In my efforts to recapture the Post Apoclyptic (PA) genre of my youth, I'm going back and watching old movies that inspired me. This weekend I watched the 1981 movie: John Carpenter's Escape from New York. I included Carpenter's name because he made some of my favorite movies of that time.
In the future, crime is out of control and New York City is a maximum security prison. Grabbing a bargaining chip right out of the air, convicts bring down the President's plane in bad old Gotham. Gruff Snake Plissken, a one-eyed lone warrior new to prison life, is coerced into bringing the President, and his cargo, out of this land of undesirables.
-- Written by Anthony Pereyra, IMDB
Escape from New York is not a true apocalyptic future, but the city is a good rendition of what may happen in a lawless city. The city was ruled by the "Duke" of New York and can easily transposed to a slaver type hierarchy. I fount the use of titles interesting as I did not think what people might call themselves in the apocalyptic future. In The Postman, the main antagonist was know as "the general", but it did not strike me as important as someone calling themselves "the duke".
The underground dwelling "crazies" that came out at the end of the month to find food was another nugget, and I had planned to have a race of nocturnal humans that shunned light, but were not necessarily cannibalistic, which is the general imprission I felt. One of the ideas that my wife offered for a post apocalyptic character class was a 'squaker' to represent the story teller of the apocolyptia future.
I do not want to go into the movie on how out dated the movie was. While searching for the cover image, I learned that there was a remake of the movie in the works. One last note that caught my eye in the movie was the graffiti "FTW" in the movie. I noticed this a couple of times and immediately thought of "For The Win". Being a 1981 movie, it is unlikely that anyone would know this term would be a common phrase in the future and it is highly more likely to be some set decorator's initials.
I am interested in what people think story tellers in a apocalyptic future would be called.
Librarians. :)
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