Case Study #1: Reading Films Ecocritically (Film Studies)
We often explore films in which the environment is very prominent. But we can also read any film (or novel, or photograph, or object) in an ecocritical manner. For me, there are three possible methodologies of ecocritical reading.
#1 Thematic. Students can analyse character, story, plot, mise-en-scène, etc. with an attention to questions of climate or environment. They can also attend to ‘background’ details — plants, animals, insects, weather, infrastructure, energy use, assumptions embedded in dialogue. In a famous scene in The Graduate (1967), Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffmann) is approached at a party by his father’s new law partner, Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton). Benjamin fears a confrontation about his secret affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Instead, in serious tones, arm around Benjamin’s shoulders, Mr. Robinson imparts the wisdom of the day: “There’s a great future in plastics.” Of course Mr. Robinson doesn’t mention that plastics are made from fossil fuels, or the centuries they can take to decompose. This moment beside the pool can be interpreted in terms of plot tension. Students can explore how capitalist logic intersects with gender, race, and social class, as one middle class white man gives his unsolicited investment advice to another. An ecocritical reading can do all this, as well as reflecting on mid-century extractivism and expansionism, and rival visions of “the future.”
#2 Perceptual. Sharon Lockhart’s Double Tide (2009) comprises two long takes of a woman digging clams. Filmed on a rare day when there is a double low tide, one at dawn and one at dusk, the film uses the technique of close-miking the clam harvester, while shooting at a distance, slowly and incrementally zooming in. Sensory perception is drawn to the sucking sounds of clams being pulled out of the mud, while the deliberate yet infinitesimal movement of the camera allows the viewer to appreciate the vastness of the changing landscape as well as the labouring figure who ever so slowly comes into view. A film like Double Tide requires the viewer to alter their viewing habits, to slow down their perception, to train their eyes and ears to notice the minutiae of the image, and to recognise the interplay between the environment and the human laborer. Yet we can also train ourselves to attend to any film like this. We might even dwell in this way on a fast-paced action scene (perhaps with the sound down) to find its sliced-up fragments of sky, mountain, sea, meadows, fields, waterfalls, and what-have-you. How are these flashes instrumentalised within the action sequence?
#3 Material. Cinema can be very resource intensive. Action blockbusters, for example, are filled with explosions and flames. Some effects are tangential, such as a chase scene that passes through a fireworks display. While the plot might not require such pyrotechnics, these serve to make the scene more spectacular. Yet the fireworks are set off in the real world, perhaps over multiple takes, and they pollute the real world. Visual effects can be added as CGI, but digital technology also has ecological impact. As well as production, we can think about the materiality of viewing. What is the carbon cost of platforms like YouTube and Netflix? How have pandemic lock-downs transformed our norms around the moving images, from ballet on Marquee TV to meetings on Zoom? Training ourselves in the material ecocritical approach allows us to look past the story, and to calculate (or at least register) the material effects of the image on screen.
