Cinema as Eco-critical Criticism: Can Movies Represent the Conscience of the Anthropocene? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Cinema and Environment: The Arts of Noticing in the Anthropocene
The aim of this paper is to raise questions about how cinema can allow us to rethink our relationship with the environment in the context of what is known today as the Anthropocene. In the discussion, I chart the current debates about the ecological in the humanities, with a particular focus on new materialisms, to argue that cinema can be fruitfully thought of as part of what anthropologist Anna Tsing (2015) calls the "arts of noticing". I then turn to a consideration of the potential influx of affect theories on ecocriticism and film studies, before sketching out possible approaches to studying film from an affective, new materialist and postanthropocentric perspective. These approaches might have wider implications for rhetorical perspectives on cinema, especially for those investigating emotional appeals.
Ecophilosophy in Contemporary Cinema. Rethinking the Relationship Human-NonHuman Through Film
Film-Philosophy Conference 2018. Gothenburg, Sweden July 3-5, 2018
More than 45 years after the publication of Arne Næss’s article “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement” in which the Norwegian philosopher postulated the difference between shallow ecology and deep ecology, the human-nonhuman relationship continues to be at the heart of the debate of environmental philosophy. By adopting diverse approaches and moving from anthropocentric, biocentric, or ecocentric perspectives, environmental philosophers have proposed a variety of theories and models trying to identify the fundamental principles and values on which a coherent, adequate environmental ethics must be based. Within this broad and complex scenario, film can express new and more vivid arguments and offer filmgoers many different film worlds in which they can rethink themselves, reflecting on their role in the ecosystem and their relationship with the nonhuman. Moving from film as philosophy and the related concept of the film world, this paper will focus on the cinematic representation of environment and, in particular, on the analysis of the modes of expression of environmental philosophy in contemporary cinema. Through the analysis of the two conflicting movies The Shallows (Collet-Serra 2016) and The Red Turtle (Dudok de Wit 2016), a discussion on expressive forms will be carried out in order to highlight the key aspects of a film ecophilosophy in which the specific mode of relationship between human and nonhuman is raised to the status of philosophical principle.
The Psychoanalysis of Environmental Crisis: The Progress of Eco-Cinema
This paper analyses three different films representing attempts of the film industry to portray people in the process of re-establishment of the healthy relationship with the nature and their quest for “ecological self” juxtaposing it with a Freudian definition of civilisation as a defence against nature. It is crucial to mention that movies such as Dersu Uzala, Medicine Man and Take Shelter serve as an explication of cultural myths related to eras of the 1970s, 1990s and 2000s in relation with corresponding real-life worsening of environmental crisis and reflecting psychological impacts of climate change. The analysis demonstrates how this marginal genre as opposes to various apocalyptic and dystopian movies develops from a dialogue of opposing forces of the civilisation and the nature into a sphere of an intimate dialogue within our minds to overcome psychological defence mechanisms and recognise the reality of environmental crisis.
Film as Ecophilosophy. Ecocentric Perspectives in Contemporary Italian Cinema
The Ninth Film Symposium: New Trends in Modern and Contemporary Italian. Bloomington, Indiana (USA), April 18-21, 2018
In his 1990 book Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, developing a new foundation for environmental philosophy, Warwick Fox proposed to consider self in an expansive sense through a process of identification with the environment. The shift between an anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective referred to a psychologization of ecophilosophy. In this sense, the so called “deep ecology” (Næss, 1973) identifies an egalitarian and holistic concept of the world based on the recognition of the equal intrinsic dignity of all biota as well as of their ecological interconnectedness and interdependence. Reconsidering these theoretical premises, my first claim will be that the notion of the film world allows us to identify the basis on which an ecophilosophical study of film can be carried out. How can a film world identify an environmental philosophy? How can it suggest an ecocentric perspective? Moving from the theses of the film as philosophy, this paper will focus on the cinematic representation of the relationship between human and nonhuman and, in particular, on the expression of ecophilosophy in contemporary Italian cinema. The analysis of some movies, such as Bella e perduta (Marcello, 2015) and Spira Mirabilis (D'Anolfi and Parenti, 2016), will be proposed in order to identify the key aspects of a film ecophilosophy for which the film world represents the hermeneutic horizon through which filmgoers can reflect on their own identity and role within the ecosystem.
Introduction: Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene_
Oxford University Press, 2018 In recent years, environmental and human rights advocates have suggested that we have entered the first new geological epoch since the end of the ice age: the Anthropocene. In this new epoch, humans have come to reshape unwittingly both the climate and natural world; humankind has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans, and irreversibly altered the atmosphere. Ironically, our efforts to make the planet more hospitable to ourselves seem to be driving us toward our inevitable extinction. A force of nature, humanity is now decentered as the agent of history. As Jennifer Fay argues, this new situation is to geological science what cinema has always been to human culture. Film, like the Anthropocene, is a product of the industrial revolution, but arises out of a desire to preserve life and master time and space. It also calls for the creation of artificial worlds, unnatural weather, and deadly environments for entertainment, scientific study, and devising military strategy. Filmmaking stages, quite literally, the process by which worlds and weather come into being and meaning, and it mimics the forces that are driving this new planetary inhospitality. Cinema, in other words, provides an image of "nature" in the age of its mechanical reproducability. Fay argues that cinema exemplifies the philosophical, political, and perhaps even logistical processes by which we can adapt to these forces and also imagine a world without humans in it. Whereas standard ecological criticism attends to the environmental crisis as an unraveling of our natural state, this book looks to film (from Buster Keaton, to Jia Zhangke, to films of atomic testing and early polar exploration) to consider how it reflects upon the creation and destruction of human environments. What are the implications of ecological inhospitality? What role might cinema and media theory play in challenging our presumed right to occupy and populate the world? As an art form, film enjoys a unique relationship to the material, elemental world it captures and produces. Through it, we may appreciate the ambitions to design an unhomely planet that may no longer accommodate us. BLURBS FROM THE BACK-COVER "Compelling and brilliant on every page, Inhospitable Worlds shows where film figures in the slow burn of the Anthropocene. In five clearly drawn and meticulously documented studies running from Keaton to noir, from China's three gorges to atomic testing sites in Nevada, and from the South Pole to the Yukon, Fay draws attention to contradictions and dilemmas at the core of cinema. Crafting a strategy of melancholy to rethink its condition past and present, Fay turns criticism in new and definitive directions. Anyone having concern about the condition of our planet must read Inhospitable World."-- Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University "At a time when much of the world is consumed with anxiety about the fate of the planet, Jennifer Fay shows us a way forward by traveling backward ironically and locating our future in the present. Inhospitable World reveals a history of cinema mobilized, as it were, for the purposes of rendering and conveying a world crisis as it unfolds. Cinema, in Fay's hands, is not only a vehicle, nor merely a medium, but a technology designed in part to capture this crisis invisible elsewhere. Not only a breath-taking feat of film scholarship, Inhospitable World is also a genuine contribution to the task of critical thought in a time of despair. It serves as an exhortation."-- Akira Mizuta Lippit, T. C. Wang Family Endowed Chair in Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California "Inhospitable World teems with cinematic lessons in survival, from the 'survival burlesques' of Buster Keaton to Bill Morrison's chronicle of the Dawson City Film Find. But there's a catch: the survivors of the Anthropocene may not be human. In Fay's arresting account, cinema's profuse world-making hastens, even as it broods on, the unmaking of human futurity. The history of film is retold in these pages as a rehearsal for a world without us."-- Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic Form
complete book. Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene
2018
Oxford University Press, 2018 In recent years, environmental and human rights advocates have suggested that we have entered the first new geological epoch since the end of the ice age: the Anthropocene. In this new epoch, humans have come to reshape unwittingly both the climate and natural world; humankind has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans, and irreversibly altered the atmosphere. Ironically, our efforts to make the planet more hospitable to ourselves seem to be driving us toward our inevitable extinction. A force of nature, humanity is now decentered as the agent of history. As Jennifer Fay argues, this new situation is to geological science what cinema has always been to human culture. Film, like the Anthropocene, is a product of the industrial revolution, but arises out of a desire to preserve life and master time and space. It also calls for the creation of artificial worlds, unnatural weather, and deadly environments for entertainment, scientific study, and devising military strategy. Filmmaking stages, quite literally, the process by which worlds and weather come into being and meaning, and it mimics the forces that are driving this new planetary inhospitality. Cinema, in other words, provides an image of "nature" in the age of its mechanical reproducability. Fay argues that cinema exemplifies the philosophical, political, and perhaps even logistical processes by which we can adapt to these forces and also imagine a world without humans in it. Whereas standard ecological criticism attends to the environmental crisis as an unraveling of our natural state, this book looks to film (from Buster Keaton, to Jia Zhangke, to films of atomic testing and early polar exploration) to consider how it reflects upon the creation and destruction of human environments. What are the implications of ecological inhospitality? What role might cinema and media theory play in challenging our presumed right to occupy and populate the world? As an art form, film enjoys a unique relationship to the material, elemental world it captures and produces. Through it, we may appreciate the ambitions to design an unhomely planet that may no longer accommodate us. BLURBS FROM THE BACK-COVER "Compelling and brilliant on every page, Inhospitable Worlds shows where film figures in the slow burn of the Anthropocene. In five clearly drawn and meticulously documented studies running from Keaton to noir, from China's three gorges to atomic testing sites
A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment
2018
Inspired by the philosophy of Wittgenstein and his idea that the purpose of real philosophical thinking is not to discover something new, but to show in a strikingly different light what is already there, this book provides philosophical readings of a number of ‘arthouse’ and Hollywood films. Each chapter contains a discussion of two films—one explored in greater detail and the other analyzed as a minor key which reveals the possibility for the book's ideas to be applied across different films, registers, and genres. The readings are not only interpretive, but they offer a way of thinking and feeling about, with, and through films which is genuinely transformative. Rupert Read’s main contention is that certain films can bring about a change in how we see the world. He advocates an ecological approach to film-philosophy analysis, arguing that film can re-shape the viewer’s relationship to the environment and other living beings. The transformative 'wake-up call' of these ...
Synthesis Philosophica, 2012
Films function both as powerful artistic forms and also as multi-layered texts, which transfer certain semantic-axiological contents to the audience. These contents articulate different values and ideological and worldview "messages". Many theoretical and critical analyses have shown that science fiction films are a kind of vision-holders of the perception and evaluation of nature by the future society. These preoccupations-describing actual environmental problems and dilemmas-are particularity not only of SF films; there is quite a number of films that range from ecocentric to anti-ecological worldviews. The paper considers connections between bioethical problems and film industry by analyzing crucial topics in James Cameron´s Hollywood blockbuster Avatar, with special emphasis on their presentations and interpretations of nature, technology, race and gender.
TRANSACTIONS WITH THE WORLD Ecocriticism and the Environmental Sensibility of New Hollywood
In their bold experimentation and bracing engagement with culture and politics, the “New Hollywood” films of the late 1960s and early 1970s are justly celebrated contributions to American cinematic history. Relatively unexplored, however, has been the profound environmental sensibility that characterized movies such as The Wild Bunch, Chinatown, and Nashville. This brisk and engaging study explores how many hallmarks of New Hollywood filmmaking, such as the increased reliance on location shooting and the rejection of American self-mythologizing, made the era such a vividly “grounded” cinematic moment. Synthesizing a range of narrative, aesthetic, and ecocritical theories, it offers a genuinely fresh perspective on one of the most studied periods in film history.