Scenes from the End of the World in American Popular Culture

Abstract

This chapter examines the influence of biblical apocalyptic literature in popular culture. After exploring the problems of terminology and definitions, it examines four examples of apocalyptic in popular culture: two of these, Good Omens (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, 1990) and the television series Supernatural (created by Eric Kripke, 2005–2020) draw directly from the biblical apocalypses, especially Revelation. They also change details from Revelation in order to better fit their agenda. Two additional examples are explored: the movie 2012 (2009) and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. Both focus on end-time scenarios that do not derive directly from the biblical apocalypses but instead use the flood narrative from Genesis 6–9 to highlight their eschatology. This chapter argues that the shift in popular culture from drawing directly on biblical apocalypses to drawing on other narratives—specifically the flood—derives from a turn toward environmental concerns in contemporary Western culture.