Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - Zsolt K. Virágos: The American Brand of the Myth of Apocalypse

Hungarian movie-going audiences, like The Towering Inferno (1974), Earthquake (1975) or several Airport films, follow similar apocalyptic scenarios of endtimes. Recently such manifestations of the stereotyping routinization of formulaic art have received more and more attention from students of American culture, and for the right reasons. The assumption is probably correct that popular culture is a sensitive barometer of the existing beliefs and myth-structure; the relation between the effects of "mere entertainment" of this sort and and socio-political behavior might be less tenuous than had been previously thought. There is one more crucial aspect of apocalyptic myth I will briefly consider here: time. To the traditional apocalyptist, time itself becomes a vehicle of divine purpose. After the final cosmic struggle between Satan's forces and God's, time will cease, heaven and earth will become one for eternity, and the faithful will enter the City of God. Thus the apocalyptic conception of time, which is the direct consequence of accepting divine providence as a theory of historical causation, is predicated upon an anti-historical structuring of history. Between two fixed points, from Creation to Apocalypse, time moves toward a predetermined and transcendent end in a way that is irreversible and linear, deterministic and teleological. In classic apocalyptic texts a sequence of events is described, each event belonging to a definite pattern of historical relationships that will not repeat itself in the cyclical manner of Oriental myth. Rooted in the Hebraic tradition of constructing history as a continuum from past through present to future, the apocalyptic conception of this linear process makes the present always futuretending. This, by the way, is a common feature of all the traditional destining myths. As W. A. Clebsch has aptly remarked, "Our totems have told us about a past presence of divine reality, whose irruptions have pointed to a future time and to an unoccupied space. Instead of our having a tradition push identity upon us, our destiny has pulled us into it" (87). The corollary of this conception is that historical movement between two fixed points is understood to be evolutionary rather than cyclical; in the linear 130