A Handshake of Carbon Monoxide: When “Bugonia” Cuts to Black, How Are We Supposed to Feel? by Z.L. Murray

The theory goes that, some four billion years ago, life on Earth spawned in the toxic froth blasting up through the ocean floor’s alkaline hydrothermal vents. Countless inanimate particles stewed for millennia, gradually coalescing into complex, self-replicating chains: the first RNA. This process is nothing short of magic, the biological equivalent of a handkerchief turning into a dove, and it’s similarly astounding that enough of these cells, and the beings they built, survived the ensuing apocalypses. Over a relatively short period of time, cosmically speaking, the seas froze and turned anoxic, supervolcanoes scorched and poisoned the atmosphere, and an asteroid the size of Mount Everest pummeled the Yucatan Peninsula. At our planet’s nadir, a sequence of catastrophic eruptions dubbed “The Great Dying” eradicated roughly 90% of all species. But somehow, the luckiest, most stubborn biota endured, and from them sprung us, the only animals determined to orchestrate our own extinction. 

“Bugonia” lays this irony bare. In its worldbuilding, it spins a creation myth with damning parallels to our own foundational parables and actual trajectory: god-like extraterrestrials (the Andromedons), sculpted the first people in their image, only to watch them meddle with their perfect genome, self-destruct in a fit of hubris, and reemerge from tribalistic apes as a basal race content to pollute and wage war. In its protagonist, the traumatized and alienated Teddy Gatz, it emblematizes mankind’s savage nature and absurd futility. As Teddy seeks to liberate Earth from supposed Andromedon domination by kidnapping one of their envoys, he indulges his most primal instincts — distrust of the other, manipulation of the vulnerable — and ultimately kills his family and himself for naught. The Andromedons, he learns in his final hour, only sought to bring about prosperity. Finally, in its resolution, it presents a remedy. Following Teddy’s fiasco, the Andromedons declare humanity beyond saving and solemnly determine to wipe them out. The omnicide is instantaneous and merciful, a carbon monoxide sleep without anticipation or suffering, a fate far more peaceful and contained than climate disaster or nuclear fallout. Bodies are left splayed across dancefloors and factory floors, under desks and dinner tables, atop mattresses and prayer rugs, primed to decay into fertilizer. Oblivious to it all, a honeybee pollinates a milkweed with one less predator to worry about.  

For better or worse, the feeling that lingered in me after “Bugonia” cut to black, as my friend and I walked out of the theater into the ever-populated Lincoln Square, was comfort. There were other, more visceral and perhaps more natural feelings too — shame at my own complicity in the planet’s deterioration, anger at the disregard shown by those positioned to effectuate substantial change — but I had to dig for them. From what I’ve gathered in discussions and seen posted in online forums, many viewers share this experience. So, what does this mean? Are we so accustomed to our being doomed that an extinction event devoid of explosions and tsunamis can be considered a happy ending? Do we view ourselves and each other as so irredeemable that a complete reset can be the only fair consequence? Have we devalued small-picture pleasures like delicious meals and temperate days, and thus life itself, in response to our big-picture anxieties? Is it just laziness, finding solace in the notion of an easy way out? Knowing us, it’s likely some combination of all and none of the above. Even still, there is meant to be one fundamental imperative at the root of our genetic code: survival, both as individuals and as a species. We were endowed with the willpower to amputate our own limbs and the instinct to shield our loved ones from bullets. Our drive to live does manifest, day by day, in healthy people; we eat when we’re hungry, drink when we’re thirsty, reproduce when we’re horny, and avoid oncoming traffic. But macroscopically, is it lost, replaced with manufactured cravings for fleeting pleasure and dominance? Maybe “Bugonia” is here to test us. Or maybe, like the Andromedons, it’s here to fix us.