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Green Frames: Exploring Cinema
Ecocritically
Since its emergence as an industry,
cinema has been almost exclusively an urban art form and
has served and continues to serve audiences, which are
predominantly urban. This means that most of the cinema
audiences have a limited scope of knowledge and first-hand
experience regarding nature. In current Western (post)modern
society, which relies on completely outsourced or minute
agricultural work force, the alienation from real nature
becomes more and more comprehensive. In this situation,
cinema and other audiovisual media have a key role in
representing nature for us, the audiences, and in shaping
of our views about it. This is one of the reasons why the
research of nature and cinema is important, and gives rise
to some central questions, such as: how does cinema shape
and aesthetisise nature? What kind of conventions,
patterns and trends does it adhere to? And simply, what
are understood as representations of nature on film?
If one applies the broadest
defininition of nature describing it as the biosphere and
everything in it, including humans and their cultures, it
seems to encompass all films, the most urbanite,
technocentric sci-fi films included. Even if one excludes
everything man-made that is inorganic (e.g. buildings,
cars, roads) as I intend to do here, how does one approach
this vast topic? How can one start to analyse it into more
manageable fragments? And in what other ways, besides the
issues concerning representation, does nature dissect
cinema and its institutions? These are some of the core
questions that I will explore in this essay, which is
based on an introductory lecture given in the Finnish Film
Archive’s Cinema and Nature series in Spring 2007. Given
the scope of the topic it is perhaps necessary to
emphasise that the thoughts and ideas I outline should be
understood as preliminary sketches and ruminations, which
are due for refinement in subsequent research.
There is, of course, a lot of research
on nature in cinema. However, most of this research tends
to focus on one narrowly defined special topic, such as,
say, a chapter on nature in a book on Westerns, or nature
in television documentaries. Comments outlining a broader
picture or analysis that would chart the relationship
between cinema and nature have been left to the background.
The only exception seems to be ecocriticism, an approach
developed and crystallised within the research of
literature during the 1990s.
Although there is no consensus on what
is the precise definition of ecocriticism, there seems to
be a general agreement that it contains three main focal
points. These are the investigation of relationship
between literature and nature, the search for
interdisciplinary connections and synergies between
different fields of knowledge engaged in the study of
nature, and affirmative, positive politics, that is,
environmentalist ethos that frames and inspires the
research (Estok 2001). The first two
can easily be transferred to the study of cinema, while
the third probably emerges automatically in one shape or
another as an inevitable by-product of hermeneutic process
of interpretation. However, the more critical findings can
be backed with data from other sciences and/or fields of
criticism, the more persuasive and less subjective the
case that is being made will be.
Linked to this vague terminology is
another issue concerning some ecocritics, namely that of
missing theoretical identity, or as Estok puts it, "we
need to understand why ecocriticism has problems in
getting its theoretical footing."(ibid.).
As compared to, say, marxism, ecocriticism lacks a
theoretical tradition and clearly formed basic, core
assumptions, which could help bring the field into focus.
Thus, there has been some questioning
as to what extent ecocriticism is a theoretical formation,
a bunch of methodological tools or just a focus (Estok
2001). For me, and for the purposes of this essay,
this question is a non-starter. To fulfil the three
criteria mentioned above and to be useful, an ecocritical
approach does not have to form a solid theoretical
structure. A collection of piece-meal,
small-to-medium-sized theories and methods that
effectively explain some small-to-medium-sized problems
can do the trick just as well. In fact, it can be argued
that this is actually the best way of tackling such
complex and multifarious phenomenon as cinema, since it
avoids the strictures and maxims of an over-arching theory
and the pre-determination and homogenisation that it can
impose on any given source material or data.
Over ten years ago, David Bordwell
wrote that "Middle-level research
programs have shown that an argument can be at once
conceptually powerful and based on evidence without appeal
to theoretical bricolage or association of ideas… Most
important [they] have shown that you do not need a Big
Theory of Everything to do enlightening work in a field of
study" (1996a,
29. See also: Carroll 1996, 56-61).
In the sections below, I will refer to
different bodies of research and methodologies which, to
my mind, can best help enlighten the questions at hand.
If ecocriticism is a young innovation
in literature, it is even more so within the research of
cinema. During the past five years it has produced only
few significant texts, and since the space here does not
allow for a detailed survey I shall briefly mention four
principal texts.
Sean Cubitt’s EcoMedia (2005)
is a collection of highly theorised, in-depth case studies
of films exhibiting environmentalist themes ranging from The
Lord of the Rings (2001-3) to Princess Mononoke (1997)
and addressing issues such as bio-security, over-fishing,
eco-terrorism and genetic modification. While Cubitt
sketches a theory that links nature, technology and film,
he does not provide a general analysis of nature on film.
Pat Brereton’s Hollywood Utopia:
Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema promises an
account of "the contrasting ecological
connotations of nature through Hollywood film from the
post-war period to the end of the century," (2005,
51). Unfortunately the book is beset by various
difficulties, from argumentation via style to typology,
that undercut this aim considerably (see my
review of the book at: http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/bookreview.php?issue=6&id=167&q=Brereton).
David Ingram’s Green Screen:
Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema (2002)
is a clearly laid out thematic survey into films that are
particularly about nature and ecological issues, whether
about masculinist survival, big game conservation in
Africa or problems with nuclear energy. While Leo Braudy’s
1998 article contains many valuable insights, observations
and mediatations, they focus on one particular
manifestation of nature on film, which he calls The
Genre of Nature. Although these texts all reflect and
respect the heterogeneity of the topic, they do not engage
in any wider speculation about how the relationship
between nature and cinema could be analysed on a more
general level.
One such opening, that will also take
into account the ecocritical assumptions outlined above,
could be achieved by loosely applying the old tripartite
division of cinema into production, texts and reception.
Therefore, I will first look on the film industry and its
relation to nature. Then I will try to tackle some of the
problems relating to the film texts and representation of
nature on film. In the final section, I will briefly point
out what anthropology, cognitive and ecological film
theory and evolutionary psychology, that is, the "nature"
of the spectator, can offer in terms of explaining the
basic and universal fascination of cinema.
What kind of films I am investigating?
I am mainly interested in popular narrative cinema (with a
couple of excursions into television), which is why I will
skip avant garde cinema in this essay. Nature has of
course been used by various avant gardists, from Maya
Deren (At Land, 1944) and Robert Smitson (Spiral
Jetty, 1970) to Chris Welsby (e.g. Seven Days,1974;
Stream Line, 1976; Sky Light, 1988) and
Peter Greenaway (Water Wrackets, 1975; A Zed
& Two Noughts, 1985), which are all fascinating,
yet cannot be thought of as instances of popular cinema.
Furthermore, it has been argued, though, that many avant
garde films discard the (conventional) narrative (Bacon
2004, 95), a feature which differentiates these
films from others. (In addition, since a penchant for and
the use of narrative is a universal human trait,
discarding it affects avant garde films in a
nature-related way. I will return to this theme in the
last section of the essay).
Film Industry and Nature
In the study of cinema some variant of
Marxist cultural criticism has traditionally been deployed
when a critical analysis of culture industries has been
needed. Money flows, hierarchies of power, issues around
centralisation, monopolisation and around institutes and
persons managing these entities and using them for their
benefit have usually been the mainstay of this kind of
analysis. The focus has generally been on corporations,
people (capitalists, movie-goers) and the processes of
oppression such as the exploitation of film-workers, and
the ideological effects of films on audiences (e.g. the
false consciousness hypothesis).
Although the filmic representations and
their potential effects on the audiences have been a
central concern for research, cinema also produces as a
matter of fact concrete, real-world effects on the
environment. It does so by being an industry engaged in
the uses of raw materials and locations. Therefore,
instead of focusing on people, a critical look at the film
industry from the perspective of nature would focus on the
usage of raw materials and on environmental strains caused
by film production. In effect, this kind of research would
trace the ecological footprint of a given production and
help contribute to the environmental audit of the industry.
Although detailed and reliable facts
about a film production can be hard to come by, some
general trends can already be identified. Nearly obvious
point of departure is the recognition of the fact that
cinema (and by extension, all popular, widely-distributed
audiovisual media) is by far the most polluting and least
ecologically sustainable form of art. A brief look at the
three sectors of the industry – production, distribution
and exhibition – from an ecological perspective confirms
this claim. The focus is on the modus operandi of
Hollywood, although many of the facets analysed are
applicable to other film industries as well.
Production
As compared to other arts production of
a film requires contribution from a large number of people.
All have to be transported to and from locations and
catered with food, all of which adds to the consumption
and therefore also the ecological footprint of the
production. Star entourages, in which the consumption can
take excessive, not to mention ludicrous forms, are an
extreme, but regrettably common feature of any large-scale
film production. Nowadays alternative production budgets
are made regarding different locations around the globe in
order to find out the cheapest possible combinations of
low labour costs, tax evasions and so on. Ecological
issues, such as the distances, their effects on logistics
and resultant carbon emission are not a concern.
Furthermore, there is the question of effects on the
shooting locations. Does the production affect the
environment it has used, and if so, has anything been done
to amend those effects? As a yardstick for these questions
and themes one can use the recent acknowledgment that the
entertainment industry is the second-most polluting
industry in the Los Angeles area right after the
petrochemical industries (Kotler 2006).
Distribution
Film distribution also contains lots of
raw material consumption and logistics that is usually
forgotten. Advertising, which sometimes devours more money
than the actual production, is focused mostly on
immaterial media such as radio and television. There is
still however lots of outdoor advertising, while
promotional and press materials have to be printed and
shipped around the globe. While some of these materials
can be moved through the internet, promotional tours of
stars and directors (and their entourages) take place in
the physical world and thus affect its carbon balance.
James Schamus, the head of Focus Features says that
$150.000 is a very modest budget for a Cannes
participation (2005, 97). Trade
magazine Variety estimates that an average
production that wants to get something out of Cannes has
to spend nearly $500.000 in order to be seen and heard.
This figure includes $60.000 for flights, $10.000 for cars,
$20.000 for accommodation and a whopping $190.000 for a
sales bash alone (Ulmer 2005, 8).
Whether on a festival or not, 35mm
physical copies of films have to be made and shipped
around the world, which further widens the ecological
footprint of distribution. In the extreme blockbuster
cases the number of premiere weekend copies is measured in
thousands. In addition to 35mm, a vastly larger number of
DVD (and in the past VHS) copies are manufactured, along
with ever-more elaborate covers and other paraphernalia.
All of these have to be stored somewhere and then shipped
to retailers and rental shops. What is more, with the DVD,
planned obsolescence seems to have become openly shameless:
less than ten years after the introduction of the DVD
format, new formats, such as the Blu Ray and HDDVD, are
being pushed to the markets. This shortens the lifespan of
DVD players and consumer's film libraries, which in turn
increases their relative footprint: the more disposable
something, the less unsustainable it is. As for digital
distribution and exhibition, the technology (with its
environmental benefits) is already there, but the fear of
piracy will keep the bulk of the distribution in physical
formats for the foreseeable future (Culkin et
al 2005, 4).
Exhibition
The third sector of film industry is
exhibition, most traditionally in theatrical form. In
terms of exhibition's ecological problems, one could point
to the use (or lack thereof) of the auditoria during
daytime: a huge number of cubic meters of air and
furniture warmed-up and air-conditioned for nothing or for
very poorly attended matinea shows. Furthermore, one could
argue that since the main source of income for the
theatres is in advertising revenues and concession sales (Epstein
2005, 196; Schamus 2005, 92), their anti-ecological
contribution increases via endorsement they give to
consumerism. With considerable sales of sodas, pop corn,
burgers, crisps, doughnuts, candy and ice cream film
theatres also form a part and parcel of the junk food
culture that has well-known health and ecological
consequences of its own.
To be fair, Hollywood has not been
completely inactive in terms of its own environmental
awareness. The industry lobbies established Environmental
Media Association already in 1990 to offer researched
information, green consultation and tips to the studios.
This activity has, however, attracted criticism as being
mere greenwash, a green fig leaf for what remain
essentially polluting methods of production.
In 2006, Variety launched a
portal called Green Hollywood. According to its
information Hollywood is cleaning up its act. Carbon
offsetting, ecological building practices, recycling and
all-round environmental awareness seem to be making
significant inroads into Hollywood mainstream. Films such
as The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Syriana (2005)
and An Inconvenient Truth (2006) were all carbon
neutral (Kotler 2006), that is,
their emissions were offset by using different
corporations which specialise in, say, tree-planting and
renewable energy schemes and initiatives.
Stars, such as Cate Blanchett, George
Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio (who is
releasing an environmental documentary of his own, The
11th Hour (2007); http://www.11thhourfilm.com/)
and Harrison Ford, which have considerable leverage
in Hollywood through their agencies, have raised the green
profile of the industry. According to Variety, the
amount of content that deals with environmental issues is
also growing, although "eco-friendly programming
must still move past the stigma that its TV's equivalent
of vegetables: it may be good for you, but it's not
particularly entertaining." (Schneidera
2006)
One still cannot escape the feeling
that this is so much greenwash, or at least way too little
in relation to the size of the industry and the size of
the problem. To every green star there is a flamboyant,
preposterous consumerist set up as an object of
idolisation and as a model for emulation for millions of
people. One such idol is Tom Cruise, who has according to
the British newspaper The Guardian, earned the
nickname "emissions impossible" among the
environmental lobby. Cruise "is
reported to own three private jets –
including a recent $20m (£10m) purchase for wife Katie
Holmes. There's a story, never denied by Cruise, that he
sent one of those private jets just to pick up some
groceries for Katie. But the good news is that the
vegetables were organic." (Collinson 2007)
John Travolta’s real-life
eco-performance has also been less than stellar. He "once
starred in a movie about bringing industrial polluters to
justice, but in real life he probably has the biggest
carbon footprint of any Hollywood star. He parks his
personal Boeing 707 on his front lawn – next to
his three Gulfstream jets and a Lear jet. Rather
appropriately, he has called his home "Jumbolair".
He's already logged 5,000 hours as a pilot - but he did at
least put his skills to good use transporting food to
victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans." (ibid.)
Cynically viewing this situation Los
Angles Times staff writer James Bates re-wrote some
"green" tips for Hollywood megastars:
–"Order your assistant to take
the Escalade to a gas station to make sure the tires are
properly inflated.
–For you next movie, instruct your agent to ask
for a trailer only twice the size of your co-stars instead
of three times the size.
–Share a ride with at least one other executive
or movie star on the Gulfstream V to Cannes.
–Have the most energy efficient Plasma TVs
installed in each room of each of your homes.
–Use recycled paper when ordering 10 or more
rewrites of a script.
–Use recycled paper for your complaint when you
sue a studio over profit participation.
–Use recycled paper napkins in your private
dining room.
–Lower the thermostat by 2 degrees at your winter
home in Aspen.
–Cut the size of your posse by one to lighten the
load when you roll in your Hummer.
–Have your assistant call a plumber to install a
clean air filter in the air conditioner off your Malibu
estate.
–Carpool to the Kabbalah Centre
–Take the Prius when driving to Santa Barbara for
the weekend
–When firing assistants, do it by e-mail instead
of making them drive into the office." (Bates
2007)
What is more, carbon offsetting is a
problematic way of fighting climate change in any case.
The carbon from a jet engine transporting a film crew goes
to the atmosphere right now, while its capture in the form
of new trees or new technology might – or might not –
happen in ten, twenty years' time. According to the
Conservation Fund one tree absorbs about 1.3 tonnes of
carbon dioxide during a 70-year lifespan (Kotler
2006). For comparison, one Western consumer
produces 2 to 6 tonnes of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel
use alone – in one year (CDIAC
2003, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/top2003.cap).
Even if offsetting was an efficient way
making a production green, what parts of the whole
multimedia enterprise that the modern filmmaking is could
actually be covered and controlled? Could all
subcontractors that manufacture the tie-in products, such
as toys, some in questionable conditions in the Third
World countries, be really monitored in terms of their
environmental performance? What about the various product
placements and the companies behind them? How many
productions can afford to put ecological conditions in
their contracts with huge, rich multinational corporations
such as Coca-Cola or McDonald's?
Finally, let's again assume that all
this can be made real, that all parts of the film
value-chain can be made truly, sustainably carbon neutral.
Does any of it really matter, however, if the contents of
the films themselves endorse conspiciuous consumption,
consumerist lifestyles and their attendant high-level
carbon emissions? Films do not only sell themselves, they
sell a variety of products. Therefore, in their texts,
they rely on and endorse the consumerist culture and its
basic idea that good life equals high consumption. What
film franchises such as Toy Story or Cars (2006)
gain in potentially green production methods (animation
being done mostly in computer labs and other immaterial
environments), they lose in their vast tie-in sales and in
consumerist ideology embedded as self-evident way of life
in their film texts. Biggest franchises of recent years,
such as Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man and Harry
Potter, incorporate the same ideology in their texts
in much the same matter-of-fact style, while some others
such as The Fast and the Furious franchise blow it
into near-fetisishistic proportions. And yet, as bleak as
this picture might look, films can and do affect the
viewers towards the other direction as well. This leads to
the second large area of ecocritical film study, that of
textual analysis.
Approaches for the analysis of
Representations of Nature in Film Texts
The default point of departure for
analysis of cinematic representations of any kind has been
some form of cultural constructivism. Drawing from
traditions of Marxism and cultural studies, it holds that
(cinematic) representations are always already biased,
that is, they are conditioned by the culture that has
produced or given rise to them. The production process
selects elements, emphasises one thing and downplays the
other, and colours everything through different social
prisms, such as gender, class, race, nationhood and so on.
How these sensibilities affect the portrayal of nature in
audiovisual media is of utmost importance, and it has been
addressed for instance in ecofeminist criticism.
The issues are too complex and manifold
to be included here in an exhaustive manner which is why I
have picked out just few themes and restricted my comments
on a rather general level. I will look at four different
ways, or heuristics, according to which one might start to
categorise nature on film. These are the concept(s) of
national cinema, genres, terminology relating to mimesis
and thematic weighting of nature portrayed. Rather than
ready-made overarching theories all heuristics have their
special uses, advantages and disadvantages which I try to
point out. As for the definition of nature, no easy
solutions can be found. For the purposes of the essay the
nature simply excludes everything man-made that is
inorganic (e.g. buildings, cars, roads) and includes the
organic (e.g. flora and fauna, but also gardens,
agricultural and pastoral landscapes). The humans
themselves are a borderline case, and thus figure in some
categorisations and not in others.
Concept(s) of national cinema
Lands, states, nations, peoples and
ethnic groups, when engaged in filmmaking, leave subtle
traces of their policies, views and ideologies on the
product, some in explicit, some in more implicit, mediated
ways. Therefore, dividing different representations of
nature in terms of their national imagery and origins,
would make sense. Different national ideologies and
cultures and their views and effects on nature and
environment could be analysed within this framework.
Furthermore, the use of national natural heritage sites is
of particular interest as it reveals the connections
between the film and tourist industries and fleshes out
what are thought to be the natural selling points of the
given country.
In English heritage films such as Jane
Austen and E.M. Forster adaptations (e.g. Howards End, 1992,
Pride and Prejudice, 2005), the rolling
green hills, meadows and lawns tap not only to the
timelessness of the pastoral but also its specific English
variation, especially when combined with stately homes and
literary romance. For example, the landscapes of Lake
District, one of the favourite tourist destinations in
Northern England, are one of the key attractions in Miss
Potter (2006), which otherwise is a bio pic. It could
be argued that the changing locales of Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon (2000) and Pusan pond in Spring,
Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (2003) are at least
in part designed to show off the topographies of China and
South Korea respectively in a bid to woo tourists.
Difficulties arise with the definition
of "the national" (see: Higson
2002, 52-3). Since so many films are now
multinational undertakings, what constitutes a national
film or a national landscape? How would this approach
account for Hollywood films, which are, after all, the
most widely scattered in terms of production and design?
Is there an American view of nature, or is the Hollywood’s
view a caleidoscopy of different locales designed to
appeal the inhabitants, i.e. the consumers, of those
locales? And what about the representations of nature that
seem to recur regardless of the film’s national origin?
Division by Genre
Landscapes and nature, animals and
plants provide essential agents and backdrops for a number
of genres, which can be seen as another basic tool when
dividing the representation of nature in more compact
categories. Prairies and deserts in Westerns (e.g. The
Searchers, 1956), extreme weather (The Perfect
Storm, 2000) and monstrous animals (Anaconda, 1997;
television series Lost, 2005-) in disaster films, a
certain "geographic" locales in adventure films,
such as the Caribbean in the pirate films (The Crimson
Pirate, 1952) and India and Pakistan in imperial
adventure films (Kim, 1950; North West
Frontier, 1959) form presences that define these films
visually as well as generically. In children’s animated
films anthropomorphic animals frequently take leading
roles (from Bambi, 1942 to Finding Nemo, 2003),
while in dystopic science fiction films nature has been
permanently damaged with serious consequences for the
humankind (Stalker, 1979; Silent Running, 1972;
Blade Runner, 1982). Many of these representations
of nature, Westerns excluded, cross national borders and
definitions to become generic rather than national
features of these films.
The advantage of genre terminology is
that many of them are widely recognised and used by both
cinemagoers and the film industry. They incorporate
clichés and iconic representations of nature, which make
genres interesting and give rise to the questions of what
kind of ideologies recur. For example, how is African
nature portrayed in Tarzan and other adventure films? What
uses and functions does it perform? How does it distort
the reality of natural conditions in any given area? What
kind of slants do the so called wild life films or
environmentally progressive films bring to their
representations of wilderness? With nature documentaries
one might dissect the rhetorical ways in which the film
tries to pass itself as the truth about the matter at hand
or how it might try to politicise certain aspects of
nature (e.g. Planet Earth, 2006).
There are of course some well-known
problems with generic terminology. Genre films seldom
exhibit just one genre, while multi-genre hybrids seem to
be the industrial standard. Genres also change over time,
which makes their already blurry borders even harder to
define. (Altman 1999, 99, 123, 127, 136,
142, 208, 214. See also: Neale 2000). This in turn
poses a problem for categorisation: which films one should
include in a sample of a certain genre? What criteria can
one use, especially if the sample should cover several
decades of changing generic history? One way is to focus
on shorter periods of time and try to define and identify
core and peripheral cases of that period as regards the
nature film (Bordwell 1989, 148).
One might also to try to link this analysis with
industrial history and look into generic issues during
genuine production trends.
Mimetic Continuum
There are, however, many depictions of
nature that fall outside the perimeter of genre films.
Thus another tool is needed to complement the analysis
alongside the national and the generic. In the Greek
tradition, mimesis has been called the representation of
nature, while Erich Auerbach widens it to cover the
representation of reality (1968).
Here, my intention is to link it with realism in order to
create a following continuum regarding different
representations of nature:
Documentaryà
Mimetic realismà
Stylised and/or Magical realismà
Fantasy
A number rules and caveats are in order.
Firstly, the main purpose of the continuum is to describe
how the loyalty to the real nature varies across different
representations of nature. In effect, the bid for veracity
decreases as one steps down the continuum. Secondly, the
borders between categories are blurry and leaky and they
can overlap with each other. Thirdly, one film seldom sits
squarely in one of these categories, but slides and jumps
along this continuum as ordered by the film’s narrative
and genre. Fourthly, this cinematic continuum does not
float in a vacuum, it is surrounded by the realities of
film industry, cinematic conventions and finally the
larger cultural reality to which all the categories allude
to and depend on. Some examples should clarify the idea
Documentary category has on its one end
films dedicated to accurate portrayal of nature and films
which comment on the processes of their own making (the
DVD version of Planet Earth). However, as one nears
mimetic realism, fictional aspects grow larger as in some
grossly anthropomorphic Avara luonto (1984-)
documentaries and in the puerile adventures of late Steve
Irwin (The Crocodile Hunter, 1996-2004) and others.
The fact that The March of the Penguins (2005),
which is replete with fictional elements and humanistic
projection, won the Academy Award for the Best Documentary,
show how blurry the border between the documentary and
mimetic realism really is.
Films in the category of mimetic
realism differ from documentaries mainly because they rely
on a different set of generic conventions in their
construction, the main feature being the use of fictional
characters. Within mimetic realism, nature is usually
meant to resemble the real nature as authentically as
possible. Rapids in Koskenlaskijan morsian (1937)
or the hay fields and hay stacks in other Finnish films
are meant to be loyal representations of their real
counterparts. This does not preclude them from having
national, gender, sexual and other connotations. Although
films such as Dante’s Peak (1997) or Twister (1996)
refer to relatively rare and extreme events of nature they
also strive for realism in order to increase the shock
effect of the disasters they portray.
Terms stylised and/or magical realism
refer to those elusive moments when otherwise authentic
pictures of nature get clearly invested with meanings
other than those found in the real nature. In the
television series Lost, the island forest develops
a mysterious, monstrous hue that is never fully explained.
In Apocalypse.Now (1979) the journey up the jungle
river becomes a metaphor for soul searching and darker
sides of human nature, while in Blueberry (2004)
the mental inner space of the main character dissolves
into the larger environment. In short, in magical realism’s
milder form, authentic, realistic pictures are ladened
with meaning and its stronger form the realistic features
are bent for the purposes of the narrative.
In addition of imaginatively altering
or bypassing the laws of nature, fantasy differs from
strong magical realism in that it is not located in the
past or present or reality. Thus, science fiction films
depicting the future (Soylent Green, 1973; Wonderful
Days, 2003), fantasy films set in imaginary realms (Willow,
1988; The Lord of the Rings I-III, 2001-3) or
films about dream worlds or dreaming (The Company of
the Wolves, 1984; Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, 1990;
Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006) are here put under the
fantasy category.
Thematic Weighing Continuum
The degree of authenticity goes only so
far in describing the representations of nature on film.
It seems reasonable that there should also be some way of
talking about the general weight given to the natural
themes in any given film. One could call this the thematic
weighting continuum, which might look like this:
Nature negligible or non-existent à
Nature performing an important, yet passive role à
Nature performing an important, active role à
Nature is the central issue of the narrative
Rules and caveats similar to the
mimetic continuum apply here as well. Any given film may
slide to and fro on this scale according to the needs and
phases of its narrative; there is seldom a film that is
thoroughly and monotonously about just one of these
categories. As the adjective-laden language implies the
categories themselves blur at the borders and are in the
need of more specific definition in later research.
The films that belong to the first
category are probably quite obvious. These include mainly
urban dramas, thrillers, science fiction and so on, which
limit themselves to urban, human-built environments and
issues. Some of the most clear-cut examples would include
the Robocop trilogy, The Fast and the Furious franchise,
Die Hard series, Lethal Weapon series and Toy
Story series. The body of films in this category is
huge, probably comprising the majority of mainstream films.
Variety’s box-office top 20s from 1990 to present
certainly points to this conclusion.
In the second category nature is
usually brought in as a wow-factor, as a spectacle. Great
landscapes and aerial photography bring added production
value to the film, while the connection to the narrative
might be rather thin. For example, Zhang Yimou’s Hero
(2002) and The House of Flying Daggers (2004)
and Terence Malick’s Badlands (1973) and Days
of Heaven (1978) frequently deploy breath-taking
scenery and yet the landscapes do not form an active agent
in the story. Through their repeated presence they might
attain larger metaphorical meanings that are indeed
important and enriching to the narrative, but on the level
of explicit meanings (Bordwell 1989, 8)
they are passive and mostly left to the background. Of
course, these passive elements can become obstacles and
critical challenges that are central to the narrative as
is the case with the river in Deliverance (1972),
mountains in Cliffhanger (1993) and the desert
island in Cast Away (2000).
Nature performing an active role means
that it is no longer just a passive backdrop but an agent
that directly and actively affects the characters and thus
forms an important part of the narrative. Many films
focusing on natural disasters (e.g. Earthquake, 1974;
Volcano, 1997) belong to this category, no matter
how ridiculous their premises might be (Armageddon, 1998;
The Core, 2003). Films featuring dangerous
animals (The Jaws series; Alien series; Jurassic
Park series; Arachnophobia, 1990) and
not-so-dangerous animals (e.g. Lassie series; Free
Willy series) form a large subset of this category
containing both "real" and imaginary beasts.
Films with nothing but anthropomorphic animals, such as Shark’s
Tale (2004), The March of the Penguins, and
most Disney animations, represent this category in an
extreme form: all active roles are taken over by (seemingly,
superficially) non-human agents.
Although the last category might seem
problematic in that it implies only a degree of difference,
not a difference in kind, compared to the third category,
I wanted to make films, that are principally and primarily
about nature and environmental issues a category of their
own. In these films nature and/or ecological issues are at
the heart of the narrative and are explicitly discussed in
the film. In effect, this group of films is more or less
convergent with those discussed by Ingram and Braudy,
although they exclude documentaries from their samples.
Documentaries that focus on nature,
such as Jacques Cousteau’s Le Monde du Silence
(1956) and Le Monde sans soleil (1964)
or larger frame work of ecology, such as Darwin’s
Nightmare (2004) and Crude Impact (2006),
obviously belong to this category. As regards fictional
films, the foregrounding of conservation issues (e.g. Gorillas
in the Mist, 1988; Amazon, 1990), environmental
catastrophes (The Day after Tomorrow) are a part
and parcel of this category as are Godfrey Reggio’s
trilogy of montage films, Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Powaqqatsi
(1988), and Naqqoyqatsi (2002). Some less
obvious, more urbane films would include court dramas such
as Erin Brockovich (2000), comedies such as Fierce
Creatures (1997) and thrillers such as On Deadly
Ground (1994).
National, generic, mimetic and thematic
analyses are just four tools that can be used as the
starting grid when dividing the representation of nature
in smaller units. They are not meant to be mutually
exclusive, rather, they complement each other. The topic
is huge, but I hope that these sketches have begun to
flesh out some broad trends in the big picture that is
nature on film. There is, however, even larger frame work
in which the interaction of nature and cinema can be
considered. In the last section, I will briefly outline
some thoughts on universal, common human nature and how
the knowledge of that can further our understanding of
cinema.
Human Nature and the Ecology of Cinema
Cultural constructivism referred to in
the previous section can only go so far in explaining the
appeal cinema. The limitations surface when one reviews a
certain form of cultural constructivism, which could be
defined as its radical or reductionist version. Proponents
of this view would hold that the representations are
nothing but cultural constructions, and that they are
always nothing but context-dependant creations, and that
explanation for the appeal of certain images is always
nothing but cultural and historical. While in its moderate
form (take away the "nothing buts")
constructivism clearly makes sense, some of the more outre
statements of the radical view can be rebutted with
evidence from other sciences, namely those of anthropology,
physiology, cognitive and evolutionary psychology.
Crucially, there seems to be some traits and features that
are shared by all peoples across the globe that are not
reducible to cultural contexts and that can help us
understand the allure of cinema and the images of nature
it conveys.
Drawing together findings of dozens of
individual studies from across the globe, anthropologist
Donald E. Brown claims that there are dozens of traits or
propensities that are found in nearly all human cultures (Brown
1991, 5-6; Pinker 2002, 435-9). These include play,
narrative and myths, all of which provide the necessary
ground work for understanding a narrative medium such as
cinema. (The evidence of cinema’s
near-universal accessibility can in turn be found in the
research done in Africa by Renee Hobbs et al [1988,
50-60]). According to Brown, there is also a
universal interest towards living entities and towards
things that look as if they were living. This trait might
well lie behind the general appeal of cinema, which, after
all, captures reality more accurately than any other
visual art form.
Some of these traits and other,
physiological yet equally universal features have been
acknowledged in the field of cognitive and ecological film
theory. Joseph D. Anderson writes that his "efforts
will be directed toward placing cognitive science in
relationship to the film medium, and I shall describe a
metatheory that can encompass both. I call this metatheory
ecological because it attempts to place film production
and spectatorship in a natural context. That is, the
perception and comprehension of motion pictures is
regarded as a subset of perception and comprehension in
general, and the workings of the perceptual systems and
the mind of the spectator are viewed in the context of
their evolutionary development." (1998,
10)
He then goes on to explain how the film
technology takes advantage of human brain anatomy (e.g.
the flicker fusion threshold, the illusion of motion),
which is universal and a product of evolution. Other
researchers have taken up similar themes. David Bordwell,
who has introduced many concepts of cognitive psychology
to the film theory, has analysed the borders between
conventions and contingent universals that relate to some
well-known cinematic devices such as shot-reverse shot (1996b,
87-107, esp. 91-4). Ed Tan and Carl
Plantinga have analysed the usage of human face in films
with reference to universal basic emotions (anger, disgust,
fear, joy, sadness, surprise and contempt) (Tan
2007, 5-27; Plantinga 1999, 239-258), while Torben
Grodal has used evolutionary psychology in order to
analyse and explain representations and the attractions of
love and desire in cinema (2004, 26-46).
All in all, this approach could be seen as falling under
the wide church of ecocriticism, since it deals with
natural elements, that is, common, universal human nature
and its relation to cinema. Crucially, it seems that this
approach does have strong explanatory power regarding many
aspects that concern cinema’s general comprehension and
appeal, especially when compared with other, more
rigorously constructivist approaches.
There is another, and much more
speculative way in which human universals could be
deployed in ecocritical research of cinema. As regards
nature, Brown lists the categorization of animals, plants,
spaces and weather and the ability to adapt to different
environments among the universal human traits. These could
be linked to what ecologist Edward O. Wilson has called
biophilia hypothesis. According to the hypothesis one
common human characteristic is not just interest, but
affection, even love towards living things and systems. He
writes: "Biophilia, if it exists, and I believe it
exists, is the innately emotional affiliation of human
beings to other living organisms. Innate means hereditary
and hence part of ultimate human nature." (Wilson
1993, 31)
Shadowed by different phobias there
seems to be also philias towards nature, which would
explain our fondness with parks, zoos, house plants,
gardens and pets. These manifestations are of course
mediated and coloured by different cultures (proximate
causes), but the ultimate cause behind it could be an
evolutionary one. Philia towards flora, fauna, environment
and life in general helps to sustain life and thus humans
as well, which makes biophilia an evolutionarily
advantageous trait (ibid. 32). Some
other natural propensities, such as status-seeking and
selfish resource consumption, can, however, override
biophilia, as seems to be the case in the contemporary
Western societies.
How could biophilia be related to film?
In his article on aesthetic universals art philosopher
Denis Dutton points out that certain kind of landscapes
seem to have global appeal. Drawing on research done by
Orians and Heerwagen on young children not yet too much
conditioned by their cultures, he concludes that a
landscape featuring open spaces, trees, water, greenery,
flowers and variegated cloud patters holds most appeal
across cultures. This can in turn be explained by
evolutionary development: an ability to recognize a
resource-rich, good living environment is an evolutionary
advantage (Dutton 2001, 207-8).
These results were humorously
re-created by artist Vitali Komar and Alexander Melamid,
who used opinion poll information in order to paint "best-liked"
landscapes in different countries across the globe. In the
end, the landscapes ended up resembling each other quite a
lot – all in concordance with the features in Dutton’s
list (see: http://www.komarandmelamid.org/chronology/1994_1997_peoples/index.htm).
Could a similar experiment and research be done in cinema?
Could universally appealing images of landscapes, animals,
habitats and ecologies be identified more or less similar
forms across the cinematic cultures? It certainly seems an
enticing proposal.
Epilogue
In this essay I introduced one way of
dividing the field of ecocriticism in smaller chunks.
These were the ecocritical study of film production, which
could focus on environmental auditing of the film industry;
textual analysis, which could focus on the representations
of nature in cinema in at least four interlinked ways
(national cinema, genre study, mimetic continuum, thematic
continuum); and the ecology of cinema, that is, the
research on the frameworks that nature impose on cinema
via evolutionary developed human nature. The methods and
issues introduced should be thought of as a set of tools,
which compliment, not subvert, one another. The approaches
are not delineated in rigorous enough fashion and they are
not exhaustive but they do represent one way of
structuring the target field of ecocriticism using a bunch
of small-scale theories and methodological tools rather
than any overarching and overtly political theories. As
such, it should bring into focus the full richness of the
field without subjugating its constituent parts any
pre-determined, catch-all thought-patterns.
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