gerry Canavan

    coined the term ‘necrofuturism’, a phenomenon that ‘premediates the unhappy economic and ecological future that will emerge out of current trends, but not in a register that suggests or nurtures alternatives; rather, necrofuturism resigns us to a coming disaster we can anticipate but not prevent’ (‘If the Engine Ever Stops We’d All Die’: Snowpiercer and Necrofuturism’ 3). Applying Mark Fisher’s theorisation of capitalist realism (the sense that there is no viable alternative to capitalism) and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee’s concept of necrocapitalism (which links capitalist expansion to death production) to bleak sf visions of the future, Canavan persuasively argues that Snowpiercer embodies but ultimately rails against necrofuturist tendencies in dystopian sf.

  4. 4.

    The one exception is the character of Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou), who ‘Father’ (Christos Stergioglou) pays to sleep with his son in Dogtooth.

  5. 5.

    ‘Brecht’s concept of gestus refers to a physical acting style which opposes the clichéd dramatic one according to which the actor “becomes” the character he/she embodies. For Brecht, a gestic acting minimizes psychological traits and offers a simplification of character through an exposition of attitudes and postures which allow the audience to place emphasis on the social characteristics of the individual instead of the psychological ones’ (Koutsourakis 86).

  6. 6.

    Citing fears over the political climate in Italy and Spain, Eirini Karamouzi, writing for The London School of Economics’ EUROPP: European Politics and Policy blog, notes that ‘by the mid-1970s, Western interests in the southern part of Europe appeared to be increasingly under threat. Similar to the spill-over scenarios prevalent in many assessments of the current crisis, the Greek case was never assessed on its own merits, but as part of the Southern European puzzle. Greece’s entry into the EEC was therefore a solution to a genuine Cold War problem’ (‘Does the Greek Crisis Prove the Country’s Entry into the EEC in 1981 Was a Mistake?’).

  7. 7.

    Indeed, at the very moment it was being othered in a European context through widely voiced doubts as to its economic competency, Greece was paradoxically being enjoined to live up to its obligations as a good European nation by sealing off the Mediterranean to migrants on behalf of the EU as a whole, recalling Naomi Klein’s observation that ‘if a continent is serious about being a fortress, it also has to invite one or two poor countries within its walls, because somebody has to do the dirty work and heavy lifting’ (The Shock Doctrine 23).

  8. 8.

    Crucially, Papandreou’s mooted referendum never took place. As Ivan Krastev has observed: ‘Three days after announcing it, and following a harsh reaction by Berlin and Brussels, the Greek government shelved the idea and the reforms were voted on in the Parliament instead. It was a painfully clear example of “democracy frustrated”. Western European leaders were convinced that Greek citizens should not be permitted a say when the outcome of the vote would affect the fate of a currency belonging to everyone living in the Eurozone’ (After Europe 65–66).

  9. 9.

    The most obvious rebuke to any such theory is that Varoufakis resigned in July 2015, some two months after The Lobster was released.

  10. 10.

    Other Spanish sf films of the period include Extraterrestrial/Extraterrestre/ (Nacho Vigalondo 2011), Timecrimes/Los cronocrímenes (Nacho Vigalondo 2007), and EVA (Kike Maíllo 2011).

  11. 11.

    Major studios’ creation of ‘speciality divisions’ or oxymoronically titled independent wings began as an attempt to exploit and co-opt the success of independent films such as Sex, Lies and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh 1989) and Reservoir Dogs (Quintin Tarantino 1991). For a practical everyday illustration of this model, one could do worse than observe how major beer companies have responded to the explosion of interest in the independent craft beer market by seeking to create ‘craft’ offerings of their own.

  12. 12.

    Although the narrative that Iceland protected its citizens and instead elected to ‘burn the bondholders’ is less straightforward than is often portrayed (for one thing it had the option of devaluing its own currency unlike nations tied to the Euro), the island’s swift recovery is often held up as a counterpoint to arguments that austerity measures are the only way to move beyond a financial crisis. This recovery belied the severity of the nation’s crisis. As Matt O’Brien recounted in The Washington Post, a widely repeated joke at the outset of the crisis held that the only difference between Iceland and Ireland ‘was one letter and six months (‘The Miraculous Story of Iceland’).

  13. 13.

    Although voter turnout was low (49.41 per cent), 74 per cent of voters supported the implementation of the statute.

  14. 14.

    The Guardian reported that since the outset of the financial crisis, the Banco Sabadell has bucked trends across Spain, ‘doubled in size and has risen to become Spain’s fifth largest bank, mainly through an energetic programme of acquisitions in both Spain and abroad’ (Burgen, ‘TSB Takeover: the Spanish Buyer Banco Sabadell’).

  15. 15.

    An article in El País in March 2018 confirms such suspicions and suggests that while matters have seemingly improved in the interim, with the deficit down to 13 per cent according to the most recent data, the truer figure actually reaches 23 per cent when annual earnings are taken into account (Gómez, ‘Women in Spain Earn 13% Less than Men for Similar Work, New Study Shows’).

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  1. University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Aidan Power

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Power, A. (2018). PIIGS to the Slaughter II. In: Contemporary European Science Fiction Cinemas. Palgrave European Film and Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89827-8_5

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