Lucy MacLean desires to consider in a couple of issues: proper and incorrect, human dignity, and the Golden Rule, for instance. What she doesn’t need is to be fooled or manipulated. You would possibly say that Lucy MacLean desires the reality, however she additionally desires the reality to be excellent news.
That’s a troublesome line to stroll in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Because it seems, it might not be a lot simpler in our pre-apocalyptic world.
Fallout speaks to the core longings and fears of the metamodern age: the deep want for a narrative that’s true and good, and the concern that such a narrative might not exist.
Lucy MacLean is the first protagonist of Amazon-MGM’s new sequence Fallout, based mostly on the long-running sequence of video video games. Fallout tells the story of people and factions scrabbling for energy and function in a world ravaged by nuclear battle. Maybe by advantage of their very nature as role-playing video games, most entries within the Fallout sequence have stood squarely within the custom of postmodern storytelling. Particular person characters have their motives and values, however all of the “metanarratives” which drove the outdated world—political, philosophical, spiritual, or in any other case—have been turned to mud within the nuclear winds.
The Fallout TV sequence (2024) tells a distinct form of story. The variations are delicate, however deeply vital: Fallout is a quintessentially metamodern story. It’s not only one extra existentialist romp by way of a meaningless universe. Quite the opposite, Fallout speaks to the core longings and fears of the metamodern age: the deep want for a narrative that’s true and good, and the concern that such a narrative might not exist.
I not too long ago wrote a chunk for Christianity Immediately on the rise of metamodernism, a brand new cultural temper which has arisen in response to the longstanding affect of postmodernism. It’s essential for the Church to establish, perceive, and interact with metamodern impulses as we search to current the particular person and work of Jesus to a altering tradition.
The story of Fallout will help us try this. By rigorously following among the main characters and storylines from the present, we will watch in actual time as metamodern impulses take root and develop.
Earlier than we get into it, although, a short disclaimer is so as. This piece will embrace main narrative spoilers for the Fallout sequence, so you could need to watch it earlier than studying. That mentioned, the sequence itself comprises very graphic and gratuitous violence all through, and I don’t suggest or endorse a few of its content material. If you happen to would like to get the ideological drift of the present with out watching it, you may be completely able to following the argument of this piece with out having seen the present.
With that out of the way in which, let’s return to Lucy MacLean. Firstly of the sequence, Lucy is what we’d name an ideal modernist. Modernism is, broadly talking, a set of emotions, assumptions, and expectations about actuality that took root through the Enlightenment and carried on by way of the early 20th century. At its root, modernism is a temper of humanistic optimism fueled by scientific and technological development and rationalist philosophy. Put merely, modernism is the assumption that humanity can and can steadily enhance ourselves over time by way of accountable utility of our rising intelligence and self-understanding. It’s a assured, humanistic, optimistic view of actuality.
Watching Lucy’s story, we see the “fairly lie” of modernism uncovered.
Lucy has been raised in simply such a modernist framework. Optimistic humanism could also be shocking in a world shattered by nuclear battle, however Lucy is a “vault-dweller,” raised in borderline-utopian isolation in Vault 33, far beneath the war-ravaged floor of Earth. Lucy and her group are pushed by a robust sense of function: they’re ready for “Reclamation Day,” when the floor might be secure sufficient for human settlement and the vault-dwellers will emerge to repopulate the Earth.
Tragically, over the course of the sequence, Lucy discovers that this story which has given which means and function to her life is constructed on a sequence of lies and cover-ups. When her vault is attacked by savage “raiders” from the floor who kidnap her father, Lucy pursues them. On the floor, Lucy doesn’t discover an empty, therapeutic planet ready for human reclamation. As a substitute, she finds a barren wasteland populated by human survivors dwelling in determined poverty, deeply distrustful of strangers and beset on all sides by pure and unnatural horrors.
Lucy is appalled to find that surface-dwellers constantly lie, cheat, steal, and homicide, and instantly begins inserting herself into harmful conditions to teach surface-dwellers on easy ethical regulation. “You may’t deal with folks like this!” Lucy declares confidently to a bounty hunter who kills a number of innocents in pursuit of his goal. When he responds with a contact of amusement, “Why’s that?” Lucy solutions, “Due to the Golden Rule—do unto others as you’d have them do to you.”
This similar angle is retained by Lucy’s vault-dwelling neighbors as they debate one of the best ways to deal with the raiders they’ve imprisoned after the assault. Regardless of a want to see justice executed towards the killers, the bulk votes to pursue moral rehabilitation. Within the phrases of 1 vault-dweller, “They didn’t know any higher. How may they, with out a formal training?” That is modernism at work: an unfailing confidence within the important goodness of the human spirit.
Sadly for Lucy, this worldview doesn’t seem to match the fact of the wasteland on the floor. Again and again, Lucy’s makes an attempt at rational conflict-resolution are scorned by suspicious and determined folks. This rising confusion and frustration involves a head when Lucy’s pal Maximus is needlessly shot by suspicious strangers and Lucy cries out in anguish, “Why?! I hate it up right here!”
Watching Lucy’s story, we see the “fairly lie” of modernism uncovered. Humanity, it seems, will not be essentially and primarily good, and progress towards peace and cooperation is much from inevitable. Even worse for Lucy, the complete story which had anchored her values was proving to be a sham. “The whole function of my Vault,” Lucy explains to Maximus, “was to come back as much as the floor and restart civilization. It’s Reclamation Day. It’s what retains us all going, and… it already occurred with out us.” Maximus, making an attempt to console Lucy, responds, “If it makes you’re feeling any higher, it didn’t work out.” Human civilization nonetheless exists with out the Vault-Dwellers and their Reclamation, but it surely’s removed from the utopia that Lucy and her folks have been envisioning.
Lucy will not be the one character in Fallout to grow to be disillusioned with modernist optimism. The present’s secondary protagonist, Cooper Howard, noticed his confidence in humanity shattered lengthy earlier than Lucy was born. Howard was a well-known actor in Western movies within the pre-war period, over 2 hundred years earlier than the present’s main timeline. He was a very good old style American man of precept, dedicated to the story of the American Dream.
In Howard’s eyes, postmodern cynicism is an inevitable fallout from the dying of modernist idealism.
It’s tragic and ironic, then, that Howard is uncovered to harmful, mutating radiation when the bombs fall and is was a Ghoul—a mutated human cursed to terribly lengthy life with near-constant struggling. For over 2 hundred years, Howard lives as “The Ghoul,” changing into an notorious bounty hunter with no ethical scruples and a repute for brutality. He seems to haven’t any ideas, no function, no grand plans in any respect—he’s only a man cursed to go on dwelling in a world he hates, having misplaced everybody he as soon as beloved. His former idealism is lengthy lifeless, and as The Ghoul, Howard turns into an ideal foil to Lucy’s modernist confidence. He sees in her a naïve foolishness which he associates together with his personal previous. He’s the bounty hunter who questions Lucy’s ethical certainty, and he appears to please in watching her illusions crumble.
Together with his cynical, skeptical outlook on life and his abandonment of precept, Howard supplies a terrific image of postmodernism. Within the wake of the primary World Warfare, the humanistic optimism of the Modernists seemed to be silly at greatest and harmful at worst. Postmodernism reacted towards this by rejecting all makes an attempt to make sense of actuality by way of large-scale narrative. All of the tales which appeared to present which means to actuality—spiritual beliefs, political actions, and so forth—have been discarded as so many harmful lies. Postmodernism embraces cynical skepticism and encourages people to make their very own means in a world emptied of actual which means.
Crucially, the true postmodern feels that this angle is an sincere response to actuality. Within the postmodern mind-set, any intellectually sincere particular person will finally embrace the skeptical, individualist outlook of postmodernism. Howard betrays exactly this expectation. When Lucy, appalled at his obvious lack of ideas, asks Howard, “What are you?” His response is telling: “Oh, I’m you, sweetie. You simply give it a bit of time.” In Howard’s eyes, postmodern cynicism is an inevitable fallout from the dying of modernist idealism.
That is the place the story of Fallout takes a vital flip. Lucy’s modernist optimism is shattered by the chaotic and harmful world of the floor. Howard thinks it solely a matter of time earlier than Lucy embraces the cynical postmodern nihilism which has grow to be his personal angle. However that’s not the place the story goes. As a substitute, it exhibits us the beginning of metamodernism, a synthesis of the impulses of modernism and postmodernism which can be changing into a robust affect in our personal world.
[Lucy] will not be content material with a descent into meaninglessness, however neither is she prepared to really feel simplistic or naïve. She has deconstructed a false narrative and is making an attempt to rebuild.
In Fallout, Lucy repeatedly discovers that main components of her worldview have been constructed on lies. The Vaults, it seems, weren’t constructed by altruists to protect humanity for an eventual heroic Reclamation Day, however have been constructed by the very firm which dropped the primary nuclear bombs to be able to promote costly properties within the Vaults. Lucy’s personal father is revealed to be an govt from the Vault-Tec who killed his personal spouse—Lucy’s mom—when she found the reality about life on the floor.
But even because the story which justified Lucy’s moral convictions is ripped away, Lucy stays stalwart in her dedication to sure beliefs: the Golden Rule, for instance, and the significance of treating different human beings with dignity. These convictions are, for the second, set adrift with none anchor. They float untethered within the air with out a narrative to justify them. Why care about others? What’s the purpose of treating folks nicely? Why not make your personal means, embrace postmodern cynicism like Howard? Frankly, Lucy isn’t fully positive. She doesn’t need to cling to a lie—by the tip of the primary season, she has no intention of returning to the Vaults, and decides to accompany Howard on a seek for the executives behind the Vault-Tec mission and the nuclear battle itself. She desires solutions. She desires the reality.
In our world, an analogous shattering has taken place. The 20th century confirmed the optimistic humanism of the modernists to be out of step with actuality, however up to now, postmodern cynicism has fared no higher. We are able to really feel in our bones that it simply doesn’t match.
Lucy deeply hopes that the reality she discovers will present new grounding for her dedication to sure beliefs. She desires the Golden Rule to be not solely good, however true. However for now, Lucy is prepared to carry the stress. This can be a key attribute of metamodernism: oscillation. Lucy is hanging within the pendulum between modernist optimism and postmodern cynicism, refusing to land in both place. That is the metamodern age: folks in oscillation, caught between tales of human progress which turned out to be lies and a wearisome cynicism which produced nothing however ethical chapter.
Lucy is an idealist searching for a narrative; she is a believer desperately searching for one thing worthy of perception. She will not be content material with a descent into meaninglessness, however neither is she prepared to really feel simplistic or naïve. She has deconstructed a false narrative and is making an attempt to rebuild. She has the mental braveness to hunt the reality and the heartfelt hope that the reality could also be greater than a tragedy. She is considered one of us: the metamodern technology, wandering a world haunted by lifeless tales and hoping towards hope to seek out one that also has life in it, one thing each true and good, one thing able to producing magnificence.
Hoping, maybe, for the gospel.
