The Aesthetics of Petroleum, after Oil!

Abstract

In a subversive comic book that might be titled “Style Guide for the Long Emergency” but is instead titled Fashion 2012, cartoon characters ponder the role of aesthetics in a near future that delivers the convergence of peak oil and global warming.1 Geologists suggest that the peak in global oil production already may have occurred, just as climate change forecasts point to the likely necessity of intensive energy consumption as we adjust to new, extreme weather. Though 2012 refers to the supposed end of the world by the Mayan Long Count Calendar, Fashion 2012 posits not apocalypse but rather “people living, global warming, economic change” (Herbst 1). “I just don't know how to dress anymore,” one character muses, “They used to say ‘dress for success.’ With the new reality, what is success when no one is getting rich?” (9). Another thinks, “I can't afford to drive my car anymore … am I a failure?” (10). The small book pivots upon the brighter assertion of a third character that, “There are other things I can be” (15). But, as we turn the page, the cartoonist, Marc Herbst, introduces his own primary question, “What does that look like? … That is a question for artists” (16).