fin de siècle

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert Frost

Has anyone else noticed how morbid we, and the media, seem to be getting? We can't just blame the media for their fascination with death, destruction and apocalypse, because we buy the products that fill the commercial breaks. Lately, I've been doing a not-so-scientific survey of all the programs that predict, fictionalize or otherwise cover the end of the world.

As for the fictional, we have already been destroyed by weather-control machinery, asteroids, comets, earthquakes, nuclear explosions (though these are rather blasé), global warming, tsunamis, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, black holes and aliens many and sundry. We can add to this space viruses, super-Ebola, biological attacks, terrorism in all its forms and of course, zombies. Never forget the zombies or the killer tomatoes.

As for documentaries, we get entire channels devoted to programs telling us exactly how the world will come to an end. Plate tectonics will destroy us all. We'll alternately boil, freeze, drown, dehydrate or asphyxiate depending on which global climate change program you are viewing. Hurricanes are getting more severe, we have more sunspots and droughts are everywhere. Super-bugs, like H1N1, which I am convinced came from my parents' uncleaned basement, will soon overcome all with floods of mucus-soaked tissues. California, like Atlantis, will sink into the sea or drift off in its own direction. That this has already happened psychologically is irrelevant.

Remember Y2K? The entire world was going to stop because programmers had forgotten to put two additional digits in the year field of databases. I decided to spend the night before the "Y2K event" in Detroit, thinking if any city was going to collapse entirely under badly-constructed computer systems, Detroit was the #1 candidate. I was rather disappointed.

Now we have 2012, some day in December I've heard. I don't mind, because really the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas has always been problematic to me. Students panic at their abysmal grades, people run around looking for the "in" gift for the season and we get yet more warnings about sliding retail sales and credit card debt. It also historically has started a chain reaction of 'cello gigs that keeps me in a tuxedo in my car eating cheeseburgers from one musical religious pageant to another. So that one probably wouldn't bother me that much either.

Even better are the speculative documentaries that attempt to document speculations. Nostradamus, Bible codes, Revelations, Leonardo, Freemasons, Fraggles and prophets using everything from crystal balls to adding machines fill yet another program slot. The Nostradamus Effect is a series entirely devoted to these various prophecies. Frankly, I've always found that it is much easier to read these things and test their veracity after the fact, when you can interpret the code however you want. According to my the dandruff on my cat, we are likely to have a cold, windy winter.

So we have global destruction on fictional, factual and speculative dimensions. But that's not where it ends. We're also incredibly fascinated by individual deaths.

They said it was a "bad summer" for generation X, as we supposedly lost most of our role models, assuming we gained them in the first place from popular culture. I tended to get mine from Gothic romance and historical fiction, but nevermind. Don't you think a hysterically dramatic and romantic death like Madame Bovary's would just be incredibly good entertainment? Damn, VH1 probably already had that idea. Then Andy Cohen from Bravo will interview all the folks with witty comments about their lack of class.

I'm not going to list these notables, not because they aren't worth mourning I suppose, but I hate to be guilty of the random beatification of a particular celebrity. Do I really need to spell out the strange prioritization that occurred with this summer's death toll? How does the media (and the public) determine how long is appropriate for hysterical, media-driven despair to last per celebrity? Is it based on the disease, the scandals, the finances, the drugs, the record sales, the number of movies or programs? Is there a formula somewhere that says we're allowed to mourn pancreatic cancer for longer than breast cancer? Is there another one that allows us to differentiate between journalists of great merit and men who die in sexual-asphyxiation accidents?

So death seems to feature high on our priorities for our viewing pleasure. Whether it's personal, global, national or universal, we will find a way to cover it with suitably-selected computer graphics. I know this sounds cynical, but every time I hear one of the prophecies or new deadly illnesses I think to myself "Yeah, right. Like you're going to get off that easy." I know things can get tough, but does subconscious yearning for the end of the world or our own lives somehow make the present more palatable?

So, will it be fire or ice? Frankly, I'm too busy living to care.