On the frontier

Cole's Course of an Empire: Desolation

But let that man with better sence aduize,
   That of the world least part to vs is red:
   And dayly how through hardy enterprize,
   Many great Regions are discouered,
   Which to late age were neuer mentioned.
   Who euer heard of th'Indian Peru?
   Or who in venturous vessell measured
   The Amazon huge riuer now found trew?
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did euer vew?

Yet all these were, when no man did them know;
   Yet haue from wisest ages hidden beene:
   And later times things more vnknowne shall show.
   Why then should witlesse man so much misweene
   That nothing is, but that which he hath seene?
   What if within the Moones faire shining spheare?
   What if in euery other starre vnseene
   Of other worldes he happily should heare?
He wo[n]der would much more: yet such to some appeare.

(Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, proem to Book 2)

Up until a few years ago, I never considered myself to be particularly interested in space movies. I think it had something to do with the geekiness associated with Trekkies and the cult surrounding Luke Skywalker. However, things changed when I was in college and went to see Interstellar in the theater (maybe I shouldn't be proud to admit this, but I think I saw it 3 or 4 times...I was obsessed). One of the reasons I enjoyed the film that much was because it shares several themes in common with Renaissance literature (one scene is extremely Dantean, when astronauts surmise that the universe is held together by a cosmic love; think the ending of Paradiso, when Dante discovers in God "the love that moves the sun and other stars").

The most significant shared motif between these two eras/genres is the sense of frontier. It's easy to look back at our ancestors in indulgent condescension, chuckling over their awe of the "New World." Those maps are cute. We today, though, with our satellites and vaccines and computers, have taken control over the earth; we've lost that sense of mystery. However, I don't think this is entirely the case, even in light of all the advances we've made. We've simply shifted our frontier to space; Mars and the Moon have become our New World.

The Utopian literature of the Renaissance often situates these made-up civilizations in the neighborhood of the Americas; modern science fiction loves to toy with the possibility of further-developed societies in different galaxies. The angst felt by the early explorers concerning all the unknowns surrounding the Atlantic Passage, "savage" indigenous peoples, and basic survival in an unknown land is echoed in films like The Martian (although isolation rather than hostile natives is the focus of the plot). The romance, fantasy, and adventure that gave rise to quests for the Fountain of Youth, traces of Atlantis, or the city of Cibola carry through into the sometimes-bizarre worlds featured in Star Wars.

Perhaps the most poignant parallel is the shared sense of loss and sacrifice. Leaving the East for the West, most early-modern migrants never hoped to see their homes and families again. Interstellar, with all the relativity and quantum theory that went completely over my head, brought this home to me. The closest thing to it is death (insert all the cliches about it being the last taboo/frontier/etc here). There is a familiarity with loss and mortality in Renaissance literature that I think can be a little off-putting to modern-day readers, coming across as morbid. I don't mind it, though. Perhaps we need our illusion of invincibility shattered, and the Universe around us is more than able to do the job. It's a reminder of our limits, of our humanity, of our dependence on a higher power than ourselves.