Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis: Surviving the Environmental Apocalypse in Cinema 2021000655, 2021000656, 9780367373412, 9780367373429, 9781032027760

Table of contents :
Cover
Endorsements
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Environmental crisis and epistemological crisis: Ecologicallydestructive Cartesian subjectivity
2. Cinema spectatorship as an illusory Cartesian ‘symptom’
3. Realist film as cogito-centric film
4. Surviving environmental disasters in film ‘lifeboats’
5. Surviving environmental apocalypse in film ‘lifeboats’
6. Survivors in post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias
7. The possibilities of non-Cartesian film
Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

“Robert Geal’s meticulous and wide-ranging discussion seeks to understand why despite the heavy presence of environmental issues in film … things are getting much worse. Rather than promoting action, Geal argues, contemporary … films … reinforce the Cartesian separation between the human and nonhuman, what Geal calls the “epistemology we live by.” This timely book is refreshing and original, persuasive and accessible, complex and provocative.” — Simon Estok, Professor, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul. Author of The Ecophobia Hypothesis (Routledge, 2018). “This is an engaging and compelling analysis of how various filmmaking traditions express, reinforce, and normalize our dominant dualistic Cartesian worldview grounded in a subjectivity of human separation from and domination over nature. Robert Geal productively applies various theoretical strands to the study of cinematic form and content, revealing how films both repress and resurface our awareness of the “ecological precipice at which we stand.” This eye-opening study concludes with a cautiously optimistic exploration of a potentially non-Cartesian cinematic practice that, if embraced, could offer an alternative form of spectatorship, one that might be capable of meaningful action in the face of ecological disaster.” — Paula Willoquet-Maricondi, Champlain College. Editor of Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film (2010). “This accessible, interdisciplinary and carefully argued book contributes to ongoing environmental theories about the impact of dystopian films on spectators. Geal argues that realist dystopian Hollywood films construct the spectator as mastering environmental devastation—a mastery that prevents our taking responsible action. An important book that should be required reading in Environmental Media Studies and beyond.” — E. Ann Kaplan, Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s Gender, and Sexuality, Studies at Stony Brook University. Author of Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Literature (Routledge, 2015). “In Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis, Robert Geal brings psychoanalysis to bear on our response to the oncoming environmental disaster. This approach enables him to see the ideological forces responsible for our inability to act in a way adequate to the disaster. This urgent book is necessary for gaining our bearings today and for understanding the reasons why we can’t.” — Todd McGowan, Professor, University of Vermont “Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis addresses the urgent question: What cultural biases might explain our lack of action in response to ongoing ecological destruction? Looking at how a broad range of films deal with non-human beings, ecologies, disasters, and environmental crises, Geal ultimately discovers,

like Lacan, that “this lack is beyond anything which can represent it.” The challenge of this book lies in the very lack of cinematic solutions it finds to the symbolic hold of Cartesian subjectivity, which reinforces human alienation from the biosphere with every monocular turn of the camera.” — Thomas Lamarre, Professor, University of Chicago “In this timely book, Geal contributes to the field of ecocriticism and ecocinema studies by developing a new Lacanian psychoanalytic ecocritical methodology. This book convincingly explains why a rationalistic, Cartesian response to ecocrisis fails. The potential cure, Geal argues, lies in a radical, non-Cartesian turn in aesthetic and cultural practices. A must-read for environmental humanists!” — Chia-Ju Chang, Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Brooklyn College “An ambitious and daring work distinguished by a rare clarity of expression that adds force to its argument about the psychological alibis enabling our ecological crimes. This is a study of the separation ideologies of our time. … Geal’s theoretically surprising, even bracing, approach illustrates that the “ecological unconscious” glimpsed and obscured in contemporary cinema is the very terrain of the frightening unknown that governs our collective impotence in responding to our ecology crisis.” —Anil Narine, Professor, University of Toronto, Editor of Eco-Trauma Cinema (Routledge, 2015)

Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis

This book applies ecolinguistics and psychoanalysis to explore how films fictionalising environmental disasters provide spectacular warnings against the dangers of environmental apocalypse, while highlighting that even these apparently environmentally friendly films can still facilitate problematic realworld changes in how people treat the environment. Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis argues that these films exploit cinema’s inherent Cartesian grammar to construct texts in which not only small groups of protagonist survivors, but also vicarious spectators, pleasurably transcend the fictionalised destruction. The ideological nature of the ‘lifeboats’ on which these survivors escape, moreover, is accompanied by additional elements that constitute contemporary Cartesian subjectivity, such as class and gender binaries, restored nuclear families, individual as opposed to social responsibilities for disasters, and so on. The book conducts extensive analyses of these processes, before considering alternative forms of filmmaking that might avoid the dangers of this existing form of storytelling. The book’s new ecosophy and film theory establishes that Cartesian subjectivity is an environmentally destructive ‘symptom’ that everyday linguistic activities like watching films reinforce. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of film studies, literary studies (specifically ecocriticism), cultural studies, ecolinguistics, and ecosophy. Robert Geal is a Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, where he teaches classes on film spectacle, representation, adaptation, psychoanalysis and Japanese cinema. He is the author of the monograph Anamorphic Authorship in Canonical Film Adaptation, as well as numerous articles and chapters on topics including science fiction spectacle, sexuality and gender in animation, race in television comedy, adaptation studies and film theory.

Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media Series editor: Thomas Bristow

The urgency of the next great extinction impels us to evaluate environmental crises as sociogenic. Critiques of culture have a lot to contribute to the endeavour to remedy crises of culture, drawing from scientific knowledge but adding to it arguments about agency, community, language, technology and artistic expression. This series aims to bring to consciousness potentialities that have emerged within a distinct historical situation and to underscore our actions as emergent within a complex dialectic among the living world. It is our understanding that studies in literature, culture and media can add depth and sensitivity to the way we frame crises; clarifying how culture is pervasive and integral to human and non-human lives as it is the medium of lived experience. We seek exciting studies of more-than-human entanglements and impersonal ontological infrastructures, slow and public media, and the structuring of interpretation. We seek interdisciplinary frameworks for considering solutions to crises, addressing ambiguous and protracted states such as solastalgia, anthropocene anxiety, and climate grief and denialism. We seek scholars who are thinking through decolonization and epistemic justice for our environmental futures. We seek sensitivity to iterability, exchange and interpretation as wrought, performative acts. Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media provides accessible material to broad audiences, including academic monographs and anthologies, fictocriticism and studies of creative practices. We invite you to contribute to innovative scholarship and interdisciplinary inquiries into the interactive production of meaning sensitive to the affective circuits we move through as experiencing beings. Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis Surviving the Environmental Apocalypse in Cinema Robert Geal Ecocriticism and the Sense of Place Lenka Filipova For further information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Environmental-Literature-Culture-and-Media/book-series/RELCM

Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis Surviving the Environmental Apocalypse in Cinema Robert Geal

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Robert Geal The right of Robert Geal to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Geal, Robert, author. Title: Ecological film theory and psychoanalysis : surviving the environmental apocalypse in cinema / Robert Geal. Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge environmental literature, culture and media | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021000655 (print) | LCCN 2021000656 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367373412 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367373429 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Environmentalism in motion pictures. | Ecology in motion pictures. | Environmental psychology. | Motion pictures--Psychological aspects. | Motion pictures--Philosophy. | Environmental disasters-Psychological aspects. | Ecocriticism. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.E78 G43 2021 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.E78 (ebook) | DDC 791.43--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000655 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000656 ISBN: 978-0-367-37341-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-02776-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-37342-9 (ebk) DOI: Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

For Abby and Livia

Contents

Introduction 1

Environmental crisis and epistemological crisis: Ecologicallydestructive Cartesian subjectivity

1 4

2

Cinema spectatorship as an illusory Cartesian ‘symptom’

39

3

Realist film as cogito-centric film

85

4

Surviving environmental disasters in film ‘lifeboats’

113

5

Surviving environmental apocalypse in film ‘lifeboats’

154

6

Survivors in post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias

187

7

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film

204

Conclusion Index

234 246

Introduction

Humanity stands at what Toby Ord calls The Precipice (2020), a unique historical period in which our use of technology has the potential to cause human extinction. Some of the existential risks we face are dependent on the occurrence of specific conditions, such as the choices of politicians and military leaders about whether to fire nuclear weapons; and some existential risks are dependent on developments that technology may take in the future, such as artificial intelligence and anthropogenically-engineered pandemics. Other existential risks, however, are bound up with our everyday economic, social and cultural practices. The industrial exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources has created an existential risk to humanity through various forms of ecological degradation, most notably anthropogenic climate change. This risk is unfolding in slow motion, with a growing consensus (some notable dissenters aside) that the risk is real, and that we must take action to change our behaviour in order to avert disaster. This book is part of a body of scholarship which explores the reasons why we are not taking sufficient action to ameliorate anthropogenic ecological degradation. The first chapter outlines the contours of this ecocritical academic project, focusing particularly on the idea that contemporary human subjectivity is grounded in the illusory separation of humanity from the rest of the world. The alienation of humanity from ostensibly separate and external ‘nature’ underpins our disregard for that which is not ‘us’. I discuss how this form of human subjectivity emerged from a series of historically specific circumstances which informed occidental thought.1 This subjectivity is exemplified in the dualistic philosophy of René Descartes. I claim that the Cartesian illusion that we are separate and hierarchically positioned over and above the ostensibly passive environment is an ‘epistemology we live by’ – our damaging behaviour towards the natural world is an inevitable result of our ingrained alienation from the natural world. Existing ecocriticism makes a similar claim, but generally asserts that the problem can be resolved by consciously rejecting alienating dualism. This book argues, however, that humans do not have direct control over their consciousness, and that ecophobic dualism cannot be willed away. It utilises various strands of poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theory to demonstrate that a wilful rejection of this ecophobia is not possible, with Cartesian dualism DOI: -1

2

Introduction

operating at the unconscious level through what Jacques Lacan calls the Symbolic Order. This Order is a matrix of possible thoughts, beliefs and behaviours which any given human subject assents to adopt, without being aware that those ostensibly internal forces are imposed from without. Our Symbolic Order is inherently anthropocentric, so that our dualistic alienation from the nonhuman world is both an integral element of who we are as contemporary Cartesian subjects, and also something that is unconsciously imposed upon us through all the subtleties and complexities of our Cartesian culture. The first chapter outlines these differing scholarly approaches to conceptualising human responses to anthropogenic ecological degradation. Chapter 2 then addresses how various aesthetic practices, including film, transmit and normalise our Symbolic Order’s alienating dualism. I discuss how the dominant occidental form of film positions the spectator as the Cartesian master of perception and meaning, unconsciously reinforcing the idea that the external world extends out from the centralised locus of the individual human subject. This idea is then applied to a particular body of films that relate, in various different ways, to the ecological precipice at which we stand. Our culture is aware of the existential risk, but represses this awareness, and this repressed trauma then resurfaces. The films analysed in this book are all expressions of this ecological trauma, which I call the ‘political-ecological unconscious’, in one way or another. Chapter 3 considers how film regulates borders between the human and the nonhuman. Chapter 4 explores films which stage large-scale ecological disasters as enjoyable spectacles, while Chapter 5 analyses those films which raise the narrative threat level up to the explicitly apocalyptic. Chapter 6 discusses dystopian films set in the aftermath of ecological catastrophes. What the films explored in these chapters all have in common is a formalised film grammar which privileges the spectator’s perceptual mastery. The films’ narratives vary more from chapter to chapter, but they all align the spectator with active survivors rather than with passive victims, and they mostly cathartically resolve the environmental problems which they stage, with humanity emerging renewed and cleansed by the ordeal. The effect of these combined formal and narrative conventions is the normalisation of the spectator’s Cartesian subjectivity, so that the films essentially suggest that the spectator would survive a similar real-world environmental disaster, like a protagonist, rather than be destroyed by it, like the hordes of antlike figures which the films represent as part of the spectacle of destruction. The films provide various types of ‘lifeboats’ for the protagonists to escape on, and function as vicarious cinematic ‘lifeboats’, offering the spectator the means to imagine that (s)he too would escape a real-world ecological disaster. There is still the possibility, however, for film to challenge these Cartesian conventions, and Chapter 7 looks for the potentially non-Cartesian components of documentary ‘nature’ films, avant-garde ‘ecofilms’, various avant-garde practices that may be employed by mainstream films, and certain non-occidental filmmaking traditions, such as Japanese cinema. Although I am only tentative about the potential for these filmmaking practices to remedy humanity’s alienation from nature, any possibility that we have to make such a change in human subjectivity

Introduction

3

will need to expand on and develop non-Cartesian aesthetics, and there are signs, in some of the films addressed in this chapter, of how this might be done. I begin, however, with an analysis of the illness before I come to a discussion of the potential cure. Immediate and radical action is required if humanity is to survive the existential risks posed by anthropogenic ecological degradation. There are many reasons why we fail to take this action, and our cultural practices are inextricably bound up in this failure. This book is an analysis of how films represent and cathartically resolve our repressed anxieties about ecological degradation, and about how this traumatic exercise both expresses and contributes to our culture’s ecophobia.

Note 1 The term ‘occidental’ is problematic, given how it potentially equates a historicallyspecific culture with a geographical region, without adequately acknowledging how people living in various parts of that geographical ‘Western’ region have been colonised by cultures conceptualising themselves as occidental/Western. The term is also problematic because of another culturally constructed binary opposition between ‘West’ and ‘East’ which is the focus of Edward Said’s influential book Orientalism (1985). For Said, “the Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely there, just as the Occident itself is not just there either” (1985: 4, original emphasis), so that “as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West” (5). I don’t want to repeat that binary in this book, particularly in the sense of Said’s claim that “Orientalism is premised upon exteriority, that is, on the fact that the Orientalist, poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West” (20–21). Nevertheless, in the sense that Said claims occidental ideas about the orient are culturally constructed, I also conceptualise occidental culture as similarly constructed. The book is principally focused on how an occidental culture derived from specific historical circumstances produces a certain form of subjectivity, and Chapter 7 also considers how certain aesthetic traditions which are not exclusively derived from these specific historical circumstances might represent and/or facilitate a different form of subjectivity. I therefore use ‘occidental’ as a historically-specific socio-cultural term, rather than as a geographical term.

Bibliography Ord, T. (2020) The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. London: Bloomsbury. Said, E. (1985) Orientalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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Environmental crisis and epistemological crisis Ecologically-destructive Cartesian subjectivity

This book is part of a wide scholarly movement which attempts to understand how culture relates to ecological degradation. A longstanding tradition in Western academia, and Western thought more broadly, tends to separate objects of study from one another, with each object having its own delineated borders and its own specific methods of analysis. The impact that humans are having on the environment, however, is a subject so pressing that it demands inter-disciplinary investigations which go far beyond traditional separations such as science from the humanities. Having scientists either merely catalogue the woes of environmental degradation, or experiment with material and technological means to ameliorate or reverse this degradation, is not sufficient. Scholars who study culture need to also contribute their insight that the ways humans think about the world around them influences how they act in and on the world around them. There are a number of overlapping approaches to conducting this cultural analysis of how humans relate to the environment called, variously, ecocriticism, ecosophy, deep ecology, ecofeminism, ecopsychology and ecolinguistics. There are some important differences between these approaches, and these will have particular influences on this book’s argument as it develops, but they all share the overriding principle that, as Cheryll Glotfelty puts it, “current environmental problems are largely of our own making, are, in other words, a by-product of culture” (1996: xxi), and that we must therefore recognise Greg Garrard’s claim that “environmental problems require analysis in cultural as well as scientific terms, because they are the outcome of an interaction between ecological knowledge of nature and its cultural inflection” (2004: 14). This book does therefore not promise any material, empirical scientific solutions to the environmental crisis. Ecocritical engagements with the scientific aspect of the crisis tend to limit themselves to an opening paragraph or two outlining statistics and predictions collated by governments, NGOs and/or intergovernmental bodies like the UN on the frightening extent of the problem. As time passes, the apocalyptic tone of these reports increases. However, by the time of writing, the need for such a summary here seems superfluous. I will discuss the phenomenon of climate change denialism in the next chapter, but such denialism is an instance of outright rejection of information that a summarising paragraph here cannot hope DOI: -2

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to change. Climate change deniers aside, the impending reality of disastrous ecological degradation is now broadly accepted, and has in fact become, as Slavoj Žižek has argued, an increasingly instrumentalised aspect of contemporary capitalism (2011: 330–334). The existence of this broad acceptance, combined with a startling failure to meaningfully act on this acceptance, is an important area of study for ecocriticism, and is the principal issue addressed by this book. That is: why, given that we know how disastrously our actions impact on the environment, do we not radically change those actions to alleviate this damage? What is the role of culture in either preventing or helping to facilitate this necessary change? And, more specifically, given the book’s focus, what is the role of films, especially those films which address ecological degradation in various different ways, in either perpetuating or helping to address and revise our negative attitudes and actions towards the environment?

The impact of the ‘stories we live by’ on our attitudes to the environment The burgeoning field of ecolinguistics offers some useful insights in addressing these questions. Arran Stibbe makes the case for the significance of linguistics in addressing environmental issues because language influences how we think about the world. […] How we think has an influence on how we act, so language can inspire us to destroy or protect the ecosystems that life depends on. Ecolinguistics, then, is about critiquing forms of language that contribute to ecological destruction, and aiding in the search for new forms of language that inspire people to protect the natural world. (Stibbe 2015: 1) This argument will contribute to my analysis of how film operates similarly to language, influencing how we think, and therefore how we act. I will address this formal aspect of film in more detail in the next chapter. But there is also another important aspect of ecolinguistics that demonstrates a limitation with the ecologically-progressive potential of information communicated by language or by film. That is, language and film both have ways of communicating information (formal and grammatical structures) and contents of communicated information (particular claims and stories). The distinction between these two different elements is central to the role that language and film plays in communicating ideas about environmental degradation. This book’s opening two chapters are dedicated to explaining and exploring this distinction, but a certain element of ecolinguistics begins to demonstrate an important aspect. Stibbe claims that one of the main tasks of ecolinguistics is to investigate the stories we live by – mental models that influence behaviour and lie at the heart of the ecological challenges we are facing. There are

6

Environmental crisis and epistemological crisis certain key stories about economic growth, about technological progress, about nature as object to be used or conquered, about profit and success, that have profound implications for how we treat the systems that life depends on. (Stibbe 2015: 1–2, original emphasis)

Films have been complicit in telling all of these ecologically damaging stories. Scholarship has addressed some of these examples, so that, for example, Sean Cubitt notes how in films like The Fast and the Furious [Cohen 2001] [the] wanton annihilation of natural resources is celebrated, consumerism is triumphant, the green world only a backdrop to blacktop, and the highest virtues – solidarity, brotherhood, liberty – [are] enacted in rituals of guiltless destruction. (Cubitt 2005: 99) In addition, a dominant tradition in Hollywood films locates the resolution of various problems with charismatic protagonists. Again, scholarship (Ingram 2000: 2–3; Rust 2013: 202) has noted how this individualisation of conflict facilitates a blasé attitude towards problems – an average spectator need not especially worry about a real-world crisis if they are used to fictional models where an individual undertakes a hero’s journey culminating neatly in the problem’s resolution. If these were the only stories told by film, then it might be quite simple to explain why films contribute to ecological degradation – audiences ‘live by’ the environmentally damaging stories they watch. These are not the only stories told by film, however. This book is principally concerned with those films that tell stories of technological hubris, and of the destructive consequences of our attitudes towards nature. Yes, the narrative trajectories of these stories often resolve the ecologically problematic questions posed, and often do so through recourse to the same kind of aforementioned heroic protagonist who rises to the challenges presented. The Day After Tomorrow (Emmerich 2004), in which a devastating ice age is caused by runaway climate change, is often used as the apogee of how big budget Hollywood films can address ecological issues, and it conveniently demonstrates many of the premises set out throughout this opening chapter. In terms of how it resolves the ecological issues it poses, the film ends with a pristine image of the Earth seen from space, purified of the toxins still building in the real, non-fictional world, and with the observing astronaut asking ‘have you ever seen the air so clear?’ In terms of suggesting that gritty individualism can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, The Day After Tomorrow culminates with a shift from climatologist Jack (Dennis Quaid) attempting to warn the government about the impending shift in the Earth’s climate, to his (successful, of course) attempt to rescue his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) through an act of indomitable, selfless and self-assured heroism.

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As such, it might be the case that the stories told by a film like The Day After Tomorrow point towards narratives that ostensibly challenge the ecologically damaging stories mentioned by Stibbe, but finally lack the courage of their convictions and temper their environmentally progressive narratives in various ways. These kinds of narrative oscillations will be an important part of my subsequent analysis of how films depicting environmental degradation typically resolve the crises they portray. However, there is something more fundamental about the failure of films like The Day After Tomorrow to decisively alter environmentally damaging behaviour. This is to do with a limitation in this particular aspect of the ecolinguistic argument that we should change the content of the ‘stories we live by’. It is true to say that ecolinguistics goes beyond a focus merely on narrative content, and is concerned with form and grammar – these elements will be an important part of how I will use ecolinguistics alongside film theory to analyse how the formal grammatical structure of film influences spectators to think about the environment. But at this stage, the ecolinguistic focus on the ‘stories we live by’ suggests that altering the content of those stories will help to change how we think about and act towards the environment. However, a number of problems, both empirical and philosophical, suggest that a change in the information contained within the ‘stories we live by’ is an insufficient driver of genuinely transformative thought and behaviour.

The chimera of awareness: False consciousness, ‘wokeness’ and doomsday fatigue Empirical surveys of how audiences responded to The Day After Tomorrow demonstrate the limitations of filmic information about anthropogenic ecological degradation. Even though viewers felt global warming is a problem which should be addressed, they were equivocal about how they would go about addressing the problem themselves, and the attitudes of viewers did not seem to have an impact on wider society. Anthony A. Leiserowitz’s (2004) questionnaire survey of two groups of Americans, one of which had seen the film, and one of which hadn’t, found that those who had watched the film changed their attitudes to climate change: “Even after controlling for […] demographic and political factors, […] watchers were still more likely than nonwatchers to perceive global warming as a greater risk” (28). Asked whether they would partake in four (minor) activities to ameliorate climate change, “[m]oviegoers were found to be much more likely to engage in all four behaviors than nonwatchers” (29), or at least said they would. Leiserowitz concluded that “these results suggest that popular movies can have a considerable influence on the risk perceptions, conceptual models, behavioral intentions, policy preferences, and even the voting intentions of the moviegoing public” (31). However, when Leiserowitz correlated his data against surveys of the broader American public conducted before and after the film’s release, he concluded that

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Environmental crisis and epistemological crisis Americans before and after The Day After Tomorrow were no more likely to be concerned or to worry about global warming – or to believe that climate change impacts were more likely to occur. They also were no more likely to prioritize global warming as an issue, take personal actions, or to vote differently. (Leiserowitz 2004: 31)

For Leiserowitz, then, a certain bundle of information in a story could be something like a ‘story we live by’ in the sense that it changed the attitudes of some of the people who watched it – these viewers at least partly adopted a new ‘story’ to live by. He puts the fact that this change of attitudes was not shared by those questioned in the wider survey down to the fact that the film was seen by “only 10 percent of the U.S. adult population, not enough to change public opinion as a whole” (2004: 31). A similar survey, conducted on British audiences by Thomas Lowe et al., concluded that even though The Day After Tomorrow can be said to have sensitized viewers and perhaps motivated them to act on climate change, the individuals who participated in this study do not feel they have access to information on what action they can take or the opportunity in their daily lives to individually or collectively implement change. (Lowe et al. 2006: 453, my emphasis) For both Leiserowitz and Lowe et al. the problem is therefore a lack of information – the film’s story can have ecologically beneficial effects, but only in alliance with more and/or other forms of information. So, either more people need the information contained in the film’s story, or the information in the film’s story needs to be accompanied by information in additional stories. This is an essentially rationalistic approach, which conceptualises human thought and behaviour as reasonable (based on receiving, processing and balancing information) and measurable (through empirical surveys, for example). This rationalistic approach to ecological awareness has both a long history, with Henry David Thoreau stating as long ago as the mid-nineteenth century that “we [must] front up to the facts and determine to live our lives deliberately, or not at all” (in Merchant 1998: 438), and a growing sense of urgency, with the quasi-hagiographised David Attenborough stating, in the introduction to the television documentary Climate Change: The Facts (Davies 2019), that “if we better understand the threat we face, the more likely it is that we can avoid such a catastrophic future”. Although I would obviously not want to argue against extending understanding about this threat, and accept that it is possible for people to be more or less ecologically aware depending on what information they have access to, there is also a limitation to this approach. In part, this limitation is peculiar to the way that ecological degradation like global warming is developing. Anthony Giddens has developed an idea he calls “Giddens’s Paradox”, which means that

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since the dangers posed by global warming aren’t tangible, immediate or visible in the course of day-to-day life, many will sit on their hands and do nothing of a concrete nature about them. Yet waiting until they become visible and acute before being stirred to serious action will, by definition, be too late. (Giddens 2009: 2) Again, here, inaction is fuelled by a lack of information – in this case, the absence of first-person experiential consequences of the nascent disaster. Giddens’s Paradox partly explains why certain forms of information, such as the fictional account of the impending disaster in The Day After Tomorrow, or the forward-looking documentary warnings in Climate Change: The Facts, might not encourage more decisive action. That is, these films provide pertinent information, but of a qualified, mediated, non-immediate kind. But it is also the case that the failure to engage with information about what is likely to come is also paradoxical because awareness about impending disaster is not just being deferred or ignored, but actually goes hand in hand with an increase in environmentally damaging activity. As Stephen Rust puts it, the gravity of this paradox is “underscored in the United States by the fact that just as public awareness of the issue has risen sharply over the past few decades so too has the nation’s carbon footprint” (2013: 205). This poses some serious problems for the rationalistic assumption that providing information about the disaster will lead to action to counter the disaster. Richard Kerridge puts this in stark terms: “Awareness is not producing change” (2014: 363). This is particularly troubling for the activist tradition in the environmental movement which sees awareness as the key to addressing public indifference perceived to stem from ignorance. An important strand of ecocritical approaches to film shares this idea that disaster can be averted through enlightenment inspired by filmic activism. Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, for example, argue that “films including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth [Guggenheim 2006], may inspire ecological action because they reveal something about the current state of environmental politics” (2009: 205, my emphasis). The supposition shared by Leiserowitz, Lowe et al., Thoreau, Attenborough, and Murray and Heumann is that revealing the problem will provoke action to resolve it – error comes from ignorance, whereas right action comes from knowledge. This supposition is similar to the Marxist idea of ‘false consciousness’. This term has a complex and contested history that I don’t have time to go into here, but in the way that I am using the term I mean a distinction between a complex conceptualisation of ideology as a matrix of forces that constitute an individual’s subjectivity, which I address in more detail below, and a simpler conceptualisation of ideology as a matter of individuals being provided with the wrong information which makes their consciousness ‘false’, whereas with different information their consciousness could be ‘true’ or ‘correct’. I will discuss the former, more complex idea of ideology later in this chapter and in the next, but the suppositions discussed above, which argue that

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people need more information to make better choices about the impact of their behaviour on the environment, are more akin to the vulgar Marxist notion that individual agency is dependent on access to information. In the original Marxist context, false consciousness related to the proletariat – provide them with awareness of how the bourgeoisie were exploiting them, and they would transcend their false consciousness and overthrow their oppressors. In contemporary ecological terms, the awareness model wants to provide people with information about the damage that their actions are doing, so that they can transcend their false consciousness and change their unwittingly destructive behaviour. The extent to which this awareness model dominates contemporary thinking about addressing ecological crisis is demonstrated by the alignment of ecological awareness with other forms of ‘progressive’ politics.1 The term ‘progressive’ is indicative here, demonstrating that social, cultural and political development is understood as an unfolding linear process, with an inevitable trajectory of improvement – each generation less racist, less misogynistic, less homophobic, and so on, than the last. In contemporary parlance, one is or is not ‘woke’ when one aligns oneself with this perceived progressive trajectory that, counterintuitively, also includes our retrogressive contributions to environmental degradation, which incontrovertibly demonstrate that things can get worse, as well as better, through time. Again, the etymology here is significant. ‘Wokeness’ implies either being aware or unaware of structural injustices, awake or asleep, and these two binary states are determined by access to, and acceptance of, the facts of these structural injustices. Awareness of the problem is key, so that ‘wokeness’ functions as an intersectionally-updated version of false consciousness. In the historic development of Marxist theory, the historic fact that the proletariat did not overthrow their oppressors once they were presented with information that could challenge their false consciousness, led to a substantial, subtle and sophisticated revision of the notion of ideology. This revision will be useful for addressing the related fact that ecological awareness does not seem to be helping people to adequately address the contemporary environmental crisis. I will discuss this in detail later in this chapter, and in the next. But the false consciousness model chronologically pre-exists these developments, and provides a conceptually simpler approach that seems to offer the activist a clear project and tool – spread information, because information is the key to transforming human behaviour in the face of injustice and/or impending disaster. Unfortunately, though, this does not seem to be how human societies have typically responded to crises historically. Comparing the current crisis with earlier examples of societal collapse, Ed Ayres argues that “a general pattern of behavior among threatened human societies is to become more blindered, rather than focus on the crisis, as they fall” (1999: 141). Something about our culture and/or about our existential humanity prevents us from adequately responding to our awareness of impending disaster. This produces an irrational rather than a rational response to ecological crisis, which Nicole Seymour describes as a “deeply weird current moment – in which reports of immanent collapse inspire not robust environmentalist action but doomsday fatigue” (2012: 57).

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Given that, as mentioned above, ecocriticism’s principal focus is on how culture relates to environmental crisis, this failure of awareness to inspire meaningful action means that it is necessary to address the ways that culture displaces, mystifies and obfuscates the reality of environmental degradation. Something about our culture (s) prevents us from turning information into action. To some extent, this issue is addressed by certain strands of deep ecology, ecofeminism and ecopsychology. I will discuss these arguments in the next section. But I will also discuss the limitations of these approaches, which oversimplify the solution to transcending the ecophobic elements that they identify in our culture. These approaches claim that human subjectivity can be willed into different forms, so that overcoming ecophobic culture is a relatively simple matter of consciously deciding to alter one’s subjectivity. I will demonstrate that this idea is a philosophically problematic assumption that elides the complexities of the relationships between cultural ideas and human subjectivity. Happily, an existing branch of thought from the humanities has already constructed a clear and systematic account of how cultural ideas inflect human subjectivity, and this account has been particularly influential in terms of explaining how film functions as a conveyor of socio-cultural meaning. There has not yet been a detailed account, however, of how human subjectivity functions in terms of our current failure to take meaningful action to ameliorate environmental degradation. I will outline this method later in this chapter and in the next, but first it is necessary to address existing attempts to theorise inaction in the face of ecological disaster, in order to outline both a clear critique of what motivates our ecologically damaging attitudes, and then to identify the limitations in how existing scholarship thinks that we might transcend this cultural ecophobia.

The ‘epistemology we live by’: The destructive nature of Cartesian subjectivity, and the Cartesian destruction of nature Arne Næss’s influential attempt to distinguish between ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ ecology demonstrates both the extent to which habitual ways of thought and behaviour impact negatively on the environment, and the limitations of how existing ecosophy conceptualises the required shifts in thought that might address this. Næss wrote that most thinking about the environment, particularly that associated with scientists, politicians and businesses, is essentially the “Shallow Ecology movement [which] [f]ight[s] against pollution and resource depletion. Central objective: the health and affluence of people in the developed countries” (1989: 28, original emphasis). On the other hand, the Deep Ecology movement [is a] rejection of the man-in-environment image in favour of the relational, total-field image. […] Organisms are knots in the field of intrinsic relations. […] [T]he equal right to live and blossom is an intuitively clear and obvious value axiom. Its restriction to humans is an anthropocentrism with detrimental effects on the quality of life of humans themselves. (Næss 1989: 28, original emphasis)

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Næss’s deep ecology therefore begins to address the idea that fundamental changes in thinking, such as a rejection of anthropocentrism, are required to go beyond a shallow ecology which prevents meaningful action that could mitigate environmental degradation. Subtly altering our behaviour to maintain our current lifestyles whilst merely avoiding or displacing the worst effects of environmental damage is not sufficient, and will not avert disaster. Certain foundational elements of our culture(s) and/or our existential humanity are therefore intrinsically damaging to the environment on which we are dependent. Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker pose the pertinent question clearly: “What possible flaw in the human psyche has enabled us to develop attitudes which result in the poisoning of our own nest?” (1994: xvi). Simon C. Estok calls this flaw “ecophobia”, which “is rooted in and dependent on anthropocentric arrogance and speciesism, on the ethical position that humanity is outside of and exempt from the laws of nature” (2009: 216–217). Estok argues that “there is clearly a need to hypothesize the existence and factuality of ecophobia as a starting point for understanding the origins of the Anthropocene, of current environmental crises, and of climate change” (2018a: 2, original emphasis). Ecological scholars generally link this ecophobia with a specific historical path that has gradually and progressively alienated humanity from nature, and I am not going to disagree with the broad outlines of this claim. I am, however, going to argue that the historical explanation of this alienation does not acknowledge the full consequences of how ecophobic thinking defines our very sense of who we are as individuals in contemporary capitalism, and that such explanations thereby oversimplify the solutions to overcoming Chapple and Tucker’s “flaw in the human psyche” (1994: xvi).2 In relation to the biological evolution of our species, this cultural alienation from nature is a relatively recent phenomenon. It began with the First Agricultural Revolution, sometimes called the Neolithic Revolution, in which societies composed of small groups of hunter-gatherers started to settle into larger groups of farmers. This material change facilitated a radical transformation of thinking which, for the first time, separated humanity from nature because the world was now conceptualised either as that which humanity cultivates, owns and controls (civilisation), and that which is beyond humanity’s control (the wilderness). As Garrard puts it, to designate a place apart from, and opposed to, human culture depends on a set of distinctions that must be based upon a mainly agricultural economy: for the hunter-gatherer, concepts such as fields and crops, as opposed to weeds and wilderness, simply would not exist. […] [T]he transition from Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer to Neolithic farmer is […] a crucial turning point, marking a ‘fall’ from a primal ecological grace. (Garrard 2004: 60) Monotheism was the next step on this alienation trajectory. In Genesis the Biblical God commands mankind to “[b]e fruitful, and multiply, and replenish

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the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Pre-monotheistic paganism might have separated human-the-farmer from nature, but this nature still had spiritual power that prevented it from being fully instrumentalised, or which imposed geographic limits on what could and could not be instrumentalised. Lynn White Jr. thus argues that in Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. […] By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. (White Jr. 1996: 10, original emphasis) Monotheism thereby extends and provides moral justification for agricultural society’s separation of humanity from nature. The final and most significant element of this alienation between humanity and nature is associated with the European Scientific Revolution during the Early Modern period. ‘Natural’ philosophers developed an understanding of the universe not as an inexplicable mystery but as a complex mechanism which operates according to a series of immutable and discoverable laws. For Garrard, this view of the universe as a great machine put forward by, among others, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), René Descartes (1596–1650) and Isaac Newton (1642–1727) represents the decisive blow to the universe inhabited by our ancestors. If […] Palaeolithic people venerated a fecund Magna Mater or Great Mother figure, these men were to complete the process of her annihilation begun by the dominance of the male Judeo-Christian sky god. In place of the Earth as nurturing mother, natural philosophers posited a universe reducible to an assemblage of parts functioning according to laws that men could, in principle, know in their entirety. (Garrard 2004: 61–62) Descartes, in particular, connected observation, and the knowledge derived therefrom, with a hierarchical separation of humanity from nature. He wrote that in “knowing the force and the actions of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us […] we might be able [to] render ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature” (1998 [1637]: 35). In part, the empiricism established by this scientific method of understanding nature-as-machine through observation demonstrates one reason why the aforementioned awareness model fails to adequately ameliorate environmental degradation – cool detached reason alienated mankind from nature, so it is unlikely that this same reason will effectively counter the negative effects of such alienation. But even more importantly, the scientific approach to nature produced an alienated attitude to the environment because of the specific way

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that Descartes conceptualised the very different ontological characteristics of humanity and nature. This infamous Cartesian dualism does not just reproduce or reinforce the humanity–nature binary opposition begun by agricultural society and legitimated by monotheism. Cartesian dualism establishes a fundamentally scientific ontological divide, with humanity and nature understood as completely different at the very level of their being-ness. Furthermore, and this is the element that is not fully addressed in existing ecosophy, this ontological dualism is so embedded in what it means to be a contemporary human subject that a self-destructive form of ecophobia is an integral and almost inescapable component of who we are. Descartes established this alienating dualism in his attempt to address one of the recurring questions in occidental philosophy. Metaphysics, which Aristotle called ‘first philosophy’, is concerned with defining the nature of reality. A key underlying element of the emerging scientific method was doubt, so that natural philosophers tried to ascertain metaphysical certainty by asking what they could and could not know. When Descartes approached the question of reality from the perspective of doubt he attempted to establish a sure foundation for knowledge. That is, he asked himself whether he could formulate any knowledge of reality that would be unassailable to doubt. Thus, he began from a position which doubted the very existence of reality. So, although his senses provided stimuli that seemed to indicate the existence of some kind of reality, he doubted whether such stimuli could be trusted, and was willing to accept the hypothetical possibility that his senses deluded him in some way, so that he might be dreaming, or being manipulated by some malicious spirit. Films such as The Matrix (Wachowskis 1999) fictionalise this idea that sense perception might be deceived by a malignant force, and all that we see, hear, touch and taste is an illusion. In this dystopian fictional instance, humanity has been enslaved by machines, who harvest their passive bodies for energy. Humans experience a simulated reality, in which their senses provide various stimuli which seem real, but which have no genuine correspondence with material reality. The film is a technologically-updated secular manifestation of the Cartesian argument, which fictionalises Descartes’s conclusion that the senses cannot resist doubt. Descartes did, however, find a form of certitude within the very act of doubting. Because his mind had the capacity to doubt whether it existed, or to think anything else for that matter, the mind itself must exist. Thus, Descartes formulated perhaps the most famous statement in occidental philosophy – “cogito, ergo sum”, “I think, therefore I am” (1982 [1644]: 5). The world itself, as perceived through the senses, might be some form of illusion, but the doubting mind itself, according to this Cartesian logic, must exist. (The Matrix, too, conforms to this reasoning – although protagonist Neo’s (Keanu Reeves) senses might deceive him, so that all around him is an illusion, Neo himself does exist). Descartes had thereby established what he thought of as a sure foundation for knowledge – the rational, doubting human mind. The specific problem, in terms of how this thinking mind (the cogito) relates to

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environmental degradation, is the series of logical reasoning that Descartes made about how this ostensibly secure foundation for knowledge relates to the wider question of reality. Descartes had already accepted that senses can be deceived, and that therefore merely perceiving the world could not guarantee the world’s existence. Nevertheless, Descartes concluded that this world does exist, but derived this conclusion from reason rather than from the senses. His reasoning ran thus: doubt is an imperfect form of knowledge which must be a lesser replication of a perfect form of knowledge (God), and since perfection must be benevolent, God would therefore not endow the cogito with deceiving senses. However tendentious this argumentation might be, particularly to the secular inheritors of these ideas, the lasting significance of Descartes’s reasoning is that Cartesian dualism accepts the existence of the world, but only as an attendant conclusion derived from the ontologically primary certitude of the cogito. Descartes knew that the mind exists, and he therefore reasoned that the world does too, so that the cogito is the evidence for and measure of wider reality, which has meaning only in relation to the human mind. He called these two different categories the res cogitans, the ‘thinking thing’ and the res extensa, the ‘extended thing’. In this model, then, the human res cogitans is primary and central, with the wider world literally extending out from humanity. Descartes thereby provided a philosophical justification for wider changes underway in Early Modern society in which the Medieval view of humanity as inevitably unworthy and sinful was beginning to be replaced with an individualism and humanism that remembered and reinvigorated the Ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras’s maxim that “man [sic] is the measure of all things”. Critiques of Descartes’s dualism are central both to ecosophy and to a certain psychoanalytic tradition (particularly in film studies), which I will come to at the end of this chapter and in the next. From an ecological perspective, Cartesian dualism is seen as prioritising humanity and devaluing nature. Anna Grear has claimed that When Rene [sic] Descartes famously split ‘mind’ from ‘matter’, he wrought a profound ontological fracture between, in his terms, res cogitans (the rational mind) and res extensa (everything else – including the human body). Descartes imposed, in this move, a deadening objectification, one that suppressed the living significance of the world for ‘man’. [This] brought about, in effect, [what Carolyn Merchant calls] the ‘death of nature’. (Grear 2015: 83–84, original emphasis) One example of this deadening dualism, which will be significant in terms of how I discuss filmic representations of boundaries between humans and nonhumans in Chapter 3, is Descartes’s demotion of nonhuman animals to the category of res extensa rather than the exclusively human res cogitans. In 1649 he wrote that “[i]t is more probable that worms, flies, caterpillars and other animals move like machines than that they have immortal souls” (1991 [1619–1650]: 366). Animals, then, like

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the wider world, are conceptualised as part of a mechanistic universe, in which only mankind’s rational mind/soul is allowed to have the status of res cogitans. For Josephine Donovan this means that with his “dualistic ontology, which divided reality into res cogitans (thinking thing) and res extensa (material object extended in space), Descartes relegated animals to the latter category, seeing them as thoughtless mechanisms” (2017: 209). Such a “view has legitimized animals’ treatment as experimental material in laboratories, as commodities in animal husbandry and industrialized agriculture, and as property under common law” (Donovan 2017: 209). It is important to point out here that Descartes does not merely provide a philosophical excuse for certain forms of behaviour towards the environment, but helps to develop a particular way of thinking that determines how people act towards the environment. This means that Cartesian dualism is not only an ontology – a philosophy of the nature of being, in this case an ontology that separates out the universe into active res cogitans and passive res extensa. In addition, this means that Cartesian dualism is also an epistemology – a philosophy of the nature of knowledge, in this case an epistemology that also separates out the universe into these two categories. Dualism becomes an internalised attitude towards self, to others, and towards the environment. Grear states that The rational mind, in Descartes’ ontology, is radically separated, as if by a great chasm, from the body and from any other form of material extension. The mind of ‘man’, as a result, is disembodied […] and ‘knows’ through a rationalistic, disembodied theory of knowledge – an epistemology – that privileged the lonely Cartesian cogito as the knowing centre of an objectified existence. It was precisely this rationalistic epistemology that, combined with certain other impulses, produced the ‘epistemology of mastery’. (Grear 2015: 84, original emphasis) These ‘other impulses’ are the aforementioned alienations from nature associated with agriculture, monotheism and the scientific method, which are discussed at length by Lorraine Code, who developed the term “epistemology of mastery” (2006: 30). This Cartesian epistemology separates humanity from nature, and positions the two in a destructive hierarchy. What is significant about this epistemological element is the fact that thought chronologically precedes action – Descartes first conceptualised the natural world as subsidiary, passive and dead, and then the actions of humanity predicated on this conceptualisation actually threaten, in our own times, to make the natural world dead. How Descartes thought about the world causes us, today, to think and act in certain ways towards it. This points towards the idea that something even more fundamental than the “stories we live by” (Stibbe, 2015: 1) contributes to our ecologically destructive behaviour – there is also what one might call an ‘epistemology we live by’ which is fundamentally destructive. Descartes’s claim that animals do not have

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souls, discussed above, demonstrates the extent to which such shared cultural ideas influence how we think about nature. Although contemporary societies clearly still contain powerful currents of religious belief, science is ostensibly divorced from religious ideas like souls. Richie Nimmo, however, has demonstrated that the cogito maintains the Christian idea of the soul, and makes this the bedrock of how we conceptualise our humanity in secular terms. Descartes’s mind/body or mind/matter dualism, a philosophy much criticised but strikingly persistent in many ways [asserts] that all humans possess ‘minds’ and ‘consciousness’ whereas all non-humans do not. […] This is essentially religious, for by dislocating the ‘mind’ from its material embodiment and conceiving it as a kind of immaterial substance, Cartesian dualism effectively retains the notion of the human ‘soul’ albeit translated into secular form. […] Like the ‘soul’, the ‘mind’ of course does not exist as such. If we cut into our heads we find only more brains, which is to say, more body, more matter and more nature. The ‘mind’ is a category of our language which we enact into being in our lived practices. (Nimmo 2011: 61) The conventions of language and histories of established thought therefore produce everyday forms of behaviour. The accidental legacy of humanity’s cultural evolution has produced an ‘epistemology of mastery’ which threatens to end that cultural evolution through an environmental apocalypse. This means that, as Bunyan Bryant puts it, “[a]lthough we view ourselves as being in a state of environmental crisis, that crisis is perhaps more of a crisis of epistemology, of how we know” (2011: 23). What distinguishes my subsequent argument from the above premises is not a rejection of this idea that our contemporary Cartesian epistemology is the root cause of our contemporary ecological crises. Instead, my departure from existing ecosophy develops insights offered by scholarship in various areas of philosophy and the humanities not explicitly (thus far – or at least not systematically) addressing environmental issues. These insights can be used to account for some serious limitations in the ways that existing ecosophy argues that contemporary Cartesian epistemology can be transformed into less destructive forms of thought and behaviour.

Attempts to transcend the ‘epistemology of mastery’: The limitations of a Cartesian solution to a Cartesian problem How, then, does existing ecosophy suggest that humanity can reject the destructive ways of thinking associated with Cartesian dualism? What are the implications of such suggestions in terms of cultural activities such as making and watching films? I have already quoted Thoreau, who said that in order to live harmoniously with nature we must “front up to the facts and determine to

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live our lives deliberately, or not at all” (in Merchant 1998: 438). Thoreau’s manifesto demonstrates the three interconnected elements which dominate deep eco-philosophical thinking about how we might transcend Cartesian dualism: 1 2 3

Awareness that the problem is our own current modes of thought and behaviour – “front[ing] up” Awareness derived from objective and observable truth – “the facts” Conscious rejection of a mind-set that ignores this awareness of this objective truth – “live our lives deliberately”

This approach relies on three problematic assumptions which each relate to the three principles Thoreau outlined: 1

2

3

Deep ecologists are here conceptualising awareness in more sophisticated terms than my aforementioned criticisms of awareness about environmental problems. The deep ecological conception of awareness is more like a recognition of the destructive attitudes inherent in the anthropocentrism associated with agriculture, monotheism and Cartesian dualism. Nevertheless, the same assumption is made that information is persuasive, and that awareness can therefore alter thinking and behaviour – it is just that in this instance the altered thought and behaviour is ‘deep’ rather than ‘shallow’ It is assumed that truth is objective, which is itself a claim relying on certain rationalist-scientific premises that eco-philosophers are otherwise attempting to reject. This paradoxical admixture of utilising and simultaneously rejecting various aspects of the scientific method is a more minor and specific example of the final problematic assumption made by this deep ecological method It is assumed that humans are able to make rational choices about how they relate to information provided to them, so that we humans might live our lives ‘accidentally’, if we passively accept Cartesian dualism, but might also, as Thoreau puts it, “live our lives deliberately” (in Merchant 1998: 438), if we actively reject Cartesian dualism Thus, Ruth Rosenhek argues that we’re breeding whole societies of eco-illiterate people who don’t even have the chance to develop an understanding and deep connection to the earth and natural processes, which Indigenous Peoples have always had. […] Fortunately, […] we humans are deeply embedded in the biosphere and it is quite simple to begin to remember this connection. Deep ecology suggests that we develop nature rituals to remind ourselves of who we really are. (Rosenhek 2004: 45, my emphasis).

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Rosenhek’s assertion that “Indigenous People have always had” this understanding will be something I can begin to address in my analysis of certain traditions in non-occidental cinema in Chapter 7. Most significantly, though, Rosenhek thinks that it is “simple […] to remind ourselves of who we really are” (2004: 45), so that either having or not having this understanding is still very like transcending false consciousness (or being either ‘woke’ or non-‘woke’, in my aforementioned comparison). Rosenhek’s deep ecological position shifts the ground for this false consciousness, so that her argument is now no longer merely that people need awareness of information demonstrating that environmental degradation threatens humanity’s safety, and is now an argument that people need awareness of information demonstrating that the ways that we think about the environment are inherently destructive. Nevertheless, this shift in terms of what information is required still assumes that people can consciously make these changes in thinking – indeed, for Rosenhek such changes in thinking are “quite simple” (45). In part, Rosenhuk’s claim that thinking can be changed so simply is based on an ostensibly objective, empirical fact – “we humans are deeply embedded in the biosphere” (2004: 45). But the deeper assumption, of which this ostensibly objective empiricism is only a part, is a particular (unacknowledged) approach to how human consciousness functions. The way that existing ecosophy conceptualises (and actually elides) the topic of human consciousness is demonstrated by the way that the term ‘consciousness’ is used. Bill Devall and George Sessions influentially called for the act of cultivating ecological consciousness. This process involves becoming more aware of the actuality of rocks, wolves, trees, and rivers – the cultivation of the insight that everything is connected. […] This process involves being honest with ourselves and seeking clarity in our intuitions, then acting from clear principles. (Devall and Sessions 1985: 8 my emphasis) Again, “aware”-ness is important here, and this awareness is the foundation of “insight” leading to “honest”-y about “our intuitions” and then “acting with clear principles”. The use of the term “ecological consciousness” suggests that ‘unawareness’, ‘lack of insight’, ‘dishonesty with ourselves’ and ‘acting from unclear principles’ is a form of consciousness based on ignorance and (self-) deception, so that non-ecological consciousness is a form of false consciousness or non-‘wokeness’ in which the individual passively accepts a (self-)destructive form of thought and behaviour. ‘Ecological consciousness’, on the other hand, is conceptualised as aware and honest, and a form of consciousness in which the individual actively constructs his or her own enlightened attitudes to, and interactions with, the environment. There are some clear attractions offered by this approach to consciousness: humans might be deceived by bad ideas, but they can just as easily be undeceived by better ideas (demonstrated, of course, through awareness of objective facts). There is, however, another philosophical tradition which rejects this idea

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that consciousness can be unproblematically controlled by the individual experiencing that consciousness. This tradition is the central principle underlying this book, both because it provides a model for understanding how film relates to human consciousness, which I will discuss in the next chapter, and more broadly because this tradition provides an explanation for the failure of deep ecology to substantially convert human populations possessing passive forms of non-ecological consciousness into populations possessing active forms of ecological consciousness. Just as shallow ecology is based on a flawed model which thinks that awareness of environmental crisis will lead to conscious action to avert the crisis, so too deep ecology is based on a flawed model which thinks that awareness of our unnatural alienation from the environment will lead to conscious ways of thinking, which can then avert the crisis. This alternative, sceptical approach towards human consciousness needs outlining, then. It is most clearly articulated by French philosopher Paul Ricœur’s (1970) account of how Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and (principally) Sigmund Freud each developed somewhat similar ideas about human consciousness’s lack of agency. Ricœur discusses how these philosophical developments established that the “home of meaning is not consciousness but something other than consciousness” (1970: 55). Marx’s material relations, Nietzsche’s ‘prison house of language’ and Freud’s unconscious all contribute to any individual’s consciousness in such a way that the individual’s ideas, beliefs and feelings are principally determined by these external factors, rather than by the centralised cogito that philosophy had, prior to these three thinkers, privileged. Marx’s, Nietzsche’s and Freud’s departures from Cartesian principles is key both to these ideas about inauthentic consciousness, and to the way that these departures relate to ecological issues. Ricœur writes that these three thinkers take up again, each in a different manner the problem of Cartesian doubt, to carry it to the very heart of the Cartesian stronghold. The philosopher trained in the school of Descartes knows that things are doubtful, that they are not such as they appear; but he [sic] does not doubt that consciousness is such as it appears to itself; in consciousness, meaning and consciousness of meaning coincide. Since Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, this too has become doubtful. After the doubt about things, we have started to doubt consciousness. (Ricœur 1970: 33) Ricœur calls the approach to consciousness associated with Descartes the ‘school of truth’. This approach conceptualises the human subject as a rational independent entity that distrusts the objective world (the res extensa) but trusts its own ability to formulate knowledge through reason (the res cogitans). In contradistinction, Ricœur calls the approach to consciousness pioneered by Marx, Nietzsche and Freud the ‘school of suspicion’. This approach claims that one should be suspicious about how the human subject formulates ideas because

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the internal mental mechanisms which the subject uses to interpret the world appear to be under the subject’s control, but are in fact constituted in significant part by factors outside the control of the cogito, through a combination of Marx’s material relations, Nietzsche’s conventionalised language, and Freud’s sublimated unconscious drives. The human subject, if it is conceptualised as operating according to the logic of the school of suspicion, is not in control of its own consciousness. The rationality of the cogito is an illusion, and human subjects think and act because of motivations that they do not understand, and which they cannot simply alter through an act of an agency which does not exist. Deep ecological claims about the development of an ‘environmental consciousness’ are part of Ricœur’s school of truth in the sense that they claim that human subjects are in control of their consciousness (or at least can be in control of their consciousness under certain circumstances), and can will their consciousness from an environmentally-destructive way of thinking to an environmentally-caring way of thinking. There are two principal reasons why this school of truth approach to consciousness is unsatisfactory for an ecosophy attempting to ameliorate the environmental destruction wreaked by the Cartesian cogito. The first, and main reason, is that the school of suspicion demonstrates that a non-dualistic way of thinking that one might call ‘ecological consciousness’ cannot simply replace existing dualistic forms of consciousness through awareness, insight and will. Human consciousness is beyond our direct control, so that various unconscious forces are like a tail wagging the dog that is the human subject. Thus, any given individual will inevitably think about and act towards the environment in ways that are outside that individual’s full rational control. Where does this bleak view leave the prospects for the humanity that is on the brink of ecological apocalypse? Eco-scholars and eco-activists have a long tradition of advocating urgent action, and the school of suspicion’s claim that people cannot consciously reject ecologically destructive forms of thought and behaviour could be accused of suggesting that a resigned shrug, the aforementioned “doomsday fatigue” (Seymour 2012: 57), is a more appropriate response. I will address this question in more detail in the Conclusion, discussing how subjectivity might achieve agency within the context of the school of suspicion. But importantly, before those possible solutions are addressed, it should be accepted that the bleakness of a diagnosis is no reason to disregard it. Just as I have already discussed how the environmental crisis is also a crisis of epistemology (of how we think), it is also a crisis of how we theorise epistemology (how we conceptualise how we think). Each element of this crisis needs to be addressed together in order to have any chance of successful alleviation. The second reason why a school of truth approach to ecological consciousness is unsatisfactory is the inadvertent consequence of an eco-philosophical approach that attempts to move away from the anthropocentrism inherent in Cartesian dualism, but which ironically reinforces that same Cartesian dualism. A number of scholars define the inauthentic consciousness associated with the

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school of suspicion as part of the ‘social construction’ (Berger and Luckmann 1966) of the human subject – various socio-cultural forces construct any given individual’s consciousness. Yuval Noah Harari (2011: 117–124) provides a clear example of this process, comparing two influential and foundational legalpolitical documents which demonstrate two very different socio-cultural attitudes. The earliest is the Babylonian stela inscribed with Hammurabi’s Code of Laws from c.1776 BCE. The later document is the Declaration of Independence of the United States from 1776 CE. The first of these documents articulates a foundational principle of Babylonian society – different social classes and genders are organised in a strict hierarchy, and the punishments for injuring or killing anyone is entirely dependent on the status of the offender and the victim. The second of these two documents expresses our own society’s completely opposite view that ‘all men [sic] are created equal’. There are some historically-specific caveats about the religious, racialised and gender-specific elements of eighteenth-century American society that complicate this, and I address the Cartesian component of these caveats in the Conclusion, but Harari makes the point that these two documents represent fundamentally conflicting ideas about how society should function, and which completely dominate the thinking of the participants in those different societies: Hammurabi and the Founding Fathers alike imagined a reality governed by universal and immutable principles of justice, such as equality or hierarchy. Yet the only place where such universal principles exist is in the fertile imagination of [Homo] Sapiens, and in the myths they invent and tell one another. (Harari 2011: 122) Babylonians and Americans thus have certain internalised and ingrained attitudes that are not formulated from an individual engagement with objective reality, but are instead adopted from a collective engagement with subjective socio-cultural myths about reality. This formulation has sometimes been considered somewhat crude, and the particular approach to subjectivity I will outline shortly utilises Jacques Lacan’s more subtle conception of a Symbolic Order that inflects consciousness. But the social constructionist approach is useful, here, in terms of addressing how ecosophy inadvertently reinforces Cartesian dualism in the very act of attempting to displace it. This is because even when ecological studies employ social constructionist ideas, they apply these ideas not to the human subjectivity which they are attempting to move away from, but instead only to the damaging ways that human society constructs destructive attitudes towards the environment. Ecological scholars might be interested in what Klaus Eder calls The Social Construction of Nature (1996), but they have not yet addressed how the social construction of human consciousness relates to this. Robyn Penman, for example, writes that

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[f]rom the social constructionism perspective I am using, the way we talk about environmental matters (or do not talk, as the case may be) has direct bearing on what these environmental matters may or may not be. Indeed, in our very talking, we bring about those environmental matters. (Penman 2001: 145) For Penman, the social construction here is our understanding of nature, or of how society conceptualises human relations to nature, rather than human consciousness itself. Social and cultural factors might inform the way that we think about the environment, but are not conceptualised as informing the way that we think about our own consciousness. Insofar as existing ecosophy addresses issues of social constructionism, then, it accepts that the ways that humans conceptualise the environment are socially constructed, but it does not accept that human consciousness itself is socially constructed. This is part of an understandable and deliberate anti-anthropocentrism, so that ecological studies shift attention from the human, the central preoccupation of philosophy and the etymologically-revealing ‘humanities’ since at least the Renaissance. The shift means that ecosophy wrestles with numerous philosophical issues, but these do not relate to the question of how human consciousness operates. In so doing, however, this shift paradoxically valorises human consciousness in precisely the same way as Descartes. Deep ecology accidently inherits a strikingly anthropocentric attitude towards human consciousness, because thinking that we control our consciousness is a deeply Cartesian idea which grants the exclusively-human cogito unfettered powers of autonomy. Deep ecology thus critiques Descartes’s approach to human consciousness, arguing that the res cogitans should not be privileged over the res extensa, whilst simultaneously utilising the same Cartesian conception of human consciousness to model how this de-privileging of the res cogitans can be achieved. Deep ecology identifies the inherently destructive nature of the cogito but thinks that this same cogito can save itself. I will therefore not use the term ‘ecological consciousness’, at least in the manner that it has hitherto been used, because I conceptualise consciousness not as the rational cogito which can be changed from ecologically-destructive to ecologically-protective thought and behaviour through rational persuasion (or through personal experience, which I will address in detail below). I instead conceptualise the cogito as an illusory sense of control over an inherently uncontrollable matrix of impulses and discourses. The concept of ‘ecological consciousness’ thinks of consciousness as a set of ideas and beliefs that can be changed (consciousness of a phenomenon), rather than consciousness as an internalised way of thinking (consciousness as a phenomenon). Deep ecologists thereby argue that controllable ecological consciousness leads to controllable ethics – Theodore Roszak writes “[c]onscience and consciousness, how instructive the overlapping similarity of those words is. From the new consciousness we are gaining of ourselves as persons perhaps we will yet create a new conscience” (1978: 99). But if our consciousness is beyond our control,

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then so is our conscience. Ecologists might yearn and strive towards environmental consciousness and conscience, but current ecological crises suggest that our ungovernable Cartesian consciousness is responsible for a fundamentally bad conscience – guilt about the vicissitudes of animals suffering in industrial agriculture, or about refugees displaced by flood and famine, but little or no effectively transformative consciousness, conscience and behaviour.

Socially constructed consciousness and ‘personal’ experiences of nature I will discuss how Lacanian psychoanalysis can be used to address the cogito’s unconsciously destructive attitudes towards the environment, and the ways that this approach relates to the film case studies conducted in the following chapters, in a moment, and in more detail in the next chapter. But before turning to this it is worth noting one particular element of existing ecosophy that points towards a psychoanalytic understanding of how consciousness is culturally manipulated towards environmentally destructive behaviour, because this will also be relevant for my specific method. This element is part of the ecolinguistic critique of how language inflects thought and behaviour. At the beginning of this chapter I discussed how Stibbe identifies environmentally-negative narrative elements in the ‘stories we live by’. Stibbe’s stories, however, are not only explicitly fictional narratives. These stories are diffused throughout culture and society. He writes that We are exposed to them without consciously selecting them or necessarily being aware that they are just stories. They appear between the lines of the texts which surround us in everyday life: in news reports, advertisements, conversations with friends, the weather forecast, instruction manuals or textbooks. They appear in educational, political, professional, medical, legal and other institutional contexts without announcing themselves as stories. (Stibbe 2015: 5, my emphasis) In part, Stibbe’s argument could be falling back on something like false consciousness, so that different stories would lead to different forms of thought and behaviour. But Stibbe also recognises that these stories obfuscate their status as social constructs, and people do not relate to these stories in an exclusively conscious manner. He quotes from Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, who suggest the social constructionist element of these stories: “When you’re living in the middle of this story, it’s easy just to think of it as the way things are” (Macy and Johnstone 2012: 15). Stibbe also partly develops his approach to ‘stories we live by’ from Mary Midgley’s Myths We Live By (2011), which are “imaginative patterns, networks of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world” (Midgley 2011: 1). Midgley’s recourse to ‘symbols’, here, indicates a rough alignment with the semiotic tradition in linguistics which has had some impact on ecological

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studies, in the field of ecosemiotics/biosemiotics (Kalevi and Clauss 2011), but is a more significant force in the non-environmental humanities where it has been combined with (neo-)Marxism and psychoanalysis into poststructuralism. Poststructuralism is a notoriously complex and diffuse academic paradigm, whose proponents agree on little. In the main, however, these proponents do agree that ideology, people’s internalised beliefs and values, is more determining of consciousness that determined by consciousness. The semiotic linguistic element of poststructuralism stresses how language structures thought, ordering the external world according to culturally-determined signs and symbols which determine how we think about the signifieds to which those signifiers refer. Although Stibbe does not adopt an explicitly semiotic or psychoanalytic approach, he does claim that language influences thought in ways that the thinker of those thoughts does not comprehend, and this is an insight which semiotics has also brought to the poststructuralist idea of inauthentic consciousness. Stibbe therefore writes that the “stories we live by are embedded deeply in the minds of individuals across a society and appear only indirectly between the lines of the texts that circulate in that society” (2015: 5). Stibbe also recognises that these unacknowledged stories influence thought in a collective socio-cultural manner, writing that cognitive structures are mental models that exist in the minds of individuals. […] Stories are cognitive structures in the minds of individuals which influence how they see the world. Stories-we-live-by are stories in the minds of multiple individuals across a culture. (Stibbe 2015: 6, original emphasis) Stibbe’s ecolinguistics therefore shares an important foundational premise with psychoanalytic and poststructuralist ideas about inauthentic consciousness – external factors inflect thoughts and feelings in ways beyond the awareness and control of the human subject who experiences those thoughts and feelings. Certain other trends in ecological thinking have tried to work their way around the issue of whether consciousness has agency or not, particularly in relation to critiquing Cartesian dualism. Two of these trends are attempts to develop ecocritical uses for Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s idea of an ‘incarnate cogito’ (Grear 2011: 38; Kerridge 2014: 366–368; Willoquet-Maricondi 2008: 181), and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (Swanstrom 2016: 11). A third trend is worth mentioning here in some detail, because of the way that it problematizes the possibility of active human consciousness, but then also displaces the significance of this problematization. This last methodology is called ‘New Materialism’, an emerging (and another disparate) approach that attempts to rethink issues of materialism and subjectivity. In some ways my own method here has some affinities with New Materialism, but not in terms of a New Materialist attempt to move away from the problematic issue of human consciousness. Jane Bennett, a key writer in this area, demonstrates how New Materialism simultaneously struggles with, and also displaces, the problematic agency of consciousness. Bennett accepts both that existing forms of

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consciousness are environmentally damaging, and that transforming consciousness is a deeply difficult enterprise, concluding that “[i]t seems necessary and impossible to rewrite the default grammar of agency, a grammar that assigns activity to people and passivity to things” (2010: 119). This chapter has covered the necessity of this change in consciousness in detail. New Materialism shares this idea about the necessity of transforming human consciousness, but is reticent about repeating existing accounts, which I will discuss in a moment and in the next chapter, of the potential ‘impossibility’ of the change that Bennett mentions. Thus, Kerridge, evaluating the approach of scholars like Bennett, states that New Materialist ecocritics are aligning ecocriticism with post-structuralism’s general critique of the unified self. They seek to banish early ecocriticism’s hostility to ‘theory’, and to apply post-structuralist insights to material ecological relationships, rescuing post-structuralism from an exclusive concern with cultural constructionism. (Kerridge 2014: 368) What Kerridge describes as “rescuing”, however, can also been thought of as an elision of the most problematic element of the whole crisis of epistemology underlying the climate crisis. If our current cultural constructions like Cartesian dualism are really so ecologically destructive, as claimed above, then the principal arena for analysis must be the same “concern with cultural constructionism” which Kerridge argues that New Materialism has “rescu[ed] post-structuralism from” (2014: 368). The starkness of deeply set biases against this poststructuralism, and in favour of an undertheorised reliance on the autonomy of human consciousness, is demonstrated by Kerridge’s postscript to the New Materialist engagement with theory: [in] apply[ing] post-structuralist insights to material ecological relationships [New Materialists] risk entrapping ecocriticism in one of post-structuralism’s greatest disadvantages: its […] dependency on forbiddingly dense, technical and alien linguistic formations, far removed from the idiom and conventional narrative structure of personal experience. (Kerridge 2014: 368) Although I share Kerridge’s preference for clarity over obscurity, it is also the case that his assumption that “personal experience” can address our destructive Cartesian thought and behaviour is in direct conflict with the psychoanalytic/ poststructuralist claim that all such experiences are problematically inflected by complex factors beyond the control of the subject doing the experiencing. The difference between the two rival approaches to personal experience, and to the consciousness relating to that experience, is central to the revised method that this book applies to ecocritical issues. Rosenhek’s aforementioned claim that “we humans are deeply embedded in the biosphere and it is quite simple to

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begin to remember this connection” (2004: 45, my emphasis) is an insight that depends on a tradition of experience exemplified by Aldo Leopold’s account of his Damascene encounter with a dying wolf: Only the ineducable tyro can fail to sense the presence or absence of wolves, or the fact that mountains have a secret opinion of them. My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. […] In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. [After shooting one] [w]e reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. (Leopold in Penna 1999: 128) Such experiences lead to what Næss calls “an intuitively clear and obvious value axiom” (Næss 1989: 28), so that encounters with nature beget positive attitudes towards nature. Even when an ecological scholar like SueEllen Campbell writes a book chapter called ‘The Land and Language of Desire: Where Deep Ecology and Post-Structuralism Meet’ (1996), she states that theory teaches me to argue that all desire is not human […] [b]ut it is in nature writing – perhaps almost as much as in the wilderness itself – that I learn to recognize the shape and force of my own desire to be at home on the earth. (Campbell 1996: 135–136) If such personal experiences – even the vicarious ones that Campbell associates with nature writing – help to develop less damaging attitudes towards the environment, then it would seem churlish to not recognise that they can have a positive use-value. One potential limitation of this approach, however, is that it values a certain type of aestheticised personal experience of nature, one emphasising the “desire” that Campbell mentions (1996: 136). A news story from the time of writing demonstrates the potential for such experiences to be heavily mediated by (specifically human) aesthetic notions. In June 2019 the BBC reported that the National Trust, a British environmental and heritage conservation charity, had “paid £202,000 for a Lake District landscape immortalised by painter J.M. W. Turner” (BBC 2019). The report included both a photographic image of the landscape and a reproduction of the painting of it, Crummock Water, Looking Towards Buttermere (1797). Tom Burditt, a spokesperson for the trust, said: ‘We know [the location] was visited by Turner and formed a popular stopping off point for early Lake District tourists in the Georgian and Victorian eras. We’ll work hard to support this area of high cultural and ecological importance, which neighbours woodland, fells and lakes. […]

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Environmental crisis and epistemological crisis We plan to maintain its mosaic of veteran and younger trees and heathland habitats which provide a haven for rare birds, bluebells and red squirrels.’ (BBC 2019)

Here, the ecological maintenance of the landscape is mentioned only after the aestheticised (even fetishised) reference to a painting tradition related to a culturally- and historically-specific nostalgic, nationalistic and paternalistic connection to nature as landscape.3 Thus, J. Baird Callicott has claimed that “[m]any more of our conservation and management decisions have been motivated by aesthetic rather than ethical values, by beauty instead of duty” (2008: 106). Deep ecological intuitions might therefore be based on certain problematic human attitudes about how the wonder of nature relates to something observably ‘beautiful’, and in the Lake District example, something which is actually secondary to the artistic mimesis of that beauty. Indeed, this stress on the personal element of engagements with nature suggests an unwitting return to anthropocentrism. Žižek notes the irony of how The more we emphasize the break with anthropocentrism, man’s subordination to the totality of nature, etc., the more this totality of nature is perceived, in an implicit way, from the standpoint of the human interest: there is no purely ‘natural’ equilibrium, clean rivers and air, etc., are desirable only, if, underhand, we observe nature sub specie man’s survival. In other words, such an ecological ‘decenterment’ already relies on a surreptitious teleological subordination of nature to man. (Žižek 2012: 186, original emphasis) Deep ecologists might counter this argument with Næss’s claim that “the equal right to live and blossom is an intuitively clear and obvious value axiom. Its restriction to humans is an anthropocentrism with detrimental effects on the quality of life of humans themselves” (1989: 28, original emphasis), but in intuiting this axiom from personal experience, Næss derives a conclusion from the perceiving/experiencing human in a manner that replicates Descartes’s reasoning that the res extensa universe emanates out from the ontologically primary res cogitans human. The more important problem with this emphasis on personal experience, however, is the reliance that deep ecology places on the inevitability of such experience leading to changes in thought. The aforementioned accounts of awe in response to nature have a clear lineage going back to Romantic notions of the sublime, but it is also the case that the sublime potentially perpetuates a certain form of anthropocentrism. I will discuss how filmic representations of awe-inspiring nature are structured around a centralised spectating Cartesian subject in detail in the next chapter, but more fundamentally an integral component of the sublime experience is wonder in response to nature’s awesomeness, and a concomitant recognition that the experiencing human subject is dwarfed by this awesomeness. The connection between this experiential

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sentiment and the one described by Leopold is clear. However, just as the aforementioned experience of nature-as-beauty suggests a subordination of that which is beautiful to the eye of the beholder, so too the sublime recognition of the individual’s insignificance in the vastness of nature also suggests that the experience of this insignificance is paradoxically as important as the vastness which causes the experience of insignificance. German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s thinking about the sublime is central to this paradox. Christopher Hitt, evaluating this philosophy, states that, for Kant, the sublime ‘is an object (of nature) the representation of which determines the mind to regard the elevation of nature beyond our reach as equivalent to a presentation of ideas.’ […] Such a description implies the effective dissolution of the phenomenal reality into the domain of the ideal. […] Nature is reduced to ‘a mere nothing,’ to use Kant’s phrase, leaving only the self in all its glory. (Hitt 1999: 611) Deep ecologists’ personal experiences, clearly, do not lead to this relegation of nature to ‘a mere nothing’. But aestheticised responses to nature, and certain tendencies in sublime responses to nature, mean that personal experiences do not necessarily facilitate deep ecological intuitions, and even if they do facilitate such intuitions, these may perpetuate certain lingering elements of anthropocentrism that conflict with the deep ecological desire to overcome this anthropocentrism. Even more significantly, however, these deep ecological claims that personal experiences of nature activate “intuitive” (Næss 1989: 28) “desire[s] to be at home on the earth” (Campbell 1996: 136) assume that there is an ecologically-beneficent core within everyone, waiting to be nurtured. Indeed, this is where deep ecologists/ecopsychologists tend to use the notion of the ‘unconscious’ in a very different way to how I am using it. Roszak, for example, thinks of humans as having “an ‘ecological unconscious’ [which] lies at the core of the psyche, there to be drawn upon as a resource for restoring us to environmental harmony” (1995: 14). This ‘ecological unconscious’ is the ‘savage’ remnant within us, […] the collective unconscious, [which] at its deepest level, shelters the compacted ecological intelligence of our species, the source from which culture finally unfolds as the self-conscious reflection of nature’s own steadily emergent mind-likeness. (Roszak 1992: 304) Lawrence Buell’s notion of the ‘environmental unconscious’ is a little closer to my psychoanalysis, particularly in the way that Buell draws on Fredric Jameson’s notion of the ‘political unconscious’ (1981), which I discuss in more detail in the next chapter. For Buell, the

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Environmental crisis and epistemological crisis environmental unconscious […] derives partially from Freud and thence from literary theorist Fredric Jameson’s attempted synthesis of various strains of Freudian and Marxist thought in his theory of a ‘political unconscious’ supposedly operative in narrative texts. Jameson claims that psychological unconscious is mediated by collective social experience and structures according to ideological frameworks. (Buell 2001: 24)

However, as Buell notes here, Jameson claims that texts carry unconscious meaning which transmits ideological values, whereas Buell’s notion of the ‘environmental unconscious’ is closer to Roszak’s idea of an internal and essential relationship to nature, with the added claim that “acts of writing and reading will likely involve simultaneous processes of environmental awakening […] and of distortion, repression, forgetting, inattention” (Buell 2001: 18). Buell’s environmental unconscious in its negative aspect refers to the impossibility of individual or collective perception coming to full consciousness. […] Yet environmental unconscious is also to be seen as potential: as a residual capacity […] to awake to fuller apprehension of physical environment and one’s interdependence with it. (Buell 2001: 22) Both Roszak and Buell therefore conceptualise the unconscious as an (at least potentially) environmentally-friendly disposition which our conscious minds repress, rather than as a socially constructed ideological matrix which determines each individual’s subjectivity. For Roszak and Buell, our conscious minds may be alienated from the environment, but the unconscious can reconnect us. For me, developing Jameson and others discussed in this chapter, our conscious minds are still alienated from the environment, but the unconscious performs an integral ideological role in formulating, regulating, and expressing that alienation.4 Psychoanalysis, then, rejects the idea that humans have a ‘true’ nature that can be cultivated through experience. Personal experience never writes onto a tabula rasa form of human subjectivity. Desires are formulated by external socio-cultural forces, and personal experiences are merely descantations on broader socio-cultural phenomena. Confronted with the environment that Leopold saw as personally transformative, any given subject might share Leopold’s deep ecological experience, but might combine this with an experience of retrogressive nationalism, through a focus on geographic specificity; or might replace it with experiences of anthropocentric superiority, through a desire to hunt in and/or ‘tame’ the environment, or even through an anthropocentric form of cruelty, like the sadistic child who pulls legs off spiders. An agoraphobic would have another different personal experience. These differences are hermeneutic – the interpretation depends on the interpreter. Objects, nature included, generate no intrinsic and universal human response.

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Instead, Lacan’s psychoanalysis claims that interpretation depends on a repository of feelings, beliefs, assumptions and biases which seem to come from within the human subject, but which are, in fact, constituted more from without than from within. This argument is more than a mere historicising of the subject, so that it goes beyond claiming that a contemporary Italian thinks differently because (s)he has access to different knowledge and ideas than that available to a Classical Roman. In addition, the historical, social and cultural components influencing the subject are inherently determining because Lacanian psychoanalysis is part of Ricœur’s school of suspicion. That is, human consciousness is not autonomous – consciousness is instead merely deluded about its autonomy.

Human consciousness and the Symbolic Order This is where Lacan provides the most complete account of the Cartesian illusion of the cogito’s agency, and it is an account that goes far beyond the aforementioned deep ecological criticisms that the cogito is the cause of a damaging dualistic alienation from nature. For Lacan, the cogito is not merely harmful. Even more significantly, it is a complete misrecognition of how its own consciousness operates, and of exactly what motivates any given subject’s most deeply felt beliefs and values. Describing this psychoanalytic approach, Žižek states that “the Cartesian ego, the self-transparent subject of Reason, is an illusion; its truth is the decentered, split, finite subject thrown into a contingent, nontransparent context, and this is what psychoanalysis renders visible” (1998: 2). From this Lacanian perspective ‘having’ a thought is not necessarily the same as ‘thinking’ that thought, or at least not in the manner that Descartes conceptualises the act of ‘thinking’. This directly contradicts the foundational ‘I think’ element which defines the cogito. Thinking happens, certainly, but the ‘I’ does not necessarily actively ‘do’ this thinking – the subject may experience the thought, and experience the illusion of ‘thinking’ the thought, without necessarily being the author or architect of that thought. The thought may pass through, without revealing that it is merely passing through. This experience of seeming to author thoughts is only an experience of something which is instead authored by repressed sexual drives from the unconscious (psychoanalysis based on Freud), a habituated structure of thought derived from the conventionality of language (semiotics based on Nietzsche), or an ideological attitude derived from hegemonic social relationships determined by material conditions (socialism based on Marx). Lacan calls these external forces the Symbolic Order, which is a historicallyand culturally-specific matrix of possible thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and so on, which any given individual human subject assents to internalise, without being aware that he or she is assenting to internalise that matrix. The Symbolic Order is anterior to the subject – it exists before each subject’s existence. When a child is born in contemporary occidental society it will be given cards and presents coloured either pink or blue that signal an interminably complex

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network of historically-specific socio-cultural attitudes towards gender which that child will unavoidably have to engage with throughout his or her life, but which were already in place when the proud relative entered the gift shop, and was confronted with separate aisles of pink and blue, prior to the child’s birth. The central key element of our contemporary Symbolic Order, more important even than the aforementioned gender binary, is the Cartesian cogito. The Symbolic Order persuades the consenting subject that (s)he is the autonomous res cogitans at the centre of meaning even when, as psychoanalysis shows, the autonomy of the cogito is an illusion. As discussed above, Descartes has the world (the res extensa) emanate out from the human subject (the res cogitans), but Lacanian psychoanalysis conceptualises this relationship as operating in the opposite direction entirely. Lacan therefore reverses Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” (1982 [1644]: 5) into “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think” (Lacan 1977: 166). For Lacan, the subject is no longer defined by the act of ‘I think’, but instead by the act of having thoughts that are determined by the Symbolic Order, which existed prior to the birth of the subject, and which will continue to exist after the death of the subject. Lacan therefore states that “I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that is being written, even if it looks like a subject” (1977: viii). The Lacanian ‘I’, unlike the Cartesian ‘I’, is not active author but passive text. Lacan’s critique of the cogito can be useful, in an ecocritical sense, in three ways. First, it can extend and complete the eco-philosophical critique of the Cartesian subject’s destructive nature. Like the eco-philosophical critique, my Lacanian critique also conceptualises Descartes’s dualistic alienation of the res cogitans human from the res extensa environment as environmentally damaging. In addition, though, Lacan conceptualises the cogito as a pathological alienation integral to each human subject. He claims that “the ego is structured exactly like a symptom. At the heart of the subject, it is only a privileged symptom, the human symptom par excellence, the mental illness of man [sic]” (Lacan 1988: 16). The illusion that the subject is in control of its consciousness is a misrecognition that defines what it is to be a human subject, a fundamental misunderstanding of who we are at the very core of our being. This points to the second ecocritical use of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The Cartesian “human symptom par excellence” (Lacan 1988: 16), as discussed above, is responsible for ecological degradation. But the same symptom is also responsible for the deep ecological claim that personal experiences can transform our ecologically destructive thought and behaviour. Lacanian psychoanalysis rejects the idea that there is a ‘true’ self that one might find and know underlying this symptom. As Malcolm Bowie puts it, in Lacanian psychoanalysis ‘The subject’ is no longer a substance endowed with qualities, or a fixed shape possessing dimensions, or a container awaiting the multifarious contents that experience provides: it is a series of events within language, a procession of turns, tropes and inflections. […] [T]he characteristic

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sensations of ‘being a person’ or ‘having a personality’ come from the selfperpetuating imperative that propels the signifying chain. (Bowie 1991: 76) So, if ‘having’ a thought is not the same as ‘thinking’ a thought, then having a ‘personal experience’, such as those so central to deep ecology, is not the same as being author or architect of that experience. The deep ecological response to this might be ‘this is well and good – the personal experience is something that transcends the individual, so that nature, rather than the human subject, authors that experience’. But this response still relies on an essentialised subject who can respond to nature without the mediation of the Symbolic Order whereas, from a Lacanian perspective, any subject’s response to nature is inevitably inflected by internalised assumptions and beliefs which are culturally specific, and which are not a reflection of a universal, intrinsic and non-socio-cultural connection with nature. The deep ecological focus on personal experience stresses that the communication of ideas occurs outside the constraints of the Symbolic Order. Recall that Kerridge claimed that “post-structuralism’s greatest disadvantages [is] its […] dependency on forbiddingly dense, technical and alien linguistic formations, far removed from the idiom and conventional narrative structure of personal experience” (2014: 368). From the Lacanian perspective, however, the “idiom and conventional narrative structure” associated with language and personal experience is merely another component of the Cartesian illusion that we control our consciousness. As Bowie puts it Lacan sets out to inhabit the linguistic dimensions that the Cartesian cogito failed to acknowledge. The subject is irremediably split in and by language, but ‘modern man’ [sic] still has not learned this lesson, [and] does not understand that the trust he places in language, even as he prates about his doubts, is in direct line of descent from the cogito. (Bowie 1991: 72) We cannot trust personal experience, then, or any attempts to communicate this personal experience, because such experiences and communications are informed by all kinds of unacknowledged ideological suppositions. The Cartesian ‘I’ at the centre of these experiences is the fundamentally destructive illusion at the heart of our epistemological crisis. If we cannot trust personal experience, then that leaves the poststructuralism entailing Kerridge’s disdained “forbiddingly dense, technical and alien linguistic formations” (2014: 368) as our only reliable tool. This may be a somewhat unwieldy weapon, and one many scholars are unwilling to take up, given their reservations about employing this complex methodology which is so counter-intuitive to our Cartesian sense of centrality and agency. But this tool facilitates analyses that account for the vagaries of how the Symbolic Order inflects our attitudes towards the environment, rather than merely elides these pressures.

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This method allows for the third ecocritical use of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Specific analyses of how Symbolic stimuli influence subjective attitudes towards the environment can be undertaken. The rest of this book is devoted to one arena of this interaction between Symbolic stimuli and subjective response – films, and more particularly films dealing with examples of environmental degradation. The preceding pages have painted a bleak picture of human agency in the face of devastating anthropogenic ecological degradation. The root cause of this is the Cartesian dualism critiqued by deep ecology, and the uncomfortable claim that this critique is not enough to avert disaster because Cartesian consciousness cannot simply be willed away. Existing ecological scholarship has identified what Chapple and Tucker call the “flaw in the human psyche [which] has enabled us to develop attitudes which result in the poisoning of our own nest” (1994: xvi), but this scholarship has not recognised that this flaw is beyond our rational control, and this scholarship has thereby oversimplified the cure. This insight brings us back to the poststructuralist project which attempts to identify how socio-cultural practices and relationships influence the consciousness of human subjects. Such a change of focus may seem to be a paradoxical turning away from the environment back to humanity, but given that the environmental crisis is caused by humanity, the necessary focus of study is human subjectivity. My ecocritical approach, therefore, is avowedly (and unorthodoxly) anthropocentric, but only because our environmental and epistemological crises are anthropogenic. If human consciousness is the problem, then human consciousness must be the chief object of study. The next chapter applies this psychoanalytic/poststructuralist approach to film, and discusses how certain key aspects of films, even those which ostensibly warn against environmental degradation, contribute to cultural practices that reinforce the environmentally destructive illusion that is Cartesian subjectivity.

Notes 1 There is a longstanding affiliation between ecological activism and activism against various forms of discrimination and oppression. Recently, activist groups like Extinction Rebellion and Zero Hour have been emphasising the intersectionality of these causes. Jamie Margolin, for example, writing on behalf of the latter organisation, states that “[w]e have to dismantle the systems of oppression that gave rise to and perpetuate the climate crisis, including colonialism, racism and patriarchy” (2019). 2 Estok’s explanation for ecophobia is more complex than many of the historical explanations, because he thinks of human alienation from nature as both socio-cultural and fundamentally inseparable from the biological human organism’s genetics: “Ecophobia, like any other human behaviour […] is written into our genes. It cannot be otherwise since there is no magical ventriloquism here, no enchanted space outside of our genes from which human behaviour can reasonably be thought to originate” (2018b: 12). Therefore, “[e]cophobia is vestigial genetics gone to seed, things in evolutionary biology that have preserved us but are no longer necessary and yet form the basis of a very destructive set of behaviors” (2019: 44). Although I am also interested in the relationships between evolutionary psychology, culture and

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psychoanalysis, this genetic component is beyond the scope of this book, which focuses on how a particular element of ecophobia is the result of specific historical circumstances. 3 Taken to its logical conclusion, this notion of nature as landscape as representation of certain aspects of the character of certain people belonging to/owning that landscape might lead to the kind of possessive attitudes towards nature derived from what Albert Boime called the The Magisterial Gaze (1991). 4 Patricia Yaeger’s notion of an ‘energy unconscious’ is closer to my own approach than Roszak’s or Buell’s, because Yaeger thinks of the unconscious components of texts as operating in ideological terms rather than terms which can connect humans with the plenitude of the ecological/environmental unconscious. Analysing fictional texts referring, in various oblique ways, to how humans use energy sources, Yaeger asks whether Jameson’s “model of the political unconscious also describe[s] an energy unconscious? […] Energy invisibilities may constitute different kinds of erasures. Following Jameson, we might argue that the writer who treats fuel as a cultural code or reality effect makes a symbolic move, asserts his or her class position in a system of mythic abundance” (2011: 309). As such, Yaeger and I share an understanding of the unconscious as an arena of ideological mystification, in contradistinction to Rosazk’s and Buell’s understanding of the unconscious as an arena of ‘authentic’ interaction with the environment. However, Yaeger’s ‘energy unconscious’ is more narrow than my approach, in the sense that she is concerned with our culture’s unconscious attitudes to a particular aspect of ecological degradation – energy use – whereas I am concerned with our culture’s broader unconscious attitudes to ecological degradation.

Bibliography Ayres, E. (1999) God’s Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future. London: Four Walls Eight Windows. BBC (2019) Turner Revered Lake District Landscape Bought for £200K. BBC News Website, 5 June. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria -48521026. (Accessed 8 June 2019). Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. London: Duke University Press. Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City: Anchor Books. Boime, A. (1991) The Magisterial Gaze: Manifest Destiny and American Landscape Painting, c.1830–1865. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Bowie, M. (1991) Lacan. London: Fontana. Bryant, B. (2011) Introduction: Environmental Crisis or Crisis of Epistemology: Working for Sustainable Knowledge, in Bryant, B. (ed.) Environmental Crisis or Crisis of Epistemology?: Working for Sustainable Knowledge and Environmental Justice. New York: Morgan James Publishing, pp. 1–34. Buell, L. (2001) Writing for an Endangered World. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Callicott, J.B. (2008) Leopold’s Land Aesthetic, in Carlson, A. and Lintott, S. (eds.) Nature Aesthetics and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 105–118. Campbell, S. (1996) The Land and Language of Desire: Where Deep Ecology and Post-Structuralism Meet, in Glotfelty, C. and Fromm, H. (eds.) The Ecocriticism Reader. London: University of Georgia Press, pp. 124–136.

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Chapple, C.K. and Tucker, M.E. (1994) Introduction, in Chapple, C.K. (ed.) Ecological Prospects: Scientific, Religious, and Aesthetic Perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. xi–xxi. Code, L. (2006) Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location. New York: Oxford University Press. Cubitt, S. (2005) Eco Media. New York: Rodopi. Descartes, R. (1982 [1644]) Principles of Philosophy. (Translated by Valentine R. Miller and Reese P. Miller). London: Kluwer. Descartes, R. (1991 [1619–1650]) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 3, The Correspondence. (Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch and Anthony Kenny). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descartes, R. (1998 [1637]) Discourse on Method. (Translated by Donald A. Cress). Cambridge: Hackett. Devall, B. and Sessions, G. (1985) Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. Layton: Gibbs Smith. Donovan, J. (2017) Interspecies Dialogue and Animal Ethics: The Feminist Care Perspective, in Kalof, L. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208–224. Eder, K. (1996) The Social Construction of Nature. London: Sage. Estok, S.C. (2009) Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and Ecophobia. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 16(2), 203–225. Estok, S.C. (2018a) The Ecophobia Hypothesis. Abingdon: Routledge. Estok, S.C. (2018b) Climate Change Narratives and the Need for Revisioning of Heritage, Knowledge, and Memory. Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology, 15(1), 7–21. Estok, S.C. (2019) Theorising the EcoGothic. Gothic Nature, 1, 34–53. Garrard, G. (2004) Ecocriticism. Abingdon: Routledge. Genesis, Holy Bible. King James Version. Giddens, A. (2009) The Politics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Polity. Glotfelty, C. (1996) Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis, in Glotfelty, C. and Fromm, H. (eds.) The Ecocriticism Reader. London: University of Georgia Press, pp. xv–xxxvii. Grear, A. (2011) The Vulnerable Living Order: Human Rights and the Environment in a Critical and Philosophical Perspective. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 2(1), 23–44. Grear, A. (2015) The Closures of Legal Subjectivity: Why Examining ‘Law’s Person’ is Critical to an Understanding of Injustice in an Age of Climate Crisis, in Grear, A. and Kotzé, L.K. (eds.) Research Handbook on Human Rights and the Environment. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 79–101. Harari, N.Y. (2011) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. London: Vintage. Hitt, C. (1999) Towards an Ecological Sublime. New Literary History, 30(3), 602–623. Ingram, D. (2000) Green Screen: Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Jameson, F. (1981) The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Methuen. Kalevi, K. and Clauss, E. (eds.) (2011) Towards A Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs. London: Imperial College Press.

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Kerridge, R. (2014) Ecocritical Approaches to Literary Form and Genre: Urgency, Depth, Provisionality, Temporality, in Garrard, G. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 361–376. Lacan, J. (1977) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. (Translated by Alan Sheridan). London: Hogarth Press. Lacan, J. (1988) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I. Freud’s Papers on Technique 1953– 1954. (Translated by John Forrester. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leiserowitz, A.A. (2004) Before and After ‘The Day After Tomorrow’: A U.S. Study of Climate Change Risk Perception. Environment, 46(9), 22–37. Lowe, T., Brown, K., Dessai, S., de França Doria, M., Haynes, K. and Vincent, K. (2006) Does Tomorrow Ever Come? Disaster Narrative and Public Perceptions of Climate Change. Public Understanding of Science, 15(4), 435–457. Macy, J. and Johnstone, C. (2012) Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy. Novata: New World Library. Margolin, J. (2019) We Were Already Over 350ppm When I Was Born. The Guardian, 12 July. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/12/ jamie-margolin-zero-hour-climate-change (Accessed 18 July 2019). Merchant, C. (ed.) (1998) Green Versus Gold: Sources in California’s Environmental History. Washington, D.C.: Island. Midgley, M. (2011) The Myths We Live By. Abingdon: Routledge. Murray, R.L. and Heumann, J.K. (2009) Ecology and Popular Film: Cinema on the Edge. Albany: State University of New York Press. Næss, A. (1989) Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. (Translated and edited by David Rothenberg). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nimmo, R. (2011) The Making of the Human: Anthropocentrism in Modern Social Thought, in Boddice, R. (ed.) Anthropocentrism: Humans, Animals, Environments. Leiden: Brill, pp. 59–79. Penman, R. (2001) Environmental Matters and Communication Challenges, in Fill, A. and Mühlhäusler, P. (eds.) Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment. London: Continuum, pp. 143–153. Penna, A.N. (1999) Nature’s Bounty: Historical and Modern Environmental Perspectives. London: M.E. Sharpe. Ricœur, P. (1970) Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. (Translated by Denis Savage). New Haven: Yale University Press. Rosenhek, R. (2004) Deep Ecology: A Radical Transformation of Consciousness. Biodiversity, 5(4), 45–46. Roszak, T. (1978) Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society. Garden City: Doubleday. Roszak, T. (1992) The Voice of the Earth. New York: Simon & Schuster. Roszak, T. (1995) Where Psyche Meets Gaia, in Roszak, T., Gomes, M.E. and Kanner, A.D. (eds.) Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, pp. 1–20. Rust, S. (2013) Hollywood and Climate Change, in Rust, S., Monani, S. and Cubitt, S. (eds.) Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 191–211. Seymour, N. (2012) Toward an Irreverent Ecocriticism. Journal of Ecocriticism, 4(2), 56–71. Stibbe, A. (2015) Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Swanstrom, E. (2016) Animal, Vegetable, Digital: Experiments in New Media Aesthetics and Environmental Politics. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. White Jr, L. (1996) The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, in Glotfelty, C. and Fromm, H. (eds.) The Ecocriticism Reader. London: University of Georgia Press, pp. 3–14. Willoquet-Maricondi, P. (2008) ‘Prospero’s Books’, Postmodernism, and the Reenchantment of the World, in Willoquet-Maricondi, P. and Alemany-Galway, M. (eds.) Peter Greenaway’s Postmodern / Poststructuralist Cinema. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, pp. 177–201. Yaeger, P. (2011) Editor’s Column: Literature in the Ages of Wood, Tallow, Coal, Whale Oil, Gasoline, Atomic Power, and Other Energy Sources. PMLA, 126(2), 305–310. Žižek, S. (1998) Cogito as a Shibboleth, in Žižek, S. (ed.) Cogito and the Unconscious. London: Duke University Press, pp. 1–9. Žižek, S. (2011) Living in the End Times. London: Verso. Žižek, S. (2012) Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. Revised Edition. London: Routledge.

Filmography Climate Change: The Facts (2019) Directed by Serena Davies. UK: BBC. Day After Tomorrow, The (2004) Directed by Roland Emmerich. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. Fast and the Furious, The (2001) Directed by Rob Cohen. USA: Universal. Inconvenient Truth, An (2006) Directed by Davis Guggenheim. USA: Lawrence Bender Productions. Matrix, The (1999) Directed by The Wachowskis. USA: Warner Bros.

Painting Turner, J.M.W. (1797) Crummock Water, Looking Towards Buttermere [Graphite on Paper]. Tate Gallery, London.

2

Cinema spectatorship as an illusory Cartesian ‘symptom’

The previous chapter established that existing ecocriticism has successfully identified the defining feature of contemporary humanity’s ecophobic alienation from nature – Cartesian subjectivity – but has oversimplified the solution to the cogito’s destructivity with its claim that experiences of nature can change thinking, and create an ‘ecological consciousness’. Various strands of philosophical thought, which Ricoeur has called the “school of suspicion” (1970: 28), can be used to problematize this ecocritical position. From this suspicious perspective, most fully articulated in Lacanian psychoanalysis, the human subject does not have unmediated control over and access to consciousness, and cannot therefore simply adopt ‘ecological consciousness’ through an act of will. Instead, consciousness is determined by factors outside the control of that consciousness. The deep ecological focus on personal experience therefore relies on the illusory autonomous rationality of the same cogito that it otherwise seeks to critique. Ecocriticism requires a theory explaining why deep ecology has not successfully produced widespread changes in thinking that transcend ecophobic Cartesian dualism. Lacanian psychoanalysis provides this theory. This chapter sets out how and why existing ecocriticism has deviated from the politicised use of psychoanalysis/poststructuralism which has been so influential in the non-environmental humanities. It then outlines how the philosophical (anthropo-)centrality of the Cartesian cogito is replicated and normalised in aesthetic practices beginning with geometric perspective painting, and culminating in film. This approach is then positioned against existing ecological film studies, to clarify how my method departs from current scholarship, and the chapter then concludes by establishing how and why the films analysed in this book have been selected.

Ecocriticism and ‘Theory’ Ecocritical approaches to the school of suspicion, which Serpil Oppermann describes as “theoretical discontents” (2011: 157), mean that this book’s psychoanalytic/poststructuralist ecocritical methodology is somewhat atypical. The field’s ‘theoretical discontents’ are partly a result of the kind of activist optimism about fostering ‘ecological consciousness’, discussed in the previous chapter, and DOI: -3

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partly a result of a broader anti-theoretical movement that substantially altered the wider humanities during the period when ecocriticism was becoming institutionalised. This post-theoretical turn was significant in literary studies and film studies, and meant that ecocriticism’s atheoretical approach coalesced with, and appealed to, broader contemporary scholarly trends.1 Thus, Garrard comments that “[b]ack in the 1990s when Theory was identified primarily with anthropocentric, impenetrable French philosophers, ecocriticism was pleased to constitute itself as anti-Theory” (2014: 9). This humanities-wide reaction against theory was then itself somewhat rolled back, but the consequence of this for ecocriticism was not a return to the poststructuralist orthodoxy from literary studies’ and film studies’ theoretical heyday. Garrard’s account of how ecocritical theory developed is indicative both in terms of a lingering reliance on completely non-theoretical personal experience, and in terms of the particular aspects of theory that were adopted. He states that although there is now an acceptance that theoretical reasoning and philosophical reflection are modes of understanding as indispensable as personal experience and close readings of texts, […] [a] deicidal reconfiguration of the theoretical pantheon has been required, though: out […] went psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva and in came phenomenologists and systems theorists. […] Diverse as these perspectives are […] the presiding figures today are the French anthropologist of science, Bruno Latour, and American biologist-turned-critic Donna Haraway. (Garrard 2014: 9) This ‘deicidal reconfiguration’ specifically rejects the key premises of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis (and misinterprets some of these premises, as I will discuss in a moment), not just because it finds these premises unclear or unuseful, but because it claims that these premises are actively damaging to the environment. S.K. Robisch, for example, argues that ‘Theory’ regularly indicts itself as a participant in the destruction of biospheric health by promoting a thought process that renders the biosphere an immaterial idea subject to the laboratory of abstraction – a characteristic shared with economic ‘theories’ that have contributed to monoculture and the erasure of ecosystems. This in turn contributes to a politics and practice of contentment with loss – of species, of wilderness areas (in which the theorist never believed in the first place), and of diversity. (Robisch 2009: 702–703) Latour, one of the key figures identified by Garrard in contemporary ecocritical theory, similarly criticises what Garrard calls “postmodern relativists” (2014: 9) because

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sophisticated sociological questioning of scientific truth claims seems indistinguishable from politically-motivated undermining of, for example, climate science [so that] good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. (Latour 2004: 227) Latour is right to be concerned with how what we now call the alt-right have co-opted certain parts of the methodology of the post-’68 radical intellectual left. At the time of writing this alt-right rejection of the ‘truth’ of anthropogenic global warming extends as far as the President of the USA. Ecocriticism therefore does need to employ a form of theory that can counter ‘post-truth’ climate denialism. But this does not necessarily entail completely rejecting psychoanalytic poststructuralism. The reason for this is partly because of errors in Latour’s and especially Robisch’s critiques of the poststructuralist claim that ideas (including ideas about ‘nature’) are culturally constructed. Robisch’s critique states that poststructuralism “renders the biosphere an immaterial idea […] in which the theorist never believed” (2009: 702–703). But this claim misunderstands the idea of social construction – as Oppermann puts it, “any attempt to define nature leads us back to conceptualizations, not to absurd claims about the nonexistence of the real world” (2011: 163, original emphasis). Even more importantly, as discussed in the previous chapter, Latour’s “hardwon evidence that could save our lives” (2004: 227) is not sufficient, on its own, to avert disaster because – and this is where the insights of psychoanalysis are absolutely essential – human culture is able to displace and disavow that hard-won evidence. The psychoanalytic ecological film theory set out in this chapter, then, is a departure from ecocritical orthodoxy both in terms of rejecting the activist potential of personal experience, and in terms of utilising a hitherto-ignored theory of how human subjectivity is inflected by external factors to explain how and why the apocalyptic threat of ecocide is displaced and disavowed. The previous chapter discussed how Cartesian subjectivity is an environmentally-destructive illusion. This chapter outlines how an aesthetic tradition, beginning with perspectival painting and culminating in film – even films warning against ecological degradation – reinforces and perpetuates this ecophobic illusion.

Cartesian dualism as an aesthetic practice Geometric perspectival painting When Descartes wrote “I think, therefore I am” (1982 [1644]: 5) he explicitly expressed his (and our) culture’s attitude to the primacy of human subjectivity

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(the res cogitans) over the natural world (the res extensa). His lexical articulation, however, was not the only manifestation of this idea, which was in the process of becoming established in the Early Modern Symbolic Order. Early Modern aesthetics also expressed this Symbolic idea, principally through the newly developed conventions of perspectival painting, and these conventions were later adopted and adapted by film. Film’s perpetuation of illusory Cartesian subjectivity is dependent on a number of interrelated elements of the cogito. These are structured around the way that the cogito centralises the human subject as an ontological point of certainty amidst a universe of doubt, and thereby concludes that the wider world exists only because it can be perceived by the certitude of the central human point – the res extensa literally extends out from the focal res cogitans. Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos demonstrates how this Cartesian binary facilitates an understanding of the environment as externality and humanity as centrality: Etymologically, environment comes from the word environs, in its turn coming from the French words en (‘in’) and virer (‘to turn’). This implies an inside that stands erect and an outside that surrounds this inside and turns around it. ‘Environment’ is the ‘thing’ that surrounds ‘us’, the dervish-like outside that whirls like a frilly skirt around a stable pivot. But the pivot remains not only stable, fixed and unyielding but significantly ‘central’. (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos 2011: 22, original emphasis) There is therefore a geometric element to the division between humanity and nature, which is derived from the centrality of the cogito that observes an external universe separated out by the very act of observation. This entails more than a dualism that divides humanity from nature – this entails a dualism that grounds the division in spatial terms derived from the perceptual punctum of humanity. The res cogitans/res extensa binary opposition is not just between thinking human and passive nature but between seeing human and seen nature. Hwa Yol Jung thus claims that “Descartes erected the canonical institution of the cogito, which is by necessity disembodied, monological/narcissistic, and ocularcentric. He built an epistemological Panopticon” (2007: 239). In the term ‘epistemological Panopticon’ Jung combines the Cartesian way of thinking about humanity’s separation from nature (Descartes’s epistemology) with the Cartesian way of understanding that this separated nature can be thought of as existing only because it can be perceived by the certitude of the centralised human cogito. In this sense Cartesian ocularcentrism is related to, and facilitates, anthropocentrism. It is not a coincidence, then, that the Early Modern period produced both a lexical articulation of ocularcentric anthropocentrism, in Descartes’s cogito, and an aesthetic articulation of this same ocularcentric anthropocentrism, in perspectival painting.2 Before the Renaissance, painters did not attempt to construct the illusion of three-dimensional perspective3 because the pre-Early Modern Symbolic Order did not conceptualise the res extensa external world as geometrically

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emanating out from the centralised res cogitans human subject. The Symbolic shift entailed a new philosophy, in Cartesian dualism, and a new aesthetics, in geometric linear perspectival painting. Lacan thus notes how this historical shift “is centred on a privileged interest for the domain of vision – whose relation with the institution of the Cartesian subject, which is itself a sort of geometral point, a point of perspective, we cannot fail to see” (Lacan 1977a: 86). This new aesthetic sensibility, moreover, is not only a replication of an aspect of the Symbolic Order. Crucially, it is also one element of a cultural regime that normalises, naturalises and institutionalises this aspect of the Symbolic Order, making it seem like incontrovertible ‘common sense’. In the Early Modern period a human subject looking at a painting would see the era’s anthropocentric individual humanism reflected back. More secular topics, heightened verisimilitude, and an increasing individualisation of an artist’s style were part of this humanism, but most important, and most subliminal, was the way that the painting’s formal geometry positioned the spectating subject at the optimal position to observe a tableau perfectly arranged to be observed from that one single position. The arrangement of the painting suggests that what is seen is a res extensa emanating out from a concomitant res cogitans human subject. The painting existed before the observer saw it, of course, just as perfectly composed as when seen, but each individual act of seeing suggests that each individual observer is the centre of all meaning and all perception, with an illusion of a world ordered by and for that observer’s gaze. Perspectival painting is therefore the ultimate aesthetic expression of the individualism that characterises Cartesian subjectivity. This subtle illusion, then, does not merely exploit and replicate the geometric nature of Cartesian subjectivity. It also reinforces the illusory nature of that subjectivity every time a painting seems to perfectly order the world just for the perceptual pleasure of each observing subject. Bill Nichols therefore argues that geometric painting operates “in terms of the constitution of the self-as-subject” (1981: 53), in the sense that it actively contributes to each subject’s sense of themselves as a subject. A Cartesian subject might read or hear Descartes’s claim that (s)he is a res cogitans centre of meaning, but in observing geometric painting (s)he has a personal experience of feeling that (s)he is that res cogitans centre of meaning. This personal experience is all the more ideological because it is imposed from without, but seems to come from within. The perceiving subject does not feel that (s)he is being forced or convinced into believing him/herself the res cogitans centre of meaning. The sensation appears to come from within, even though the sensation is a historically and culturally specific articulation of ideas from the Symbolic Order, formulated by an aesthetic manifestation of those Symbolic ideas. Geometric perspectival painting is therefore inherently and literally anthropocentric. The fictional world seems to exist for the spectator, unconsciously suggesting that the real world does too. This idea aligns, to some extent, with Albert Boime’s notion of The Magisterial Gaze (1991) activated by a certain tradition in American landscape painting. In the

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elevated, commanding perspective offered by these paintings Boime identified a “desire for dominance” (1991: 21) over nature. It is certainly the case that art’s formal structure, and the ideological effects generated by that formal structure, can be accompanied by ideological effects generated by art’s specific content. In the case of Boime’s paintings, this content is a vast empty land encouraging America’s Manifest Destiny. However, it is also the case that art’s formal structure can have certain ideological effects no matter what the specific content of each particular artistic text. Formal structures operate as part of Jameson’s “political unconscious” (1981), an idea which I discuss in more detail below. Jameson calls this particular aspect the “ideology of form”, and claims that form is immanently and intrinsically an ideology in its own right. […] The study of the ideology of form is no doubt grounded on a technical and formalistic analysis in the narrower sense, even though, unlike much traditional formal analysis, it seeks to reveal the active presence within the text of a number of […] formal processes as sedimented content in their own right, as carrying ideological messages of their own, distinct from the ostensible or manifest content of the work. (Jameson 1981: 99) Geometric perspectival painting is ideologically anthropocentric no matter what is depicted on the canvas, because its formal structure articulates the Cartesian dualism of active res cogitans observer and passive res extensa observed in aesthetic form. Geometric perspective and ‘realist’ film Psychoanalytic film theory has taken these arguments about painting and applied them to the cinema. Any film that utilises the conventions of geometric perspective, without interrogating or commenting on those conventions in a reflexive manner, is defined as ‘realist’ film. This is an important categorisation in this book, not least because most existing ecological film studies use the term ‘realism’ quite differently. What ‘realism’ means for psychoanalytic film theory, drawing to some extent on a model developed by Roland Barthes (1989 [1969]), is a particular kind of ‘reality effect’ that is not precisely the same as unmediated reality, but which establishes conventions that pass film off as somewhat like reality. Colin MacCabe, who was influential in formulating these ideas, states that realist “film does not reveal the real in a moment of transparency, but rather […] is constituted by a set of discourses which […] produce a certain reality” (1985: 62). The kind of films discussed in this chapter, and throughout most of the book, are realist films in these terms, although non-realist or anti-realist films will also be analysed, in terms of how they relate to the spectating Cartesian subject, below and in more detail in Chapter 7.

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By realist film, then, I mean any film that utilises (without interrogating) the formal grammar of geometric perspective. Each individual image in realist film is like the complete image of a perspectival painting – the image creates the impression of three-dimensional space, and it positions the spectator as the ostensible locus of meaning. The spectator is shown precisely what (s)he needs to see in order to understand and enjoy the film unfolding before him/her. Even if the spectator is temporarily denied the illusion of mastery over the image, such as when the filmmakers do not want to reveal a pertinent piece of information – is Mildred Pierce (Curtiz 1945) the murderer?; which one of The Usual Suspects (Singer 1995) is pulling the strings? – this is only a deferral of the illusion of mastery, which the spectator will achieve later. Film, of course, is unlike painting in a number of important ways. In terms of perspectival geometry, this means that any single image is not necessarily static, either in terms of the objects on screen or in terms of the camera’s potential movement – something, in the kìnematic ‘movies’, is typically moving. (The earlier term ‘moving pictures’ demonstrates the extent to which this aspect of film simultaneously relies on and departs from the conventions of painting.) In addition to featuring movement, realist film (almost without exception) utilises editing to transfer from one image to another. Each of these elements potentially disrupts the coherence of perspectival geometry. Painting’s ideological anthropocentric effect is predicated on a stable res extensa image that generates the impression of centrality in the observing res cogitans. If this stable image were to move, and particularly if it were to change into a completely different image, as happens with film editing, then the centrality of the observing res cogitans might be shattered. Instead of the spectator experiencing the illusion of mastery over an image, the spectator might instead experience a disorientating destruction of that illusion. The image might no longer be a res extensa seeming to emanate out from the cogito, but become instead a demonstration that the centrality of the res cogitans is a misrecognition.

Realist film geometry Suture from the Real to the Symbolic Order Were this the case, realist film would be inevitably and radically non-Cartesian. The explanation for why this is not the case again comes from Lacanian theory, and utilises an example that Lacan identified in a particular perspectival painting. The Symbolic Order, it will be recalled, is an external repository of ideas, attitudes, behaviours, beliefs, forms of appearance, and so on. Individual subjects assent to internalise certain designated aspects of the Symbolic Order. It is deemed appropriate, for example, that people born into particular biological sexes internalise various attitudes that the Symbolic Order associates with those biological sexes. These attitudes may have some basis in the same biology which determined the sex of each assenting subject, but they are also historically, socially and culturally specific – they are the result of socio-cultural evolution as well as genetic

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evolution. (It is also the case that each individual subject may negotiate or resist certain Symbolic elements, but these negotiations will still be structured within a Symbolic context, so that a rejection of something Symbolically masculine typically entails the acceptance of a Symbolically-binary feminine, and vice versa.) However, each individual subject can never fully internalise any particular Symbolic position. The Symbolic Order designates specific but vaguely articulated forms of appearance, thought, behaviour etc. with which no individual subject can ever fully coalesce. The aforementioned Symbolic genders, for example, are culturally articulated through myriad texts ranging from nursery rhymes to games to clothes to adverts to religious, mythical and fictional stories to pornography to the conventions of language to institutionalised workplaces and governmental organisations to print media and contemporary social media, and so on. Through the bewildering bombardment of these Symbolic stimuli individual subjects structure their own gendered behaviour and appearances. It is little wonder, though, given how diffuse, contradictory and aspirational these stimuli are, that no individual can ever satisfactorily reconcile their own identity with what they feel they ‘should’ be. In the era of social media the experience of alienation from an impossible ideal is becoming increasingly problematic, so that human subjects feel more and more that their own masculinity or femininity fails to live up to Symbolic projections of those genders – Facebook, Instagram, and so on feature aspirational representations of appearance and behaviour that users consent to try to replicate, and which produce almost inevitable feelings of inadequacy in the repeated gaps that are shown between the Symbolic ideal and the imperfect individual re-performance of that ideal. But this alienation from an impossibly strived after Symbolic Order is central to all human subjectivity, according to Lacanian psychoanalysis. The contemporary social media user might measure themselves against Symbolic archetypes like Daniel Craig or Kim Kardashian, but a similar process was in operation when Leonidas channelled Achilles, whilst steeling himself for a glorious death at Thermopylae, or when Cleopatra modelled herself on Helen of Troy, as she wooed Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Indeed, just as for Freudian psychotherapy the opening and central question is ‘tell me about your parents’, for Lacanian psychotherapy the opening and central question is “who is speaking?” (Lacan 1977b: 123), so that the analysand might come to recognise the artificiality and the impossibility of the Symbolic subject position they have consented to occupy. The salient point about how this relates to film is the fact that the Symbolic Order is inevitably cracked and inconsistent, with fissures that continuously appear. Our experiences of being ‘men’ or ‘women’ or any other designated components of the Symbolic Order are never entirely convincing – there is always something vaguely and inarticulately inauthentic about our identities. These fissures have the potential to demonstrate the artificiality of the Symbolic Order, and instead reveal glimpses of what Lacan calls the ‘Real’. This Real is not associated with reality as such, but is one of two other Orders identified by Lacan. The Real is that which is revealed by the contradictions and fissures in the inevitably incomplete Symbolic Order.

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The pertinent example that Lacan uses to demonstrate this is a perspectival painting that reveals a glimpse of the illusory nature of the Cartesian subjectivity which is aesthetically expressed in the geometry of perspectival painting more widely. This painting is The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger (1533). The majority of its content is not atypical of the era – the eponymous ambassadors, and various objects demonstrating Early Modern preoccupations with science, geography, art and religion. There is one importantly atypical element of the painting, however. This is an oblique skull at the foot of the painting. Not only is this object problematically not part of an otherwise consistent diegesis, the skull is painted in such a way that it only obtains perspectival proportion if it is observed from a non-centralised position. If the observer moves so that the skull obtains perspectival proportion then the rest of the image loses its perspectival proportion. With this multiplicity of perspectival positions Holbein shatters the monocular anthropocentric singularity of typical geometric perspective. Instead of the painting suggesting that the observer is what Nichols calls “the imaginary subject whose place we propose to fill, a place we are nominated to assume” (1981: 53), Holbein provides two nominated positons, each of which destroys the illusory centrality of the other. This revelation is a glimpse of the Real. Geometric perspective’s singularity is an integral part of the Symbolic Order – the Symbolic Order separates humanity from nature, and geometric perspective articulates this in aesthetic terms. But this Symbolic idea is inevitably fractured and incomplete precisely because it is a historically- and culturally-specific illusion. Those fractures are discernible, even in the Early Modern period, although it was not possible, in Holbein’s time, to articulate those ideas in the same kind of precise lexical terms that Descartes could provide for the Symbolic idea itself. Instead, the fractures are supressed into a remarkable (and relatively isolated) reflexive aesthetic example like The Ambassadors. The difficulty of articulating the fractures in the Symbolic Order is also demonstrated by the form that Holbein gives this fracture – a skull. The Symbolic Order is so internalised that the revelation of its inevitable contradictions is enormously traumatic for the subject who bases his/her entire subjectivity on that Symbolic Order. This is why Holbein expresses the crack he intuits in the Symbolic Order as an image of death. As Lacan puts it, “at the very heart of the period in which the [modern Cartesian] subject emerged and geometral optics was an object of research, Holbein makes visible for us here something that is simply the subject as annihilated” (1977a: 88). The Symbolic Order is so much a part of who we are that any glimpse of how we might transcend that Order is inevitably traumatic. We are so inherently Cartesian in our subjectivity that the only possible form of non-Cartesianism, for Holbein at least, is death – the non-Cartesian subject is no subject at all. This is particularly difficult for the deep ecological claim that we can simply replace our Cartesian consciousness with ‘ecological consciousness’, because Lacan suggests here that the demand ‘I must stop being Cartesian’ is effectively the same as the demand ‘I must stop being I’.

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Lacan calls the visual distortion that demonstrates the incompleteness of the Symbolic Order “anamorphosis” (1977a: 79). Psychoanalytic film theory can apply Lacan’s account of The Ambassadors’ anamorphic skull to the cinema. Film’s movement and editing continuously disrupts the kind of geometric centrality integral to perspectival painting. Holbein’s The Ambassadors aside, geometric painting creates the illusion of the observer’s res cogitans subjectivity precisely because the res extensa content is perfectly ordered for the observer’s gaze. Film might temporarily repeat this illusion, in each individual image, but it then problematizes the illusion by moving and changing images, threatening to shock the spectator out of a position of mastery. Like Holbein’s skull, film is inherently anamorphic – it employs an anthropocentric geometric perspective but inevitably and repeatedly disrupts this geometry. Editing is the principal means of this anamorphosis. One instant the spectator is the res cogitans master of a particular res extensa image, and the next moment that res extensa is gone, replaced with another image. Again, however, Lacanian theory explains how this threat to Cartesian subjectivity is overcome. The Symbolic Order continuously reveals various fissures which threaten glimpses of the Real, but there is a mechanism that can displace and smooth over these glimpses. This mechanism is called ‘suture’ (Miller 1977/1978). The term has a medical origin, referring to the stitching up of a wound. Psychoanalytic suture is also a stitching process, but instead of stitching together flesh, it stitches together the fissures in the Symbolic Order.4 At the simplest level this means, for film, that each edit might disrupt the geometric relationship between spectator and res extensa image, but that the subsequent image is stitched to the previous one in a causal manner. The clearest and most ubiquitous examples of this process are shot/reverse shots between two characters in dialogue. Character x is shown whilst character x speaks. When character y replies, the film cuts to show character y speaking. The spectator does not experience an alienating jolt between these two images because they are sutured together by narrative and by convention – the spectator expends no mental energy on the question ‘why has the image changed?’ because the change of image makes complete sense in narrative terms. The spectator still has mastery over the res extensa images, even though they shift in a manner that should be impossible for a real-world res cogitans to observe. The impossibility of this kind of instantaneous shift, in the real world, demonstrates how the suturing together of images creates an additional pleasurable effect for the spectator. If one were to observe two people speaking, in the real world, one could move between and behind them in an attempt to synchronise a vision of each interlocutor at the precise time they were speaking. In all likelihood, however, one would move rather imprecisely, training vision on one of the speakers after they had begun a reply, or lingering on them after they had finished speaking. In addition, the observed speakers would notice this strange behaviour, and modify their own, or interject against this contravention of social convention. In realist film, however, the observer is entirely unseen, and the filmmakers take

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great care to synchronise their editing with the dialogue between characters. The cutting might include close-ups on important props that one of the characters does not see, might dolly in at moments of heightened tension, can accompany the images with emotionally-coded non-diegetic music, and so on. These elements are all heightened additions to what is possible in the real world. Recall that MacCabe stated that realist “film does not reveal the real in a moment of transparency, but rather […] is constituted by a set of discourses which […] produce a certain reality” (1985: 62). Reality cannot effortlessly cut, dolly or musically accompany like film (even if, technically, one could attempt to replicate these effects) but these elements do not seem to be particularly unreal. Rather than shattering the illusion that the spectator is the res cogitans master of space and of meaning, they reconfirm this notion, arranging the fictional world in a manner than privileges the spectator’s centralised act of observation. All realist film employs these conventions, but it is possible to demonstrate them, and the subsequent effects discussed below, using one film example that is relevant to the environmental degradation subject matter of this book. I will outline the reasons why the films examined in this book are pertinent to ecological issues below, but for now it is enough to say that the disaster film 2012 (Emmerich 2009), in which an apocalyptic environmental collapse threatens to wipe out humanity, features all of the realist film conventions of interest here. The film uses shot/reverse shot conventions throughout,5 but one early scene in particular demonstrates the extent to which these conventions continuously reposition the spectator as master of meaning and space. The film has introduced a number of characters, some of whom live in California where seismic activity is increasing rapidly. A couple, Kate (Amanda Peet) and Gordon (Tom McCarthy), are shopping in a supermarket. The mise-en-scène surrounding the characters makes this location clear, but the opening shot of this sequence establishes the location more specifically through a close-up on Kate’s hand picking up absorbent underpants that her daughter Lilly (Morgan Lily) requires because of anxiety about her parents’ divorce. Dialogue had previously established why Lily needs these pants, so that the shot is coded with certain information. The informational component of the shot is also increased by the fact that this scene begins after a previous scene with the same Lily camping in Yellowstone with her father Jackson (John Cusack). An eccentric conspiracy theorist Charlie (Woody Harrelson) ended the previous scene warning Jackson to get his children out of Yellowstone, where he predicts a massive natural disaster will soon occur. The cross cut between scenes, then, is narratively loaded. It provides the spectator with a reason for why the res extensa imagery has shifted – the threat to Lily and her family extends across space, which the film allows the spectator to effortlessly transcend. There is then a cut from the shot of the hand picking up the pants to a two shot of Kate and Gordon in the supermarket. Again, the narrative component of these two images sutures them together – a hand is shown picking up an object already associated with Kate, and then Kate is shown with Gordon and

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the object. The spectator is busy making these associations, and the associations grant a mastery over the imagery that makes sense of the geometric shift that would be impossible in the real world. An even more potentially disruptive edit then occurs. The camera is suddenly pointing down at a very dark image that, for a brief moment, is unclear and ambiguous – what is the spectator being shown? A crack quickly appears, and the camera moves upwards. The crack’s expansion is synchronised with the camera’s movement, which now shows a manhole cover, so that by now it is clear that the shot is showing the ground, and that it is dark because it is night-time (it was also night-time in the scene in Yellowstone with which this scene was cross cut). The crack’s and the camera’s synchronised movements then show a painted yellow parking bay line; then a parked car; and then a number of cars in a car park, their alarms beginning to go off; and finally a supermarket lit up in the mid-distance, the crack moving inexorably (and geometrically) towards it. The drama of this double movement (crack and camera) is enhanced with ominous non-diegetic music. With the cut back into the supermarket, the spectator has a dramatically-coded motivation for why the res extensa has shifted – in this case a dramatic irony in which the spectator knows that a crack in the earth is bearing down on Kate and Gordon, but the characters do not know this. The dramatic motivation here is predicated on a privileging of the spectator’s vision. Up until now there was no possibility that the characters could see the threat, which has been located outside the supermarket, and therefore beyond their potential field of vision, but the film now emphasises the privileging of the spectator’s vision by showing that the characters do not see what the spectator sees. (To an extent this dramatic irony is also predicated on another perceptual privileging, because the loud car alarms from the outside scene can also be heard, more quietly, after the cut back in to Kate in the supermarket. The spectators can still just hear a signal of the threat, but Kate ignores it). Kate and Gordon briefly bicker about Kate’s ex-husband Jackson, in shot/ reverse shot, before the camera cuts to another woman, loading groceries from her trolley onto a checkout. The woman is turned away, so that she does not see, but the trolley slowly moves away from her. If the spectator is wondering why the trolley has moved, then the motion of the camera provides the answer, for in titling down to follow the trolley it shows a crack emerging in the floor of the supermarket. This movement, again, is enhanced with ominous music. The synchronised camera’s and the crack’s movement ends on an aisle of drinks that begin to wobble. The next shot is a close-up of a wobbling cereal packet on another aisle, with the ominous music continuing. Again, the transition between shots is narratively and dramatically motivated, particularly when the next shot shows Kate looking worriedly at the cereal packet. This shot, indeed, does not explicitly show that Kate is looking at the cereal packet, because the packet itself is not seen here, but the conventions of shot/reverse shot make that narratively and dramatically motivated suggestion, displacing any potential spectatorial questioning about why the res extensa has changed. The next shot is from behind Kate. She turns to Gordon, who is out of focus

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in the foreground, and asks the dramatically pertinent question ‘did you see that?’ In the next reverse shot Gordon replies ‘see what?’ The characters have been given some relevant perceptual information about the impending earthquake, but not as much as the spectator, who has seen evidence of it through the cracks; through three movements caused by those cracks (the trolley, the wobbling drinks, and wobbling cereal packet – only the last of which one character saw); through camera movements which are synchronised with the cracks and which geometrically point towards the impending target of those cracks; and through ominous non-diegetic music suggesting something is about to happen. When the earthquake occurs, at the end of this shot/reverse shot sequence, Gordon even provides a darkly comic culmination to this dramatic irony signalling what is about to happen. He says ‘I feel like there’s something pulling us apart’ just as a loud tearing sound is heard. The shot/reverse shot conversation ends to show the couple in two shot, looking down at the floor, and then cuts to the reverse angle to show a huge crack racing towards the space between them. This crack then gapes open into an earthquake, literally pulling them apart. By the end of the scene the characters now have as much information as the spectator, but the spectator has a mastery over the images because each image contributes to a privileging of the spectator’s knowledge over the characters’ knowledge. In the case of this scene this hierarchy of knowledge entails explicit dramatic irony, but it is also the case that the spectator’s perceptual mastery can be deferred, and aligned with the less masterful perception of characters, without breaking the dramatic motivation for sutured editing. Near the end of 2012, for example, Jackson needs to swim into a flooded chamber to dislodge a piece of equipment that is blocking a door-closing mechanism for the ark on which the protagonists are attempting to escape destruction. He is shown whilst he is en route to the chamber, but on the way back the filmmakers decide to create suspense about whether he has drowned after completing his mission. They therefore do not show him swimming from one chamber to another, taking breaths from convenient air pockets, as they had done when he swam towards danger. Instead, the filmmakers have the characters awaiting him at the chamber’s entrance, and the rest of the ark’s crew watching on through a video link verbally articulate the pertinent dramatic question – ‘where’s your dad?’; ‘any word from the hydraulic chamber?’; ‘where is he?’; ‘I thought you said he was right behind you?’ Each of these questions is shown in a different shot, but the erotetic drama is in fact drawn out over no less than twenty-one different shots of numerous characters’ anxious waiting. These shots include images of Kate diving under water, and her point-of-view shot of an empty dark passageway out of which Jackson does not yet emerge. After twenty-one shots, however, a torch light emerging from the darkness signals Jackson’s approach, and only then is he shown. A similar number of shots show the celebrations. This waiting for Jackson, then, does not privilege spectatorial vision in terms of information. The spectator learns that Jackson is safe along with most of the characters. (Only Jackson himself knows that he is still alive prior to this, so that

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he, at least, briefly has more information that the spectator). However, spectatorial vision is still privileged in a manner that elides the Real-like potential for these twenty-one different shots to displace the geometric centrality of the spectator. The privileging here is emotional rather than informational, so that the spectator can share the characters’ anxiety, but still have a mastery over this anxiety, since fiction involves an aesthetic distance in which Jackson’s death would be felt more keenly by his real family and friends. The emotional privileging is accompanied, too, by non-diegetic music, in this case coded towards the poignant rather than the ominous. Both of these scenes, then, demonstrate the extent to which realist film conventions displace the potential Real-like threat of how editing might decentre the illusory centrality of the spectating res cogitans. These scenes are heightened exemplars of the process, but film realism more widely utilises narrative, dramatic, informational, and emotional motivations to continuously reposition the spectator as the locus and master of meaning. Suture from the Real to the Imaginary Order In addition to reconfirming the Symbolic centrality of the spectating cogito realist film conventions allow the editing between images to also suture with the third of Lacan’s Orders, the Imaginary. This Order is in fact the first for Lacan, in the chronological sense that it is occupied by the child prior to entry into the socio-cultural realm of the Symbolic. The Imaginary Order exists before the child develops language, and at a point where the child does not recognise that it is an individual constrained in a body. Lacan calls the Imaginary child an “hommelette” (1977b: 197) – a fusion of the words ‘little man’ and the intermixed eggs in an omelette, because the hommelette does not have the centralised sense of self that will subsequently come when the child assents to become a cogito in the Symbolic Order. Part of this hommelette-like diffusion means that the child does not recognise its separation from the mother. The Imaginary is therefore a realm of blissful misrecognition. When the child does assent to the Symbolic Order it will recognise its separation from the mother who becomes other, and the child will now construct its identity out of designated and assented-to aspects of the Symbolic Order. The Imaginary hommelette becomes a Symbolic subject. Because this subjectivity involves separation from the (m)other who the child once thought was part of its own hommelette-like nature, and because the subject can never fully coalesce with the Symbolic positions it attempts to occupy, the subject is unavoidably alienated. It will use the Symbolic Order to attempt to compensate for an inevitable lack caused by entry into that Order, and the subject will misrecognise the cause of its lack and the failure of any Symbolic compensation for that lack. Both the Imaginary and the Symbolic, then, are realms of misrecognition, but in the Imaginary this misrecognition is a blissful illusion of unity, whereas in the Symbolic this misrecognition is an alienating illusion of compensation for lack.

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When realist film sutures images together, in the manner described above, it temporarily activates this blissful Imaginary. Editing from one image to another provides the spectator with movement outside the real-world confines of the body. Each new res extensa image can instantaneously appear from a position that would be impossible in the real world. This demonstrates the full efficacy of suture – instead of the edit shattering the Symbolic Order by revealing the Real, the Symbolic is sutured together with the Imaginary. The Imaginary pleasure of the hommelette-like transcendence of space increases the Symbolic sense of the cogito’s mastery over space. The aforementioned scenes from 2012 demonstrate how this suture with the Imaginary Order operates. It would not be possible for a real-world observer of Kate and Gordon to expertly choreograph movements around them in the supermarket, and to instantaneously teleport out of the supermarket at the precise moment when an emerging crack in the ground appears. Nor would a real-world observer be able to rapidly move twenty-one times around the space inside the ark, in order to observe the reactions to Jackson’s absence. Realist film can activate the Imaginary pleasures of these kinds of transcendences of bodily constraints. Attempting to make these movements, in a real world experiencing seismic activity or a flooding ark, would also be very dangerous. The Imaginary pleasures of cinematic suture are entirely vicarious, without any genuine danger to the spectator. Indeed, the kinds of spectacles offered by the apocalyptic disaster films analysed in this book are particularly conducive to vicarious Imaginary pleasures. Were a spectator to experience a typical action sequence in real life, his/her bodily constraints would be an extremely dangerous liability. In a clear example of this kind of sequence from 2012, Jackson evacuates his family from an enormous earthquake that destroys California in his limousine, and then in an airplane. If a spectator were to experience this kind of event in real life his/her bodily constraints would have two consequences. Firstly, bodily constraints would seriously limit his/her perception of the events, so that it would not be possible to see reverse angle images, overhead images, and so on. Secondly, bodily constraints would entail a certain kind of inevitable mortality, so that the perceiving body could cease perceiving because of the (almost) inescapable threats of falling objects, yawning chasms, other fleeing cars, exploding petrol stations, and so on. The filmic experience is quite different, however. The spectator is encouraged to partly forget that (s)he is experiencing these events vicariously, so that each fictional near-miss might be met with an involuntary wince or jolt. But the spectator never fully forgets that (s)he is watching fictional images, so the real threat of harm is displaced. Instead, the spectator can transcend the bodily constraints that endanger the fictional characters. The escape sequence includes point-of-view shots, positioning the spectator in the same threatened place as that occupied by the characters, but these shots are far outnumbered by images that show the frightened reactions of the characters; by overhead shots of the devastation; by sweeping helicopter shots looking back at and following the limousine; by a slow motion side shot of the car leaping over a chasm, and of

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collapsing buildings; by low level shots of the car smashing objects out of its path. The editing regime between these images is extremely fast, mirroring the narrative tension. When the characters transfer to the plane, an overhead shot of the ground collapsing moves (geometrically) towards the airstrip, with a small plane on it. Cutting to the inside of the plane, the characters hesitate and prepare for take-off, with the spectator aware that the collapsing earth is heading for them. Rapid edits from inside and outside the plane establish that the earthquake may reach it before it escapes, but this fate is narrowly avoided. Once airborne the editing regime replicates the car sequence, cutting from objective shots showing the plane pirouetting between collapsing buildings; to shots of the characters peering incredulously out of the plane windows; to images coded as point-of-view shots by the preceding images of characters looking. The sequence ends with the protagonists safely (for now) high up above the devastation which fills the rest of the frame. This kind of sequence is a heightened example of how realist film can activate Imaginary pleasures that suture over the potentially alienating edit from one image to another. It is true that each image reconstructs a new Symbolic sense of the spectating cogito’s centrality. But the principal pleasure of a sequence like this is the way that the rapid editing provides the spectator with the kind of deathdefying mobility that is impossible to achieve in the real-life constraints of the body. In moments such as this the spectator can experience a glimpse of the never-compensated-for thrill of an hommelette-like transcendence of the physical body. The camera moves from being an embodied cogito-eye view to what might seem something like a God’s-eye view, but is rather an hommelette-eye view, or even more accurately, given that this spatial transcendence oscillates between so many different positions, a series of hommelette-eye views.

Glimpses of the Real: Suture as a masochistic form of pleasure It is not sufficient to say, however, that realist film only activates the perceptually embodied centrality of the Symbolic and the disembodied pleasures of the Imaginary. Holbein’s skull-like glimpses of the Real are also inevitable. These glimpses become, however, the defining ideological feature of realist film because suture requires a sense of alienating fragmentation in order to achieve its fully pleasurable effects. This premise relies on another foundational principle of psychoanalysis first developed by Freud, and taken up later by Lacan. In developing language, recall, the child assents to enter the Symbolic Order. In so doing it recognises its separation from the (m)other. This recognition is a trauma for which nothing in the Symbolic Order will ever fully compensate. Indeed, compensation for this lack is so impossible that the subject principally derives pleasure from the attempt at compensation rather than from any particular object of attempted compensation. Freud gave a famous example of this process when observing his grandchild playing with a bobbin (1955 [1920]: 14–17). The child was just learning to talk, and it would repeatedly cast the bobbin away with a cry of ‘fort’ (‘gone’)

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before winding it up whilst saying ‘da’ (‘here’). The child was beginning to recognise its separation from the (m)other, and was using the Symbolic realm of language to attempt to compensate for this lack. Having no genuine control over this inevitable alienation from the (m)other the child staged this alienation in a game where it could control that alienation in Symbolic terms. The child might experience the fort of lack, but by imposing that lack on itself the child could gain the illusion of control over the lack, because if the fort was selfimposed then so too, seemingly, was the compensatory da of reunion. This is another example of how the Symbolic Order is structured in misrecognition, with fort/da a false sensation of control and plenitude amongst an actuality of passivity and lack. For Freud this process is fundamentally masochistic, in the sense that it wilfully enacts something unpleasurable – an allegoric separation from the (m)other – in order to achieve an illusory control over that unpleasure and thereby attempt to make it pleasurable. Realist film continuously repeats this masochistic fort/da game. It repetitively reveals contradictions in the Symbolic Order. Most important of these, for the spectating Cartesian subject, is editing’s repeated revelations that the spectator is not the unproblematic res cogitans locus of meaning. Yes, as discussed above, suture with the Imaginary and with subsequent Symbolic centrality compensates for this revelation. But realist film generates additional pleasure from the momentary revelations of the Real. Like Holbein’s skull these revelations frequently include death-like symbols of the subject’s annihilation – gaping maws in films like Jaws (Spielberg 1975) and Alien (Scott 1979), monstrous reflections in films like What Lies Beneath (Zemeckis 2000) and Juon: The Grudge (Shimizu 2002), and various examples relating to ecological degradation that I discuss later in this book, such as the violently vengeful Earth in 2012. Even more important, though, than these death-like symbols is the fact that temporary breakdowns in geometric perspective are almost instantaneously reset. The pleasures of this, like the pleasures for Freud’s grandson, are masochistic – a brief unpleasurable revelation that the spectator is not an unproblematic res cogitans master of the res extensa imagery, and then an almost instantaneous suturing over into the pleasurable illusion of control over the imagery. MacCabe thus claims that the charm of classical realism is that […] the threat [to geometric perspectival consistency] appears so that it can be smoothed over and it is in this smoothing over that we can locate pleasure – in a plenitude which is fractured but only on condition that it will be re-set. (MacCabe 1985: 68) This re-set plenitude is described by Stephen Heath, a key figure in Lacanian film theory, as “the jubilation of the final image” (1985: 514). The aforementioned scenes from 2012 all feature this anamorphic suture over revelations of the Real. This process is inherently masochistic. In narrative terms this means that unpleasurable events are shown occurring or as

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possibilities – vast numbers of people are depicted dying as the family escape California’s mega-earthquake, with the devastation repeatedly threatening the family (and vicariously, the spectator); the fear that Jackson has drowned is coded as traumatic; and so on. These fort-like unpleasures are resolved, however, with the metaphorical bobbin wound back in, da-like. Jackson does not drown, the family’s car and airplane does successfully escape each threat. Susan Sontag has influentially claimed that somewhat similar science fiction films about fictional disasters are “concerned with the aesthetics of destruction, with the peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, making a mess. And it is in the imagery of destruction that the core of a good science fiction film lies” (1966: 213). A film like 2012 certainly employs an ‘aesthetics of destruction’, and makes a very great mess, but it is imperative that this mess has limits, extending to almost catch the protagonists and spectator, but finally falling short of this. The masochistic pleasures of 2012 rely on the oscillation between “wreaking havoc” and surviving that havoc; of “making a mess” and – finally – tidying up the mess.6 My conception of the ‘aesthetics of destruction’, then, involves a repeated oscillation between the “wreaking [of] havoc”, and the escape from and transcendence over the forces which are “wreaking havoc”. Indeed, once the overall fort-like threat of apocalypse is survived by the protagonists, the film ends – there can be no narrative without the masochistic oscillation from unpleasure to pleasure. ‘Happily ever after’ is often mentioned or suggested, at the end of stories and films, but is only shown as one of Heath’s “jubilant[…] final image[s]” (1985: 514), rather than as a portrayed continuation of fictional events, because there is no narrative without threat and resolution. Narrative is predicated on restoring equilibrium, and the spectator leaves the cinema once this catharsis is finally and fully achieved. As Terry Eagleton puts it, Fort-da is perhaps the shortest story we can imagine: an object is lost, and then recovered. But even the most complex narratives can be read as variants on this model: the pattern of classical narrative is that an original settlement is disrupted and ultimately restored. […] [N]arrative is a source of consolation: lost objects are a cause of anxiety to us, symbolizing certain deeper unconscious losses, […] and it is always pleasurable to find them put securely back in place. (Eagleton 1996: 160–161) Realist film is also masochistic in formal terms because editing unpleasurably throws spectators out of their illusory res cogitans centrality, but the subsequent edited-to image pleasurably reconstructs that centrality. Narrative resolutions are thereby accompanied by formal (geometric) resolutions. 2012’s airplane escape sequence culminates with a shot held for longer than the images in the preceding rapid cutting which accompanied the threat to the plane, and the non-diegetic score now slows to signal resolution as opposed to danger. High above the devastation, the spectator can experience a moment of cathartic calm

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after the preceding tension – the next shot shows the characters in the plane breathing out in the same kind of response. The plane sweeps past, and the camera lingers on the carnage below, but the film suggests (temporary) resolution. There may be some element of pathos for the people killed below, but this is downplayed because the non-protagonists were antlike figures amongst the film’s close identification with the family, and although there may still be unpleasure occurring far below, the spectator is aligned with the family’s emotionally drained survival. Formally, the image re-establishes the Cartesian centrality of the spectating subject, which had been threatened and displaced numerous times during the dramatic tension of the preceding shots and their rapid editing. The shot of the plane smoothly wheeling away is now briefly held, so that what Heath calls “the jubilation of the final image” (1985: 514) is reasserted, with the spectator now fixed back in perspectival place. The fort of both narrative and formal unpleasure is sutured into the da of narrative and formal catharsis. The aforementioned deferral of spectatorial mastery, when the editing delays the film’s revelation of whether Jackson has drowned, is also a masochistic oscillation from fort to da. The spectator briefly shares the other characters’ lack of information about Jackson, but when he finally emerges the spectator is placed back into a restored position of mastery. There are both narrative and formal geometric catharses, with the spectator’s unpleasurable fear for the protagonist sutured into another “jubilation of the final image” (Heath 1985: 514) in which the spectator’s transcendence of space facilitates the illusory jouissance of the disembodied Imaginary Order, and in which the restoration of Jackson’s previously divorced nuclear family facilitates the illusory pleasure of the socio-cultural Symbolic Order. Something similar applies to the spectator’s mastery over knowledge. The dramatic irony of the scene where the earthquake approaches Kate and Gordon in the supermarket, for example, provides the spectator with a certain level of mastery, in the sense that (s)he has more perceptual information than the threatened characters. There is also a gap in mastery, however, in the sense that the spectator does not know how the characters will cope with the threat – the spectator knows the threat is coming, but not what impact it will have on the characters. Again, however, this gap is merely a deferral, unpleasurably staging a threat to both the characters the spectator is being encouraged to identify with, and to the spectator’s mastery over knowledge, before pleasurably resolving this threat by delivering characters to safety, and by providing the spectator with the missing piece of information about how the foreseen disaster relates to the characters. The spectator’s perceptual mastery is therefore temporarily incomplete, but only in the masochistic sense of staging incompletion so that it can subsequently be completed. Realist film, then, exploits each of Lacan’s three Orders. The Symbolic Order positions the spectator as the illusory ocularcentric master of the imagery. Editing temporarily threatens a Real-like revelation of this Symbolic illusion. This revelation is sutured over by an Imaginary transcendence of

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bodily limitations, and by the restored plenitude of the next Symbolic positioning of the spectating cogito as locus of meaning. Realist film is an inevitably anamorphic process, in oscillating between these different Orders. Realist film is also an inevitably masochistic process, in repeatedly activating a brief unpleasurably Real-like revelation that the spectator’s status as centralised res cogitans is an illusion, before suturing over this revelation and restoring the illusory centrality of the spectating cogito. Most significantly this anamorphic and masochistic process privileges the Symbolic illusion of the cogito’s centrality. Detours into the Real and the Imaginary are subservient to, and increase the ideological illusion of, the centralised Symbolic res cogitans. In this sense realist film is inevitably and ontologically Cartesian film. These examples demonstrate how realist film is an aesthetics that reinforces the ecologically-damaging illusion of Cartesian subjectivity. All realist film is part of this aesthetics, no matter what any particular film’s narrative subject matter. A realist film may have a thematic content that has no direct (or even unconscious – a distinction that I address below) relationship to ecological issues, but the formal composition of that film still reinforces Cartesian subjectivity. Clearly, however, films that do engage with ecological issues are particularly significant to ecological questions. I will outline the precise parameters I employ, in terms of how film narratives interact with these ecological issues, shortly, and then state how this kind of film relates to the realist film conventions discussed above. But before this it is necessary to briefly position the claims I have made within the context of existing film studies about ecological issues, in order to demonstrate both areas of overlap and areas of departure, and to clarify how my method differs from other scholarship.

Theoretical departures from existing ecological film studies Film conceptualised as non-anthropocentric In terms of how existing ecological film scholarship relates to the theoretical approach set out above, it is possible to approximately identify four broad academic approaches to the issue of whether film is anthropocentric or non-anthropocentric. The first approach claims that there is something inherently non-anthropocentric about film. The second explores how film has certain anthropocentric as well as certain non-anthropocentric elements. The third recognises that film has a certain anthropocentrism, but positions this only in narrative terms, without considering film’s formal anthropocentrism. The fourth utilises some Lacanian theory, but focuses only on film’s Real-like characteristics, without considering the Symbolic or the Imaginary. I will briefly outline and consider each of these categories, in order to more precisely position my own argument. The first of these categories is optimistic about how film can communicate environmental issues through an inherent cinematic problematization of anthropocentrism. Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway, for example, think that in communicating the subjective experiences of various different characters,

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which can include nonhuman characters, “cinema (like other arts) is ecologically oriented and zoomorphic: it expresses the interconnectedness of human and other life forms, our implication in and filtering through material networks that enable and bind us” (2013: 5). Pat Brereton provides a more detailed account of this process, exploring the power of cinema to invoke empathy and allow audiences to step into another world and see reality from a totally different perspective. For eco-film scholars, cinema enables audiences to begin to recognise ways of seeing the world, other than through the narrow perspective of the anthropocentric gaze that primarily situates individual human desires at the centre of the moral universe and which […] remains problematic for the prospect of engaging with a deep ecological and ethical sensibility. (Brereton 2016: 33) In terms of my theory about how realist film reinforces Cartesian subjectivity, Brereton’s focus on how cinema’s “different perspective[s]” might challenge “the anthropocentric gaze” (2016: 33) is highly problematic, because those different perspectives are almost always anthropocentric in narrative terms – subjectivising various human characters’ experiences7 – and are inevitably anthropocentric in formal terms – each different perspective orientating the geometry of the spectating cogito, and the editing shift between these perspectives masochistically disorientating and then reorientating this Cartesian centrality. Rather, then, than “cinema enabl[ing] audiences to begin to recognise ways of seeing […] other than through the narrow perspective of the anthropocentric gaze” (Brereton 2016: 33), realist film inevitably reinforces that anthropocentric gaze. James Leo Cahill’s approach to cinema points somewhat towards the next category, where film might be both anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric, but still locates the non-anthropocentric element in the intrinsic ontology of film. He writes that film theorist André Bazin […] refers to the double-status of photographic images as fulfilling a ‘mummy complex’ (a symbolic solution to the problem of death) while also having ‘ghostly’ (fantomatique) qualities capable of literally defamiliarising even the most familiar of family portraits by suffusing them with the ‘troubling presence of lives halted in time and liberated from their destiny’. […] Bazin emphasises the fact that ‘an impassive mechanical device’ freed from any ‘anthropocentric usefulness’ produces these effects, and in a manner that minimises the intervention of human agency. […] The impassive camera, which sustains a rigorous indifference to what it films, endows the medium with an anti-anthropocentric potential. […] [T]he cinema has a centrifugal, decentring orientation, producing a radically equalising vision of the world in which ‘human beings (l’homme) do not necessarily have preferential status over beasts or forests’. (Cahill 2013: 76, original emphasis)

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Cahill’s Bazinian approach identifies a certain alienating displacement integral to cinematic imagery which is caused by the somewhat uncanny way that film images are almost like reality, but also exist outside reality. There is certainly some potential for this kind of effect and, indeed, Cahill is careful to describe this as “an anti-anthropocentric potential” (2013: 76) rather than an anti-anthropocentric certainty. In terms of my theoretical approach, however, this potential is sutured over, in realist film. Cahill states that the “camera […] sustains a rigorous indifference to what it films” (2013: 76), but I have demonstrated that film images are fundamentally subjectivised, either in terms of adopting characters’ implied perspectives and/or (more fundamentally) in terms of providing geometrically structured subjective perspectives for the spectating cogito. Realist film images are always a res extensa constituting a res cogitans observer, and in the masochistic oscillation between images this geometric relationship is continuously disrupted and reasserted. In so doing, realist film re-performs the illusory anthropocentrism of the spectating Cartesian subject. Bazin and Cahill are right to identify a certain ghostly defamiliarisation inherent to cinema, but they do not position this defamiliarisation in the context of masochistic suture, in which the alienating threat to the cogito is repeatedly activated only so that it can be inevitably resolved. Cahill thus states that “the ambivalence of cinematic anthropomorphism […] prevents it from becoming too stable, static or fixed” (2013: 77), but realist cinema’s fully masochistic pleasures are based on the fact that the threat of “becoming too stable, static or fixed” is presented but then repeatedly overcome. Cahill therefore identifies the same threat to ocular centrality that has preoccupied psychoanalytic film theory, but does not address the psychoanalytic mechanisms that realist film employs to overcome this threat. Film conceptualised as both anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric Cahill’s account of cinema’s ghostly characteristics points his argument somewhat towards the second broad category of how ecological film studies address cinema’s anthropocentrism. This category conceptualises cinema as having certain inherently anthropocentric elements, but also as possessing certain non- or anti-anthropocentric elements. These elements are analysed in various different ways. Adrian Ivakhiv has established a useful starting point for categorising these analyses because he outlines two binary approaches to this anthropocentrism. In the first of these binaries, a line of notable critics, from Martin Heidegger to Susan Sontag to ecophilosopher Neil Evernden, have written influential exegeses on how the camera serves as an instrument of distancing, even of domination, enabling an objectification, decontextualization, dehistoricization, and commodification of the things that make up the world, making us spectators rather than participants and ultimately spreading a dangerous sense of irreality in our midst. (Ivakhiv 2008: 16–17)

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As a result, “cinema only accentuates what Heidegger called the ‘enframing’ and ‘conquest’ of the world ‘as picture,’ and its subsequent setting-upon as a ‘standing reserve’ to be objectified, measured, dominated and parcelled out for human uses” (Ivakhiv 2008: 17). This argument comes close to my own, in terms of how the camera sets up an alienating distinction between res cogitans observer and res extensa observed. Indeed, Ivakhiv demonstrates how this argument relies on a critique of the perspectival element of Cartesian dualism when he writes that Historians and philosophers have long associated the predominance of visuality, our contemporary ‘ocularcentrism’, with the emergence of the modern world [in which] social hierarchies and empires have arisen, spreading systems of rule over large distances [that] have required techniques for mastering space. This is what the development of linear-perspectival representation in fifteenth-century Europe gave that continent’s rising maritime powers. […] This facilitated the development of […] a scientific gaze, which shifted the European cosmos into a much more distinctly visual or optical register. Perspective acted, in effect, as midwife to the birth of modernity – a modernity that, philosopher Martin Heidegger argued, has given us ‘the world as picture’. (Ivakhiv 2013: 2–3) Ivakhiv then sets out the second argument about visual anthropocentrism, and it is in the distinction which he makes that the differences between his approach and my own are most clear. He states that the aforementioned view of visuality as objective, or objectivizing, and at the same time as controlling, as an exercise of power masquerading as knowledge, is rivalled by a second view that has re-emerged forcefully in recent visual and cultural theory. According to this alternative view, while visuality can stabilize the world and render it a manageable and inert object, it can also destabilize, dissemble, and jostle. […] Visual images provoke, stir, invoke, incite, inflame, and move to tears. They manufacture desire, possess us and claim us – one only need think of the passions generated by national flags, team colours, or global brands. […] At its extreme, this second view leans towards suggesting that images may even be primary and that we, individual subjects, are their ghostly effects: we swim in a sea of images – visual representations providing ‘subject positions’ for us to insert ourselves into, spatial configurations, habituated bodily comportments and cognitive schemata that shape the ways we think, move, look, and act. (Ivakhiv 2013: 3–4, original emphasis) Here, Ivakhiv makes a clear separation between an objectivising scientific gaze, which he thinks of as rational, and a socially constructing gaze that can irrationally “provoke, stir, invoke, incite, inflame, and move to tears, […] manufacture desire,

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possess us and claim us” (2013: 3). Ivakhiv sets out these two different arguments as distinct rivals, but this separation is very different from the Lacanian approach I outlined above. Our approaches differ because I do not separate out what Ivakhiv thinks of as two different “view[s] of visuality” (3). Ivakhiv accepts that the second view is part of a “sea of images” that constitute “‘subject positions’” (4) for the viewer to occupy. Although he doesn’t use the following specific Lacanian terminology here, Ivakhiv is essentially referring to the Symbolic Order. The “national flags, team colours, or global brands” (3) he mentions relate to potential identities designated by the Symbolic Order. When they “manufacture desire, possess us and claim us” (3) the subject unconsciously consents to internalise these Symbolic characteristics, and incorporate them into his/her own subjectivity. On this, Ivakhiv and I agree. But the first view he outlines – the ocularcentric, objectifying gaze of linear perspective – has just as much impact on constructing Symbolic spectatorial “‘subject positions’”, whereas Ivakhiv does not think of this “scientific gaze” (3) as another manufacturer of subjectivity. In term of the Lacanian theory I have developed above, the Symbolic illusion of the subject as the res cogitans centre of meaning is another ideological illusion that possesses and claims subjects – indeed, it is the defining illusion of subjectivity, from which all others, such as the nations and brands discussed by Ivakhiv, derive their subsidiary status. Yes, images can construct subjectivities through invoking Symbolic ideas such as nationalism and consumerism, as Ivakhiv accepts, but the conventions of linear perspective, including realist cinema, also invoke the Symbolic idea of the centralised, unified Cartesian res cogitans observer, which is just as much an illusion that spectators unconsciously believe in as the illusions of nationalism and consumerism. And, as discussed above and in the previous chapter, this Cartesian subjectivity is the central ideological illusion facilitating our current ecological crises. Ivakhiv’s film theory, then, accepts that spectators might be ideologically deceived by certain images, but does not account for how spectators are ideologically deceived by the formal grammar of realist film.8 A branch of this scholarship on how cinema has both anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric potential focuses on explicit filmic challenges to the kind of realist conventions I have outlined in this chapter. This branch accepts Ivakhiv’s and my own premise that vision is in some ways controlling. However, this scholarship tends to be quite imprecise about how this controlling operates, so that it prescribes a quite specific medicine for a rather vaguely understood illness. For this branch of scholarship, the loosely defined anthropocentrism of what I call realist cinema can supposedly be countered by a form of avant-garde film called ‘eco-cinema’ or ‘ecocinema’. Scott MacDonald, one of the proponents of this approach, argues that “the fundamental job of eco-cinema […] is a retraining of perception, as a way of offering an alternative to conventional media-spectatorship” (2004: 109). In the sense that this “retraining of perception” (109) might challenge the conventions of Cartesian spectatorship, MacDonald’s argument comes close to my own. Chapter 7 will be devoted to exploring how certain forms of avant-garde or non-occidental filmmaking might facilitate this ‘retraining’. But MacDonald is less clear about how the

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retraining of a non-anthropocentric cinema might relate to the primary training of an anthropocentric cinema. Re-training, after all, suggests an initial training, at an earlier point. If avant-garde ecocinema might retrain perception, then a detailed account of how realist cinema trains that perception which subsequently needs to be retrained is required, but MacDonald does not provide this. In attempting to address how ecofilms reject anthropocentrism MacDonald writes that ecocinema should not produce pro-environmental narratives shot in a conventional Hollywood manner (that is, in a manner that implicitly promotes consumption). […] The job of an ecocinema is to provide new kinds of film experience that demonstrate an alternative to conventional media-spectatorship and help to nurture a more environmentally progressive mindset. (MacDonald 2013: 20, original emphasis) In advocating an “alternative to conventional media-spectatorship” MacDonald only vaguely defines this “conventional Hollywood manner” as “a manner that implicitly promotes consumption” (2013: 20). I would agree that realist film does promote consumption, but this is only a subsidiary effect, determined by a much more fundamental promotion of individual Cartesian subjectivity, which MacDonald does not address. It is somewhat surprising that this kind of advocacy of an ecological avantgarde cinema has not conducted an extensive critique of the non-ecological non-avant-garde, because film studies, outside the ecological context, has an existing history of closely connecting a critique of realism with an advocacy of the avant-garde. The 1970s’ poststructuralist turn in film studies, indeed, was based on the analysis of what was conceptualised as a filmmaking binary – realism employs certain formal structures that render the spectator ideologically passive, whereas the avant-garde interrogates those formal structures in an attempt to make the spectator politically active. As Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake put it, [o]n the one hand Theory sought to ascertain the role of the cinematic machine in contributing to and maintaining an oppressive and unjust social order; on the other, it advocated an avant-garde cinematic practice that would question and combat the prevailing system. (Lapsley and Westlake 2006: 220). Poststructuralism has therefore been so concerned with the ideological effects of film’s form that it locates resistance to that ideology only in an interrogation of that form. MacDonald’s approach advocates the latter element – an interrogation of form – without addressing the former element in detail – what, precisely are the components and effects of that dominant film form? In this poststructuralist sense, this is where my argument makes its most important contribution to the field. I, too, am interested in how certain films might help to transform the

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thought and behaviour of spectators – how ecofilms might “retrain[…] [their] perception”, as MacDonald (2004: 109) would have it. But scholarly advocacy of an alternative, ‘retraining’ form of cinema can only be effective if it first clearly establishes the workings of the dominant practice from which any avant-garde alternative deviates. This is not to say, however, that existing scholarship has not, in exploring the avant-garde ecocinema, identified some of the same elements that I have located in film realism. It is perhaps more the case to say that the field has not yet explicitly made the connections between advocacy of the avant-garde and a criticism of realism, rather than that these two elements have not been addressed at all. Paula Willoquet-Maricondi has provided the most detailed connection between these binary elements, explicitly positioning an avant-garde practice in a rejection of Cartesian principles. Discussing Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books (1991), a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Willoquet-Maricondi writes that “[f]or Descartes, the power of vision becomes the power of the mind to attain absolute knowledge. […] Perspectivism and scientism both strive to organize, rationalize, normalize, and mathematize the visible” (2008: 182). Having established that Cartesian perspective generates conventions around controlling vision, Willoquet-Maricondi echoes the 1970s Theoretical advocacy of an avant-garde interrogation of these conventions, stating that “Greenaway’s antidote to the hegemonic eye of modernity […] is to offer a postmodernist ‘playful gaze’ of multiple reflections, superimpositions, and metaframings of images” (182). Thereby, his, “postmodernist ‘visual essay’ […] critically investigates […] the hegemonic role of vision, the rise of transcendental reason, and the concomitant Cartesian subject’s colonization and mastery of the world” (178). Willoquet-Maricondi comes close here to my argument, in identifying how Cartesian perspective represents a historically- and culturally-specific attempt to control vision, and points this towards environmental issues – the “Cartesian subject’s colonization and mastery of the world” (2008: 178). She doesn’t provide a detailed account of how this Cartesian perspective operates in nonavant-garde film, but this may be partly because of the scholarly context behind the book in which her chapter appears. It is called Peter Greenaway’s Postmodern/ Poststructuralist Cinema (Willoquet-Maricondi and Alemany-Galway 2008), so it is aligned with poststructuralist scholarship, where the more general critique of film realism had already been made, rather than with ecological film studies, where that critique has been missing. Indeed, Willoquet-Maricondi’s chapter does not address ecological issues anything like as explicitly as her subsequent work such as Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film (2010). Nevertheless, references to this chapter do frequently make it into other ecological film scholars’ reviews of the field, so that it is part of the eco-film studies canon, as it were. But the chapter’s focus on formal issues that are not directly taken up by other ecological film scholars suggests that it only enters this canon in somewhat ad hominem terms, because of Willoquet-Maricondi’s subsequent work. Precisely why her use of poststructuralism’s conventionalised distinction between an ideological realism and a political avant-garde has not entered into

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ecological film studies more widely is difficult to answer, particularly because it suggests a fruitful method for outlining the precise ecologically-damaging effects of mainstream films. This may be partly explained by the field’s wilful anti-anthropocentrism, mentioned in the previous chapter, with scholars unwilling to focus their analyses on humans as object of study. Whether or not that is the case, this is where I want to position my own contribution to the field – Willoquet-Maricondi and others correctly identify some anti-Cartesian elements of certain ecofilms, and I will address these in more detail in Chapter 7, but my main project is an attempt to provide a full explanation for how realist films, particularly those with content engaging with environmental issues, contribute to the spectatorial Cartesian subjectivity that Willoquet-Maricondi sees Greenaway as interrogating. Film conceptualised as only narratively anthropocentric, rather than as formally anthropocentric The third broad category of ecological analyses of film’s anthropocentrism focuses on how narratives are anthropocentric, rather than on how film’s form is anthropocentric. I agree with the following claims about how mainstream Hollywood narratives subsume any nonhuman concerns beneath human concerns. David Ingram provides a clear example of this approach, arguing that “Hollywood’s environmentalist movies often use their concerns with nonhuman nature […] as a basis for speculation on human social relationships, thereby making those concerns conform to Hollywood’s commercial interest in anthropocentric, human interest stories” (2004: 10). Scholarship has been able to apply this wide account of narrative anthropocentrism to more particular culturally-specific forms of human behaviour. Gregg Mitman, for example, identifies how Disney’s anthropomorphic documentaries provide humanlike motivations for the animals they portray which can have a heteronormalising function through their “sentimental version of animals in the wild that sanctified the universal ‘natural’ family as a cornerstone of the American way of life” (1999: 111). In addition, Estok has demonstrated how the cinema can depict the environment as a threat to human characters in an explicitly ecophobic manner, arguing that film often represents nature “as a gendered hostile enemy (a bitch trying to get you, an angry mother nature, and so on), or as the antagonist in a series of dramas about a humanity imagined as besieged and embattled” (2016: 142). This insight certainly applies to many of the films analysed in this book. The cinema’s use of the narrative conventions of melodrama is often understood as the epitome of this specifically human component to film. Melodrama creates a fiction of clear good and evil, right and wrong, structured around individuals with rational agency rather than around victims of sociocultural circumstances (Williams 1998). Ingram uses this scholarly approach to narrative to identify an “environmental politics of melodrama” (2004: 2), which sets up a protagonist/antagonist binary through the “trope of the

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reluctant outlaw-hero [who] provides the means for representing ecological crises […] as ‘short-lived’ and ‘solvable by decisive action’, in keeping with familiar American mythological patterns” (2), on the one hand, and archetypes of hunters or tycoons as villains, on the other. These melodramatic binaries frame “environmental issues as Manichean conflicts” that follow “the tendency of melodrama to individualize social conflicts” (3). Environmental melodrama thereby displaces the genuine and complex causes of and possible solutions to environmental degradation, and in so doing prevents meaningful understanding of and action against that degradation. Such films are inherently damaging to the environment because, as Stephen Rust puts it, of the ability of melodrama to inhabit the cultural logic of capitalism, to speak directly to the individual consumer and instil in us the sense that we each have the power and obligation to act. As Linda Williams explains, ‘melodrama offers hope that it may not be too late … that virtue and truth can be achieved in private individuals and individual heroic acts […]’ (Rust 2013: 202). This sort of narrative is anthropocentric, in the kind of terms I am interested in, because it (narratively) positions the individual spectator in relation to individual protagonists who resolve what are in reality complex problems in definitive ways – why should the spectator worry too much about a potential future disaster when melodrama teaches that some individual hero will rise to the challenge of that disaster and overcome it? The environmental disaster films that I discuss in detail in Chapters 4 and 5 tend towards this melodramatic logic. They are therefore narratively anthropocentric. There are two elements of my argument that this existing approach to ecological melodrama does not address. In the subsequent film analyses in Chapters 3–6, I will position conventions about melodramatic characters within the context of the Symbolic Order. That Order articulates what it means to be a certain kind of person. In 2012, for example, Jackson represents the self-sacrificing active characteristics associated with a benevolently patriarchal form of Symbolic masculinity, whereas Kate represents the more passive and nurturing characteristics associated with a particular form of Symbolic femininity. These Symbolic characteristics are smaller subsidiary components of the broader environmentally-destructive Symbolic cogito. Spectators can internalise selected Symbolic characteristics, and/or those represented by other characters, but when the film ends by simultaneously resolving the apocalyptic threat and restoring Jackson and Kate’s heteronormative family, it closely connects the spectator’s pleasure that the threat is over with a pleasure grounded in heterosexual union. The Symbolic illusion of the cogito’s centrality is the film’s principal ideological effect, then, but this effect is accompanied by additional, more specific ancillary ideological effects relating to other aspects of the Symbolic Order.

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The second element that existing analyses of ecological melodrama do not address is the fact that narrative anthropocentrism is accompanied by realist film’s formal anthropocentrism, with the two ideological illusions reinforcing one another symbiotically. In a realist film like 2012 the Symbolic Order designates various possible (and illusory) subject positions, represented by characters and narrative events, which the spectator might consent to internalise, but these subject positions are anterior to the more fundamental subject position designated by realist film’s geometric grammar – Cartesian subjectivity. The Lacanian Real, without the Symbolic and Imaginary Orders The fourth and final broad category of relevant ecological film studies does not directly engage with anthropocentrism in the strictest sense, but it is pertinent because it utilises a related element of the theory I am concerned with. This category applies the Lacanian concept of the Real to film. This approach, in fact, is as close as existing ecocriticism more widely can be thought of as employing a Lacanian ecosophy. The influence of such an approach is quite substantial, reflecting, no doubt, the scholarly authority of Žižek’s branch of Lacanian philosophy, which focuses, to a large extent, on the Real. Like certain other aspects of his work, Žižek’s thinking on ecological issues is somewhat diffused across his writing. To complicate matters further, he does not explicitly link his arguments about ecology with the Real, although commentators on his work do make this connection. Principally, Žižek is concerned with critiquing a dominant aspect of ecological thinking associated with the Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock 1995), or perhaps more accurately an activist tradition that utilises certain ideas from the Gaia hypothesis. So, whereas Alan Drengson, Bill Devall and Mark A. Schroll state that “those urging a transformation of consciousness” suggest that “[h]umankind is being invited to participate in the fullness of nature as wilderness, not a well-manicured garden that is dominated and controlled for human use” (2011: 105), with Gaia-like nature, here, having agency (“inviting” humanity) and the harmonious plenitude of “fullness” (105), Žižek states instead that “nature is not a balanced totality, which then we humans disturb. Nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes” (2009: 159). Žižek argues that humanity should reject the idea that nature is of value because it has a beauty derived from its purity, and that we should instead find poetry, spirituality […] in trash itself. That’s the true love of the world. […] Love is not idealization. […] You see perfection in imperfection itself, and that’s how we should learn to love the world. The true ecologist loves all this [trash] (Žižek 2009: 165–166). Given that Žižek elsewhere repeats the orthodox Lacanian premise that “Lacan’s notion of the Real as impossible […] refers to the failure of its symbolization: the Real is the virtual hard core around which symbolizations

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fluctuate; […] the only ‘certainty’ is that of the void of the Real which they (presup)pose” (2011: 107), it is uncertain whether the aforementioned ‘trash’ is precisely the Real, or a symbolisation pointing towards a fully unsymbolisable Real. Either way, his argument has been interpreted, by Dan C. Bristow for example, as “a plea for rediscovering poetry in the real of nature (the real, that is, in the Lacanian sense)” (2017: 4, original emphasis). Kevin Spicer, similarly (although somewhat bypassing Žižek) argues that Lacanian psychoanalysis can be used to identify the “fundamentally traumatic kernel of the ecological Real” (2018: 102). Insofar as Lacanian psychoanalysis has informed ecological film studies, it is in this notion of nature’s Real-like divergence from harmony and balance. The same kind of fictional ecological devastations that are of interest to this book have been interpreted as attempts to symbolise the unsymbolisable traumas that humanity might experience as a consequence of anthropogenic environmental degradation. Mark Steven, for example, claims that ‘trauma’ refers to the psychological intrusion of something radically unexpected and ecologically exterior – something which cannot be assimilated into the psyche without returning in neurotic symptoms. […] It was Jacques Lacan who argued (after Sigmund Freud) that traumatic events repressed in the symbolic order will always return in the real. […] According to Lacan, the ‘real’ comprises ecological and psychological phenomena that defy presentation […] – it is thus that the real of ecological violence should transform itself into traumatic symptoms. (Steven 2015: 73) Ivakhiv, too, is interested in how, in these kinds of ecologically traumatic films, “acts of real or Hollywood nature interrupt the narrative, serving as a kind of Freudian uncanny or Lacanian Real, as excessive reminders that invade the representational frame, jarring and dislocating the social worlds portrayed” (2013: 269, original emphasis). These films’ spurious, random acts of (seemingly violent) nature […] represent the Real – the excessive, excluded, and incommensurate remainder of reality, which resists symbolic capture and always threatens to return and intrude, revealing the essential fragility of the nuclear bonds that make up the social. They constitute tears in the fabric of social meanings – the fabric into which we are incorporated as we become social and linguistic beings – which point to the gap at the centre of human identity. (Ivakhiv 2013: 272) In a similar manner to my earlier point about existing scholarship on ecological melodrama, I agree with this kind of analysis, but do not think that it goes far enough, in its Lacanian logic. Yes, ecological disaster films have elements of the Real, in the sense that repressed real-world ecological traumas return in an

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oblique aestheticised form, but the repressed that returns is inevitably sutured back into the Symbolic Order, as I discussed above. This, recall, is the fundamentally masochistic nature of suture – the Real’s threat to the Symbolic is a fort-like disruption that is quickly resolved by a da-like catharsis back into the Symbolic. Ivakhiv is correct to note that films about ecological trauma might invoke a Lacanian Real which threatens the “fragility of the nuclear bonds that make up the social” (2013: 272) Symbolic Order, but this cinematic quasi-Real is not the same Real as that employed by Lacan precisely because it does not finally “resist[…] symbolic capture” (Ivakhiv 2013: 272) at either the narrative or formal level. The “tears in the fabric of social meanings” (272) are sutured over, through the mechanisms of realist geometric grammar, as discussed above, and through narratives which restore a purified and improved human Symbolic Order (families reunited, social problems collapsed onto individuals, transgressive figures punished, and so on). Realist film may invoke an ecologically traumatic Real, but only so that the trauma can be disavowed and reburied in our ecophobic Symbolic unconscious.

How the films discussed in this book relate to ecological issues: The ‘political-ecological unconscious’ This form of aestheticised ecological trauma brings me to the final section of this chapter, in which I briefly outline what kind of films this book addresses, and why. Cartesian culture facilitates environmental degradation, displaces awareness about this degradation, and obfuscates how we might respond to this degradation. I have already set out how the formal grammar of realist film contributes to this ideological process, and made the claim that all realist films, no matter what their narrative content, operate in these terms. But I have not yet established any heuristic parameters for the kind of films that engage with pertinent ecological issues, at the level of narrative content. Such films are particularly interesting because they demonstrate cultural anxiety about ecological degradation, and they therefore provide a nuanced case study for how, precisely, the conventions of realist film geometry interact with potentially environmentally ‘aware’ narratives. It is easiest to begin with the kind of films that I do not principally focus on, although I will return to discuss these in Chapter 7. I am referring here to the kind of films that dominate existing ecological film studies which, as Ivakhiv puts it, “have tended to focus on films that are considered ‘environmental’, especially those that portray nature and its defenders positively” (2008: 1). For proponents of these kind of films and this kind of analysis, ecocinema is “something like a garden – an ‘Edenic’ respite from conventional consumerism – within the machine of modern life, as modern life is embodied by the apparatus of media” (MacDonald 2004: 109, original emphasis). Within these parameters, ecological film studies has constructed a rough (and relatively binary) taxonomy, demonstrated in Willoquet-Maricondi’s claim that the “overt eco-activist intent of ecocinema offers an alternative to the more

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popularized mainstream ‘environmentalist’ fiction films […] whose principal intent is to put a topical subject in the service of entertainment” (2010: xi). I don’t want to offer the same or alternative taxonomies, although my chapters are structured in a quasi-taxonomical manner, for the sake of clarity, and although I do explore the possibility of how avant-garde ecocinema or non-occidental film might problematize the Cartesian basis of realist cinema, in Chapter 7. I therefore retain Willoquet-Maricondi’s binary, albeit in a qualified sense. Instead, my principal focus is on how certain realist films relate to ecological issues in various ways. In the previous chapter I critiqued an awareness model that seeks to avert disaster by providing relevant information about the impending inevitability of such disaster. I therefore do not position environmental disaster films squarely in the context of Dan Bloom’s claim that what he calls “cli fi novels and movies can serve to wake up readers and viewers to the reality of the Climapocalypse that awaits humankind if we do nothing to stop it” (in Murray and Heumann 2016: 191). As I discussed in the previous chapter, ecological disaster films may change some audience members’ attitudes, but these potential changes are limited and mitigated in various ways. ‘Cli fi’ might serve an activist function, then, to some extent, but my Lacanian method argues that any beneficial effects are accompanied or even outweighed by negative effects that perpetuate the environmentally destructive illusion that is Cartesian subjectivity. The films analysed in this book relate to our real-world ecological crises, but often in oblique ways. They are not necessarily precise examples of what Ingram calls “an environmentalist film [which] is a work in which an environmental issue is raised explicitly and is central to the narrative” (2004: vii). It is certainly true, in the selected films, that “an environmental issue […] is central to the narrative”, but these environmental issues are not always “raised explicitly” (vii). Films like World War Z (Forster 2013), for example, depict global zombie outbreaks. I will return to a more detailed analysis of the apocalyptic element of zombies in Chapter 6, but for now it is sufficient to say that a fictional zombie apocalypse may or may not relate to ecological issues, but in World War Z the filmmakers choose to make this connection, in an indirect manner. In part the film’s zombies suggest that humanity is somehow ‘unnatural’, through locating the outbreak in the context of hubristic science, and in particular through an opening montage set before the outbreak which uses documentary footage of non-zombie humans engaging in various kinds of behaviour that is alienated from nature. The film begins with sunrise over a deserted beach, and then rolling clouds, setting up a Gaia-like plenitude from which the subsequent images of humans – depersonalised commuters stepping from a train in unison, lines of queuing traffic, screens showing scrolling share prices, and so on – have departed. In amongst these images a television report shows stranded dolphins, and then cuts to a different news report, whose anchor says ‘CO2 emissions have dramatically increased in the last…’ The subsequent film does not ‘explicitly’ engage with this environmental narrative, and therefore does not precisely

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fit Ingram’s criteria for an “environmentalist film” (2004: vii). The narrative does not feature twists and turns where, in a possible example which the prologue might have developed into, an industrial pollutant that infected the dolphins is revealed to have caused a zombie outbreak in humans. Nevertheless, the opening sequence demonstrates an oblique link between zombies and ‘unnatural’ forms of human behaviour like living in urban capitalism, which is associated with high levels of CO2 emissions and incidents of Cetacean stranding. The suggested logic is that this alienation from nature culminates in the phenomenon of human-as-zombie. This logic hovers around the overall narrative, rather than explicitly drives it but, given that it is perfectly possible to make a zombie film without this ecological issue appearing at all, the film features a sublimated oblique ecologically apocalyptic component. The films addressed in this book all engage with ecological degradation in apocalyptic, or quasi-apocalyptic, terms. They therefore do not depict what Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann call “everyday eco-disasters, such as those associated with industrial farming and energy generation” (2014: xii). Such everyday disasters are more specific, and less sublimated than the disasters depicted in the films of interest here – the films discussed in this book do not engage with the everyday, but the final day, the ‘End of Days’, or at least with more localised disasters which are coded as being similarly apocalyptic within a specific area. Pompeii (Anderson 2014), for example, shows the devastation caused by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. This event was clearly not apocalyptic in literal terms, because humanity as a whole survived. Nevertheless, the film depicts the eruption in a quasi-apocalyptic context. It opens with written text from the Classical historian Pliny the Elder, stating ‘Some prayed for help, […] But still more imagined that there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness’, and culminates with the main female protagonist Cassia (Emily Browning) asking ‘is this the end of the world? Why would the gods let this happen?’ The extended destruction of the city utilises imagery associated both with religious apocalypse (a red/black chiaroscuro of fire/lava and smoke/ash, and slow motion plummets into Underworld-like chasms) and with contemporary environmental disasters (earthquakes, fires, and a vast tsunami). In a similar manner to how the previous example of World War Z was not explicitly ecological, Pompeii is not explicitly apocalyptic. But Pompeii’s narrative and imagery connect ancient localised events with contemporary wider concerns that relate to ecological issues in quasi-apocalyptic terms. How, precisely, does this connection function? Psychoanalysis, again, provides the answer to this question. This is because of the same process of disavowing the magnitude of the crisis that I have been discussing throughout this and the previous chapter. The foundation for this disavowal is predicated on our culture’s complex blend of awareness of a vaguely defined problem combined with our inability to effectively respond to this awareness. Thomas Bristow has argued that “[r]esearch shows that given the high uncertainty and future-bound orientation of many climate change impacts, anxiety is a common affective response to climate

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change” (2019: 315). And, as Freud famously argued, anything that is repressed into the unconscious will inevitably return in a sublimated manner. Freud calls this return of the repressed ‘parapraxis’. It is not that our culture has no awareness whatsoever that environmental degradation is becoming unsustainable. It is, rather, that our culture knows this fact but represses that knowledge, which then returns in oblique forms. The anxiety about a problem that we should be addressing, mentioned by Bristow, is one form of this return. But given that the knowledge was repressed in the first place, the return is not direct and specific. It is, instead, distorted and displaced (parapraxis). Murray and Heumann’s aforementioned “everyday eco-disaster” (2014: xii) films are direct and specific, because the filmmakers are not repressing the real-world disasters informing those films. The films discussed in this book, however, are the result of our culture’s attempts to repress anxiety about ecological degradation, so that the films are, rather, oblique parapraxis-like ‘returns’ of that repressed anxiety. Indeed, these films are classic examples of disavowal, which in Freud’s terms is a mind-set characterised by the simultaneous and contradictory double positions of ‘I know very well, but…’ Sally Weintrobe demonstrates how disavowal relates to ecological issues by clarifying the distinction between climate change denial and climate change disavowal. She calls the first of these “denialism […] which involves campaigns of misinformation about climate change, funded by commercial and ideological interests. Denialism seeks to undermine belief in climate science” (2013: 7, original emphasis). I entertain no delusion that my argument will persuade climate change denialists of this sort. More complex, however, is the second category: “In disavowal reality is more accepted, but its significance is minimized” (Weintrobe 2013: 7, original emphasis). In the Freudian model disavowal is fetishistic – it focuses on a certain less threatening element to displace attention from a more threatening element. Discussing how this might relate to ecological issues, Joseph Dodds writes that the fetish covers over a lack that is simultaneously accepted and denied; in the textbook case of the maternal phallus this translates as ‘I know very well that mummy does not have a penis, nevertheless I do not accept it’. Are we dealing here with a kind of mass denial of the castration of Mother Earth? (Dodds 2011: 42) World War Z’s and Pompeii’s ecologically apocalyptic allusions can thus be thought of as fetishistic, in the sense that they take the repressed trauma of an impending ecological apocalypse and return this trauma in a fictionalised context where the real-world issues causing the repressed trauma are replaced with distance. Rather than the ecological apocalypse directly threatening the spectator, the repressed fear of disaster happens to someone else, in the distant past (Pompeii) or in an unprecedented and therefore clearly implausible scenario that only happens in horror films, like a zombie outbreak (World War Z). These fictional contexts are fetishes, displacing the real threat.

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In the example used throughout this chapter, 2012, this fetishism disavows the anthropogenic nature of apocalyptic climate change. The film essentially plays out an exaggerated climate change apocalypse – temperatures rise, forests burn, the Earth’s crust gives way, mega-tsunamis sweep over mountain ranges, and so on. But the film begins with an image of a massive solar flare, and dialogue pointedly states that this is the cause of the unfolding disaster. Humans have no role whatsoever in causing the apocalypse, and are free, instead, to survive it. No longer the problem, humans can become the solution. The solar flare is thereby another fetish – it causes something that looks very like the repressed trauma of an apocalyptic anthropogenic climate disaster, but it is very significantly not an anthropogenic climate disaster. The real-world repressed problem is alluded to, and returns in fitful spectacles of destruction, but it is displaced onto something somewhat like, but not precisely the same as, that which has been repressed. These films’ ecological ‘returns’ are not only fetishes that displace the repressed trauma of real-world environmental degradation, but are also fictional resolutions of the complex socio-cultural issues causing environmental degradation. In this sense, the films I am interested in fit within the context, introduced in the previous chapter, of Jameson’s ‘political unconscious’. Jameson claims that unjust hegemonic social systems rely on the continuing maintenance of real-world contradictions and conflicts which cannot be resolved in reality, because such a form of genuine resolution would overturn those hegemonic social systems. Instead, these contradictions and conflicts are repressed into what Jameson calls the political unconscious. Because these contradictions have been repressed, they follow the Freudian logic of parapraxis, and fitfully ‘return’, and are fictionally resolved, in various texts, so that “the individual narrative, or the individual formal structure, is to be grasped as the imaginary resolution of a real contradiction” (Jameson 1981: 77). Fictional texts thereby function as a kind of wishfulfilment in relation to real-world problems. As Geoff King puts it, such “narratives often entail a move towards the imaginary resolution of contradictions that cannot be resolved in reality” (2009: 6). In terms of ecological issues, our culture now broadly accepts, climate change denialists aside, that certain aspects of humanity’s industrial behaviour are detrimental to the environment. The opening montage of World War Z invokes this idea in vague terms, establishing something like a binary opposition between ‘nature’ and ‘civilisation’. The films discussed in this book all invoke this binary and, most crucially, enact narratives which resolve this binary opposition in ways that offer no viable real-world resolutions. They are therefore fundamentally ideological, because they demonstrate that our culture’s political unconscious has anxiety about ecological degradation, but they work to resolve this anxiety, rather than the real-world cause of that anxiety. Given that I have argued, in the previous chapter, that scholars like Roszak (1995: 14) and Buell (2001: 22) utilise the terms “ecological unconscious” and “environmental unconscious” in a manner which does not think of the unconscious as an arena of ideological mystification, Jameson’s notion of the

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political unconscious needs to be applied to these films using new terminology. In order to emphasise the contrast with Roszak’s and Buell’s elision of the politicalideological in the terms ‘ecological unconscious’ and ‘environmental unconscious’, the appropriate new terminology is ‘political-ecological unconscious’. Our culture has anxiety about ecological degradation, but our culture’s political-ecological unconscious ideologically represses, obfuscates and resolves this anxiety through fictional texts like environmental disaster films. The contemporary Symbolic Order, then, is inherently Cartesian, establishing and policing borders between the human and the nonhuman. Traumatic fissures in the Symbolic Order demonstrate that this dualism is damaging towards the environment, but the Symbolic Order contains mechanisms to suture over these fissures through a political-ecological unconscious which represses and resolves the traumatic revelations. Todd McGowan (2010) has provided a clear example of how the relationships between political and ecological issues are unconsciously worked over in order to imaginarily resolve real-world problems, in his analysis of a film much discussed in the eco-film studies literature, James Cameron’s Avatar (2009). In this film, Jake (Sam Worthington), one member of a military-industrial attempt to extract energy resources from the Gaia-like plenitude of the moon Pandora, learns to care for, and then aligns with, the native Na’vi defenders against this despoliation. The film concludes with a violent showdown between the human despoilers and the Na’vi. McGowan is also interested in a related but somewhat different Lacanian component of the film, in terms of how the planet fights back against the human invaders, thereby depicting “the incompleteness” of “maternal or natural plenitude” (2010: no pagination). But McGowan also addresses how what I call the film’s political-ecological unconscious represses and collapses political and ecological issues onto the melodramatics of individual psychology. When Jake comes face to face with the leader of the human military, Quaritch (Stephen Lang), in the final fight, the socioeconomic dimension of the antagonism falls out and a physical struggle ensues where the psychology of the villain takes centre stage. Up to this point in the film, Quaritch has been pursuing the interests of the corporation looking to mine the planet, but when he fights Jake, he abandons any concern beyond the fight itself. His individual homicidal psychosis trumps the villainy of the structural evil and allows the spectator to personalize evil. When he fights with Jake, the imperial dimension of the soldiers’ presence on Pandora disappears. […] With the concluding fight, Cameron appears to present a political account only to turn away from it. (McGowan 2010: no pagination) The following chapters analyse various forms of this kind of illusory resolution to political-ecological issues. One repeated example of resolution is a fictional shearing-off of the worst parts of the civilisation element of the civilisation/ nature binary. King has already identified this process, discussing how a common theme in disaster films “is that of ‘natural’ or elemental force breaking

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into the paved, built-up and ‘civilized’, ‘over-civilized’ or ‘decadent’ and ‘artificial’ worlds created by humans. […] The eruption of disaster destroys the excessive products of humanity” (2009: 146). King previously mentioned that this process is part of wider mythic resolutions of problems, and the cleansing power of fictional environmental disasters has its most moralistic precedent in the flood myth of Noah, where the deluge wipes out the worst exponents of mankind’s sin. Darren Aronofsky’s film adaptation Noah (2014) takes up this idea of environmental disaster as purification, and extends the Biblical account of how humanity’s wickedness demands punishment to a more contemporary anxiety in which humanity’s destructive behaviour towards nature is grounds for punishment by that same nature. Noah (Russell Crowe) and his family are shown sojourning through a desolate land of tree trunks destroyed by the descendants of Cain. Noah tells his children the story of Creation, in which all was in balance. […] Then The Creator made Man, and by his side, Woman. […] But they ate from the forbidden fruit. Their innocence was extinguished. And so […] sin has walked within us. Brother against brother, nation against nation, Man against Creation. […] We broke the world, we did this. Man did this. Everything that was beautiful, everything that was good, we shattered. Those few who survive are those who did not threaten nature in the first place – humanity and nature are set up as binary opposites, and the resolution of those binaries is a flood that purges humanity of its most unnatural elements. The films discussed in this book partake in this moralistic resolution of the humanity/nature binary in various ways. Ecological trauma is a sublimated response to real-world behaviour that we are all responsible for, but these films assign guilt to certain people who are deemed to be particularly responsible. In Noah this guilt is very clear and precise, but in most films discussed guilt is generally more subtle and sublimated. Indeed, this guilt is usually displaced from a definitive ‘character x is responsible for environmentally damaging behaviour’ onto a vaguer ‘character x is responsible for certain other forms of negatively-coded behaviour’. This negative behaviour transgresses certain aspects of the Symbolic Order. 2012 provides numerous examples of these transgressions that are punished by destruction in the environmental disaster. As has already been discussed, Jackson survives the suspenseful-coded escape from drowning, and he is rewarded for his selfless benevolent patriarchy by the resolution of his heteronormative family. The stepfather Gordon, who threatened that family, is punished by death. Some of the other characters who die are punished for somewhat ecologically-related reasons. Russian oligarch Yuri (Zlatko Buric) displays various stereotypical forms of conspicuous consumption, including owning rows of sports cars, and taking pride in the size of the enormous airplane that will lead him to (temporary) safety. The pilot Sasha (Johann Urb), too, is associated with this plane, and both of these characters die before the end of the film. But the potentially

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environmentally-damaging aspects of these characters’ behaviour are downplayed. Jackson’s family would not be able to escape were it not for information gleaned from Yuri’s children, and both Jackson’s and Yuri’s families use both the enormous Russian plane and one of the sports cars in their repeated escapes. These potential signifiers of ecological guilt thereby become means for surviving the apocalypse that is very vaguely associated with them. More explicit punishments of various transgressions are not limited to ecological issues. Gordon is an intermediate case, because he is learning to fly, and is therefore somewhat linked with an ecologically damaging form of transport. More significant, though, is his attempted disruption of Jackson’s nuclear family. His career, too, marks him down as vaguely transgressive of certain positively-coded Symbolic elements, because he is a plastic surgeon who performs breast implant operations. One former patient is Yuri’s girlfriend Tamara (Beatrice Rosen). She, too, is punished with death, but the film makes no direct suggestion that her implants are environmentally damaging. Instead, they are part of her broader ‘un-naturalness’, demonstrated through glamorous hair, makeup and costume, by her small dog performing as stand-in for a biological human child, and by her affair with Sasha, which, bundled together with these other deviations from ‘nature’, juxtaposes her transgression of family with Gordon’s and Kate’s resolution of this transgression. The punishments meted out here, then, are for violations of the Symbolic Order more than for violations of damaging behaviour towards the natural environment. Insofar as 2012 assigns blame for the repressed ecological trauma that ‘returns’ in it, guilt is displaced from the real-world forces that contribute to environmental degradation onto vaguely articulated transgressions of various elements of the Symbolic Order. Anil Narine discusses how this kind of phenomenon relates to wider cultural understanding of natural disasters, stating that we engage in what Žižek calls ‘the temptation of meaning’, which is a psychological response to the chaos an ecological catastrophe reveals about our universe [Žižek 2009: 158]. As a way of coping, we impose meaning and even narrative formations onto chaotic events: New Orleans flooded and Las Vegas is drying up as punishment for the sins committed there, for example. (Narine 2015: 5) The films of interest in this book provide similar ‘temptations of meaning’. The real-world causes of environmental degradation are displaced onto various negatively-coded forms of behaviour, which can then be selected for punishment, while the innocent and virtuous survive. Narine’s mention of Las Vegas is appropriate for the example of 2012, because in the second airplane escape, Jackson’s and Yuri’s families take off from Las Vegas airport, with the casinos, hotels and reproduced monuments engulfed in fire and smoke, and plummeting into chthonic chasms. Like Noah’s flood narrative, humanity is purged of these most conspicuously ‘unnatural’ fringes of the humanity/nature binary. 2012 can then signal that the brave new world of the survivors is less

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‘unnatural’ than humanity prior to this secular ‘Fall’. As the arks designed to survive the apocalypse prepare to bear the brunt of approaching mega-tsunamis, a gaggle of hopeful survivors hammer at the sealed doors, pleading for access. When the American Commander in Chief, Anheuser (Oliver Platt), refuses to let them in, geologist Adrian (Chiwetel Ejiofor) articulates exactly why they must be saved: ‘to be human means to care for each other, and civilization means to work together to create a better life. […] [T]here’s nothing human and nothing civilized about what we’re doing here. […] Everybody out there has died in vain if we start our future with an act of cruelty.’ In this exhortation, neither humanity nor civilisation is the cause of the kind of fall from ecological grace articulated above by Noah. Instead, the characters are on the brink of a new future, in which humanity and civilisation can be purged by the cleansing waters of the flood, if the doors are opened which, of course, they are. The ‘temptation of meaning’ is acquiesced – anxiety about a realworld problem revealing the worst of humanity (our inability to meaningfully address our own impending destruction) is disavowed into a fictional resolution revealing the best of humanity. This book is principally concerned with the apocalyptic (or quasi-apocalyptic) representation of ecological disasters because such films provide the clearest juxtapositions between narratives warning about ecological disaster, on the one hand, and realist film’s inevitably anthropocentric Cartesian grammar, on the other. Post-apocalyptic films are also addressed, in Chapter 6, because these films also feature this juxtaposition, but films which stage the environmental apocalypse demonstrate the fully ideological effects of realist film grammar. The empirical analyses of how The Day After Tomorrow might raise audience awareness of the impending disaster, discussed in the previous chapter, suggest that this kind of film can function as a wake-up call – the visceral nature of action cinema can make the threat tangible. As Rust puts it, discussing the same film, “[o]nly when Americans finally see climate change and feel its direct impact within the United States, the film argues, will they accept responsibility for causing global warming and begin to take action in response to it” (2013: 198, original emphasis). But, as I have argued throughout this chapter, the very act of seeing, in the realist cinema, is an ideological ritual reinforcing and naturalising the same Cartesian anthropocentrism that is facilitating environmental degradation. All realist film, as argued above, reinforces this Cartesianism. But environmental apocalypse films are doubly ideological, because they raise the issue of anthropogenic environmental degradation only to suture over this revelation. Realist film, as discussed above, privileges the spectator’s vision. Environmental apocalypse films make this privileging of vision a matter of life and death. In the aforementioned example in the supermarket in 2012, Kate and Gordon do not see the approaching earthquake, but this is only a preliminary warning of the genuinely apocalyptic earthquake that is to come. Other protagonists do know about this impending disaster, and the spectator is provided this information not just through dialogue but through images seen by both characters and spectator – repeated computerised models of what is to come; flocks of fleeing birds; a printed map of

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the arks’ location. In the most extreme example of this privileging of vision the oligarch Yuri, watching his boxer Zultan (Paul Tryl) fight in a large auditorium, receives a text message saying ‘Start boarding procedure’. Both he and the spectator know what this refers to – in the case of the spectator, because of prior images, as well as dialogue, warning about the impending disaster. (Images of the arks themselves are deferred until later in the film, so the ‘boarding’, at least, is somewhat ambiguous for the spectator, at this stage.) Yuri is shown looking at the message, and the spectator shares a point-of-view shot providing this information. The fact that this information is significant for Yuri is revealed through a dolly into a close-up. He rises, turns and leaves. The boxer catches him out the corner of his eye, and turns to look, seeming disturbed that Yuri is leaving. The boxer has not been granted the same perceptual information as Yuri and the spectator, and his vision distracts him from safety – he is knocked down by his opponent. Yuri’s and the spectator’s vision, however, point towards survival, although in the case of Yuri this is temporary, and he will be punished for his aforementioned deficiencies with death. In each of these examples, however, the spectator is provided visual information that allows characters to avoid danger – vision is synonymous with survival; lack of vision with death. During the film’s spectacular escapes, as mentioned above, the spectator is granted a form of masochistic perceptual mastery that vicariously flirts with danger, but which transcends this danger, and which also transcends the embodied constraints of space. This spectatorial vision goes beyond that of the protagonists, but the protagonists’ survival is still dependent on a perceptual mastery above and beyond that of the multitudes that are shown passively destroyed by the apocalypse. The close association of protagonists and spectator functions at both the narrative level, with the camera following these characters rather than the other insignificant people who are only shown as antlike victims of that which the protagonists escape; and at the level of Jameson’s “ideology of form” (1981: 99), through close-ups, shot/reverse shots, subjectively motivated camera movements and non-diegetic music, and point-of-view shots. These two levels reinforce the Cartesian subjectivity of the spectator. At the more obvious level this reinforcement is narratorial – despite the threat of death, and the fact of death for numerous other diegetic characters, the protagonists survive (or those that die are punished for various Symbolic transgressions, or compensate for the obliteration of their subjectivity by asserting certain important aspects of the contemporary cogito, such as sacrifice to ensure the wider survival of Earth’s last human subjects, so that individual subjects might die, but subjectivity itself endures). At the more subtle level the apocalyptic film’s Cartesian reinforcement on spectating subjects is structured around the formal parameters of geometric film grammar – the survival of the protagonists is predicated on, and structured around, the centrality of their ocular perception. These narrative and formal effects do not mean that spectators genuinely believe they are really surviving an actual apocalyptic event. The effects do, however, make two more subtle suggestions to spectating Cartesian subjects. First, like the protagonists, spectators might speculate that they could also

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survive any potential real-world disaster/apocalypse. After all, despite the fact that more people are shown being killed in 2012 than are depicted surviving, spectators are linked to those survivors rather than the victims, as discussed above. Might not each spectator consider themselves similarly heroic, resourceful (and lucky) like the protagonists? However, the efficacy of this first effect is limited in a number of ways. Spectators might not directly ask themselves how they would react in a similar situation to the protagonists, might not consider themselves particularly heroic and resourceful, especially in contradistinction to the physicality of certain protagonists, or spectators might have a certain pragmatism about the mathematical odds against survival. More significant, more subtle, and more pervasive, is the second effect of the aforementioned vicarious spectatorial survival. This is the formal component, organised around (quite literally) the perceptual and ontological centrality of the spectating Cartesian subject. Spectators, like the protagonists, are privileged in terms of seeing the threat of, and the spectacle of, environmental devastation. Spectators share the protagonists’ centrality – visually provided the information that will facilitate survival, which is unseen by the devastation’s passive victims. The formal structure of film narration provides protagonists and spectators with a survival mechanism rooted in the illusory ontological/perceptual centrality of the res cogitans – the very same illusory centrality which threatens environmental apocalypse through its destructive human/nonhuman dualism. In the environmental apocalypse films addressed in this book, then, spectators are not necessarily being consciously encouraged to think that they might survive a real-world environmental apocalypse, but are being unconsciously encouraged to equate such survival with a perceptual centrality that is granted them in formal cinematic terms, whilst the illusory nature of this cinematic formalism is disavowed into the illusory nature of the cogito’s ontological centrality. This form of environmental apocalypse film privileges survival whilst it simultaneously privileges the same ocularcentrism that facilitates real-world environmental degradation. These films raise the threat of environmental disaster only to locate the transcendence of such disaster in the same illusory subjectivity which threatens such real-world disaster in the first place. Dipesh Chakrabarty argues that the impending real-world environmental apocalypse will be all-encompassing – “there are no lifeboats here for the rich and privileged” (2009: 221). But the ecological disaster/apocalypse films discussed in this book function as Cartesian cinematic ‘lifeboats’. They invoke and represent the impending disaster, and turn this disaster into a pleasurably masochistic spectacle, but the protagonists ultimately find lifeboats – cars, airplanes, and finally arks, in the case of 2012 – and close alignment with the protagonists allows the spectator, too, to share those lifeboats. The conventions of realist film’s Cartesian geometry also function as a kind of formal lifeboat, allowing the spectator to weave around the destruction, unharmed. Žižek, discussing the unconscious gap between how contemporary culture understands and responds to the threat of real-world environmental apocalypse, states that “we know the (ecological) catastrophe is possible, probable even, yet we do not believe it will really happen” (2011: 328, original

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emphasis). In terms of the ocularcentrism privileged in environmental disaster films, I would extend Žižek’s distinction one stage further – even if these films perhaps encourage us to “believe it will really happen” (2011: 328), we do not believe it will really happen to us. The vicissitudes of such a disaster would merely be a temporary and cathartic experience, these films suggest, with everything that is best about humanity restored and celebrated once aboard the metaphorical lifeboat, on which protagonists and spectators survive. The rest of this book applies the premises set out above to specific films. Chapter 4 examines how localised quasi-apocalyptic disaster films construct narrative and formal lifeboats for protagonists and spectator, before Chapter 5 analyses detailed examples of films that threaten genuine environmental apocalypses. Chapter 6 explores post-apocalyptic survivors of these disasters, before I consider, in Chapter 7, how avant-garde ecofilms and non-occidental filmmaking practices, such as in Japanese films about ecological disasters, might problematize the Cartesian centrality of occidental realist film. Before this, however, it is necessary to consider one further component of realism’s Cartesian anthropocentrism. As I discussed above, Pick and Narraway claim that “cinema […] is ecologically oriented and zoomorphic: it expresses the interconnectedness of human and other life forms, our implication in and filtering through material networks that enable and bind us” (2013: 5). The next chapter provides detailed examples of how realist films supress film’s potential zoomorphism, and collapse any potential nonhuman cinematic experiential-ness back into the context of the anthropocentric res cogitans.

Notes 1 See Geal (2019: 14–25) for a fuller account of these academic trends’ historical development. 2 For a more detailed account of the development of geometric perspective painting in these terms see Geal (2019: 44–51) and Panofsky (1991 [1927]). 3 Art historian Erwin Panofsky argues that the ostensible perspectival painting of classical antiquity is not the same as Early Modern geometric perspective because it is “the expression of a fundamentally unmodern view of space. […] Systematic space was as unthinkable for antique philosophers as it was unimaginable for antique artists” (1991 [1927]: 43). 4 Fissures in the Symbolic Order are so ubiquitous that the very foundation of the Cartesian cogito is grounded in a suturing process. As Žižek puts it, Descartes was the first to introduce a crack in the ontologically consistent universe: contracting absolute certainty to the punctum ‘I think’ opens up, for a brief moment, the hypothesis of the Evil Genius (le malin genie) who, behind my back, dominates me and pulls the strings of what I experience as ‘reality’. […] However, by reducing his cogito to res cogitans, Descartes, as it were, patches up the wound he cut into the texture of reality. (Žižek 1993: 12, original emphasis) Lacan demonstrates that le malin genie cannot be banished though recourse to “I think” (Descartes 1982 [1644]: 5), because the ‘I’ is an illusion constructed by the Symbolic Order, but Descartes utilised that “I think” to suture over this revelation.

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5 Shot/reverse shot conventions are so ubiquitous that they are often used even when characters are not being depicted in the same literal fictional space, such as when they are conversing on the telephone. In 2012, when geologist Adrian (Chiwetel Ejiofor) phones his father Harry (Blu Mankuma) to tell him that the environmental apocalypse is about to begin, each shot cuts from the son looking right to the father looking left, as though they were sharing an eyeline match in the same fictional space. Comparison with the real world is again indicative – two people conversing on the phone are unlikely to be pointing towards one another across potentially vast distances, but if the film were to show them pointing in different directions it might suggest a problematic lack of interconnectivity between the two images. Having the two characters facing one another elides this problematization, and sutures the images together. 6 Sontag does recognise that resolution is part of the appeal of disaster films, arguing that they “reflect real-world anxieties, and they serve to allay them” (1966: 225), in a proto-Jamesonian sense, but she does not account for the masochistic element of the “aesthetics of destruction” (1966: 213). 7 Chapter 3 addresses the issue of the cinematic experience as a specifically human experience in more detail, exploring how realist film anthropomorphises ostensibly nonhuman perspectives and experiences. 8 Ivakhiv has developed a subtle tripartite taxonomy of how film constructs impressions of fictional environments. He calls these three categories geomorphic, biomorphic/ animamorphic and anthropomorphic cinema (2013: 7–10). However, each of these categories is still inherently Cartesian, unless a film adopts any of the elements that might problematise the anthropocentric, as discussed in this chapter and in more detail in Chapter 7. In the first of Ivakhiv’s categories the “geomorphic dimension of cinematic experience […] deals with cinema’s production of territoriality, of hereness and thereness, homeness and awayness, public and private spaces, alluring destinations and sites of repulsive abjection” (7–8, original emphasis). But this geomorphic ordering of space is necessarily part of linear perspective’s geometric ontology, and therefore, as discussed above, necessarily Cartesian and anthropocentric. Similarly, Ivakhiv’s “biomorphic or animamorphic […] produces the sensuous texture of what appears to be life. […] Insofar as film is primarily visual, it is specifically the optical axis, comprising the relationship between seer and seen, subjects and objects of the act of seeing” (8, original emphasis). This visual relationship, too, principally operates within the context of Descartes’s geometric perspective, unless, again, a film specifically disregards or interrogates perspectival conventions. Finally, Ivakhiv states that “because film shows us human and human-like subjects, beings we understand to be thrown into the world of circumstance and possibility like us, it is anthropomorphic. It produces subjects more like us and those less like us, characters and character types we relate to in varying degrees” (9, original emphasis). This register is the most clearly anthropocentric – film’s geomorphic geometry and biomorphic/animamorphic relationship between seer and seen is accompanied, in Ivakhiv’s anthropomorphic dimension, with characters and narratives who share and reinforce our anthropocentrism (unless, again, such films explicitly challenge this anthropocentrism).

Bibliography Barthes, R. (1989 [1969]) The Reality Effect, in Barthes, R. The Rustle of Language. (Translated by Richard Howard, Edited by François Wahl). Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 141–148. Boime, A. (1991) The Magisterial Gaze: Manifest Destiny and American Landscape Painting, c.1830–1865. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Brereton, P. (2016) Environmental Ethics and Film. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Bristow, D.C. (2017) Toilet Humour and Ecology of the First Page of ‘Finnegans Wake’: Žižek’s Call of Nature, Answered by Joyce. International Journal of Žižek Studies, 12(1), 1–18. Bristow, T. (2019) Towards ‘Keystone Feelings’: An Affective Architectonics for Climate Grief, in Bellocchi, A., Olson, R.E., Khorana, S., McKenzie, J. and Peterie, M. (eds.) Emotions in Late Modernity. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 311–326. Buell, L. (2001) Writing for an Endangered World. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Cahill, J.L. (2013) Anthropomorphism and its Vicissitudes: Reflections on ‘Homme’sick Cinema, in Pick, A. and Narraway, G. (eds.) Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 73–90. Chakrabarty, D. (2009) The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Enquiry, 35(2), 197–222. Descartes, R. (1982 [1644]) Principles of Philosophy. (Translated by Valentine R. Miller and Reese P. Miller). London: Kluwer. Dodds, J. (2011) Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos: Complexity Theory, Deleuze|Guattari and Psychoanalysis for a Climate in Crisis. Hove: Routledge. Drengson, A., Devall, B. and Schroll, M.A. (2011) The Deep Ecology Movement: Origins, Development, and Future Prospects (Toward a Transpersonal Ecosophy). International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 30(1), 101–117. Eagleton, T. (1996) Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Estok, S.C. (2016) Ecomedia and Ecophobia. Neohelicon, 43, 127–145. Freud, S. (1955 [1920]) Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in Freud, S. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 18. (Translated and edited by James Strachey.) London: Hogarth Press, pp. 3–64. Garrard, G. (2014) Introduction, in Garrard, G. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–24. Geal, R. (2019) Anamorphic Authorship in Canonical Film Adaptation: A Case Study of Shakespearean Films. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Heath, S. (1985) ‘Jaws’, Ideology and Film Theory, in Nichols, B. (ed.) Movies and Methods Volume II. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 509–514. Ingram, D. (2004) Green Screen Environmentalism and Hollywood Film. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Ivakhiv, A. (2008) Green Film Criticism and its Futures. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 15(2), 1–28. Ivakhiv, A. (2013) Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Jameson, F. (1981) The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Methuen. Jung, H.Y. (2007) Merleau-Ponty’s Transversal Geophilosophy and Sinic Aesthetics of Nature, in Cataldi, S.L. and Hamrick, W.S. (eds.) Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy: Dwelling on the Landscapes of Thought. New York: State University of New York Press, pp. 235–257. King, G. (2009) Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London: I.B. Tauris. Lacan, J. (1977a) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. (Translated by Alan Sheridan). London: Hogarth Press. Lacan, J. (1977b) Écrits: A Selection. (Translated by Alan Sheridan). London: Tavistock. Lapsley, R. and Westlake, M. (2006) Film Theory: An Introduction. 2nd Edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Latour, B. (2004) Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Enquiry, 30(2), 225–248. Lovelock, J. (1995) The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth. New York: Norton. MacCabe, C. (1985) Theoretical Essays: Film, Linguistics, Literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press. MacDonald, S. (2004) Toward an Eco-Cinema. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 11(2), 107–132. MacDonald, S. (2013) The Ecocinema Experience, in Rust, S., Monani, S. and Cubitt, S. (eds.) Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 17–41. McGowan, T. (2010) Maternity Divided: ‘Avatar’ and the Enjoyment of Nature. Jump Cut, 52. Available at: https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc52.2010/mcGowanAvata r/index.html and https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc52.2010/mcGowanAvatar/2. html (Accessed 25 June 2019). Miller, J.A. (1977/1978) Suture (Elements of the Logic of the Signifier). Screen, 16(3), 6–18. Mitman, G. (1999) Reel Nature. Cambridge, MA: University of Harvard Press. Murray, R.L. and Heumann, J.K. (2014) Film & Everyday Eco-Disasters. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Murray, R.L. and Heumann, J.K. (2016) Monstrous Nature: Environment and Horror on the Big Screen. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Narine, A. (2015) Introduction: Eco-Trauma Cinema, in Narine, A. (ed.) Eco-Trauma Cinema. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1–24. Nichols, B. (1981) Ideology and the Image: Social Representation in the Cinema and Other Media. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Oppermann, S. (2011) Ecocriticism’s Theoretical Discontents. Mosaic, 44(2), 143–169. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A. (2011) Towards a Critical Environmental Law, in Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A. (ed.) Law and Ecology: New Environmental Foundations. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 18–38. Panofsky, E. (1991 [1927]) Perspective as Symbolic Form (Translated by Christopher S. Wood). New York: Zone Books. Pick, A. and Narraway, G. (2013) Introduction: Intersecting Ecology and Film, in Pick, A. and Narraway, G. (eds.) Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 1–18. Ricœur, P. (1970) Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. (Translated by Denis Savage). New Haven: Yale University Press. Robisch, S.K. (2009) The Woodshed: A Response to ‘Ecocriticism and Ecophobia.’ Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 16(4), 697–708. Roszak, T. (1995) Where Psyche Meets Gaia, in Roszak, T., Gomes, M.E. and Kanner, A.D. (eds.) Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, pp. 1–20. Rust, S. (2013) Hollywood and Climate Change, in Rust, S., Monani, S. and Cubitt, S. (eds.) Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 191–211. Sontag, S. (1966) The Imagination of Disaster. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Picador, pp. 209–225. Spicer, K.A. (2018) L’extermination de tout Symbolisme des Cieux: Reading the Lacanian Letter as Inhuman ‘Apparatus’ and Its Implications for Ecological Thinking, in Thakur, B.G. and Dickstein, J.M. (eds.) Lacan and the Nonhuman. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 101–120.

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Steven, M. (2015) Great Southern Wounds: The Trauma of Australian Cinema, in Narine, A. (ed.) Eco-Trauma Cinema. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 72–87. Weintrobe, S. (2013) Introduction, Weintrobe, S. (ed.) Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Hove: Routledge, pp. 1–15. Williams, L. (1998) Melodrama Revised, in Browne, N. (ed.) Refiguring American Film Genres: Theory and History. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 42–88. Willoquet-Maricondi, P. (2008) ‘Prospero’s Books’, Postmodernism, and the Reenchantment of the World, in Willoquet-Maricondi, P. and Alemany-Galway, M. (eds.) Peter Greenaway’s Postmodern / Poststructuralist Cinema. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, pp. 177–201. Willoquet-Maricondi, P. (ed.) (2010) Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Willoquet-Maricondi, P. and Alemany-Galway, M. (eds.) (2008) Peter Greenaway’s Postmodern / Poststructuralist Cinema. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Žižek, S. (1993) Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Durham: Duke University Press. Žižek, S. (2009) Ecology, in Taylor, A. (ed.) Examined Life: Excursion with Contemporary Thinkers. London: The New Press, pp. 155–183. Žižek, S. (2011) Living in the End Times. London: Verso.

Filmography 2012 (2009) Directed by Roland Emmerich. USA: Columbia. Alien (1979) Directed by Ridley Scott. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. Avatar (2009) Directed by James Cameron. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. Jaws (1975) Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA: Universal. Juon: The Grudge (2001) Directed by Shimizu Takashi. Japan: Pioneer LDC. Mildred Pierce (1945) Directed by Michael Curtiz. USA: Warner Bros. Noah (2014) Directed by Darren Aronofsky. USA: Paramount. Pompeii (2014) Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. USA: TriStar. Prospero’s Books (1991) Directed by Peter Greenaway. UK: Allarts. Usual Suspects, The (1995) Directed by Bryan Singer. USA: Bad Hat Harry Productions. What Lies Beneath (2000) Directed by Robert Zemeckis. USA: DreamWorks. World War Z (2013) Directed by Marc Forster. USA: Paramount.

Painting Holbein the Younger, H. (1533) The Ambassadors [Oil on Oak]. National Gallery, London.

3

Realist film as cogito-centric film

The previous chapter established that realist cinema is fundamentally anthropocentric.1 Its formal aesthetics reinforce and normalise the Cartesian opposition between res cogitans human and res extensa external world. The human spectator is the geometrically central locus of the film’s meaning, and is closely aligned with fictional protagonists who provide narrative justification for the spectator’s optic mastery. These conventions repeat the fundamental ontological divide of Cartesian dualism – the illusion of the centralised and ostensibly active human cogito, and the subsidiary, passive nonhuman world which is there merely for the cogito’s pleasure and utility. This chapter considers how realist film manages this anthropocentric gaze when it includes nonhuman characters of various kinds. After all, realist films have a long history of nonhuman characters that audiences might be encouraged to identify with. As mentioned at the end of the previous chapter, some ecological film scholars argue that these characters facilitate a zoomorphic cinema that challenges anthropocentrism (Brereton 2016; Cahill 2013; Pick and Narraway 2013). Such films, it is argued, enable “audiences to begin to recognise ways of seeing the world, other than through the narrow perspective of the anthropocentric gaze” (Brereton 2016: 33). The following addresses this issue, exploring the potential for realist film to challenge anthropocentrism, or, as is more often the case, for realist film to subsume this zoomorphic potential into the anthropocentric logic of geometric film grammar, and for the dualistic Cartesian borders between the human and the nonhuman to be reinforced. The chapter is not organised according to specific forms of nonhuman representations, so that it does not consider animals, followed by cyborgs, and so on. Instead, the chapter is structured theoretically, addressing how films activate and/or subsume various potentially non-anthropocentric forms of storytelling. As discussed in Chapter 1, Descartes claimed that “[i]t is more probable that worms, flies, caterpillars and other animals move like machines than that they have immortal souls” (1991 [1619–1650]: 366). This is why nonhumans other than real-life animals are also of interest in this chapter, particularly those that are ostensibly mechanical automata, but which problematize a neat boundary between human and machine. Almost all human cultures, including our own, DOI: -4

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enforce a binary opposition between human animals and nonhuman animals, so that cultural representations of animals, such as in film, therefore directly relate to real-world behaviour towards animals. The ethical dimension of this binary is thus clear, Anat Pick arguing that the human–animal distinction is a site of contestation, anxiety, and ritual (philosophical, scientific, religious, and artistic) and […] the concrete relations between human and nonhuman animals have been – increasingly since the age we call modernity – an area of sharp separation, a zone in which the upkeep of human integrity, as it were, exacts a devastatingly violent price on animals. (Pick 2011: 1) The ethical dimension of how film enforces borders between humans and various forms of non-animal nonhumans is less explicit. It may be that a human culture of the future will engage in real-world behaviour towards cyborgs or androids that have some similarities with how our own culture behaves towards animals. Should this transpire, cultural representations of cyborgs or androids, such as in films, will directly relate to real-world behaviour towards cyborgs or androids. In the meantime, however, cultural representations of these particular nonhumans are still pertinent, in the sense that they address the same dualistic borders between human res cogitans and nonhuman res extensa, and therefore relate to the same real-world impact of how our culture thinks about and acts towards the environment. The following discusses existing scholarly arguments about why and how realist film includes certain non-anthropocentric elements. These arguments cover 1) zoomorphic narratives; and 2) manipulations of realist film form that are arguably somewhat zoomorphic. I then discuss existing scholarship that conceptualises any film zoomorphism as an attendant part of film’s more pervasive anthropocentrism – these claims are 3) that film’s zoomorphism is frequently coded as monstrous, repeating the Cartesian separation of the human and the nonhuman; and 4) the nonhuman is frequently anthropomorphised, with film animals, for example, behaving and thinking like humans. I then add my own ideas about how nonhuman characters are used to enforce Cartesian dualism – 5) the process of anthropomorphising nonhumans takes place within the context of the Symbolic Order, so that the spectator’s identification with a film animal, for example, is predicated on shared Symbolic experiences; and 6) a process of ‘extensionism’, whereby the fictional nonhuman is effectively promoted to the category of res cogitans while the non-fictional nonhuman of which the character is a representation remains relegated in the category of res extensa. The chapter finishes up by discussing whether realist film can challenge Cartesian dualism not by valorising the nonhuman, but by problematizing the autonomous illusion of the human cogito.

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Possibilities of a non-anthropocentric film realism? Zoomorphic narratives The first branch of scholarship about film’s zoomorphic potential relates to narratives focusing on the experiences of nonhumans with which spectators are encouraged to empathise. There are two main areas in which this identification operates – as something ethically superior to humanity, and as something specifically different to humanity, in terms of an ‘animal-ness’. In both of these areas there is still something like a binary between the human and the nonhuman, but this binary is not coded negatively towards the latter. Indeed, in the first area, it is the human that is coded as negative, and the nonhuman as innocent and, Gaia-like, ‘balanced’. Discussing Disney’s Bambi (Algar et al. 1942), a key text for this approach, Ivakhiv claims that the film’s “stark juxtaposition of the romance, love, and beauty of the forest with the harsh realities of human predation of animals remained a powerful motivator for many children who grew up in the middle of the last century” (2013: 218). Ivakhiv’s statement sounds like a kind of anthropomorphism, ascribing the affective states of “romance, love, and beauty” (218) to the forest and its nonhuman inhabitants, as I will address in more detail below, but his argument is nevertheless significant in terms of inverting a cultural binary that valorises humans and devalues nonhumans, and, in terms of the potential for film to encourage environmental activism, as discussed in the previous two chapters: Ivakhiv sees Bambi as a “powerful motivator” (218). In the second area of this scholarship, a film like Bambi is thought of as narratively zoomorphic in the sense that it attempts to represent an animal-like view of the world. David Whitley, discussing the scene where Bambi and his mother are shot at by hunters, states that the apprehensive, surveying gaze of the grazing deer gives way to focused awareness solely of features to be navigated around in the flight path; thence to taking in the comforting detail of a familiar environment experienced in safety; and, finally, to a transformed world, dimly glimpsed through grief, for which the falling snow provides a compelling visual metaphor. (Whitley 2016: 77) Again, here, there is an element of anthropomorphism in how a pathetic fallacy connects the spectator’s and the animals’ ‘grief’, but Whitley is principally concerned with how the film attempts to represent animal-like experiences of the environment, based on a herbivorous herding mammal’s evolved perceptual approach to space. Pre-empting my criticism that this process includes an anthropomorphic element, Whitley argues that this representation of the deer’s world is not just a “displacement of human loss onto animal forms. The animal figures are also teaching children how to look at significant detail in the world

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around them and to integrate these perceptions within their whole emotional response” (2016: 77). Whitley’s point is that the experience of watching a film such as Bambi is something akin to what Deleuze and Guattari call the experience of “becoming animal” (2007 [1987]), although they particularly associate this process with contagion, so the category of the monstrous zoomorph, discussed below, is more specifically one of ‘becoming animal’ in a Deleuzian/Guattarian sense. Nevertheless, Whitley is attempting to position certain film animals within the context of a non-anthropocentric fictional space. He focuses mainly on the narrative component of this process, but his claim that Bambi involves looking in a particular manner points towards a formal component that is developed in more detail by other scholars. Zoomorphic form As with the previous category, scholarship about zoomorphic film form can be approximately subdivided into two strands. In the first, film is conceptualised according to Bazin’s claim that cinema represents the human and the nonhuman in similar ways (an argument which was introduced in the previous chapter); and in the second, certain realist films are thought of as possessing nonhuman forms of movement. The Bazinian approach is ostensibly concerned with film realism, but it may be that it applies more directly to the avant-garde, because Bazin’s conceptualisation of realism is quite different to the poststructuralist/psychoanalytic conception of realism that I am using. Without spending too much time going into the underlying theory, scholars like Cahill (2013), discussed in the previous chapter, Pick (2011) and Jennifer Fay (2008) claim that the cinema (literally) flattens out the ‘reality’ which is filmed, in the process eroding cultural hierarchies between living and non-living, human and nonhuman. Pick, for example, notes how Bazin writes about documentary footage of real-life executions: At each screening, at the flick of a switch, these men came to life again and then the jerk of the same bullet jolted their necks. I imagine the supreme cinematic perversion would be the projection of an execution backward like those comic newsreels in which the diver jumps up from the water back onto his diving board. (Bazin in Pick 2011: 114, Pick’s emphasis) Pick compares this to early films like the Lumière brothers’ Demolition of a Wall (1896), which was “regularly screened backward, delighting audiences by magically reconstituting the wall they had just seen destroyed” (2011: 114), and asks “what is the meaningful difference between a wall and a man from the point of view of cinema?” (114). I will provide my answer to that question in a moment, but it is first important to state that Pick’s reading of Bazin facilitates a view of “cinema as a

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zoomorphic stage that transforms all living beings – including humans – into creatures” (Pick 2011: 106). Fay, similarly, claims that Bazinian realism, as reimagined through animals and nature, is not merely the replication or record of the world as we humans perceive it; […] rather, it reveals the details of animate and inanimate life that are lost to anthropocentric attention and history. (Fay 2008: 42) For Pick and Fay, then, film is inherently objective and distancing, and therefore non-anthropocentric. However, the argument that I have set out in the previous chapter demonstrates a limitation in this idea. The conventions of realist film grammar are attempts to overcome any potentially alienating effects generated by the cinema. When Pick asks what is the cinematic difference between a falling wall and a dying man she answers that “in Bazin, realism’s encounter with death ultimately dehumanizes all who come under its technological spell” (2011: 114), but realism as understood from the poststructuralist/psychoanalytic perspective outlined in the previous chapter, is an attempt to emphasise humanity, rather than displace it. Consider any number of executions in realist film fictions – the innocent soldiers selected by lot in Paths of Glory (Kubrick 1957); the kindly John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) accepting his fate in The Green Mile (Darabont 1999); William Wallace (Mel Gibson) bellowing ‘freedom!’ at the culmination of his tortuous death in Braveheart (Gibson 1995). In each of these examples the characters are humanised in various ways – Kubrick’s ordered ranks of onlooking soldiers providing a juxtaposition with the travesty of justice taking place; close-ups of John’s and the executioners’ crying faces competing with sentimental non-diegetic music to instil pathos for a man that executioners and film spectator alike know is innocent; Gibson’s intercutting to the crowd, recognising Wallace’s heroism, to Wallace’s nemesis King Edward (Patrick McGoohan) dying painfully and lonely in bed, and to a slow motion point-of-view shot where the dying Wallace sees his smiling slain wife Murron (Catherine McCormack), welcoming him back to her. Each of these cinematic executions works hard to overcome film’s flatness and its dehumanising potential – Pick’s difference between walls and men, here, is very great. Indeed, Pick, Cahill and Bazin all recognise this, in various ways. Cahill claims that cinema has “an anti-anthropocentric potential” (2013: 76) rather than an inevitable anti-anthropocentric ontology. Bazin describes his aforementioned imagined film of a reverse execution as “the supreme cinematic perversion” (in Pick 2011: 114), demonstrating that this dehumanising ‘man-as-wall’ is not the principal form of film communication, which is subverted and ‘perverted’ in his hypothetical example. This means that when Pick asks “would not a fully blown realist cinema do away with the artificial constructions of species in the pursuit of what Derrida called the ‘living in general’? Film’s realism is its inhumanity” (2011: 115), she recognises that this inhumanity is not a component of anything other than “a fully blown realist cinema” (115), which, in the sense of a Bazinian

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“cinematic perversion” (in Pick 2011: 114) means an avant-garde beyond the conventions of what poststructuralism/psychoanalysis defines as film realism. I will therefore return to this argument, in Chapter 7, when I address avant-garde ecocinema in more detail, but the realist films discussed throughout the rest of this book are not zoomorphic, in Bazinian terms, because they employ an anthropocentric film grammar, and do not thereby collapse the boundary between the human and the nonhuman, as Pick, Cahill and Fay claim. The second strand of scholarship on zoomorphic film form is concerned with ostensibly nonhuman movement. Christopher Holliday (2016) has written about computer-animated films like Bee Movie (Smith and Hickner 2007) and Ratatouille (Bird 2007), which follow the stories of bees and rats, respectively, who live in an ostensibly normal world like our own. These films are part of a (principally animated) tradition in which animals have cognitive and emotional abilities more associated with humans than nonhumans, but, for Holliday, the computer-animated turn in animated filmmaking facilitates a “style of performance that frequently withdraws from ánthro-pos (attribution of human characteristics) [to] the anthropomorph’s morphe- (rather than its human connotation)” (2016: 251, original emphasis). I will address the extent to which the ánthro-pos element is still central in more detail below, but Holliday’s focus is on the formal component of the characters’ animality, so that the reversal in agency from human ánthro-pos to non-human morphe- is […] most commonly articulated in computer-animated films through dynamic point-of-view subjectivity, a degree of perspectival intrigue, and a continuous innovation of spectator viewpoint. […] The varying of angles and the reorganization of the spatial coordinates within these fictional worlds is the result of the anthropomorphic eye (the eye of the anthropomorph) that is in constant positional flux, […] with a new saliency and forcefulness that has its roots in an anthropomorph who has rejected its human essence in favour of exploring the dynamic potential of its morphe-. (Holliday 2016: 255, original emphasis) For Holliday, then, these films’ mobility is rooted in the animality of the protagonists. The main bee, Barry (Jerry Seinfeld) in Bee Movie, for example, has the physical capabilities of a flying insect, and the film can exploit this physicality to activate a swooping and swirling cinematography that follows Barry’s flights. Thus, Holliday argues that within the film’s broader allegiance towards the anthropomorph’s subjectivity, it is ultimately the morphe- identity, or ‘morphe- eye’, which is rendered most dominant, and central to how the scene (and its narrative drama) is transmitted. The camera did not need to occupy such intrusive, exploratory and dynamic positions; the animators could certainly have located it elsewhere, telling the story from more conventional, ‘grounded’ places within

Realist film as cogito-centric film 91 the fictional world. But it is the energy of the non-human morphe- eye and its aptitude for spatial discovery that is used to inscribe the spectators into the world, and skew their perception of the events that unfold there. […] Barry’s ‘take’ on the scene […] is animated to be the spectator’s own viewing position. (Holliday 2016: 256, original emphasis) The extent to which this ‘morphe- eye’ might function within the context of Deleuze and Guattari’s aforementioned “becoming animal” (2007 [1987]) is demonstrated by Holliday’s claim that this cinematic mobility is akin to what Gilles Deleuze has called ‘gaseous perception’. […] [T]his is ‘the pure vision of a non-human eye, of an eye which would be in things’. […] Gaseous perception therefore fits within the broader shift occurring in the anthropomorphic representations of computer-animated films away from ánthro-pos (human subjectivity), and towards the possibilities of the morphe(the object or ‘thing’). (Holliday 2016: 257, original emphasis) Previously, Holliday had described the camera’s alignment with the morphe- as subjective, whereas here “[b]reaking with the normal conditions of human subjective experience allows the audience to achieve an open flow of ‘hallucinogenic’ perception that can be said to be experienced by objects that are situated in their position of uncontaminated objectivity” (257). Whether the spectatorial alignment with the flying Barry can be described as subjective or not is important, in the sense that I have been talking, throughout this book, of subjectivity as centralised human Cartesian subjectivity. Holliday perhaps means nonhuman non-Cartesian subjectivity, as opposed to human Cartesian subjectivity, and with his focus on ‘gaseous perception’ he certainly stresses some kind of difference to human subjectivity. But even if this ‘gaseous perception’ were to be an entirely different state of (non-)subjectivity, which the spectator is being invited to share, this perception is still part of a broader perceptual regime that does (literally) revolve around human subjectivity. Holliday acknowledges the predominance of this stable subjective visual style, writing that films like Bee Movie are still structured by an overarching ‘classical’ model of narration, one that traditionally privileges an illusionist, transparent textual system rooted in diegetic coherency and legibility. Many computer-animated films adhere to the logic of classical storytelling (establishing shot, continuity editing, 180-degree rule, shot/reverse-shot) at the same time as they fully confront the dizzying possibilities of anthropomorphic subjectivity, thereby revealing a push–pull relationship in their formal style between the visual bravura of animated intervention and a more restrained 1940s/1950s Hollywood classicism. (Holliday 2016: 259)

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Although Holliday does not utilise the Lacanian terminology, the “push–pull relationship in their formal style” (2016: 259) fits in with the anamorphic suture between the centralised geometry of the Cartesian cogito in the Symbolic Order, Real-like threats to that Order, and (particularly) the disembodied transcendence of space associated with the hommelette-like Imaginary Order. Holliday’s description of Barry’s flight, after all, is not dissimilar to my description of the airplane escape from the mass earthquake in 2012, discussed in the previous chapter. In both, protagonists and spectator break out from the shackles of an earthbound human body, pleasurably manoeuvring around and between various different proffered visual positions, some of which belong to protagonists, some of which do not. Both Bee Movie and 2012 thereby oscillate between the subjective and the objective in spectacles of bodily transcendence. The Imaginary pleasures of these movements are combined with sutures back to the more stable Symbolic geometry of what Holliday calls “a more restrained 1940s/1950s Hollywood classicism” (259). If the ‘gaseous perception’ of Bee Movie’s nonhuman movements entails a kind of ‘becoming animal’, then even if it might be a stretch to describe 2012’s flight escape as a ‘becoming airplane’ then it is at least an Imaginary ‘becoming hommelette’. It is no coincidence, then, that Bee Movie’s more anthropomorphic narrative elements coincide with the “restrained […] Hollywood classicism” (Holliday 2016: 259) while the more explicitly nonhuman flight coincides with the ‘gaseous perception’. I will address anthropomorphism more broadly below, but in Bee Movie, Barry’s first ‘gaseous’ flight is preceded by a sequence in which the bees prepare to depart. The camera, here, sticks to what Holliday previously described as “conventional, ‘grounded’ places within the fictional world” (256), and editing is replete with eyeline matches and shot/reverse shots. The bees are dressed as, and act like, human subjects. Their leader wears military uniform, checks his ‘troops’ on a clipboard, and salutes their take-off. The other bees wear helmets and sun visors. Their wings are started by assistants, who remove starting blocks standing in for airplanes’ ‘chocks’, in references to World War Two aviation. These features, clearly, are much more ánthro-pos than they are morphe-, and this ánthro-pos is closely connected with anthropocentric (‘classical’) film grammar. When the bees take off, emphasising their morphe-, the restrained classicism is replaced with the more energetic ‘gaseous perception’. The oscillation between ánthro-pos and morphe-, and between restrained and energetic forms of film grammar, therefore operates within the context of anamorphic suture between the Symbolic and the Imaginary Orders. Even if the morphe-’s ‘gaseous perception’ does briefly challenge the cogito’s geometric stability, it only does so temporarily, and activates an Imaginary pleasure that soon sutures back into the Symbolic, with the morphe-, once again, a somewhat humanlike Cartesian ánthro-pos. This suture between an Imaginary ‘gaseous’ animal-like subjectivity (?)/objectivity and a more stable anthropocentric Symbolic subjectivity continuously reinscribes the centrality of the latter. In this sense the quasi-subjectivity of the anthropomorph points towards extending the most important component

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of human subjectivity, the status of res cogitans, to nonhuman protagonists like Barry. This idea will be discussed in more detail below, but before that there are existing scholarly arguments about the filmic relationships between the human and the nonhuman to discuss, beginning with representations of the latter as monstrous threats to human subjectivity.

Film zoomorphism/non-anthropocentrism as monstrous The anthropomorphs discussed by Holliday may problematize a neat division between the human and the nonhuman, but they do not directly threaten human subjectivity, at the level of the narrative. Filmic representations of what Deleuze and Guattari call “becoming animal” (2007 [1987]) can carry this threat, however. Stacy Alaimo (2001) has written about this process in depth. The Island of Dr. Moreau (Frankenheimer 1996) is an exemplar of this idea. Trapped on an island, Edward (David Thewlis) discovers that the eponymous Doctor (Marlon Brando) is breeding human-animal hybrids that threaten the boundary between the human and the nonhuman, with predictably monstrous consequences. For Alaimo this monstrosity functions as a warning against the kind of manipulations of human/nonhuman boundaries undertaken by the ‘mad’ doctor: When films such as […] The Island of Dr. Moreau […] portray nature as monstrous – something that literally threatens human life and figuratively threatens the bounds of human subjectivity – they insist on solid divisions between nature and culture. […] They undertake a kind of border work, dramatically distinguishing ‘man’ from nature. (Alaimo 2001: 280) Films that mark out transgression of this border as monstrous do not only apply to relationships between humans and animals. Various other types of nonhumans can also be used to make clear juxtapositions with the human. Zombies are one such category. They represent something which seems human, but which is in fact a nonhuman other. The zombie’s monstrosity is predicated on this threat to humanity. Sarah Juliet Lauro and Karen Embry state that the zombie is an antisubject. […] The zombie is different from other monsters because the body is resurrected and retained: only consciousness is permanently lost. […] Whereas the vampire and even the intangible ghost retain their mental faculties, and the werewolf may become irrational, bestial only part of the time, only the zombie has completely lost its mind, becoming blank – animate, but wholly devoid of consciousness. (Lauro and Embry 2008: 89) In Cartesian terms this means that the zombie was a human res cogitans now reduced merely to res extensa. Recall that for Descartes the human body itself is

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an externality that might or might not exist, whereas the human mind itself is the certitude which suggests the existence of the subsidiary external world, including the human body (in The Matrix’s fictional narrativisation of this idea the ostensibly human bodies within the Matrix are part of the illusory computer-generated res extensa). The zombie retains only this extended body, but has lost its status as cogito. Zombies are frightening not only because they threaten to kill humans, but because they threaten to turn humans into zombies, transgressing the border between the human res cogitans and a monstrous travesty of that human reduced merely to res extensa. The attempts of human protagonists to survive zombie attacks are thereby part of a wider cultural attempt to maintain borders between the human and the nonhuman. In narratively threatening those borders, the zombie culturally reinforces those borders. There are a number of ways in which certain zombie films problematize this neat division between human and nonhuman, and in the sense that this process relates to anthropomorphism (or – given that the zombies were once human – re-anthropomorphism) I will discuss this issue below. More typically, zombie films police the border between the human and the nonhuman not just by representing the zombie as Lauro and Embry’s “antisubject” (2008: 89), but by invoking the disgusting nature of that which problematizes the human/nonhuman border. The post-Lacanian philosopher Julia Kristeva describes this as the ‘abject’. Kristeva’s argument begins with the idea that the abject is something like the gap between subject and object, and the revelation that the subject is not only an illusion (as Lacan has it), but that the subject is also dependent on a rigid policing of the borders between the self and other because of the subject’s inevitable mortality. Kristeva therefore starts with the premise that [i]f dung signifies the other side of the border, the place where I am not and which permits me to be, the corpse, the most sickening of wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything. It is no longer I who expel, ‘I’ is expelled. (Kristeva 1982: 3–4). The abject, then, is a trauma associated with the border between the human and the nonhuman that I am discussing: “It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite” (Kristeva 1982: 4). Kristeva discusses how human subjectivity attempts to cope with this threat through rigid policing of borders, with her principal focus on how “[a]bjection exists as exclusion or taboo […] in monotheistic religions” (1982: 17). Film scholars like Barbara Creed have applied this idea to the cinema, arguing that the central ideological project of the popular horror film [is] purification of the abject. […] The horror film attempts to bring about a confrontation

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with the abject (the corpse, bodily wastes, the monstrous-feminine) in order finally to eject the abject and redraw the boundaries between the human and the non-human. As a form of modern defilement rite, the horror film attempts to separate out the symbolic order from all that threatens its stability. (Creed 1993: 14) From this perspective the blurring of boundaries between the human and the nonhuman in The Island of Dr. Moreau’s human-animal hybrids or in the zombie’s threat to human subjectivity functions as “confrontation[s] with the abject […] in order finally to eject the abject and redraw the boundaries between the human and the non-human” (Creed 1993: 14). As there is a good deal of existing scholarship detailing this argument I don’t need to provide numerous examples, but it is worth noting that Creed conceptualises the abject borders between the human and nonhuman as applying not only to the categories I have already discussed, but also to other supernatural monsters and to various extraterrestrials. This last category is most clearly explored in her analysis of Alien. In this film the abject collapse of the borders between the human and the nonhuman entails a monstrous travesty of human biological reproduction, when Kane (John Hurt) is impregnated by an alien creature, which gestates in his stomach, from where it erupts (Creed 1993: 19). After the human/nonhuman borders are threatened, they need to be restored, so that the abjectly-contaminated human bodies, and the abject threat of the alien, are expelled out of human space into outer space. Indeed, the film’s sequel Aliens (Cameron 1986) repeats the ejection of the abject alien out of an airlock, so that this act might be a non-abject coincidence in one film, but is more certainly an abject trope, given its repetition. Creed, and others, have written extensively about the filmic abject, so that a detailed repetition of their arguments is not required here. The salient point is worth repeating, however – when realist films’ narratives problematize the borders between the human and the nonhuman, they frequently mark out this border as monstrously abject, and work to restore that border. I will address some of those films that do not do this below. Creed’s focus is principally on biological organisms, but abjection can also apply to technological nonhumans of various kinds. Indeed, Alien includes one such, in the form of the android Ash (Ian Holm), who/which is made abject by association (because he/it attempts to bring the alien back to Earth) and through explicitly abject imagery and narrative (because his/its head is knocked off but continues to speak, leaking white fluid instead of red human blood, and because Ash is reduced to the substance of his/its name when the body is torched with a flamethrower – the abject must not only be killed, it must be removed, so that it ceases to contaminate human space). Technological nonhumans, however, are typically less associated with the abject than are animal hybrids, supernatural monsters, and extraterrestrials, principally because these other categories more explicitly involve a mise-en-scène

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evoking Kristeva’s focus on blood, puss, excrement, and so on. As Ash demonstrates, though, androids can have an embodied kind of abjection that demonstrates the problematic similarity and difference between his/its body and the human body. This bodily indeterminacy is particularly evident with the biological/technological hybrids of cyborgs. In the original The Terminator (Cameron 1984) film, the T-800 cyborg assassin (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the biological mother of the man who will lead the human resistance against the machines in the future, also has an indeterminate body (described in the first film as ‘part man, part machine’, and in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Cameron 1991) as ‘living tissue over a metal endoskeleton’). This indeterminate body is rendered most abject when it removes a damaged biological eye, revealing the blood and tissue covering over its metal skull and glowing red mechanical eye. The Terminator films are more frequently abject at the narrative level. The first film ends with the cyborg’s flesh burnt away, so that only the completely technological endoskeleton remains, and the machine is reduced to the definitely nonhuman. It is crushed in a factory, but the second film reveals that parts of the endoskeleton were salvaged, and are being used to build the same machines that will soon turn against humanity. This second film both extends and contracts the borders between the human and the nonhuman. The extension involves a more advanced robot assassin, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), which is made from liquid metal, so that it can morph into various shapes, both human and nonhuman. The contraction of the human/nonhuman borders involves another T-800 sent back to protect the adolescent future human leader, John Connor (Edward Furlong). This cyborg’s narrative trajectory is anthropomorphic, as it learns about human emotions, eventually stating ‘I know now why you cry’. The precise status of the T-800’s subjectivity or consciousness was vague to begin with, but becomes something more like a thinking res cogitans towards the end of the second film. In the first, it does not possess the ability to make its own decisions – Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), Sarah’s protector from the future, stating that ‘it can’t be reasoned with, it can’t be bargained with, it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear’ (my emphasis). In one interesting (quasi-)subjective shot from the first film the inside of the cyborg’s thought process is shown, after the smell of his rotting biological eye socket prompts the question ‘you got a dead cat in there?’ The cyborg brain brings up the following text as optional responses: YES/NO OR WHAT? GO AWAY PLEASE COME BACK LATER FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE FUCK YOU

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The penultimate options flashes, and the T-800 speaks this line. The options presented here are the kind of automata-like processes that Descartes reserves for res extensa animals, rather than res cogitans humans. Nevertheless, the response seems sufficiently humanlike for the cyborg’s interlocutor, and the point-of-view nature of these optional answers is part of a filmic convention that, if the possessor of the point-of-view were a human, would be unproblematically described as a subjective shot. Given that the T-800 doesn’t explicitly have a subjectivity, however, this scene is a problematic erosion of the border between human and nonhuman, and this erosion has some additional abject elements to it, in terms of the cause of the smell (the blood and putrefaction of the cyborg’s biological/ technological hybrid body), and dialogue references to a dead animal and an asshole, both of which have abject associations. In the second film the T-800 does becomes more human, in terms of an emotional capacity which suggests a res cogitans-like ability to think. The aforementioned ‘I know now why you cry’ and deadpan comments like ‘I need a vacation’, when shuffling along after sustaining heavy damage, are not shown as text in a point-of-view shot like that described above, and the suggestion is that they come from experience rather than from the external programming exhibited in the first film. As such, they are examples of ‘I think’. The boundary between the human and the nonhuman is thereby collapsed. However, just as it reaches this point of achieving something like res cogitans subjectivity, the very existence of the cyborg, now it has completed its mission to protect John, is a threat that needs to be extinguished. Because its technological body could be harvested to create future killing machines, it volunteers to destroy all traces of itself in a vat of molten metal. Both of the aforementioned cogito-like lines of dialogue come from these final moments, so that the boundary between human and nonhuman is most fully eroded just as it is about to be restored. As with Ash, the neat Symbolic division between human and nonhuman is maintained through a purifying fire (for good measure, the more definitively nonhuman T-1000 is also melted in this vat). More frequently, however, borders between the human and the technological nonhuman operate in the context of anthropomorphism, to which I turn shortly. Before that, however, there is one last element of the potentially monstrous/abject nonhuman that has not yet been addressed, and this relates to how realist films might invert the binary of human/positive and nonhuman/ negative. To some extent this can include a somewhat inadvertent potential spectatorial identification with the monstrous nonhuman. Alaimo interprets films like The Island of Dr. Moreau in this way, arguing that [p]erhaps, in the muddled middles of these films, viewers can experience a kind of corporeal identification with the monstrous natures. […] Perhaps the horrific but pleasurable sense of the ‘melting of corporeal boundaries’ […] can catalyze some sort of resistance to the desire to demarcate, discipline, and eradicate monstrous natures. (Alaimo 2001: 294)

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Even if this were the case, however, the “muddled middles of these films” (Alaimo 2001: 294) are only one component of the way that abjection problematizes borders only to reinforce them. This process shares the same Lacanian logic as the suture discussed earlier in this chapter, and in the previous one – the pleasurable act of resolution (in this case, restoring human/nonhuman borders) is dependent on a prior staging of trauma, within the context of the masochistic Freudian fort/da game. A more definitive identification with the monstrous nonhuman would carry this “pleasurable sense of the ‘melting of corporeal boundaries’” (Alaimo 2001: 294) through to a film’s resolution. Alaimo discusses two films that, she argues, do this: “Habitat [Daalder 1997] and Safe [Haynes 1995] […] instead dissolve the boundaries that demarcate safe spaces” (2001: 280). The second of these films does not provide as clear evidence for this claim as The Island of Dr. Moreau does for Alaimo’s main argument, however. Safe, in which suburbanite Carol (Julianne Moore) suffers from multiple chemical sensitivity, has “houses [which] stand as metonyms of a kind of toxic affluence. […] Environmental illness epitomizes that humans are inseparable from their environments” (Alaimo 2001: 290–291). But this inseparability does not involve a direct challenge to the borders between the human and the nonhuman, instead positioning the human in an inescapable relationship with nonhuman nature. Habitat, set in the near future, includes a more direct transmogrification of the human body, and of a house in which humans live, which becomes a living organism defending itself against the film’s human antagonists. This means, for Alaimo, that “[w]hile the film does depict a battle against the monstrous nature of the house, those who wage this battle are portrayed as fools” (289). Habitat’s rehabilitation of one side of the human/nonhuman boundary is somewhat similar to Ivakhiv’s (2013: 218) claims about Bambi – in both of these films, humans are destructive, and spectatorial identification is aligned with the nature that comes under attack. Given that Habitat was made for the direct to video market, a more well-known example of a filmic rehabilitation of nonhuman monstrosity is District 9 (Blomkamp 2009), although this had not been released when Alaimo was writing about Habitat. In District 9, extraterrestrials crash-land in an alternate history South Africa, and, in reference to real-world Apartheid, are soon thought of as subhumans removed to the camp of the film’s title. Wikus (Sharlto Copley), who originally shares the other human characters’ prejudice against the extraterrestrial ‘Prawns’, is appointed to relocate District 9’s inhabitants to another camp. Whilst performing his duties, however, Wikus is contaminated with alien DNA, and begins to metamorphose into a human-alien hybrid. Visually, this transmogrification shares much of the abject imagery of the mutations discussed by Alaimo in The Island of Dr. Moreau, or depicted in more disgusting detail in hybridity films like The Fly (Cronenberg 1986). Wikus’s body jerks under pressure at the changes, black liquid seeps from his nose and is vomited out of his mouth, his fingernails peel off and teeth fall out, suppurations appear on his body, he stares incredulously at an emerging claw, and so on. In terms of imagery, Wikus’s hybrid body is a site of the monstrous collapse of the human/nonhuman border.

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The film’s narrative, however, aligns this visual monstrosity with an enlightenment about human callousness and duplicity. On learning of his infection, Wikus’s boss, Piet (Louis Minnaar) orders that the body be harvested, its hybridity offering biotechnological potential for using alien weaponry. Wikus’s vivisection, moreover, is to be performed while he is still alive, without any anaesthetic, and Piet’s duplicity, as well as his callousness, is confirmed when he tells Wikus’s wife that doctors are doing all they can to help her husband. As the narrative develops, Wikus comes to understand how the aliens are being mistreated, and allies with them to fight against their oppressors. Indeed, the depiction of the aliens alters as the film progresses, as Fran Pheasant-Kelly notes: As the film proceeds, the aliens are made more endearing, narratively, by the fact that they show affection towards their families, and visually, by the use of close-ups of them, which, though earlier had tended to assume side-on framing in order to focus on their disgusting facial tentacles and various bodily appendages, now centre on their enormous eyes through frontal framing, thereby exploiting neotenic tropes. (Pheasant-Kelly 2016: 243) This revisionist manipulation of the non-monstrous human/monstrous nonhuman binary goes so far as to include direct reversals of established filmic examples. In the aforementioned Aliens for example, arch-survivor Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) uses a flamethrower to destroy the alien mother’s batch of eggs which have already been used to signify the threatening collapse of the human/nonhuman border, because they impregnate humans, producing monstrous offspring which kill their hosts. District 9 has a similar batch of alien eggs torched by a flamethrower, but in this instance the act is depicted as sadistic, with humans laughing at the devastation to aliens which are here coded as innocents, even if they look monstrous. Like Bambi, then, there is still a binary border here, even if in the case of District 9 it is a somewhat misanthropic border. I use the term misanthropic because District 9 codes humans negatively, but is ambiguous, at best, about how it represents crossing the border from human to nonhuman. As mentioned above, the depiction of Wikus’s transformation is traumatic, so that it cannot be described as an example of Alaimo’s “pleasurable sense of the ‘melting of corporeal boundaries’” (2001: 294). Wikus’s ‘becoming alien’ is not only visually monstrous, but is also undesirable for him, because he is still trying to get the aliens to return him to his previous form by the end of the film. Borders are still enforced, then, although the human side of the border is not as valorised as it is in some of the other examples discussed.

Anthropomorphising nonhumans The supreme valorisation of the human side of the human/nonhuman border occurs when nonhuman characters are represented as humanlike. Various

100 Realist film as cogito-centric film examples of this process have already been given throughout this chapter – pathetic fallacy to convey the animals’ grief in Bambi, the humanlike bees in Bee Movie, the T-800’s experientially-learned quasi-humanity in Terminator 2, the aliens’ neotenic eyes in District 9, and so on. As with some of the other aforementioned categories, there is a good deal of existing scholarship on this issue. I have already provided examples of how nonhumans behave like humans, in various ways, and the last example of the aliens’ neotenic eyes in District 9 points towards how nonhuman physiology can be manipulated into humanlike form. Jamie Lorimer, for example, discussing Disney’s animated Dumbo (Armstrong et al. 1941), has developed this physiological element in more detail, stating that the lead character’s weeping and gazing eyes (and uncommonly expressive eyebrows) and his prehensile touching trunk foreground basic human anatomical features which have been identified by phenomenologists like [Martin] Heigegger (the hand) and [Emmanuel] Levinas (the face), as triggers for human affection and ethical concern. (Lorimer 2010: 246)

Anthropomorphising nonhumans into the Symbolic Order There are two main points that I would add to this argument about how nonhumans are anthropomorphised into something somewhat human, and these two points are largely inseparable. The first is the way that anthropomorphisation involves not only a process of rendering nonhumans into various human contexts, but also involves rendering nonhumans into various contexts derived from the Symbolic Order, so that anthropomorphising is also what one might call ‘Symbolomorphising’. The second point is that this anthropomorphisation can operate in relation to the aforementioned categories discussed in this chapter, so that abject borders between the human and the nonhuman, for instance, can include anthropomorphic elements – the T-800’s self-destructive border work evoking Symbolic ideas about patriarchal sacrifice, for example. The film that I began this chapter with, Bambi, demonstrates these points. Above, I quoted Whitely stating that, after Bambi’s mother’s death the film creates a “transformed world, dimly glimpsed through grief, for which the falling snow provides a compelling visual metaphor” (2016: 77), and that this is not just a “displacement of human loss onto animal forms” (77). Even if Whitley is correct in his assessment that this grief is in some ways ‘animal-like’, it is still the case that Bambi is anthropomorphised, and not just because he can speak and think, which is an ‘extensionism’ of the cogito to certain fictional nonhumans, to which I turn below. Even without this ability to speak Bambi’s grief is anthropomorphic, however, within the context of the human Symbolic Order. For Lacan, entry into this Order, recall, involves a recognition of separation from the (m)other, and attempts to compensate for this loss in various ways, but in terms of the heterosexual male child, principally through finding a female sexual partner who can replace the (m)other.

Realist film as cogito-centric film 101 Bambi’s narrative follows this trajectory entirely. Whitely may be right to say that the spectator experiences grief in an environmentally specific way, here – thinking something like, ‘it is terrible that people can hunt and kill innocent animals like this!’ But, in addition, the spectator experiences the Symbolically-inevitable vicarious repetition of separation from the (m)other. After all, numerous films narrativise this loss, most frequently in sublimated terms, but also in literal terms. The following films all feature dying (m) others or traumatic separations from (m)others. The spectator might experience various affective responses depending on the contexts in which these separations occur. In Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (Lucas 2002), for example, spectators are encouraged to position Anakin Skywalker’s (Hayden Christensen) revenge for the murder of his (m)other Shmi (Pernilla August) within the context of his descent towards the ‘dark side of the Force’ (and his path to becoming Darth Vader culminates because of his fears for the loss of the (m)other’s replacement, his wife Padmé (Natalie Portman)). In Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle 2008) spectators might link the poverty and hardship experienced by Jamal (Dev Patel) with his search for his friend Latika (Freida Pinto), who becomes his girlfriend at the film’s end, whom he first met moments after his (m)other was lynched, when he was a child. In The Search (Fred Zinnemann 1948) the desperate attempts of child Auschwitz survivor Karel (Ivan Jandl) to find his (m)other Hanna (Jarmila Novotná) play out against the backdrop of the Holocaust, encouraging sympathy for the Nazi’s victims, and opprobrium for the perpetrators of this historical travesty. But in addition to each of those different affective responses, which may or may not include attitudes about how humans treat the environment, the spectator experiences the primary affective response of alienated loss from the (m)other. Bambi, then, follows the Symbolic attempt to recover this loss, through the title character’s heteronormative replacement, with Bambi building his own, new family, over which he becomes ‘Great Prince of the Forest’ (another Symbolic element – in this case relating also to patriarchal family structures and monarchical government).

‘Extensionism’: Fictional nonhumans promoted to cogito status As mentioned briefly above, this narrative trajectory points to what I call ‘extensionism’, which I can now address in more detail. Given a potential etymological confusion, I want to clarify what I mean by this term. By ‘extension’ I do not mean to invoke the Cartesian category of res extensa. The ‘extension’ of various human traits to certain fictional nonhumans does not mean that these fictional nonhumans are part of the ‘extended’ world that emanates out from the certitude of Descartes’s res cogitans. Rather, I mean that the central foundational ‘I think’ element of the res cogito is extended to include certain nonhumans that in the non-fictional world continue to be categorised as res extensa, but which in the fictional world act and behave like res cogitans humans.

102 Realist film as cogito-centric film This process of extensionism, crucially, does not mean that the real-world nonhumans, of which the fictional ‘thinking’ examples are representations, are permitted to move from the category of res cogitans to res extensa. The clearest examples that demonstrate this can be found in films like Babe (Noonan 1995) and Chicken Run (Lord and Park 2000), in which the nonhuman protagonists are livestock under the threat of being eaten by humans. Real-world pigs and chickens, of course, are in the same situation. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, the Cartesian separation of humans from animals “has legitimized animals’ treatment as experimental material in laboratories, as commodities in animal husbandry and industrialized agriculture, and as property under common law” (Donovan 2017: 209). Meat-eating humans, many of whom are also film spectators, can eat pigs and chickens with a reasonably clear conscience because of the Cartesian distinction between res cogitans humans and res extensa animals – almost none of them would eat human flesh, unless they were in the most extreme of circumstances.2 So, one might ask, does the fact that films like Babe and Chicken Run have nonhuman protagonists attempting to avoid being eaten by humans provoke the spectator to question whether they should eat meat? Some nuances notwithstanding, the films do not provoke this question, for the precise reason that the animal protagonists are not represented as res extensa automatons, but as thinking, feeling, Symbolic res cogitans subjects, even if they are not human. The category of res cogitans is extended to these fictional nonhumans, who are shown thinking, speaking, feeling, planning, and so on, just like fictional human characters do. This is especially the case in Chicken Run where the birds wear clothes, jewellery and glasses, and use what are exclusively human objects, in the real world, like knitting needles and walking sticks. And, given that it is hardly conceivable that a spectator should think that real-world animals can do the same, the process of extensionism brackets off the fictional nonhumans as a special category which is essentially not relevant to real-world ethical questions about human/nonhuman relationships. The Symbolic anthropomorphism mentioned above is in full operation in these films – the eponymous Babe (voiced by Christine Cavanaugh), for example, exhibits the ostensibly human qualities of being sweet and polite and plucky. Identification with this character, then, is not principally predicated on its ‘pig-ness’, but rather on its Symbolically articulated ‘res cogitans-ness’.3 Indeed, this film is about an animal that is remarkable precisely because it behaves unlike its real-world equivalent, becoming a ‘sheep-pig’ entered into a sheepdog competition. Put very bluntly, it is entirely possible for a spectator to experience an affective identification with this little pig whilst eating a bacon sandwich, because the fictional live pig and the real-world dead pig only directly correlate with one another under the kind of categorically false conditions in which animals can think like humans. The real-world distinction between res cogitans human and res extensa animal is maintained precisely because the fictional animal is anthropomorphised via an impossible (in the real world) extensionism. Even if these films are not literally anthropocentric,

Realist film as cogito-centric film 103 because the protagonists are nonhumans, they are still cogito-centric, because the protagonists are thinking beings, and in the real world anthropocentrism and cogito-centrism are precisely the same thing. These films, therefore, link sympathy for their nonhuman protagonists with the res cogitans-like subjectivity of those protagonists. It is entirely possible for a spectator to identify with the protagonists because of their animality – Babe’s sheep are timid, while its dogs are loyal, in rough approximations of those realworld animals’ specific biological characteristics. But the spectator is encouraged to hope that the protagonists will escape becoming food because of their humanlike qualities – their speaking, thinking, emoting, planning behaviour. This humanness, too, is linked with the Symbolic Order, so that empathy is generated through character and spectator sharing Symbolic experiences. Bambi’s aforementioned separation from the (m)other is present again at the beginning of Babe. This is not to say that nonhuman infant mammals cannot experience anxiety after separation from their mothers, but as an affective engagement with the spectator this shared experience is grounded in Symbolic anthropocentrism. Perhaps the clearest example of how spectatorial identification with the nonhuman is predicated on shared Symbolic experiences that extend the cogito to include the nonhuman is provided not by a fictional nonhuman animal, but by a fictional nonhuman robot, in WALL-E (Stanton 2008). The eponymous robot (Ben Burtt), the last of a number programmed to clean up a future Earth devoid of human life, begins the film tidying and collecting various objects that it/he finds interesting. This process begins to establish the robot as a res cogitans, thinking thing, even though it/he also displays programmed behaviour. The small packages of detritus that it/he cleans are shown stacked on top of one another, and the camera moves away to show that WALL-E has built vast towers. Here, an externally programmed impulse generates behaviour that is essentially purposeless. But, in addition, WALL-E investigates and collects objects in a somewhat anthropomorphic manner, as Vivian Sobchack notes: WALL-E does not just work hard, as we might say of a machine. Rather, he is figured as ‘hardworking’, as well as ‘plucky’ and ‘lonely’. He has developed over the centuries both a childlike curiosity and the quasi-anthropomorphic sensibility of a collector. (Sobchack 2009: 387) The most humanlike aspects of WALL-E’s subjectivity are produced in fundamentally Symbolic terms. Amongst its/his gathered possessions is a videotape from which it/he watches the musical film Hello Dolly! (Kelly 1969). Sobchack notes part of Hello Dolly!’s function, writing that WALL-E “has developed a borrowed-upon human (if heteromachinic rather than heterosexual) dream of romantic communion and care [from] an ancient videotape that preserves the human memory of romance” (2009: 387). In addition, however, Hello Dolly! constructs WALL-E’s subjectivity, and

104 Realist film as cogito-centric film specifically its/his gendered subjectivity. I have referred to the robot, thus far, as it/he, but WALL-E’s subjectivity is quite definitively male – ‘he’ constructs ‘his’ male subjectivity from the human Symbolic Order transmitted through Hello Dolly! To begin with, the process of constructing subjectivity is represented as comically random, with WALL-E opening a small box to find a diamond ring, before discarding the ring and keeping the box. In this instance, he is unaware of the ring’s Symbolic value (which relates to the same kind of ideas about heterosexual human romance as that represented in Hello Dolly!), whereas the spectator is aware of the ring’s Symbolic context. This divergence could be used to establish a human/nonhuman separation, but WALL-E’s naivety, curiosity about the box, and large neotenic eyes all contribute to make this somewhat humanlike behaviour endearing rather than boundary-making. WALL-E’s collection of discarded human objects demonstrates a desire to construct subjectivity out of Symbolic fragments, and this desire reaches its apogee in one of humanity’s supreme Symbolic instructors – film. Watching Hello Dolly!’s male characters repeatedly lifting hats from heads, WALL-E re-performs the routine with a metonymic cylindrical piece of detritus (which looks somewhat like an empty film can). From the outset, then, he copies male as opposed to female traits. When Hello Dolly! moves into a medium close-up of male and female hands clasped together, expressing newfound love, WALL-E first repeats the motion with his own two mechanical hands, and later attempts to take the hand of EVE (Elissa Knight), the female-coded robot who has returned to Earth in search of flora that can signal the planet’s repopulation by humans. When, at the end of the film, WALL-E’s memory is reset, and his subjectivity entirely lost, so that he merely follows his programming and compacts the various found objects that EVE gives him in an attempt to reawaken his personality, it is their handholding that finally restores his subjectivity. The film cuts from their embrace to the heterosexual union of Hello Dolly!, the film-within-the-film’s diegetic music overlapping the robots’ romantic reunion. WALL-E’s subjectivity is thus entirely constructed out of a pre-existing Symbolic template that relates to humanity’s mammalian biological reproductive imperatives, but which here translates to a completely non-biological context. WALL-E is thus able to dispense with the biological component of masculinity, entirely. Indeed, one of the first objects he collects is a human’s discarded bra. He places the cups over each of his eyes, demonstrating his lack of knowledge about a part of human anatomy related to biological reproduction. It is perhaps possible to read his gifting of the plant he has found to EVE, who places it in a womb-like receptacle that is roughly positioned in an appropriate place for that part of human anatomy, as some kind of metaphor for human biological procreation, but the connections that the film codes as romantic, such as WALL-E and EVE’s pirouetting dance through space, and in particular WALL-E’s reaching out to hold what passes for EVE’s hand, are Symbolic gestures learnt from Hello Dolly! The videotape, moreover, is stored in a toaster, so that WALL-E no more understands the mammalian imperative to obtain

Realist film as cogito-centric film 105 sustenance from food than he understands the mammalian sexual imperative. What he does understand, though, is the Symbolic mystification attached to that sexual imperative, and he learns this through watching film, demonstrating Žižek’s argument that “[c]inema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire – it tells you how to desire” (The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Fiennes 2006). In the title of his influential novel, Philip K. Dick asked Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). WALL-E suggests that robots don’t so much watch films of electric sheep as watch films of human Symbolic subjects. This is the kind of ‘training perception’ I discussed in the previous chapter – realist film is a facilitator of the illusion that the spectator is the res cogitans centre of meaning, and of the gendered, socio-cultural Symbolic subject. WALL-E is anthropomorphised in such a way that everything which is endearingly humanlike about him is fundamentally Symbolic. The spectator’s identification with the nonhuman character is structured around the same anthropocentric Symbolic universe in which both spectator and character are res cogitans because of their shared desires, irrespective of whether the desiring subject is biological or mechanical, human or nonhuman. Cogito-like subjectivity is extended to the nonhuman, but only in the sense that the nonhuman’s subjectivity is a replication of human Symbolic subjectivity. One final example demonstrates how this kind of anthropomorphising the nonhuman via the Symbolic Order operates within the context of a film that problematizes the binary division between human and nonhuman. Above, I discussed how the zombie is an “antisubject” (Lauro and Embry 2008: 89) which, through its abject disgust, makes clear distinctions between the human and the nonhuman. There are some zombie films, however, which erode this boundary by re-anthropomorphising zombies back into something somewhat human. Murray and Heumann note that in films like “Land of the Dead [Romero 2005] and Warm Bodies [Levine 2013], zombies don’t just pretend to be alive. They live, expanding definitions of humanity and adapting for survival in a postapocalyptic world that ideally includes both species” (2016: 82). The latter of the two films, in particular, positions this re-anthropomorphism within a clearly Symbolic context. Warm Bodies begins with a zombie, who can only recall that his name began with the letter R (Nicholas Hoult), shuffling around an airport and, crucially, providing a thought voice-over for the audience. R is therefore, quite literally, a res cogitans ‘thinking thing’, even though the voice-over indicates that he thinks about his purposelessness and his desire to eat human flesh. His subjectivity therefore problematizes human/nonhuman borders. He states that he cannot remember anything about himself, but he speculates about the pre-zombie human life of those around him, and he retires to an airplane where he, much like WALL-E, has certain Symbolically important items from human culture, although his taste is for music, played on an old record player, rather than WALL-E’s preference for an old film. Subjective identification with R is established not only through the fact that the audience can hear his thoughts, and the pathos derived from his predicament, but also through point-of-view shots, so that the spectator shares R’s position somewhere between the human and the nonhuman.

106 Realist film as cogito-centric film Having established that this film’s zombies are liminal subjects, Warm Bodies then activates the idea of the genre’s more prevalent rigid binary between the human and the nonhuman, with Grigio (John Malkovich), the leader of a community of human survivors, stating the Cartesian premise that ‘corpses look human. They are not. They do not think. […] They are uncaring, unfeeling, incapable of remorse’. The spectator, however, who has already heard R thinking, knows that this is not the case. The film then proceeds to definitively bring the nonhuman zombie back into the fold of the human, and it does this through repositioning the zombies within the Symbolic Order. R utilises certain Symbolic objects from the outset, and these are used to construct a humanlike subjectivity. When the zombies encounter a group of humans, R sees (including through point-of-view shots) Grigio’s daughter, Julie (Teresa Palmer), but instead of attacking he forms a romantic attachment. That this attachment is Symbolic is demonstrated by the non-diegetic music, which shifts from conventional dramatic orchestra to play Missing You by John Waite, the same song that R had listened to, via diegetic record player, in the airplane. From the Symbolic fragment of this music, then, R constructs a desiring heterosexual male subjectivity. He builds on this subjectivity by eating Julie’s boyfriend Perry’s (Dave Franco) brain, his voice-over explaining that ‘If I don’t eat […] his brain, he’ll rise up and become a corpse like me. But if I do, I get his memories, his thoughts, his feelings. […] The brain’s the best part. The part that makes me feel human again’. This cogito-centric human-ness is expressed through point-of-view shots of Perry’s memories, including his falling in love with Julie. R then helps Julie to escape from the other zombies, and becomes increasingly human to the extent that his heart starts beating again. Some of the other zombies, too, follow this trajectory, and their re-anthropomorphisation is also fundamentally Symbolic. M (Rob Corddry), R’s ‘best friend’, stands in front of a poster showing a man and a woman holding hands. Point-of-view flashbacks show M’s memory of R holding Julie’s hand, and then the pre-zombie M holding another woman’s hand. As with WALL-E’s hand holding, the impetus for this behaviour is a Symbolic representation. Once the representation has made M recall his lost subjectivity, his heart, and those of the zombies with him, also begins to beat again. An eleventh-hour crisis means that Grigio does not trust the re-anthropomorphised zombies, but when these liminal subjects ally with humans against the definitively “antisubject” (Lauro and Embry 2008: 89) ‘bonies’, the border between human and nonhuman is collapsed, including literally, as the survivor community’s protective wall is demolished. Warm Bodies begins by problematizing the boundary between human and nonhuman, but ends by definitively putting the res cogitans human mind back into the res extensa human body. Boundaries might be blurred, at points, but the resolution of this blurring is fundamentally structured around interpellation into the Symbolic Order, so that the process of ‘becoming human’ is also a process of ‘becoming a Symbolic subject’.

Realist film as cogito-centric film 107

Problematizing the human cogito in realist film In all of the various categories discussed in this chapter, the human side of the human/nonhuman binary is represented as the coherent, stable, unified apogee against which the nonhuman is measured, so that whether the nonhuman is monstrous or abject or in some way humanlike, the nonhuman is measured against the idea of the human as an autonomous res cogitans. It is also possible, however, for realist film to problematize this notion. Encounters with fictional nonhumans can interrogate the illusory assumption that the human is an independent autonomous cogito. This process is certainly not frequent, and it is possible for the interrogation to resolve itself with a filmic conclusion that the human is, after all, an autonomous cogito. The two films last discussed, WALL-E and Warm Bodies both make various suggestions that human consciousness is constructed from without, but then suture over this potentially traumatic revelation with happy endings fundamentally grounded in the Symbolic Order. WALL-E, as mentioned above, constructs his subjectivity out of Symbolic fragments including film. His romantic reunion with EVE is intercut with the heterosexual union of Hello Dolly! But WALL-E does not suggest that these two unions are inauthentic – WALL-E’s subjectivity may be constructed, but it touches on affective elements shared with diegetic humans from the narrative and with humans in the audience. The film’s future humans have become fat and passive, travelling for centuries on a spaceship where all their needs are met by robots, and where they communicate via screens and speakers. At this stage, their subjectivity is shown to be constructed, with classrooms of children learning how to consume, and with an advertisement telling them to shift from red to blue clothes, to which everyone submits. When WALL-E accidentally begins to interact with them, however, one male and one female human look past their screens, gazing about in wonder. Watching WALL-E and EVE dance outside the ship, they accidentally touch hands, repeating this motif of Symbolic love and belonging which is coded as authentic, in juxtaposition to their previously inauthentic experiences. When the humans return to Earth they become more authentic still by learning farming, as opposed to consumption. WALL-E therefore repeats something like the binary between a world of illusion and a world of authentic experience that is narrativised into The Matrix, and which is derived from Plato’s myth of the cave – certain experiences construct a fake subjectivity, but certain experiences facilitate a meaningful subjectivity. Warm Bodies repeats this motif. R, M, and the other zombies construct their humanlike subjectivity from discarded Symbolic fragments, but the subjectivity they construct is depicted as authentic. This authenticity, as in WALL-E, is articulated through juxtaposition. In R’s opening voice-over he states how he misses real human experiences, and the airport around him shifts to the world prior to the zombie apocalypse, with humans all staring into phones and other screens – R’s yearning for authentic human experience is depicted as futile, and the pre-apocalypse humans as zombie-like, in their inauthenticity. The film’s

108 Realist film as cogito-centric film culmination, however, cleanses humanity of this inauthenticity, with the humans and zombies collaborating to forge new relationships – Grigio (again) holding his daughter’s hand in reconciliation, zombies staring into a sunset, and so on, all played out with stirring non-diegetic music. These filmic suggestions that the cogito may be constructed from without are thereby resolved, and the human cogito valorised. The key film that doesn’t resolve this revelation, at least in terms of an existing scholarly claim, is Blade Runner (Scott 1982), and Žižek’s discussion thereof (1993). The film is set in 2019, a dystopian future at the time of release, in which the Earth has been severely damaged, and nonhuman animals are extremely rare. Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a ‘blade runner’ charged with ‘retiring’ a group of android ‘replicants’ who have rebelled, and are seeking their maker, who they hope can extend their inbuilt 4-year lifespan. At the most obvious level the replicants erode the boundary between human and nonhuman. The Cartesian component to this is clear – Pris (Daryl Hannah), one of the replicants telling a human ‘I think, Sebastian, therefore I am’. Žižek also notes that the name “Deckard [is] homophonous with Descartes!” (1993: 12). There has been a large amount of fan debate about whether Deckard is a replicant or a human, principally because of a scene, excluded from the first theatrical release, in which Deckard daydreams about a unicorn. He tells Rachael (Sean Young), who is definitively a replicant, that her memories are implants rather than authentic experiences, but a police officer Gaff (Edward James Olmos) makes small unicorns out of paper, suggesting that he is as aware of Deckard’s implanted memories as Deckard is of Rachael’s. For Žižek the question of whether Deckard is or isn’t a replicant misplaces the film’s most profound philosophical idea, which is that it is not only the subjectivity of the replicant that is inauthentically constructed, but that human subjectivity is just as inauthentic too. Žižek thus argues that Deckard’s daydream of the unicorn invites the question where is the cogito, the place of my self-consciousness, when everything that I actually am is an artefact – not only my body, my eyes, but even my most intimate memories and fantasies? It is here again we encounter the Lacanian [concept]: everything that I positively am, every enunciated content I can point to and say ‘that’s me,’ is not ‘I’: I am only the void that remains, the empty distance toward every content. (Žižek 1993: 40, original emphasis) Lacan set out this idea, prior to the making of Blade Runner, in his thinking about a hypothetical android, arguing that [w]e are very well aware that this machine doesn’t think. We made the machine, and it thinks what it has been told to think. But if the machine doesn’t think, it is obvious that we don’t think either when we are performing an operation. We follow the very same procedures as the machine. (Lacan 1988: 304)

Realist film as cogito-centric film 109 Blade Runner’s narrative reveals that the human subject is just as inauthentic as the replicant subject. As Žižek puts it, “[m]an is a replicant who does not know it; […] our self-experience qua free ‘human’ agents is an illusion founded upon our ignorance of the causal nexus which regulates our lives” (1993: 41). Indeed, Žižek claims that the replicants, paradoxically, have a more authentic and autonomous subjectivity than humans, because the human does not recognise that its subjectivity is constructed, whereas it is only when […] I assume my replicant-status, that […] I become a truly human subject. ‘I am a replicant’ is the statement of the subject in its purest. […] [R]eplicants are pure subjects precisely insofar as they testify that every positive, substantial content, inclusive of the most intimate fantasies, is not ‘their own’ but already implanted. (Žižek 1993: 41) Blade Runner thereby narrativises Lacan’s critique of the Cartesian illusion that the human cogito is autonomous and authentic. Insofar as I have been arguing, throughout this book, that realist film is fundamentally complicit in this Cartesian illusion, this makes Blade Runner an extremely important work, signalling a possibility for realist film to tell stories which problematize our ecologically destructive Cartesian subjectivity. Blade Runner is also set in a fictional world with a devastated natural environment, so that it perhaps comes as close as any realist film to combining a critique of myopic environmental degradation with a critique of the Cartesian delusion facilitating that myopia. This claim marks a good point to end this chapter, because Blade Runner still narrates according to the conventions of realist filmmaking, and therefore geometrically positions the spectator as a Cartesian subject, even if its narrative problematizes that notion. Blade Runner’s narrative, however, is an exception that proves the rule, in terms of how realist films typically activate either human or humanlike subjective narrative and visual regimes. In the other realist films discussed in this chapter both narrative and formal components structure human subjectivity around the centralised punctum of the cogito, with nonhuman subjectivity represented as either a threat to human subjectivity that must be overcome, or as an extended form of res cogitans subjectivity that promotes certain nonhuman characters into the ranks of humanlike subjectivity, within certain restricted contexts which do not pertain to the real world. These films thereby operate within the context of the political-ecological unconscious, repressing our culture’s anxieties about the human cogito’s unique autonomous status, and resolving those anxieties at the narrative and formal levels. The next three chapters explore how Cartesian subjectivity functions in realist films that tell stories about the harmful effects of human activity on the environment. Such films have narratives that warn against ecological degradation, in various ways, but employ a formal grammar which normalises the same Cartesian subjectivity that facilitates real-world ecological degradation. Chapter 6 analyses post-apocalyptic worlds made inhospitable by environmental

110 Realist film as cogito-centric film destruction. Chapter 5 explores the representation of how such environmental apocalypses unfold. I turn first, though, in the next chapter, to films that stage ecological disasters that fall short of extinction-threatening events, but which depict the natural environment’s vengeful destruction of more localised human ‘civilisation’.

Notes 1 Non-realist film, as I discussed in the previous chapter, has the potential to challenge various elements of cinematic realism, and filmic boundaries between the human and the nonhuman can therefore be problematized by avant-garde filmmaking practice. As with other avant-garde challenges to realism’s Cartesian form, this potential is explored in Chapter 7. 2 Just as the aforementioned monstrous human/nonhuman hybrids and zombies are frightening not only because they narratively threaten to kill, but because they also threaten to collapse the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, so too films in which humans become food are frightening both because of the direct threat – characters being killed – and also because the reduction of a human to food is akin to the reduction of the res cogitans to the category of res extensa that is reserved for animals in the real world. Films like Jaws do not just threaten fictional characters with death by predator, they also threaten the traumatic revelation that the res cogitans mind is inextricably linked to a res extensa body that certain parts of the biosphere might treat just like any other res extensa animal prey. As such, within the logic of abjection and the masochistic fort/da game, such traumatic revelations are encountered so that they may be resolved, with Jaws’s devouring threat removed, by the end of the film. 3 It is possible for a film to make a distinction between res cogitans-like animals and res extensa-like animals. In the fictional Narnia universe, for example, there are ‘talking animals’ who befriend the protagonists, the Pevensie siblings. When the children return to Narnia in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Andrew Adamson 2008) they find a world losing its magic. Lucy (Georgie Henley) sees a bear running towards her and, assuming it is a ‘talking animal’ does not appreciate that she is under attack. Her companions do understand this, however, and kill the bear. Narnian native Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage) demonstrates the distinctions between res cogitans and res extensa when he comments ‘you get treated like a dumb animal long enough, that’s what you become’. Cogito-like subjectivity may be extended to certain fictional animals, then, but this does not mean that all animals, even within the fiction, are promoted to that status.

Bibliography Alaimo, S. (2001) Discomforting Creatures: Monstrous Nature in Recent Films, in Armbruster, K. and Wallace, K.R. (eds.) Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, pp. 279–296. Brereton, P. (2016) Environmental Ethics and Film. Abingdon: Routledge. Cahill, J.L. (2013) Anthropomorphism and its Vicissitudes: Reflections on ‘Homme’sick Cinema, in Pick, A. and Narraway, G. (eds.) Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 73–90. Creed, B. (1993) The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Abingdon: Routledge.

Realist film as cogito-centric film 111 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2007 [1987]) Becoming Animal, in Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A. (eds.) The Animals Reader: The Essential Classical and Contemporary Writings. Oxford: Berg, pp. 37–50. Descartes, R. (1991 [1619–1650]) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 3, The Correspondence. (Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch and Anthony Kenny). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dick, P.K. (1968) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Garden City: Doubleday. Donovan, J. (2017) Interspecies Dialogue and Animal Ethics: The Feminist Care Perspective, in Kalof, L. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208–224. Fay, J. (2008) Seeing/Loving Animals: André Bazin’s Post-Humanism. Journal of Visual Culture, 7(1), 41–64. Holliday, C. (2016) ‘I’m Not a Real Boy, I’m a Puppet’: Computer-Animated Films and Anthropomorphic Subjectivity. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11(3), 246–262. Ivakhiv, A. (2013) Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press. Lacan, J. (1988) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II. The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954–1955. (Translated by Sylvana Tomaselli. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lauro, S.J. and Embry, K. (2008) A Zombie Manifesto: The Nonhuman Condition in the Era of Advanced Capitalism. boundary 2, 35(1), 85–108. Lorimer, J. (2010) Moving Image Methodologies for More-Than-Human Geographies. Cultural Geographies, 17(2), 237–258. Murray, R.L. and Heumann, J.K. (2016) Monstrous Nature: Environment and Horror on the Big Screen. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Pheasant-Kelly, F. (2016) Towards a Structure of Feeling: Abjection and Allegories of Disease in Science Fiction ‘Mutation’ Films. Medical Humanities, 42, 238–245. Pick, A. (2011) Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press. Pick, A. and Narraway, G. (2013) Introduction: Intersecting Ecology and Film, in Pick, A. and Narraway, G. (eds.) Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 1–18. Sobchack, V. (2009) Animation and Automation, Or, The Incredible Effortfulness of Being. Screen, 50(4), 375–391. Whitley, D. (2016) The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation: From ‘Snow White’ to ‘WALL-E’. Abingdon: Routledge. Žižek, S. (1993) Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Durham: Duke University Press.

Filmography 2012 (2009) Directed by Roland Emmerich. USA: Columbia. Alien (1979) Directed by Ridley Scott. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. Aliens (1986) Directed by James Cameron. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. Babe (1995) Directed by Chris Noonan. USA: Universal. Bambi (1942) Directed by James Algar et al. USA: Disney.

112 Realist film as cogito-centric film Bee Movie (2007) Directed by Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner. USA: DreamWorks. Blade Runner (1982) Directed by Ridley Scott. USA: The Ladd Company. Braveheart (1995) Directed by Mel Gibson. USA: Icon. Chicken Run (2000) Directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park. UK: Aardman. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The (2008) Directed by Andrew Adamson. USA: Disney. Demolition of a Wall (1896) Directed by Louis Lumière. France: Lumière. District 9 (2009) Directed by Neill Blomkamp. New Zealand/USA/South Africa: WingNut Films, TriStar Pictures. Dumbo (1941) Directed by Sam Armstrong et al. USA: Disney. Fly, The (1986) Directed by David Cronenberg. USA: Brooksfilms. Green Mile, The (1999) Directed by Frank Darabont. USA: Warner Bros. Habitat (1997) Directed by Rene Daalder. Canada/Netherlands: Transfilm. Hello Dolly! (1989) Directed by Gene Kelly. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. Island of Dr. Moreau, The (1996) Directed by John Frankenheimer. USA: New Line Cinema. Jaws (1975) Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA: Universal. Land of the Dead (2005) Directed by George A. Romero. USA: Romero-Grunwald Productions. Matrix, The (1999) Directed by The Wachowskis. USA: Warner Bros. Paths of Glory (1957) Directed by Stanley Kubrick. USA: Bryna. Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, The (2006) Directed by Sophie Fiennes. UK: Amoeba Film. Ratatouille (2007) Directed by Brad Bird. USA: Pixar. Safe (1995) Directed by Todd Haynes. USA: American Playhouse. Search, The (1948) Directed by Fred Zinnemann. USA: MGM. Slumdog Millionaire (2008) Directed by Danny Boyle. UK: Celador. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) Directed by George Lucas. USA: Lucasfilm. Terminator, The (1984) Directed by James Cameron. USA: Hemdale. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) Directed by James Cameron. USA: Carolco. WALL-E (2008) Directed by Andrew Stanton. USA: Pixar. Warm Bodies (2013) Directed by Jonathan Levine. USA: Mandeville Films.

4

Surviving environmental disasters in film ‘lifeboats’

The preceding chapters have established a theoretical context for how realist films contribute towards a form of human subjectivity that is fundamentally damaging to the environment. I have claimed that Cartesian dualism is inevitably ecophobic; that contemporary subjectivity is inescapably Cartesian; that realist film grammar normalises and reinforces this anthropocentric Cartesian subjectivity; and that even realist films ostensibly warning against environmental degradation partake in this destructive ideological illusion. The next three chapters provide detailed case studies to demonstrate this last point. The theoretical claims I have made thus far have been restricted to a small number of films, in order to outline my argument as clearly as possible. I want to now demonstrate that my claims apply to a wider body of films, so that those claims are not passed off as merely applying to a very limited cinematic corpus. This chapter discusses a number of films, but focuses principally on five, so that the various theoretical elements I have set out thus far can be explored in detail. The films have been selected because they either demonstrate the relevant points I am concerned with very clearly, so that they are exemplars of the environmental disaster film, or because they depart from certain elements present in the other films in important ways, whilst simultaneously following other established conventions, so that they demonstrate how somewhat atypical environmental disaster films still feature important aspects of continuity with the other relevant films. I begin, in this chapter, with films that do not stage environmental disasters as explicit existential threats to all human life on the planet. These films’ narratives are restricted geographically and, to an extent, in intensity. But these films do relate, in various ways, to real-world anxieties about the potential apocalyptic threats of anthropogenic ecological degradation. I argued, in Chapter 2, that our culture represses the awareness that humanity’s damaging impact on the natural world threatens our continued existence, and that this repression repeatedly resurfaces in various oblique ways as part of our culture’s political-ecological unconscious. The films analysed in this chapter activate the repressed trauma of apocalyptic environmental destruction, but without staging that trauma as an explicit extinction event. I also discussed, in Chapter 2, how the impeding real-world ecological apocalypse will not allow individuals to DOI: -5

114 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ survive aboard various types of ‘lifeboats’. Since the films discussed in this chapter stage environmental disaster on a localised scale, they present very clear illusory resolutions to this trauma, in the sense that something akin to environmental apocalypse is staged, but diegetic protagonists have access to ‘lifeboats’ that can be used to escape the localised devastation, and present the disaster as something that can be survived. One final point, before conducting these analyses, relates to the historical parameters of the selected films. Stephen Rust has positioned Hollywood and Climate Change (2013) in an explicitly diachronic context, tracing the relationships between an emerging public awareness about certain environmental issues and the ways that various films express this awareness. My account is much less historical than this. The selected films all come from an era in which the potential for real-world ecological degradation to become an apocalyptic threat to humanity is part of our culture’s aforementioned repressed trauma, so that the films are historically specific artefacts relating to that trauma, even if I do not provide a detailed account of how that trauma, and films reflecting that trauma, unfolds diachronically. Two of the five selected films are based on real events, with The Impossible (Bayona 2012) recounting the effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on a family of tourists, and The Perfect Storm (Petersen 2000) depicting the sinking of the fishing boat Andrea Gail in the 1991 Atlantic storm of the film’s title. The other three films stage imaginary disasters, although they are related to historical real-world events in various ways, with Volcano (Jackson 1997) and Dante’s Peak (Donaldson 1997) representing volcanic eruptions in Los Angeles and a small town, respectively, and San Andreas (Peyton 2015) depicting a series of massive earthquakes and a tsunami in California. The films’ approaches to staging the spectacle of disaster are partly based around whether the narratives are retellings of these real events, with The Impossible and The Perfect Storm displaying a certain respectful reticence to linger over the potential spectacle. These two films thereby depart from some of the conventions established in Chapter 2, where I outlined how the spectator and protagonists transcend pleasurably staged destruction. The Perfect Storm also departs from the other films because the main protagonists (or at least certain main protagonists) do not survive the disaster. Nevertheless, even though these two films avoid or negotiate certain aspects of the conventions associated with environmental disaster films, they adhere to other important conventions, as the rest of this chapter demonstrates, so that even somewhat atypical environmental disaster films share important characteristics with more typical examples. The chapter is structured around how these films relate to these conventions, thus:  

Ostensibly ‘natural’ disasters have sublimated human causes Relationships between how the spectator and characters perceive threats

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 115 a b c d       

The spectator may perceive what characters cannot perceive The spectator may perceive what certain characters cannot or will not perceive, but other characters do perceive Animals may perceive what characters cannot perceive The spectator may not perceive the impending threat, and be shocked

The spectator may be subjected to confusing imagery while characters are confused The spectator may be threatened directly (though vicariously), but this threat is then displaced The spectator may have traumatic threats displaced only after disastrous events end The spectator may pleasurably transcend the destruction The spectator’s oscillations between different categories are all masochistic Narrative resolutions operate within the context of the Symbolic Order Symbolic resolutions may reinforce the illusion of the spectator’s perceptual mastery

Ostensibly ‘natural’ disasters have sublimated human causes As with all of the characteristics discussed in this chapter, the selected films address a potential anthropogenic element to the represented disasters in various ways, with some films more focused on this element than others. (It is also the case that this chapter’s films are generally less overt about this issue than the more explicitly apocalyptic films discussed in the next chapter). References to anthropogenic ecological degradation may be limited to the specific disastrous events in the film, or may refer to broader anxieties about other examples of impending environmental collapse. The eruption of the Volcano under Los Angeles has the most overt human cause of the films discussed in this chapter. An opening montage of people going about their morning routines ends with a protest against the extension of a subway route. In amongst this montage the camera repeatedly cuts to underground lava, suggesting that the subway’s probing is linked to that lava. Various snippets of radio broadcasts can be heard over the montage, including a preacher saying ‘The devil knows the wickedness of the city. He knows he can prey on our ignorance’. The impending anthropogenic disaster is therefore linked to human wickedness and ignorance, both staples of the broader cultural anxiety about anthropogenic ecological disaster. Once the disaster has begun to unfold, geologist Amy (Anne Heche) articulates this connection more explicitly, stating ‘This city’s finally paying for its arrogance. […] Building a subway under land that’s seismically active. It was a foolish man that built his house upon the sand.’ Those building the subway, moreover, refuse to accept the warnings of those who glimpse the potential of impending disaster – I discuss visual signs of impending disaster in more detail below. As such, the subway is linked both to causing the disaster and to

116 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ refusing to accept it. The dangerous human activity also relates to cultural anxiety about real-world environmental disaster in the sense that its subterranean location suggests something repressed and ignored, particularly when the subway builders ignore the advice of those more prescient individuals who travel below ground to see the signs of the impending disaster – again, more on this below. The subterranean theme is repeated by another location that shows signs of impending disaster, such as cracks in the pavement, and pockets of gas bubbling up in the La Brea Tar Pit. Warnings of disaster are present, but they are repressed below ground. Once this repressed trauma erupts into the streets, it becomes associated with conflict between civilisation and the environment, so that when the city’s defenders have controlled the eruption for the first time, a news reporter comments that ‘they’ve beaten Mother Nature and claimed an extraordinary victory over the volcano’. The Perfect Storm makes a similar link between environmentally damaging human activity and a particular disaster, although more subtly. Overfishing means that the fishing ship Andrea Gail needs to travel out much further, into danger from which it will not escape. The boat also headed out to sea at a dangerously late time of the season because the previous catch was also unsatisfactory. Individual human callousness, greed and/or lack of awareness are also pertinent, as the boat heads back through the building storm because its ice making machine has malfunctioned as a result of callous owner Bob’s (Michael Ironside) costcutting, so that the hard-won catch will spoil if that deadly route is not taken. The storm of the film’s title is not depicted as being anthropogenic, then, but the reasons why the protagonists are caught up in it are grounded in environmentally damaging human behaviour. San Andreas makes a similar link between human callousness/hubris and the dangers in which protagonists find themselves, so that the film’s earthquakes and tsunami are depicted as non-anthropogenic, but are made more dangerous for protagonists (and deadly for non-protagonists) by human constructions – collapsing skyscrapers, vast ships atop the tsunami, and so on. One particular character is apportioned blame for this callousness and hubris – see below, where I address the issue of how these films apportion collective guilt for environmental degradation onto individuals. The film also connects the depicted events with real-world climate change in its final shots, which rapidly zoom out from the disaster to show San Francisco as an island, the coastline inundated by water in shots reminiscent of the opening sequence from Waterworld (Reynolds 1995), in which the spinning globe’s landmasses are gradually flooded over, as I discuss in Chapter 6. The Perfect Storm is able to collapse environmentally damaging human activity onto a single character who was not a victim of the real-world disaster informing the film, but The Impossible, which also fictionalises a recent realworld disaster, places all of the characters in danger without apportioning blame to any individual. The main protagonists are an occidental family who fly into Thailand for a beach holiday. The introduction makes the mildest suggestion that their air travel is ecologically damaging, when the high up opening shot of

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 117 the pristine Thai coast is disrupted by the family’s airplane, which lurches into shot, shaking the camera, disrupting the harmonious balanced environmental plenitude. The family finally escape from Thailand, however, on another airplane, so that the potential source of ecological damage is also a filmic ‘lifeboat’. This kind of resolution of potential anthropogenic ecological degradation is repeated in Dante’s Peak. Disused mineshafts under the volcano make the same kind of reference to repressed knowledge about environmental apocalypse discussed in Volcano, above. At no point, however, does Dante’s Peak cut from these mines to images of the impending eruption, as happens with the subway in Volcano, so that the connection is much more oblique in Dante’s Peak. In addition, this film finally makes a virtue out of this repressed human impact on the environment by turning the mineshafts into a ‘lifeboat’ where the main protagonists shelter from the lava flow. Any repression of ecological degradation associated with these subterranean spaces is thereby further disavowed in Dante’s Peak. It is significant, however, not only that both of these films about volcanic eruptions were released in the same year, but that both feature subterranean spaces in relation to the environmental disaster, even if Volcano locates these spaces as sources of disaster, whereas Dante’s Peak locates this space as a refuge from disaster. The simultaneity of these two films’ release, however, demonstrates both that the broad culture has anxiety about ecological degradation, and that this anxiety is repressed.1

Relationships between how the spectator and characters perceive threats One of the principal means by which these films facilitate ecological degradation is by reinforcing the spectator’s illusory Cartesian subjectivity. The preceding chapters have argued that realist film normalises Cartesian subjectivity by arranging images in geometric compositions that centralise the spectator as the locus of each image, and by moving around and between images in such a way as to privilege the spectator’s vision, granting him/her mastery over a res extensa seeming to exist for the pleasure of the spectating res cogitans. Any realist film doing this partakes in the ideological illusion of Cartesian subjectivity, with potentially harmful effects generated because the Cartesian subject is inherently environmentally damaging. When a realist film narrativises environmental disasters it is doubly ideological because the Cartesian spectator adopts a position of transcendent survival over the harmful effects of the depicted disaster, suggesting that the Cartesian spectator would similarly survive an impending real-world disaster, which is thereby minimised. This privileging of the spectator’s vision relates to Alfred Hitchcock’s famous distinction between suspense and shock (Truffaut 1983 [1966]: 73). Hitchcock discussed a hypothetical film scene with people sitting around a table, discussing an unimportant activity like baseball at some length, while a bomb ticks towards explosion under the table. If the bomb is not shown to the spectator then (s)he experiences a long and boring conversation about baseball followed

118 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ by a brief moment of shock when the bomb explodes. If the bomb is shown to the spectator, however, (s)he experiences the conversation about baseball as a tragic distraction from the impending disaster, which Hitchcock explains as a spectatorial response of “‘[y]ou shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb beneath you and it’s about to explode!’” (in Truffaut 1983: 73). Films, of course, can employ both of these strategies. Hitchcock’s own Sabotage (1936), for example, shows the spectator a ticking bomb that is unseen by characters, whereas the opening scene of Children of Men (Cuarón 2006) has an unseen bomb explode to the shock of both spectator and characters. In the films discussed in this chapter the impending environmental ‘bombs’ that are about to explode are shown to the spectators in extended detail, with characters’ incredulity or ignorance of the warnings functioning somewhat like Hitchcock’s conversation about baseball, encouraging the spectator to demand, paraphrasing Hitchcock, something like ‘you shouldn’t be distracted by whatever unimportant activity you are pursuing. There’s an environmental disaster about to unfold!’ To some extent this spectatorial privileging of vision might potentially serve an ecologically useful function, in the sense that the spectator could connect various characters’ lack of vision with a comparable real-world situation in which the spectator’s own vision is constrained, encouraging a response something like ‘I should stop being distracted by unimportant activities, there’s a real-world environmental disaster about to unfold!’ However, the formal geometry of realist film facilitates a conventionalised form of verisimilitude which disavows the differences between the cinematic and the real-world, encouraging the spectator to think that they would experience the same kind of visual cues that the films provide about impending disaster, in the real world. The fact that certain protagonists share some of these visual warnings about disaster, and are able to survive the ensuing catastrophe, reinforces the sense that the spectator would have the same kind of mastery over a potential real-world disaster as they have over the fictional disaster, as the following examples demonstrate. There are actually a number of subcategories of this spectatorial privileging, as mentioned above, each of which is addressed systematically below. These are: a b c d

The spectator may perceive what characters cannot perceive The spectator may perceive what certain characters cannot or will not perceive, but other characters do perceive Animals may perceive what characters cannot perceive The spectator may not perceive the impending threat, and be shocked

The spectator may perceive what characters cannot perceive The ultimate privileging of spectatorial vision transcends the vision of any characters whatsoever, so that the camera shows entirely objective shots warning about the impending disaster. At times these visual warnings are shown to spectators only moments before they are shown to certain characters, so that the images are initially objective but quickly become subjective, or initially

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 119 objective images are quickly replaced with subjective images. These examples will be addressed in the next subsection. This subsection is concerned with those images that are shown to spectators only. Some of these objective forewarnings occur only moments before that which is being forewarned. When this happens, the forewarning relates to minor damage that is itself a forewarning of the larger impending disaster. In The Perfect Storm, for example, one of the fishermen, Murph (John C. Reilly), is pulled overboard when he is accidently attached to a cast line. Extreme close-ups on the lines and the hooks which they are being attached to foreshadow what is to come, announcing to the spectator that these images and these objects signify danger. Sully (William Fichtner) drops a barrel of flares, and the other crew help to pick them up, so they don’t see Murph pulled overboard. The film repeatedly cuts back and forth from Murph being swept away to the crew picking up flares, their backs to the camera, and to where Murph should be. Murph is eventually rescued, however, and disaster averted, but this is only a temporary victory that points towards the film’s main events, and even in this minor moment of foreshadowing the spectator had a mastery over the images unavailable to the characters. In an early scene in Volcano, similarly, doctors are performing surgery in a hospital. The spectator is shown an image of a seismometer twitching, and moments later an earthquake strikes the hospital, but the damage caused is minor, and the incident is part of a chronologically longer foreshadowing of the film’s principal volcanic disaster. This more sustained foreshadowing is not as closely connected to the disaster, in temporal terms, so that the main disaster can be set up across a number of images and scenes. In Volcano this begins with the opening montage of various people starting their normal days, with various snippets of radio broadcasts, talking about insignificant things not directly related to the images. These images and these radio snippets function like Hitchcock’s conversation about baseball, with all those seen and heard oblivious of the metaphorical ticking ‘bomb’. To ensure that this impending danger is not lost on the spectator, the camera begins to insert warning images. The first of these is potentially ambiguous, with a low angle shot continuing to show commuters on their daily business, but with a crack in the pavement dominating the foreground. The crack could be an insignificant result of something that does not relate to environmental disaster, but the camera suggests it has significance by beginning to descend into it. The montage cuts back to other insignificant ‘baseball’-like activities, and then cuts to a more definitive warning about the impending disaster, showing lava and fire underground. This oscillation between oblivious people and the underground danger is repeated twice more, and the snippets of radio broadcast also come closer to suggesting danger, but in a misplaced manner that does not see as fully as the spectator, so that the aforementioned preacher talks about the city’s wickedness and ignorance, whilst the images show oblivious roller-skaters, and another radio broadcast says it has ‘a certified psychic astrologist standing by to guide you through the mysteries of the cosmos’.

120 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ The montage ends on the protests about the subway, so the spectator has seen definitive evidence about the underground danger, and can now associate this with the subway. This suggestion is emphasised by another cut to lava erupting, although this image is quite literally a foreshadowing that disrupts the film’s otherwise linear chronology, because it cuts from this explosion to the main protagonist Roark (Tommy Lee Jones), preparing breakfast for his teenage daughter Kelly (Gaby Hoffmann), and he is given no message about an eruption, with the film returning to a crescendo towards disaster. Even this cut to Roark suggests impending catastrophe as he drops his scrambled eggs on the floor. For Roark, at this stage, the dropped eggs are merely an annoyance. For the spectator, they are part of a more sustained foreshadowing of the forthcoming disaster, and the images signalling this have been entirely objective, and entirely beyond the knowledge of any diegetic character. The psychic astrologist mentioned on the radio might be able to interpret the dropped eggs as a warning of doom, but the spectator has transcended even these abilities, never mind the more prosaic constraints of the rational Cartesian subject, who cannot see beyond the limits of the biological eye constrained within a body that is unable to instantaneously move between non-embodied objective positions. In cutting to explicit images of the violent nature that is about to be unleashed, Volcano is somewhat heavy-handed, but more subtle foreshadowing is also possible. When the family first arrive at their resort in The Impossible, for example, father Henry (Ewan McGregor) steps out from their hotel room beside the beach and calls out to his sons ‘boys, come and see this’. The camera shows the family from behind, looking out at the calm sea. The image is ironically serene. The subsequent reverse shot looks back to the beach from far out at sea, the human figures barely distinguishable. No gazing figure is shown out here, in either of these shots, so that the image is non-subjective, and is accompanied by an ominous non-diegetic musical rumble. If The Impossible were filmed in the same ways as Volcano the next image would be of the seabed, an earthquake about to occur, or a more minor earthquake occurring. Other films discussed in this chapter might cut to a group of scientists monitoring seismometers. Even without such an image, however, the non-objective shot from the sea still suggests menace, and foreshadows the eruption of violent nature approaching the beach from the sea, so that the spectator is still given forewarning about what is to come (and which is denied to any characters), even if this forewarning is more a suggestion than a definitive image. This privileging of spectatorial vision can occur even when there is no ostensible risk of disaster being referred to. In Dante’s Peak, Mayor Rachel (Linda Hamilton) is introduced in a manner that grants the spectator knowledge over and above that of depicted characters. Rachel is first shown at home getting ready for her day. The next scene is a frontal shot of a platform erected in the centre of the town, with a man apologising into a microphone for the delay. The camera cranes up and over the platform to show Rachel’s car pulling up behind the platform, so that the spectator sees that the Mayor is about to arrive before the crowd does. At first this doesn’t seem to be particularly

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 121 related to the threat of environmental disaster, but in her subsequent speech accepting an award for ‘second best small town to live in America’ Rachel demonstrates her lack of knowledge about the impending disaster, which has already been shown to the spectator, as discussed below, stating that her town is ‘beautiful, it’s safe’. The minor and seemingly insignificant privileging of spectatorial vision therefore relates to the broader, and more significant warning provided to the spectator about the impending disaster. This foreshadowing can also signify a more imminent risk, as well as the more general establishing risk, so that it is possible to signify both ‘a disaster is due at some point’ and ‘a disaster is due imminently’. Volcano has already established that the earth beneath Los Angeles, and more specifically the subway, is connected to the impending irruption. To signal that this irruption is imminent the camera cuts to an objective shot of bubbles in the La Brea Tar Pit, and a model elephant starts to sink, with ominous non-diegetic music. A subway train then alights at a platform and prepares to depart. The continuation of ominous music is part of the indication that this particular journey will be significant, and this indication is enhanced through a number of shots focusing on what might be insignificant details, were it not for the broader signs of impending disaster. Drivers swap over, so that one narrowly misses disaster, and the camera tracks along beside the new driver as he takes his position. People are shown getting on the train, with one passenger running to narrowly get on before the sliding doors close. The spectator is encouraged to think that had this runner missed the train, as she almost did, her fate would be different. Such a small detail, again, demonstrates the ideological differences between cinematic perception and real-world perception. Although a subject might occasionally experience vague misplaced premonitions like those related to the ‘psychic astrologist’ mentioned in the film’s prologue, real-world warnings about dangers are limited to temporally-specific embodied forms of perception – a subject might see or hear or smell an indication of danger, but these perceptions would need to be directly linked to specific sources within perceptual range of the perceiving subject’s body. In this cinematic moment, the spectator transcends these temporal and embodied constraints, so that the spectator’s subjectivity is granted a false mastery over time, perception and life/ death, and this illusory subjectivity is encouraged to speculate that it would recognise an impending real-world disaster, just as it does in the cinema. The scene ends with a close-up of the driver’s hand on the train’s accelerator so that, again, the mise-en-scène itself ostensibly is mundane, but the cinematic treatment grants the spectator an illusory mastery over this mundane world. A big earthquake then strikes. The first direct indication of this is an objective shot of birds taking to the air. Another objective shot shows Los Angeles from a clifftop overlooking the city, with the lights cutting out block by block. An objective close-up of a seismometer spiking is then shown, and then an objective shot of a dog barking, before any of the film’s human characters experience the earthquake. Appropriately, the first of these shown is Roark, who is the character

122 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ granted most visual information about the disaster, as I address below. At this stage, however, he is made aware after the spectator, and he is placed in direct danger, waking up in a bedroom shaking at the impact. The subway train is then shown crashing into boulders from the collapsing tunnel. To emphasise the fact that the spectator has been allowed to see this coming, in amongst the rapid cutting of the train striking the boulders is a close-up of the driver’s hand grabbing at the controls, echoing the earlier close-up of him beginning the journey. Given that Roark is the main protagonist who will go on to orchestrate a successful response to the disaster, much of the subsequent visual information presented to the spectator is aligned with his perception, as I discuss below. But even his successful attempts to combat the volcano privilege spectatorial vision. Needing more information, he bellows ‘get hold of that geologist, Amy Barnes’. ‘We’re looking. Nobody knows where she is’, comes the reply. A cut to Amy, climbing out of the shaft she has been investigating, provides the spectator with this information immediately and effortlessly, transcending the spatial constraints and the danger threatening the characters. The Impossible also distinguishes between the aforementioned broad indications of forthcoming disaster and signals of the disaster’s imminence. The scene of the morning where the tsunami strikes begins with three images of nature – a beetle, a stick insect, and then a lizard, each amongst verdant plants. The next shot is positioned behind the mother Maria (Naomi Watts), and she does not move her head, and is not shown turning to look at these animals, so that the spectator sees the significance of nature, whereas the character is oblivious. After Maria settles down to read beside the hotel’s pool, the spectator is shown the next signal of impending disaster – a barmaid is making a smoothie, but the power cuts, and the blender stops. Maria is then shown turning her head from side to side, suggesting that she senses something but cannot see what. Cuts to Henry and the boys show that they do not even have this vague premonition. The camera then returns to Maria, her hair caught in an ominous breeze. A page flies away from her book, and she follows it to where it lands on a glass screen. Maria looks up, and the camera follows her eyeline to show an image of the nature that until now had only been seen by the spectator, with birds flying away from the sea. The film cuts to a more definitive sign of nature taking flight, in an entirely objective shot of the lizard, already seen by the spectator, darting away. These images of nature are the most unambiguous signs of disaster for the spectator, confirming that potentially mundane power cuts and breezes are warnings of what is to come. Ominous diegetic rumbles now signal to the characters that something is amiss, and they turn to the beach, from whence the wave strikes. The time between this awareness and the strike is very short, and the characters are unprepared for it, the family split into two different groups that will search for each other over the course of the film. The spectator, however, was forewarned, and can imagine that (s)he would be better prepared to survive, should such a situation happen to him/her in the real world.

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 123 The spectator may perceive what certain characters cannot or will not perceive, but other characters do perceive As mentioned in some of the above examples, as well as granting spectators perception that goes beyond that experienced by any characters, these films also frequently align spectatorial vision with that of particular characters. In all of the following examples, this perceptual alignment still allows the spectator to experience more information than certain endangered characters, so that perceptual information is still structured in a hierarchy. Early in Dante’s Peak, for example, volcanologist Harry (Pierce Brosnan) looks at a data sheet indicating a possible future eruption at the eponymous town. The visual element of this process is emphasised when Harry puts on glasses to better see this information. An over-the-shoulder shot shows him looking down at the sheet, with the sheet itself dominating most of the screen, so that the spectator too sees the significance of this information. The film cuts to the mountain, and moves down to show the oblivious town below celebrating ‘Pioneer Days Festival’. Harry’s car is then shown driving through the town, so there has been a temporal ellipse, and his eyeline repeatedly moves upwards, before he gets out of the car, looks up again, and a point-of-view shot shows the looming mountain. This sequence has moved from the spectator and Harry sharing the same information, to an objective shot in which the spectator alone saw the mountain, back to an alignment of the spectator’s and Harry’s vision. This alignment, moreover, allows Harry and the spectator to know more than various other disbelieving characters, as I address below. Harry and the spectator share other perceptual signs of what is to come. When he investigates the pH level of a mountain lake, the spectator is shown a close-up of Harry’s monitor reading. He travels to some mountainside hot springs with the mayor Rachel and her two children, Graham (Jeremy Foley) and Lauren (Jamie Renée Smith). Graham prepares to jump into the hot water. The spectator knows that this is not safe because of an earlier scene in which two skinny-dippers were shown in the same spring, and the camera moved down to reveal lava bubbling up below the water. There is also now far more steam covering the ground than in the previous scene, suggesting that the water is even hotter than before. In addition, a cut to bubbles in the water acts as a reminder for the spectator. Harry is then shown, his eyeline low to the ground. The camera dollies into a medium shot, suggesting a form of revelation and, in combination with the low eyeline, implying that the image of the bubbles in the water might be his point-of-view. He then grabs Graham just in time to stop him jumping into the water. Lauren then screams, and her point-of-view shows the two scalded bodies of the dead skinny-dippers. The spectator had some more perceptual information than Harry, because the previous scene was unseen by him, but in this scene the spectator’s and Harry’s perceptual knowledge align just in time to save Graham. Volcano also aligns the vision of the characters who will respond to the disaster with that of the spectator. While Roark coordinates the response to the

124 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ first volcanic eruption, for example, Amy warns him that the lava may be travelling through the underground tunnels. ‘I can only fight what I can see’, says Roark, so Amy goes underground to provide this vision, and she and the spectator both see warnings of the next impending eruption through numbers on her thermometer, confirming her theory about the lava’s movements. The second eruption sends waves of lava towards the hospital where a large number of injured people have been sent. Roark had planned to dig a trench to divert lava from the hospital, but Amy points out that the land is sloping upwards and this plan won’t work. Roark’s response demonstrates the limitations of the cogito in the face of such disaster: ‘I. I… I… I don’t know… I don’t know what to do.’ Eyeline matches from Roark and the other rescuers show point-of-view shots of desperate injured people outside the hospital, all of whom are now in imminent danger. The rescuers’ vision, at this stage, is unable to save the injured people. This failure of vision only lasts a moment, however. Roark sees a means of success, but this is in fact first shown to the spectator. The shots showing the rescuers looking, and what they are looking at, are all framed at eye level, but the next shot is a low angle medium close-up of Roark, seen through the window of the vehicle he is leaning on, with a large building looming behind him. The unusual angle of this image, in juxtaposition with the preceding images, suggests to the spectator that the image is conveying important information, much like the aforementioned scene showing the subway train preparing to depart. The next image is a reverse shot of Roark’s point-of-view looking at the window of the vehicle he is leaning on. The shallow focus of the shot is on dust and debris on the window, but it rack focuses to show the reflection of the building behind Roark. He says ‘What about a dam? Something we can drop in front of the hospital and divert the flow this way? […] Knocking a building down?’ Both the building and the window had been shown to the spectator before Roark saw the significance of the building reflected in the window, even if, for the spectator, the exact way in which the building might resolve the situation was unspecified. Roark’s plan subsequently works, so that he saw the means for success, but the spectator was shown these means even before Roark. San Andreas has a particular focus on aligning the spectator’s vision with that of those combatting the disaster, to the extent that it does not utilise any entirely objective indications of coming catastrophe, such as those discussed above in relation to the other films analysed here. A group of seismologists function as the film’s harbingers of disaster, and it is interesting that in a film which dispenses with objective warnings these seismologists do not directly interact with the other main group of characters – helicopter rescue pilot Raymond’s (Dwayne Johnson) family and acquaintances – at any point. In all the other films discussed in this chapter and the next, all characters interact with others at some point, so that even if different groups do not know one another at the beginning of the film, their paths cross as the disaster unfolds. In San Andreas the seismologists provide warnings but do not deliver these directly to Raymond’s group at any point. (The closest the characters come to directly

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 125 interacting is through the television news crew that are interviewing the seismologists, and which had also accompanied Raymond on an unrelated rescue mission in the film’s prologue.) The seismologists immediately connect information with vision and with the potential to avert disaster. Prior to any disaster happening, Kim (Will Yun Lee) tells his colleague Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) ‘I gotta show you something’. A close-up on Kim’s computer screen shows a number of minor earthquakes in Nevada. The seismologists begin packing to travel to Nevada to test Lawrence’s theory that ‘if the magnetic pulse rate goes up before the quakes, then we are predicting them’. Kim positions his equipment inside a tunnel in the Hoover Dam, from where he tells Lawrence, standing atop the dam, that their theory works, and they can predict earthquakes by monitoring magnetic pulse rates. The film then cuts to a close-up of Kim’s computer screen, showing rapid spikes in the pulse rates. ‘We’re about to have a major quake’, says Kim. Lawrence is able to survive the collapse of the dam which follows because of this warning, and this information helps him to save others by instructing them to get off the dam. Kim could have survived, but he stops to help a petrified girl, and manages to throw her to safety in Lawrence’s arms before he is swept away on the collapsing dam. The heroic sacrifice of this act is emphasised through a close-up of Kim’s foot which suffers stigmata from a metal shaft. This kind of sacrifice relates to Symbolic factors discussed in more detail below, but Kim’s act also emphasises how the seismologists’ predictive vision helps people to survive disaster – in the final scene, a television correspondent reports on the ‘tremendous amount of lives saved thanks to local experts who were able to give ample warning of the massive quake’. San Andreas also uses the seismologists to demonstrate how the spectator can be granted perceptual information in a manner which aligns with certain characters but which is definitively superior to that of other characters. All of the films discussed here do this, and this hierarchy of perceptual information is an exaggerated form of the aforementioned alignments with certain characters’ vision, in the sense that the films not only focus on how seeing helps certain characters, but also on how not seeing, or even refusing to see, endangers certain other characters. In San Andreas, for example, Lawrence is introduced delivering a lecture at Caltech about how earthquakes relate to tectonic plates. His presentation includes numerous images of previous disasters, and ends with a student asking if the San Andreas fault, lying beneath them, could cause a similar disaster. Lawrence’s response is that the answer is ‘not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when’. The film then cuts to Raymond, who has not been provided this information, so that the spectator is as prepared for the disaster as one character, and more prepared for it than another. This cross-cutting between the seismologists and Raymond’s family is used a number of times, and these become more specific, more dangerous, and more associated with vision as the film goes on. Just before the first major earthquake Lawrence is being interviewed by a television news team. He and the spectator

126 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ see more maps of spikes which show that the disaster is imminent. The visual component of this warning is emphasised as the diegetic cameraman is shown filming Lawrence making a line on the map of what is about to be struck. This line culminates on San Francisco, and the scene cuts to Raymond’s daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) in San Francisco, oblivious to what the spectator knows is about to happen. This oscillation is repeated twice. The first repetition is almost identical, as a second, even larger earthquake centres on San Francisco. Caltech is struck first, and Lawrence and his colleagues shelter under tables. One of these says ‘Professor, it looks like the whole San Andreas faultline is being activated. And it’s heading for San Francisco!’ The laptop displaying this information is turned for Lawrence’s and the spectator’s benefit, and then the following image cuts to Blake, who will again be surprised by the impending earthquake. The second repetition of this oscillation occurs for the third major earthquake. Lawrence has managed to hack into television networks. He warns people of the impending strike, and ends the scene by saying ‘pray for the people of San Francisco’. Cross-cutting back to Blake in San Francisco, again oblivious to the next phase of the disaster, repeats the spectator’s mastery over the dangers experienced by Blake. The Perfect Storm clearly distinguishes between those characters who can see signs of the impending storm, and who survive, and those who don’t see, and who are killed by it. As with San Andreas, this is partly done through a repeated oscillation cutting from characters who can see to characters who cannot. The first signs that the weather is becoming dangerous are unseen by the main protagonists aboard the Andrea Gail, with the ship exiting screen right, and the camera moving left to show dark clouds and lightning, behind it. This perceptual information is accompanied by ominous non-diegetic music, and followed by a cut to a newsroom where a meteorologist looks at a computer screen showing weather patterns (which is also shown as a point-of-view shot to the spectator), and comments ‘this doesn’t look good’. From this warning the film cuts to two different boats, the second of which is the Andrea Gail, and the first of which is a small sailing boat later caught up in the storm. The two scenes showing these two vessels have sunny weather, so both crews are oblivious to the warnings seen by the meteorologist and the spectator. The first repetition of this oscillation between characters who can see and characters who cannot has Chris (Diane Lane), the girlfriend of one of the doomed fishermen, watching a weather report on television. Emphasising the significance of vision, the weatherman says ‘look at this’ and ‘this just in, video of Sable Island’, which shows a violent storm. The film then cross-cuts to three different vessels in three different locations. The first two ships are amongst the storm, and their crews will be endangered by it, but will subsequently be rescued. The third ship is the Andrea Gail, in calm waters, so that its crew cannot see the danger, and they will ultimately be killed by the storm. The second oscillation between those who can and cannot see begins with an objective overhead aerial shot of the hurricane showing its full size. A cut to a hurricane hunter airplane flying into the storm is accompanied by the

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 127 dialogue ‘looks like a Category 5 [storm]’, and the subsequent cut to the Andrea Gail again has it in calm seas. The third oscillation has Linda (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), the captain of the Andrea Gail’s sister ship, bellowing a warning over her radio to the doomed captain Billy (George Clooney), heading into unseen disaster because he has not looked at the data she has faxed over to him – ‘look at your fax, damn it! Look at your fax!’ After the subsequent cut to Billy looking screen left, out of his window, the camera moves screen right to show the fax machine on the wall, not being looked at by Billy, but the focus of attention for the spectator. In Volcano, the spectator is given information contradicting that provided by doubting characters, and the competing truth claims can be evaluated against the ostensibly definitive proof of cinema’s visual information. Early in the film, those building the subway state that the first workers to die down the tunnels were killed by a vent of steam. Roark has already expressed scepticism about this explanation, but when the one worker who survived the incident is taken to the hospital the examining doctor says ‘look. Steam doesn’t char clothing like this. This is a flame burn.’ A close-up of the doctor cutting at the charred clothes confirms this for the spectator. In this cinematic moment, competing explanations for the level of imminent danger are provided, and the spectator can make a definitive conclusion about which of these explanations is correct because of the film’s privileging of spectatorial vision. This, again, encourages the spectator to imagine that this perceptual mastery is also applicable to the real world, whereas such mastery is in fact an illusory component of Cartesian subjectivity confirmed and normalised by realist film conventions. Animals may perceive what characters cannot perceive In many of the above examples, animals are shown responding to the imminent disaster before humans do – in both Volcano and The Impossible, birds fly away before humans are aware of a problem, and the former also has a dog, and the latter a lizard, who also respond before humans do. Dante’s Peak also has bird flight as a signal of impending disaster. The aforementioned skinny-dippers are shown after the cut from Rachel saying that the town is ‘safe’, providing the spectator with information from these earlier scenes that the skinny-dippers don’t have. A sudden flurry of birds disturbs them, and their eyelines jerk to the side, and are followed by a point-of-view shot of the birds. For the spectator this image of disruption in nature has significance, because of the previous warnings, discussed above, but the skinny-dippers have not seen these other images, and conclude that ‘it’s nothing. Some animal must have scared them’. In addition, the skinny-dippers do not share the ominous non-diegetic music that the spectator can hear. When bubbles erupt in the water, they scream, and the camera moves down to show subaquatic lava. The spectator has been granted a position where (s)he is able to see and hear the impending danger that is unseen and unheard (or more accurately seen and heard only in part, and thereby misinterpreted) by the characters.

128 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ These spectatorial alignments with animals suggest that those characters who do not perceive with the animals are alienated from nature in a manner that is different from the spectator, who is granted an illusory mastery over warnings that masquerade as ‘natural’, but are in fact merely components of realist film’s Cartesian grammar. The alignments suggest, again, that the spectator would be able to perceive various real-world signs of impending disaster, whereas these warnings are conventionalised normalisations of an ecologically damaging Cartesian ocularcentrism. The spectator may not perceive the impending threat, and be shocked The examples from above provide visual information to spectators ahead of (certain) characters, but there are also some moments where spectators are shocked by unexpected events, much like the aforementioned explosion in the opening scene of Children of Men. However, most of these shocks are part of a more generalised, more sustained, and more important privileging of spectatorial vision, so that their principal function is part of the broader foreshadowing of the main disaster to come. In The Perfect Storm, for example, prior to the onset of the main storm, the Andrea Gail’s crew is harpooning swordfish in very choppy water at night. At one point, the fish that is harpooned is a shark, which lurches up onto the deck, shocking both characters (particularly the one whose feet are dangerously close to the shark’s mouth) and the spectator. At no point, prior to this, was the shark shown to the spectator, swirling around beneath the waves, nor was any suggestion made that something menacing is lurking below the surface, in a manner akin to the famous underwater point-of-view shots in Jaws. The Perfect Storm creates a moment of shock here, therefore, as opposed to privileging spectatorial vision. Nevertheless, the threat of this shock is much more minor than the main narrative events about the storm, and the shark is killed without harming anyone aboard. The shock is therefore of minimal narrative importance. What this shock does signal, in narrative terms, is a warning about the more significant impeding disaster, about which the spectator sees numerous other examples – meteorologists’ computer screens; extreme long aerial shots of the hurricane; other ships encountering the storm in different locations; and so on, as discussed above. Indeed, the crew interpret the shark coming aboard as one of three omens of bad luck which they use to try to persuade Billy to head back to shore, so that the prior shock is an explicit component of a foreshadowing of the more serious disaster to come.2 This type of shock, then, even though it directly aligns the characters’ and the spectator’s temporary lack of vision, thereby functions as part of a broader landscape that privileges spectatorial vision, suggesting that the spectator would experience similar visual clues, in a corresponding real-world disaster. Shocks may also occur when a character’s vision is diverted away from impending danger. Just before the sequence where Graham almost jumps into the scalding hot spring in Dante’s Peak, for example, Harry moves from

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 129 photographing rocks, which may provide visual clues about what is to come, to photographing Rachel. An off-screen scream accompanies this momentary shift in Harry’s gaze, and the scientist returns to his task at this prompt. A cut to a close-up of dead squirrels reveals that it was Rachel’s daughter Lauren who had screamed, with Harry and the spectator granted this information at the same time. Moments later Harry’s control over perception will be fully reasserted when he saves Graham, as discussed above, but a moment of shock occurred during his temporary distraction. Even when shocks come they can be part of a broader landscape in which something shocking is to be expected. The previous example from Dante’s Peak may have displaced the imminent threat by shifting from photographing rocks to photographing Rachel, but Harry was still investigating the possibility of an eruption, and the spectator had been granted all of the warning signs discussed above, so that the shift to Rachel constitutes a sleight of hand in which the spectator seems to be shocked, but only by something that has already been foreshadowed. Later in the film lava bursts into Rachel’s stepmother’s shack on the mountainside, and this had not been directly signalled to spectator or characters in the moments right before this incident, so that it functions as something of a shock at this precise moment. Lava coming down the mountain towards the shack had been shown about a minute before this incident, however, so that the shock is part of a broader and more sustained form of suspenseful knowledge. After the big earthquake strikes in Volcano, dazed survivors look around them in a moment of lull. A massive explosion of lava then surprises both these characters and the spectator although, again, the broader warnings that something like this would occur, at some point, have already been provided. In San Andreas, too, the spectator’s expectation that something will happen is manipulated to provide some form of surprise about the specific moment when disaster strikes. I discussed above how the film cross-cuts from Lawrence’s warnings that earthquakes are about to strike San Francisco, to Blake waiting obliviously. The first of these does not show the earthquake striking Blake first, so that the next scene after Blake in San Francisco is with her mother Emma (Carla Gugino), dining high up in a skyscraper. She chats to Raymond on a phone, her roving eyeline suggesting that she is exasperated by her day, rather than looking about for important visual clues signalling danger. A point-of-view shot shows cutlery on a table, which begins to rattle, and the earthquake then strikes very quickly. The deferral of the earthquake, from Lawrence’s warning, to Blake, where the disaster does not strike, for now, to Emma, means that the precise moment of catastrophe could not be predicted, and comes as something of a shock, but the inevitability of the earthquake is known to Lawrence and the spectator, but not to Emma or Blake. These various shocks, then, all still conform to a broader and more significant privileging of spectatorial vision.

130 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’

The spectator may be subjected to confusing imagery while characters are confused These shocks, then, can temporarily disrupt the spectatorial mastery over perceptual information, and this disruption may be accompanied by a temporary breakdown in stable realist grammar. This breakdown is always filtered through the affective and perceptual states of various characters, so that there is confusing imagery for the spectator whilst characters are undergoing confusing experiences; and this confusion is always temporary, so that the stable conventions of geometric realist grammar are reasserted after the danger is over. There are two principal strategies which regulate the resolutions to this confusion, and these strategies relate to two subsequent components analysed in this chapter – 1) resolutions that transcend the confusing imagery whilst the disaster continues to unfold; and 2) resolutions that are purely temporal, so that the confusion only ends after the disastrous impact recedes. San Andreas has numerous examples of the first strategy. When Emma’s skyscraper is struck by the earthquake, the building’s buckling movements and falling debris cause dangers that threaten Emma, and which are shown killing various insignificant characters. While Emma moves towards the roof, where she hopes she will be rescued by Raymond’s helicopter, the handheld camera shakes violently, and moves around characters in a bewildering manner. When she makes it to the roof, the camera whips back and forth, up and down, showing collapsing buildings, and an emerging crack in the roof below Emma’s feet. The roof breaks, and she falls through several floors, the camera jerking down with her. When this fall ends, the screen is filled with dust, and Emma cannot be seen, so that the spectator’s view mirrors her confusion. The dust clears, ringing in Emma’s ears can be heard by the spectator, and she can then be seen, picking herself up. Now that the immediate danger is over, the camera is more stable, and as Emma begins to climb back to the roof, it cranes up and over her, and again whips sideward, this time to show Raymond’s approaching helicopter. The subsequent rescue, which pleasurably transcends the danger, is filmed according to the conventions established in relation to 2012 in Chapter 2, and discussed in more detail in relation to San Andreas below, with the helicopter elegantly pirouetting between collapsing buildings as it makes its escape. At the culmination of this departure it goes into a spin, and the imagery again becomes appropriately confusing, with the camera rapidly cutting from spinning shots inside and outside the helicopter. When this threat is also resolved, the geometric stability of shot/reverse shot conventions shows the divorcing Emma and Raymond looking lovingly at one another, beginning to restore their broken relationship. The second of these strategies – purely temporal resolutions to confusing imagery – is confined to those environmental disaster films that are based on real events, where the kind of pleasurable destruction lingered over in the prior sequence from San Andreas might be considered inappropriate. The Impossible is

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 131 the exemplar of this reluctance to pleasurably transcend destruction. The moment when the tsunami hits Maria cuts to black and silence, so that the spectator and the characters temporarily lose all perception. When images return a few seconds later, they are a heightened version of the handheld camerawork described in San Andreas’s skyscraper, but The Impossible uses far more cutting to represent the characters’ experiences of snatching at the surface of the water, as they are dragged along by the torrent. The first few moments of this are indistinct, and move quickly back to the dominance of blackness, to suggest the nearness of drowning. The first clear image is of Maria clinging to a tree, but confusion quickly returns when Lucas sweeps past, and Maria dives in after him. Underwater medium close-ups show them both struggling, Maria cut by branches, and overhead shots sweep along and past them. The editing is rapid, the camera whipping about to represent their confusion. Where San Andreas incorporated a heroic transcendence over the disaster, in The Impossible the spectator must wait for the waters to slow down, but not before a second wave causes more confusion, and a repeat of the ear ringing used in San Andreas. The confusion of the tsunami cannot be transcended by making the destruction pleasurable, then, but the confusion does not last, because the ferocity of the waves subside, Maria and Lucas are reunited, the pace of the editing slows, and the cinematography resumes the stability of shot/reverse shot conventions. The spectator temporarily shared characters’ perceptual confusion, but this threat to the spectator’s stable viewing position is raised only so that it can be resolved, with the spectator confirmed as the Cartesian ocularcentric point of mastery.

The spectator may be threatened directly (though vicariously), but this threat is then displaced Confusing imagery can be accompanied by threats to the spectator that fall somewhere between direct and vicarious. They are direct in the sense that the spectator’s position is struck by waves, explosions, debris, and so on; and they are vicarious in the sense that these impacts cannot literally penetrate through the screen to the spectator in the auditorium or at home, and in the further sense that the ‘direct’ strike at the spectator’s position can be followed by a quick cut to a different position observing the strike. Whichever of these components is employed, the ‘direct’ threat to the spectator is always displaced, in various ways. The most obvious examples of this displacement involve near misses, where the impact threatens to strike the screen but does not. In The Perfect Storm the massive wave that strikes the Andre Gail is shown in an overhead shot, and then sweeps past the camera, threatening to engulf it, but in a right to left motion that does not directly strike. San Andreas has numerous narrow escapes for the spectator’s position. Raymond and Emma crash-land in San Francisco in a baseball stadium. A vast array of floodlights collapses, lurching towards the camera, but it is only the dust that arises from the fall, rather than the massive

132 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ structure itself, which strikes the camera. To emphasise the fact that this impact was not destructive, amongst a film littered with casualties, Raymond asks, of the crowd huddling beside the stadium, ‘anybody hurt’. ‘No’ comes the answer, accompanied by shots of confused survivors shaking their heads. When the tsunami caused by the main earthquake strikes San Francisco, Raymond and Emma attempt to survive it by piloting a speedboat over the crest of the vast wave. Other boats attempt the same manoeuvre, the one closest to Raymond’s flipping over. The camera cuts to behind, with this boat hurtling towards it, but this threat is displaced because the boat lurches past screen left, so that the camera is only struck by water, rather than by it, and because the camera cuts back into Raymond’s boat, quickly aligning the spectator back with the survivors. San Andreas also uses the threat of this kind of ‘direct’ strike to chastise social transgressions, so that when the tsunami pushes a container ship onto Golden Gate Bridge the falling containers move towards the camera, but the film cuts before impact, so that instead of having his/her position struck, the spectator can enjoy the punishment of Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd), discussed in more detail below, who is crushed instead. This vast tsunami is then shown striking San Francisco’s streets. A cruise ship atop the tsunami falls towards the camera, and waves strike the camera, but a cut occurs before the ship hits. Another wave is then shown roaring down a street, and this strikes the spectator’s position, but unlike in The Impossible where the camera followed the characters buffeted by the torrent, here the camera remains static, with bodies swept past but the spectator’s position unmoving. This displacement of ‘direct’ threats to the spectator can also function within a context that privileges spectatorial vision. In Volcano, Roark and Amy lower a video camera down into a subway tunnel to see if lava is travelling down it. The centrality of perception is emphasised when Amy says ‘I can’t see anything’. A close-up on the camera dangling in the tunnel, slowly turning on its cable, shows this lack of clear vision. The next image is a close-up on Roark’s astonished face, then a point-of-view shot of the video monitor with a wave of lava onrushing towards it, then a shot from behind the diegetic camera of the lava itself engulfing both this camera and the screen that the spectator is watching. The spectator’s position, then, is engulfed in lava, but even this ‘direct’ threat functions as a form of perceptual mastery, with the next image Roark’s point-of-view of the monitor showing only static, warning him; followed by an objective shot of Roark pulling Amy out of the way, just in time, as the lava erupts from the hole. In Dante’s Peak ‘direct’ hits are displaced by similar strategies of cutting to positions of safety, and by associating this next position with foreknowledge. The volcano first erupts during a town public meeting planning an evacuation. The eruption is accompanied with rapid cuts of townsfolk barging towards the town-hall’s exit. Part of the confusion of this imagery threatens the spectator’s position, so that a lampshade drops towards the camera, and amid the crush of

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 133 people someone falls and lurches towards the screen. Compared to some of the more devastating damage to come, however, the impact of these forward movements is minor, and cuts to the side and above the pushing and falling position the spectator more out of the crush than in it. Outside the hall, a more dangerous object – a large electric sign – falls towards the camera, but the danger of this is displaced by cuts to two different side angles, providing the spectator an illusory mastery over this destruction. Almost immediately afterwards, a church tower crashes onto a bus. This is signalled first by Harry’s eyeline darting sideward, so that the spectator and he are aligned, and the first image of the falling tower is therefore a point-of-view shot from a position of (at least temporary and relative) safety. The next image is a low angle from beside the bus, with the tower coming towards the screen, and the impact rocks the bus occupying the right part of the screen, suggesting partial impact with the position occupied by the spectator. The next image is a side shot of the bus, from a position not being struck, and this is followed by Harry again, suggesting that the previous shot was again his point-of-view. The threat of a ‘direct’ impact, therefore, is displaced by the transcendence of cinematic mobility. Slightly later the camera is ‘directly’ struck in a more sustained, definitive manner. The town’s dam bursts, and this is shown in slow motion from a number of angles, including above, indicating a spectacular transcendence, but the last shot of this event is positioned down at the river below the dam as the vast wave engulfs the camera, which cuts to black. The spectator’s vicarious position has thereby been struck in a manner that extinguishes perception. This is only temporary, however, and is displaced by the next two scenes. The first of these scenes begins with a cut to Harry, Rachel, and her children, trying to get down the mountain. Immediately, then, the film cuts from a position engulfed by the wave to a position aligned with characters who are still alive, and who are attempting to survive. Even if the spectator’s position is ostensibly destroyed, therefore, film can resurrect the spectator’s position through cutting. To emphasise how this scene has been able to transcend this destruction, the vehicle that Harry and Rachel’s family use to escape is shown repeating the forward-thrusting movement that previously engulfed the camera. They find this vehicle inside a compound surrounded by wire fences, and break out of the compound by driving through the fence. This is shown from a low angle at road level, with the burst fence lurching forwards, and the vehicle roaring directly towards the camera. The same forward-thrusting technique is thereby used here to signal survival, where moments before it had signalled destruction. The second scene that displaces the destructive qualities of the camera’s engulfment utilises the kind of foreknowledge about disaster discussed above. The volcanologists are attempting to flee from the town, and are shown driving beside the river and onto a bridge. The spectator’s witnessing of the dam’s destruction thereby moves from a position of engulfment to a position of foreknowledge, warning that the wave from the dam is coming down the river. The last of the volcanologist’s vehicles is caught by the torrent from the

134 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ dam hitting the bridge, and Paul (Charles Hallahan) is swept away to his death. Importantly, this definitive form of destruction is visited upon a character but not upon the spectator’s position, with the film not utilising the same kind of forward-thrusting movement to engulf the camera during this scene. Slightly later the film does threaten to align the camera position’s destruction with the destruction of characters, but this threat is narrowly avoided. Harry and Rachel’s family drive away from a massive explosion of the mountain, with a pyroclastic cloud engulfing the camera, knocking over trees from a different objective side angle, and then engulfing the camera again. A cut back into the vehicle signals that the characters are safe for now. Three more shots show the camera engulfed by the cloud, and then trees explode directly towards the camera, but a cut back to Harry driving occurs before those trees can strike the spectator’s position. The nearness of the threat is now emphasised through Harry’s eyeline moving towards the rear-view mirror, and then his point-of-view in the mirror with the cloud rushing towards it. A long shot of the vehicle sweeping forward and past follows, and the camera moves up to show the cloud approaching from behind. Before the vehicle reaches safety the camera will be engulfed by debris or the pyroclastic cloud no less than fourteen more times, but these impacts are intercut with interior shots of the vehicle, its inhabitants still unstruck, and these images are also accompanied by objective external shots showing the cloud racing towards the vehicle. A point-of-view shot from the vehicle’s interior then shows the aforementioned mine entrance directly ahead, and rapid zooms into Rachel’s face and into the mine entrance are followed by a match-on-action from inside the mine with the vehicle crashing through the entrance. The interior of the vehicle is then shown, its inhabitants safe, so that all the previous ‘direct’ hits to the camera’s position did not definitively strike the characters, and did not cause the spectator’s position to lose perceptual faculties, as the earlier wave strike from the dam did. An extreme long shot of the exploding volcano is then shown, followed by the surviving volcanologists looking at it from a safe distance, signalling that the previous image of the volcano was a point-ofview shot. These characters, however, have not seen the vehicle’s narrow escape, so that the spectator has a perceptual mastery over those who say ‘so long, Harry’ and weep, even though the spectator has just been subjected to numerous vicarious ‘direct’ hits that the volcanologists were not subjected to. Even amongst these threats to the spectator’s position, then, the spectator’s mastery over perception is emphasised.

The spectator may have traumatic threats displaced only after disastrous events end The various threats that these films make towards characters and spectators can be resolved in either purely temporal terms – that is, the threat lasts only for a time, and then comes to an end – or also in terms of a spectacular transcendence over the destruction. I will come to this latter form of resolution shortly, but this section focuses on filmmaking that avoids depicting the spectacle as pleasurable,

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 135 because of the close relationship between the events portrayed and the realworld events that inspired the film. The Impossible is the exemplar of this category of filmmaking. At no point are the kind of transcendent manoeuvers around the devastation, discussed in the next section, utilised in this film. Instead, the characters’ tribulations are depicted as traumatic and confusing, as discussed above, and are only resolved once the environmental disaster ends (or at least ends for the protagonists). Nevertheless, despite the fact that this film does not conform to one of the key elements that the other films employ, it still conforms to the other elements discussed in this chapter. As discussed above, the spectator is given foreknowledge about the disaster in various ways, and confusing imagery is temporally replaced with stable imagery. In addition, this temporal oscillation also involves narrative resolution in which the protagonists escape from the disaster aboard various ‘lifeboats’, so that the events are depicted as traumatic, but survivable for important characters and for the spectator. During the first chaotic rupture in the family, as Maria and Lucas are swept away by the tsunami, attempts are made to escape via one such ‘lifeboat’. This first attempt revolves around a mattress swept up in the torrent, with the camera picking out the hands of mother and son attempting to grab onto one another across two different sides of the mattress. This first attempt is unsuccessful, but after the waves subside, they take shelter in a temporary ‘lifeboat’ in the form of a tree, and the prior unsuccessful attempt to hold hands is this time successful, as the camera shows Maria holding the hand of Daniel (Johan Sundberg) a little boy they are trying to help. Finally, the family definitively escape the disaster when an evacuating airplane functions as a ‘lifeboat’, and Maria is now shown holding Lucas’s hand to demonstrate the resolution. Close-ups on fastening seatbelts reinforce this sense of restored security, and although the film ends with Maria gazing out of the window as the airplane flies away from the devastation, the film’s focus is on the surviving family, rather than on those left below, as it was when a truck carrying Maria to hospital moved past dead bodies by the roadside, or when the family are allocated an airplane amongst a crowd of desperate people and more dead bodies. The heteronormative component of this resolution is also important, in terms of how catharsis is grounded in the Symbolic Order, as I address below.

The spectator may pleasurably transcend the destruction More frequently, however, these environmental disaster films linger over the devastation in a manner that encourages the spectator to enjoy the spectacle of destruction. As set out in Chapter 2, there are a number of elements that contribute towards this pleasurable spectacle. In part, these are structured around survival, so that the films follow, and align the spectator’s perception with, survivors rather than the insignificant masses killed in the disaster. In part, the pleasures are narratively masochistic – see below for more on this – in the sense that unpleasurable events occur, but then end. But these last two

136 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ elements also apply to the type of filmmaking discussed in the previous section, where the peril experienced in a film like The Impossible is temporarily traumatic, but short-lived. The full pleasures of spectacular destruction discussed in this section go further because they rely on the spectator’s transcendence of the stable viewing position associated with the geometrically centred cogito. Cutting to numerous different positions around the devastation activates the disembodied pleasures of the Imaginary Order, with the spectator experiencing an hommelettelike ability to escape the constraints of the bodies being threatened and destroyed on screen. This pleasure is also masochistic, in the sense that it disrupts the cogito’s stable perceptual subjectivity, but only temporarily, and in a manner that raises the spectre of the traumatic Real, only to suture over that spectre with momentary Imaginary pleasures, and then a return to Symbolic stability. The aforementioned scene in Dante’s Peak where Harry escapes from the pyroclastic cloud by driving through the mine entrance demonstrates these unconscious pleasures. It is important not only that the threat from the cloud ends, and the characters survive, but also that the spectacle of the sequence allows the spectator to transcend the danger to the characters by instantaneously moving to positions above, to the side, in front of and behind the vehicle and the cloud. The perception of the characters is confined to their threatened bodies, and the sequence aligns the spectator with that threat by including point-of-view shots from the vehicle’s interior. Exterior shots, however, rapidly and repeatedly displace the vicarious threat to the spectator, who occupies what might be described as a God’s-eye view, but is more accurately a series of hommelette-eye views, temporarily diffused from a centralised perceptual fulcrum to a perceptual transcendence over the cogito’s embodied limitations. These pleasures are masochistic because the sequence keeps cutting between spectatorial positions aligned with embodied danger and those aligned with disembodied transcendence, repeatedly oscillating between unpleasure and pleasure. These films often align this disembodied perception with extreme high positions looking down on the disaster. Some examples of this have already been mentioned – San Andreas’s helicopter rescue, discussed in more detail below, and the objective shot in The Perfect Storm which dives down through the combining hurricanes to the waves below. Escape or help from above often narratively connects these high shots with the events taking place. In Volcano, diegetic helicopters are used to drop water on the encroaching wave of lava, and the camera shows this spectacle from embodied positions at street level, and from disembodied positions high above the helicopters. In this instance the high shots and helicopters are associated with combatting the disaster, but they are also used to linger over the disaster unfolding. When lava explodes in front of the threatened hospital, near the end of the film, overhead shots with helicopters below the camera show the devastation from a position of spectatorial safety. Slightly later the pleasurable resolution to this threat is shown from an almost identical position, when charges are blown to collapse the building that will prevent the lava from destroying the hospital. This high shot, with helicopters again positioned below the camera, uses slow motion to linger over the

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 137 explosions, and this high angle is repeated again moments later to show the lava being successfully diverted by this improvised dam. San Andreas exploits these spectacular pleasures more than any other film discussed in this chapter, partly because of developments in CGI filmmaking that facilitate the epic scale of the destruction, and partly because the film moves from the kind of forewarnings of disaster discussed above into the spectacle of the disaster much quicker than the other films. As with the sequences just mentioned, and as with the airplane escape in 2012 used in Chapter 2 as an exemplar of this kind of spectacle, San Andreas repeatedly oscillates between a spectatorial position down amongst the devastation, and a spectatorial position high above. The sequence where Emma’s skyscraper collapses, for example, moves back and forth from Emma in the building to Raymond in his helicopter trying to rescue her, and transcends even the flying but still embodied constraints of the diegetic helicopter. The disaster begins with the two talking on the telephone. When Raymond hears Emma say that an earthquake has struck, he begins flying to rescue her. His point-of-view shows the disaster unfolding below, with a raised highway collapsing. People are dying, but they are depicted as antlike, with Raymond’s focus on his wife (and the eventual restoration of his fractured heteronormative family). Back with Emma, the camera moves between various hommelette-like positions, first directly over the skyscraper showing various other buildings collapsing, then transcending through space by rapidly zooming from a side shot of the building through a cracked window into the interior. Once she has climbed to the roof for a second time, and Raymond has lowered a rescue basket for her to grab onto, another even larger skyscraper collapses behind Emma’s building. This is shown from multiple angles high above, with slow motion used to linger over the spectacle and the threat. A cloud of debris races towards Emma as she runs for the dangling basket, and this is shown from Emma’s level, with shaking hand held camera, and also directly from above with a stable shot looking down on Emma and the approaching cloud. Dust fills the screen, so that it is temporarily unclear whether Emma got to the basket in time, but Raymond pulls the dangling rope, and after first seeing only part of it, in a point-of-view shot without Emma clinging on, she at last calls out and is shown right at the bottom of the basket, safe. She collapses onto Raymond, pre-empting the family reunion that is to come. Their helicopter still has to escape more falling buildings, and goes into a spin with appropriate confusing imagery, but this too is resolved, and the helicopter elegantly pirouettes through collapsing buildings, with the camera positioned objectively above and around it. These pleasures, then, threaten characters and, vicariously, the spectator, but transcend those threats by manoeuvring the spectator around and above the devastation, by allowing characters whom spectators have been encouraged to identify with to escape, and by signalling that the deaths of those not focused on are of little import. Those killed may be being punished, as discussed below, but more frequently are depicted as mere props for the pleasurable spectacle.

138 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ When Raymond and Emma pilot their speedboat over the tsunami, for example, the boat beside them flips over and rushes towards the camera, as discussed above. Any potential identification with human loss at this moment is minimised by the fact that this boat had blacked out windows, and the camera did not at any point cut to those inside it, instead cutting back to Raymond and Emma in a boat that is surviving. The movement of these boats was also preceded by an oscillation between the threatened position of the characters and an unthreatened position above and around the disaster. An extreme overhead long shot is positioned in front of the boats, and sweeps over the tsunami below it, and then under the Golden Gate Bridge, towards a large number of boats all planning to go over the tsunami, before the camera finishes its movement on one particular boat, piloted by Raymond, which will be the focus of spectatorial interest and identification. A cut into a medium close-up on Raymond and Emma confirms this focus. This identification re-established, the film moves to more transcendent positions, showing an overhead extreme long shot from the side with the Golden Gate Bridge overhead in slow motion. The film then cuts to closer in on these characters, and then to an overhead shot looking down on the boats, and then to a closer inside shot again. The film is replete with this kind of pleasurable transcendence over spectacle, and at times it even includes insignificant figures as survivors over the devastation below if they happen to be appropriately positioned. When the tsunami tears through San Francisco’s streets, for example, the camera moves from street level to a raised highway, where an unimportant character, shown only momentarily in this scene, looks at the devastation below. The insignificance of those killed is demonstrated by the distance between the camera and deaths, so that when the tsunami hits the Golden Gate Bridge it is first shown from an extreme long overhead position, buckling and then collapsing, with lots of tiny antlike figures killed. The next shot is positioned low down by the shore, with human figures much closer to the camera. They run from the roaring waves, but their deaths are not shown, as the film cuts away before the waves strike them. The unpleasurable aspects of the spectacle, then, are minimised by focusing on survivors, by literally minimising those killed, and by allowing the spectator to effortlessly move around the devastation in a manner that avoids harm and transcends the bodily constraints of those threatened or killed by the catastrophe. In a film like San Andreas this escape involves the use of a literal diegetic lifeboat, but at the more metaphorical level the characters escape from disaster, and the spectator is continuously repositioned into various ‘lifeboat’-like positions that encourage momentary sensations of coming under threat, but which are in fact illusory positions of ostensible invulnerability from danger.

The spectator’s oscillations between different categories are all masochistic As mentioned here, and at various points above, these oscillations are all masochistic, within the context of the Freudian fort/da game discussed in

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 139 Chapter 2. This process involves a staging of various unpleasures, which are each resolved into pleasures, with the oscillations between these two states repeated many times. These oscillations occur at both the narrative and formal/grammatical levels, so that all the many examples discussed in this chapter move from destabilising threat, both to the spectator’s position of stability and knowledge, and to the safety of fictional protagonists, to the restoration of that spectatorial stability, and (in most instances) the cessation of the threat to the characters. The very staging of these threats, moreover, is the central point of the films, with the spectator’s restored plenitude of stable vision, and the characters’ restored Symbolic bonds, enhanced through the temporary disequilibrium. The aforementioned spectacles, then, disrupt the geometric centralising process of each image’s illusion of three dimensional space. In Chapter 2 I discussed how all realist film creates this disruption through camera movement and through editing, but sutures over the potentially Real-like revelation that the spectator is not the master and locus of the image by activating the Imaginary pleasures of a disembodied transcendence over space, when the spectator’s position instantaneously moves with the edit. The spectacles in this chapter exaggerate this principle by staging this grammatical process as a life or death race for characters to survive the collapsing architecture of their fictional spaces. When Harry’s car seems about to be engulfed by Dante’s Peak’s pyroclastic flow, or Emma runs to grab the basket dangling from Raymond’s helicopter in San Andreas, the spectator is positioned both in and amongst the danger, through point-of-view shots, through forward-thrusting movements towards the camera, and through shaky handheld cinematography, but also above and around and beyond the dangers through objective shots, sweeping camera movements, and rapid editing from one impossible hommelette-eye to another. The repeated oscillation between these images jolts the spectator back and forth between unpleasure and pleasure, and between danger and safety, in a bewildering but fundamentally spectacular manner, and each of these oscillations ends with resolution, restoring a stable realist grammar. The spectator’s perceptual knowledge about the events, too, is masochistic. The sections above provide numerous examples of how these films show the spectator that the disaster is coming, so that the spectator has more knowledge than all or most characters. What the spectator does not know, at these points, is how and whether the characters will be able to survive the impending catastrophe, so that this is the one final (and crucial) piece of information that the spectator does not have. The only way it would be possible for the spectator to know this would be through the use of a prologue showing survivors that would precede the rest of the film, which would therefore technically be a very long flashback, or for the film to be a prequel. None of the films discussed in this book do this. The Impossible and The Perfect Storm are both based on real-life events, so that a particularly informed spectator might be aware of what will happen to the protagonists, but both films do not make this information explicitly foreknown within the text, with the latter film, for example, beginning with a memorial listing the names of lost fishermen, and only returning to

140 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ show this memorial with the names of the Andrea Gail crew on it at the end of the film. Given that the spectator knows that disaster is about to unfold, but does not know whether characters will survive, this lack of information is somewhat unpleasurable, within the context of the fort/da game – the spectator has a mastery over certain aspects of information, but a gap about certain other aspects. The narrative progression of the film fills this gap, and pleasurably resolves the unpleasure, even in an example like The Perfect Storm, where the main protagonists die, as I discuss below. This resolution of the gap in the spectator’s knowledge applies even to those films that do not stage the full masochistic pleasures of spectacle, such as The Impossible. These films can also directly narrativise the suture from a momentary glimpse that the cogito is an externally constituted illusion, rather than its ostensible claim to be the autonomous locus of reason. Film’s movement from image to image, recall, threatens to displace the centrality of the spectator. Perspectival painting maintains the illusion of the spectator’s centrality by remaining fixed, so that the viewer is not jolted out of position. Film editing inevitably decentres the spectator, but then re-centres the spectator through causal narrative links between images, and through realist conventions like shot/reverse shot and eyeline matches. Realist editing is therefore inherently masochistic, disrupting and then restoring the spectator’s centrality, and the spectator’s illusion that (s)he is the centralised locus of meaning for the images and narrative, temporarily demonstrating the Real-like revelation that the spectator is externally constituted rather than internally constituting, and then suturing over this revelation. In Volcano, when Roark despairs of saving the hospital, before he thinks of collapsing a building to make a dam, he articulates the limitations of the cogito, saying ‘I… I… I… I don’t know… I don’t know what to do.’ It is not just that this admission fails to do a certain piece of important thinking, but also that this admission fails to do an important piece of perceiving, and this limitation is shared by the spectator’s failing perception, through eyeline matches from Roark and the other rescuers showing point-of-view shots of those in grave danger outside the hospital. The grammatical fort of decentred vision, here, is accompanied by a narrative fort in which the fictional cogito cannot think or perceive how to successfully act. But these forts, inevitably, are temporary. As discussed above, first the spectator and then Roark see the means to proceed, with the pertinent building-that-will-be-dam shown looming behind Roark, and then again in the reflection of the vehicle he is leaning on. The painful limitations of the cogito are staged, but only so that they can be transcended. This kind of masochistic oscillation can also be employed at the explicitly reflexive level. In a scene reminiscent of a similar event in The Day After Tomorrow, in San Andreas Raymond’s helicopter flies past the famous Hollywood letters standing over Los Angeles, which are shown collapsing in the earthquake. Given that these letters represent cinema’s pleasures, their collapse is staged amidst a scene and a film in which those pleasures are repeatedly manipulated. In Chapter 2, it will be recalled, I outlined Lacan’s argument that a reflexive perspectival painting like Holbein’s The Ambassadors demonstrates the Real-like consequences of disrupting linear perspective’s geometric

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 141 centralisation, and depicted this disruption in the form of a skull. For Lacan, with this skull, “Holbein makes visible for us here something that is simply the subject as annihilated” (1977: 88). The collapse of the Hollywood letters does something similar – one might say that, momentarily, San Andreas makes visible something like the cinema’s spectatorial subject as annihilated, or even the cinema itself as annihilated. But in realist film, these unpleasurable moments are sutured over, so that Raymond proceeds to rescue Emma, with the film exploiting all of realism’s attendant spectacularly masochistic pleasures discussed above. Cinema may be masochistically annihilated in a moment of Real-like revelation, but this annihilation and revelation is temporary, and staged only so that it can be sutured over, with the environmentally destructive spectator-ascogito reconfirmed in all its illusory mastery.

Narrative resolutions operate within the context of the Symbolic Order Narrative masochism is also frequently grounded within specific aspects of the Symbolic Order, most notably heteronormativity. This may involve initially united families being disrupted and then reuniting, or may have families that are fractured from the outset being reunited. These resolutions are often filtered through a privileging of spectatorial perception, which is addressed in the following section. This section provides the broader outlines of how these films locate masochistic resolutions with the Symbolic Order. The Impossible follows the first strategy of depicting an initially unified family being disrupted. Although the family’s three brothers bicker somewhat at the start of the film, parents Maria and Henry are united, with the stability and happiness of their relationship represented, prior to the disaster, as they settle into their hotel, through the use of backlighting and gentle non-diegetic music. This equilibrium is disrupted by the tsunami, which causes the family’s disintegration. Maria and Lucas are parted from the others, and the two groups are shown separately, with the length of the sequences depicting the two groups shortening as they near reunion. The threat that this resolution will not be achieved is partly represented through a specific privileging of spectatorial vision – discussed below – and partly through images and events that depict the nearness of separation and reunification. Maria and Lucas’s aforementioned attempt to connect hands across the floating mattress ‘lifeboat’, for example, is shown through an overhead close-up of their fingers almost meeting before a cut to show the mattress hitting a pylon, and (m)other and son thrown clear. Later, in the hospital, both Lucas and the spectator are led to believe that Maria has died, with her trolley removed, a photograph of her seen in a folder showing dead victims, and Lucas taken to a tent full of newly orphaned children. A mix-up has occurred, however, and Maria has not died, so that (m)other and son are again reunited, although this threat of separation will be repeated when she is taken in for life-threatening surgery.

142 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ Whilst Lucas is waiting in the hospital he facilitates two other family reunions, first helping to find a lost child, Morten (Emilio Riccardi), for his father, and then seeing Daniel, the boy they had helped in the tree, safe and happy in someone’s arms, which is shown from Lucas’s point-of-view with stirring non-diegetic music. When the family finally fly away to safety, Lucas tells Maria ‘I saw Daniel again. He was so happy. He was in somebody’s arms.’ ‘I’m so proud of you’, his (m)other replies. More frequently, these films depict families separated from the outset, with the disaster restoring broken bonds, or providing substitutes for those broken bonds. Dante’s Peak and Volcano both have these substitutes. The first of these films begins with Harry’s girlfriend Marianne (Walker Brandt) being killed during a volcano in Colombia, as they unsuccessfully attempt to drive away from falling volcanic debris. This imagery is repeated almost identically at the end of the film, when Harry attempts to drive Rachel and her family to safety, and this repetition ends successfully, with pleasure rather than unpleasure, and with a new heteronormative family constructed. Rachel’s son Graham had initially been depicted as distant from his (m)other, and he is introduced being told off for playing in the abandoned mines. This source of familial conflict will become a source of familial resolution, however, as the same mines that Graham played in are used to shelter from the pyroclastic cloud. In Volcano the main protagonist Roark is divorced, and initially in conflict with his teenage daughter Kelly. Kelly is with Roark when the volcano strikes, and to protect her he sends her to what he hopes will be safety at the hospital. As she is driven away, she looks out the vehicle’s rear window, and the reverse shot shows Roark looking back, emphasising the split, which will eventually be resolved, and is discussed below, because it relates specifically to a privileging of spectatorial vision. Roark is not reunited with his divorced wife, who is only actually represented on the other end of an angry telephone conversation, but instead, like Harry in Dante’s Peak, he finds a replacement. When the demolished building finally diverts the lava away from the hospital, and the eruption has at last subsided, Roark sits next to Amy who cuddles his arm, suggesting romantic attachment, but she then leaves the shot. This is the film’s last masochistic oscillation, and last unresolved issue – the volcano has been defeated, and a suggestion made that Roark and Amy will unite to forge a new family, but in leaving the shot this possibility is not yet confirmed. Roark tells his colleagues that he is going on vacation to spend time with his daughter, confirming one aspect of Symbolic resolution, and the two then walk past a car window out of which Amy leans, offering them a lift, which they accept, finally uniting father, daughter and replacement/lost (m)other/wife. San Andreas also begins with the main family fractured, but this time reunites it directly, rather than through replacements. Raymond and Emma’s divorce was caused by the drowning of their daughter Mallory, which Raymond blamed himself for. The film’s disaster allows him to avert a repetition of a daughter’s drowning, and to reconnect with his wife. After being rescued from

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 143 the skyscraper’s rooftop, Emma asks ‘what’re we gonna do?’ Raymond replies ‘we’re going to get our daughter back.’ After they crash-land their helicopter, Raymond reflects on how he responded to Mallory’s death, saying ‘I should have let you in. I just didn’t know how.’ His use of the past tense is significant, because he now knows how to rebuild the family – through heroic rescue – as does Emma, who says ‘let’s go get our daughter,’ her hand shown on his leg in close-up. When the parents eventually find Blake, she is trapped in a flooding chamber. Raymond is unable to get through a glass panel separating them. Her lungs fill with water, and she slumps down unconscious through the water before her father can reach her. Her body is taken onto her parent’s lifeboat, where Raymond begins pumping her chest in an attempt to expel the water. These attempts are unsuccessful, and Raymond stops pumping. The family’s tragic events seem to have been repeated, with the film staging an unpleasurable absence of family reunion. Raymond is unwilling to allow this to happen, however, and saying ‘I’m not gonna lose you too’, he resumes his CPR, Blake coughs up water, and the three family members hug aboard the lifeboat, reunited.3 This family reunion is also extended into a broader sense of societal renewal after the disaster. Taking shelter in a makeshift camp, the family are surrounded by other survivors, the camera picking out a random and otherwise insignificant (young white heterosexual) couple reuniting, among images of notes and pictures of people searching for loved ones. ‘So what now?’ Emma asks. The family gaze into the distance, and the camera shows their point-of-view – the Golden Gate Bridge, previously a site of destruction and trauma, but now, supporting a fluttering American flag, an image of Symbolic restoration. ‘Now we rebuild,’ Raymond replies, with the environmental disaster threatening but ultimately strengthening familial, social and national bonds. San Andreas also conforms to the melodramatic convention of apportioning blame for the disaster on morally corrupt and socially transgressive individuals. Prior to the familial resolution, Emma is dating Daniel, a wealthy property tycoon. From the outset, this means that he transgresses the heteronormative union of father, (m)other and biological child. This transgression is emphasised when Blake asks him ‘how come you never had kids?’ Daniel replies ‘I did. This is one of them right here.’ He shows Blake a brochure of his latest skyscraper being built in San Francisco. ‘When it’s finished, it’ll be the tallest, strongest, and it’s already 80 percent sold. But honestly, I guess I never had any kids because I was always so busy raising these.’ Daniel’s statement demonstrates both a hubris about the building that will be punished by environmental destruction, and a greed in how much he has sold, which will also be represented as one of the components of too-conspicuous unnatural ‘civilisation’, in a similar manner to how images of Las Vegas are destroyed in 2012, as discussed in Chapter 2. Despite the fact that San Andreas is no Marxist critique of capitalism, then, it apportions blame for some of the repressed consequences of capitalism onto an individual. And, in addition, these melodramatic

144 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ individualisations are framed within the context of the heteronormative, so that instead of pursuing the ostensibly ‘natural’ goal of ‘raising’ a family, Daniel pursues the ostensibly unnatural goal of ‘raising’ hubristic skyscrapers, with the attendant phallic connotations present in the form of mise-en-scène rather than dialogue. These types of transgression form the backdrop for Daniel’s melodramatic villainy and punishment, and when disaster strikes he accompanies this with direct acts of cowardice and malevolence. First, he promises Blake that he will go for help when her legs are trapped in the back of his crushed limousine. Although he briefly shouts about Blake’s whereabouts to a distracted security guard, he does not return to help her, as he promised. Subsequently, out in the street, he witnesses a wave of debris rushing towards him and a crowd of other survivors. Desperate, he pushes a man out from shelter behind a pillar, and the victim of this act is shown being torn away by the wave. Having completed the melodramatic trajectory from social transgression to cowardice and murderous selfishness, it remains only for Daniel to be punished. As discussed above, he is shown being crushed by a freight container on the Golden Gate Bridge, with this death-by-capitalism an appropriately ironic fate. Daniel’s death also fits into the previously discussed Symbolic renewal at the end of the film. When Raymond says ‘now we rebuild’, this will not be conducted by the kind of hubristic, ‘too’-capitalistic, non-heteronormative builders represented by Daniel, but by the kind of virtuous and heroic survivors represented by Raymond’s family (and, vicariously, by the spectator). This kind of social renewal can also involve redemption for melodramatically ‘guilty’ characters. Volcano has two examples. In the first, the subway builder Stan (John Carroll Lynch) is at first sceptical about Roark’s warnings, and therefore puts a number of people, particularly those on the subway train caught in the tunnel, in danger. When he leads a team to investigate this incident, however, he stays on board longer than his colleagues, refusing to drop an unconscious victim, and instead jumping into lava so that he can throw the victim to safety. His redemption comes through heroic self-sacrifice. Another character’s redemption is also depicted as selfless, at least within the context of the era’s political values, although this does not involve the character’s death. Jerry (Michael McGrady) is represented as a racist cop from the film’s outset – he takes pleasure in antagonising Kevin (Marcello Thedford), an African American caught up in a car accident caused by the film’s first minor earthquake, and then refuses to send firefighters to protect a black neighbourhood, and arrests Kevin when he complains about this. However, when the police are attempting to position concrete blocks to dam the lava, he releases Kevin, who joins in the now inter-racial effort, and rewards this help by sending firefighters to Kevin’s neighbourhood. A colleague claps him on the shoulder, and says ‘you’re a good man, Jerry,’ with the earlier racial conflict now resolved by the united response to disaster. The film ends by broadening out this specifically racial form of social catharsis. A cop carrying the boy Tommy (Jared Thorne and Taylor Thorne), whom Kelly

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 145 had been helping, says ‘let’s go find your mom. What she look like?’ Tommy replies ‘she looks like…’ Point-of-view shots show numerous people covered in grey dust helping one another, accompanied by stirring non-diegetic music. Tommy says ‘look at their faces. They all look the same.’ The cop is then shown gazing in wonder at this scene of unity, and this vision of people’s differences hidden in their collective response to disaster is then accompanied by the fall of purifying rain.

Symbolic resolutions may reinforce the illusion of the spectator’s perceptual mastery These various melodramatic recourses to the Symbolic Order are also frequently specifically associated with the kind of privileging of spectatorial vision discussed above. I have already discussed how The Impossible refrains from depicting the disaster as a transcendent spectacle, but it compensates for this by heavily emphasising a spectatorial mastery over the film’s various Symbolic preoccupations. This begins with the film’s vague forewarnings about the impending disaster, discussed above. The specific Symbolic element of these spectatorial forewarnings is demonstrated when the family go snorkelling. A low angle underwater shot shows them jumping into the sea and swimming, with the scene’s ominous sound ambiguously somewhere between diegetic subaquatic ambient noise and non-diegetic musical rumblings. Lucas is then shown exploring the seabed, and his point-of-view picks out a solitary clown fish. This intertextual reference to Finding Nemo (Stanton and Unkrich 2003) foreshadows the fact that, like the titular Nemo (Alexander Gould), Lucas will be separated from his (m)other (although The Impossible resolves this separation, whereas Nemo’s (m)other dies, and this deferred reunion is transferred onto the subsequent narrative with his father). To emphasise this link, the film cuts from Lucas’s pointof-view of the fish sans (m)other to the image of the soon-to-be-lost (m)other Maria, lying in bed. The film makes no overt reference to whether Lucas finds the image of the clownfish unsettling, but in combination with the spectator’s foreknowledge about impending disaster, and through associative cutting from the fish to the (m)other, the film invites the spectator to link Nemo’s narrative with what will soon happen to Lucas, so that the Symbolic disruption of the heteronormative family is structured within the context of the spectator’s perceptual mastery. Crosscutting that privileges the spectator’s perception is also central to how The Impossible presents the family’s reunion. After an extended stay of almost half an hour with Maria and Lucas, which lasts from the moment they are swept away by the tsunami until Lucas is left alone in the orphans’ tent, the film moves to show what happened to the father Henry and the other two boys, Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast). They begin to look for Maria and Lucas, and Henry decides to send the boys away to what he hopes will be safety while he continues the search. During this time he does not know whether Maria and Lucas are alive, and then what has happened to Thomas and Simon. The spectator has seen Maria and Lucas (although at this

146 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ point, Maria’s fate is uncertain, as I address below), and will also be granted perceptual information about Thomas and Simon. When Henry sees someone who was previously with his sons, he asks after their whereabouts. This person does not know, so that Henry also does not know, but the spectator is instantaneously granted this information via a cut to show the boys, safe. Henry’s search then takes him to a hospital. The film has now reached a point where frequent crosscutting between Lucas in a hospital and Henry in a hospital is now occurring. Henry has been told that he only has five minutes to search before the truck he is with will depart to help survivors look for loved ones at other hospitals. The spectator is briefly unsure whether Henry and Lucas are in the same hospital, therefore, and this question will be answered in the affirmative both for the characters and for the spectator, but with the spectator given this information long before any of the characters. The first confirmation of this for the spectator is a camera movement from Henry in the foreground, to Lucas in the background, with neither character’s eyeline moving towards one another through crowds of people. In part, this spectatorial information is unpleasurable and suspenseful, with a temporarily unanswered question about whether the characters will see one another or not. Following this first confirmation that the father is close to his wife and son, the camera tracks beside Henry and ends its movement to reveal that Lucas has pulled a curtain shut, hiding Maria from Henry’s view. A reverse shot shows Maria in bed, and she turns towards the curtain, sensing something, but is too weak to call out. The camera lingers on this image, sustaining the possibility of resolution. Her point-of-view is then shown, with an indistinct silhouette behind the curtain, but the figure does not pull the curtain back, and instead recedes. The next shot has Henry in the foreground, out of focus, with Lucas in the background, in focus. They are both facing in the same direction, so that Lucas can only see his father’s back. Again, the family seem to sense one another’s presence, as Lucas’s eyeline moves determinedly down towards where his father is. This spectatorial mastery over vision is then emphasised in Lucas’s point-of-view shot, showing Henry’s legs. The spectator had been re-introduced to Henry via an almost identical shot, in the first scene that returned to his plight after the long sequence with Maria and Lucas. This scene had begun with the camera moving behind a pair of legs trudging through debris and then mud, in a series of cuts demonstrating that the owner of the legs is moving through multiple locations. Eventually, the camera had moved up to show that the trudger is Henry. The repetition of the Henry-as-legs image signals to the spectator that the character in Lucas’s point-of-view, at the hospital, is Henry, even without the preceding definitive images that had Henry and Lucas in the same shot. Lucas’s senses are not quite so definitive, but he thinks this may be his father, and shouting ‘dad!’ repeatedly, he runs down stairs after him. The futility of his perception, as opposed to the spectator’s is then demonstrated, however, by a cut to an overhead shot of the hospital, demonstrating its chaotic scale.

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 147 The next image is of Thomas and Simon in the back of a truck. They get out of the truck to urinate at the roadside, and the spectator is then shown Lucas in the background via a rack focus and a camera movement to the side to pick him out. Henry is then shown getting back on his truck, having concluded that his family are not at this hospital. The almost definitive nature of this conclusion is demonstrated through a close-up on a bolt locking on the back of Henry’s truck, and the driver’s key in the ignition. Henry is then shown, and he turns to see a red ball like the one his family had played with at the start of the film. In this moment, both he and the spectator share knowledge that this ball is associated with his sons. A cut then shows Lucas running and looking, and another cut then shows Thomas and Simon running back onto their truck. A cut then shows Lucas, his confusion and frustration represented by a confusing camera swirl around him. In desperation he shouts for his father, and a cut to his brothers shows that they have heard him. Their eyelines shift, and a cut then shows Lucas in the foreground with a rack focus from his brothers to emphasise that he has shifted from not being seen (out of focus) to being seen (in focus). He turns slowly, and they run towards each other, accompanied by emotional non-diegetic music. There are repeated cuts back and forth showing each side of the hugging group, but the camera eventually holds on Lucas, suggesting that he has seen something else. His point-of-view then shows Henry, and there is another emotional reunion, this time shown in two tracking shots of the boys running towards their father, and the father running towards his sons. There are more close-ups of the hugging group, and the uplifting music ends with another suggestion of as yet unresolved resolution when Lucas says ‘Mom is here’. The spectator had a mastery over information throughout this sequence, and experienced a masochistic oscillation between the unpleasurable question of whether the characters would reunite or not, and the pleasurable catharsis of the affirmative answer. San Andreas uses a similar strategy, but in a less sustained manner. The restoration of Raymond’s family allows the spectator to see the means for that restoration before characters themselves. This even begins with the family’s initial disruption – when Blake is first introduced, talking to her father on the telephone, she asks him if something is wrong. He replies that he is fine, but the spectator sees he is looking at divorce papers that have just arrived in the mail. The prelude to familial reunion also privileges the spectator’s vision. Blake is trapped in a flooding building, and she sees her parents on their lifeboat through the window. A cut to the reverse angle shows the parents in the foreground looking away from the building, with Blake banging on the windows behind them. A cut back to Blake’s point-of-view shows the lifeboat leaving. The next image is a close-up of the boat’s fuel meter. A green laser dot appears on it, and the camera moves up to Emma, who has also seen this. The parents turn, and see their daughter, pointing the laser, and following the aforementioned unpleasure of a near-drowning, there will be a heteronormative family reunion.

148 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ It is also possible for these films to oscillate between a privileging of spectatorial knowledge about Symbolic resolutions, and deferrals of that knowledge. Volcano, for example, privileges spectatorial vision when Roark, preparing to demolish the tall building to dam the lava flow, asks Amy to find his daughter at the hospital. He gives her a photograph of Kelly so that she can see who she is looking for, and Amy places her hand on his face, gazes lovingly into his eyes and says ‘I’ll find her’, suggesting a new united family, as discussed above. Amy pushes through the crowds shouting ‘Kelly Roark! Kelly Roark!’, but unaware of where she is, whereas a cut to Kelly chasing after the young boy Tommy into danger provides the spectator mastery over this information. Slightly later, this mastery is temporarily deferred. Roark orders the building’s demolition, and then sees his daughter and Tommy in the danger zone. Two rapid zooms into him emphasise the peril. As he runs towards Kelly in slow motion, a cut shows a close-up of the charges being activated, with the camera rapidly shifting to the as yet inactivated pin with ‘Tower’ written on tape next to it. An extreme close-up of this pin being touched is followed by a cut to multiple explosions and the collapsing tower. Amy is then shown, followed by her point-of-view of Roark running towards Kelly. Lava is then shown being successfully diverted by the dam, including an overhead shot with a helicopter below the camera’s transcendent objective position. The demolition has been a success, but Roark, Kelly and Tommy are temporarily not yet shown. Crosscutting to Roark’s assistant Emmit (Don Cheadle) at his base, following the events via video, articulates the pertinent question – ‘Roark? Mike Roark, are you there?’ Crowds at the hospital are then shown celebrating, and then Amy is picked out, pushing through them. Other policemen are then shown looking for Roark, with the familial irresolution temporarily foregrounded. The next shot is then a sustained static image of debris covering an entrance to the collapsed building’s basement, and the camera then zooms into this. A cut back to Amy shows her eyeline still desperately going in various directions, so that she hasn’t seen what the spectator has. The spectator has only seen an essentially empty shot, but the editing’s selection of this image, and the camera’s zoom into it, suggest significance. The next image after Amy is closer in on the basement’s entrance, and fingers in it push at the covering debris. A cut shows a close-up on the hand. Amy is then shown, and her eyeline and facial expression signal that she now sees, and her point-of-view then shows Roark emerging from the debris holding Tommy and with Kelly. The film could have allowed the spectator to know that Roark, Kelly and Tommy were fine all along, but a temporary lack of knowledge about their fate was used to increase the pleasurable resolution of this lack, after a few moments. Even when spectatorial mastery is interrupted, then, it is only for the masochistic purposes of staging an unpleasurable lack of mastery that will soon be replaced by the pleasurable restitution of that mastery. In addition, the unpleasurable rupture in the Symbolic Order, with the family potentially disrupted, is also replaced by the family’s pleasurable restoration, so that both formal and narrative components anamorphically shift from threat to catharsis.

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 149 Dante’s Peak also aligns Symbolic values with both spectatorial mastery and a deferral of that mastery. The mastery includes both broad societal components and more specific heteronormative components. In terms of the former, the sceptical voices ignoring Harry’s warnings that the mountain is dangerous are led by Les (Brian Reddy), who like Stan in Volcano is played by a conventionally unattractive bald man who contrasts with each film’s more sexually-desirable and (narratively) sexually-desired main male protagonist. Like Daniel in San Andreas, Les articulates ‘unnatural’ too-capitalistic sentiments, saying that a financier will pull his investment out of the town if he thinks the volcano might be active.4 Spectatorial mastery over Les’s ignorance has already been generated by earlier images of the impending disaster, discussed above, but is reinforced when the meeting is ended by a cut to the mountain, with the camera moving down towards the hot springs where increasingly vigorous bubbles can be seen, and ominous non-diegetic music can be heard. In terms of the more heteronormative connection between the Symbolic Order and the spectator’s perceptual mastery, the aforementioned point-of-view of the volcanologists, after they see the volcano explode, and conclude that Harry is dead, is followed by a cut to darkness which is then illuminated by the lights on Harry’s vehicle turning on in the mineshaft. Harry kicks out the window, and he, Rachel and the children can be seen by the spectator, alive and well. In the mines, Harry gees up Rachel and the children’s spirits by focusing on their future together as a family, saying that they should all go deep sea fishing together, accompanied by stirring non-diegetic music. He then moves back into danger by going to the vehicle to activate a NASA device that had been introduced earlier, and which can send a signal that they are in the tunnel. Until this point, the spectator had more perceptual information than the volcanologists, but the film then aligns the spectator’s perception with theirs in order to masochistically defer the pleasure of the final Symbolic new family’s triumphant survival. The volcanologists see red flashes signalling that the NASA device has been activated, and the film cuts to the outside of the mine, at night, with a rescue team at work. Harry gets out first, because he had gone back to the vehicle near the entrance to activate the NASA device, and he says ‘Rachel and the children are still down there’ to emphasise the lack of resolution. Rescuers’ lights point towards the mine entrance, multiple eyelines move towards it, in repeated cuts between faces, much like the scene in 2012 where it is unclear whether Jackson has drowned, as discussed in Chapter 2. Temporarily, here, irresolution is sustained. Finally, a firefighter emerges, followed by Rachel and the children. The children hug Harry, shot/reverse shot eyeline matches show Harry and Rachel looking at one another, and then they hug, accompanied by a non-diegetic cymbal crash synchronised with the moment of their embrace. They kiss passionately, with rescuers and volcanologists applauding, so that the Symbolic family and the Symbolic community are simultaneously restored. When they are helicoptered away, the camera holds on an extreme long shot of the volcano, now dormant again, so that these Symbolic resolutions are coterminous with the restoration of nature’s benign equilibrium.

150 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ The Impossible also exploits deferrals of spectatorial mastery, in order to masochistically increase the pleasure of the subsequent Symbolic resolutions. When Lucas returns to Maria’s hospital bed to find that she is no longer there, for example, the film suggests that she has died. As mentioned above, Lucas sees a photograph of what appears to be Maria’s dead face in a file, but he snaps it shut and puts his hand over his closed eyes as seeing, here, is too traumatic. His disavowal of this is rewarded later, when he sees that Maria is still alive, but this resolution to the unpleasure of the (m)other’s loss is deferred, as the film crosscuts away to show what has happened to Lucas’s father and brothers, so that this trauma lingers. To emphasise that Lucas’s vision in the file had been faulty, when he is escorted to where his (m)other will subsequently be shown he and the medical staff go completely out of focus, so that the spectator’s vision is temporarily disrupted. In addition, however, this extreme manipulation of the spectator’s vision may also suggest that perceptual information about Maria’s condition has been unclear, and that perhaps she might in fact still be alive, as the subsequent restoration of normal focus does indeed show. Such deferrals of spectatorial mastery resolve previously unpleasurable elements. In an explicit example of this, the aforementioned scene where Maria sees what she thinks may be Henry’s silhouette through the curtain, but cannot communicate with him, is reprised through Lucas’s point-of-view after Maria’s life-ordeath operation. Waking, Lucas sees a blurred face backlit by the sun. Previously, backlighting had been used for Maria, prior to the disaster unfolding, so that the image suggests Maria, alive and well, but the blurry figure had also been associated with Henry, through the curtain. The face comes into the light and into focus, and it is Henry, but this time he is not beyond the character’s contact, and he brings news of Symbolic resolution – ‘Mom’s ok, Lucas. We’re going home’. Vision had been unpleasurable, previously, with Henry out of reach, but now the image’s repetition brings the pleasure of reunion. The connection between the spectator’s perceptual mastery and Symbolic resolutions is even strong enough to transcend the physical destruction of characters’ Symbolic bonds. In all of the previously discussed examples the main characters survive, so that even when they experience traumatic events, and even when the spectator is temporarily unsure whether the characters will escape from those traumatic events, the films suture over these various unpleasures with pleasurable catharses. In The Perfect Storm, however, the main protagonists aboard the Andrea Gail do not survive. As such, it might be supposed that this film is a counterexample, disproving my claim that the various Cartesian components discussed throughout this chapter apply to all (realist occidental) environmental disaster films. The Perfect Storm compensates for this particular divergence with the other relevant films, however, partly by including all of the other components discussed in this chapter (the spectator’s perceptual mastery, sublimated anthropogenic causes to disaster, masochistic threats to the spectator’s position, and so on, as discussed above), and partly by reinforcing Symbolic relationships through a specifically cinematic perceptual transcendence over the life-or-death relationships between characters.

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 151 Thus, when the boat finally sinks, the only crew member to temporarily struggle up to the surface, Bobby (Mark Wahlberg), says a long distance goodbye to his girlfriend Chris. When he states his acceptance of impending death, saying ‘there’s only love’, in a medium close-up on him filling the right side of screen, an image of Chris appears hazily in the left of the screen. An extreme long shot then shows him amongst massive waves, but it fades to black before he is finally dragged under, so that his death is not shown. At the subsequent funeral, Linda, the captain of the Andrea Gail’s sister ship, says that ‘the only place we can revisit them is in our hearts or in our dreams’. After the funeral, Chris tells Bobby’s (m)other Ethel (Janet Wright) her dream, in which she hears the same dialogue that the spectator heard just before Bobby’s death. A close-up of Bobby’s (m)other and replacement (m)other holding hands signals that despite a particular character’s death, the Symbolic values represented by that character endure. In addition, not only does a character who loved Bobby experience the sensation described in Linda’s eulogy – ‘revist[ing] them […] in our dreams’ – but the spectator also experiences this Symbolic bond through a transcendence over life and death, so that Linda could well have added ‘in the cinema’ to the locations ‘in our hearts or in our dreams’ where these Symbolic connections can be revisited. Furthermore, the film began with Chris waking alone in bed, experiencing what, on first viewing, is ambiguously either a premonition or a flashback of the storm, so that the spectator was provided a glimpse of this Symbolic transcendence of an individual’s death from the outset. The spectator’s experience thereby ostensibly transcends space and time as well as death. For good measure, The Perfect Storm ends with a survivor’s experience that mirrors and extends the pleasurable experiences of the non-survivors, so that even though most of the film had focused on the Andrea Gail’s doomed crew, it culminates with the cathartic joy of someone who escaped the storm, and maintains ostensible control over potentially violent nature. Thus, in the final scene, Linda takes her boat out to sea. She heads out into the calm waters she mentioned at the eulogy, and she and the spectator hear the dead captain Billy’s monologue about his happiness at heading seaward. Billy had first delivered this monologue to Linda before he set out on his doomed voyage, and during this first iteration the camera remained in the docked boat’s cabin, even though Billy mentioned particular events and places on an outbound journey. In the second iteration, Linda hears Billy’s voice-over as her boat reaches each of the geographical points mentioned, so that ‘you throw a wave to the lighthouse keeper’s kid’ is accompanied by a point-of-view shot of the child returning Linda’s wave; and ‘birds show up’ is accompanied by a cut to an objective exterior shot of birds surrounding her boat. The monologue culminates with ‘you’re a goddam swordboat captain. Is there anything better in the world?’ over an image of a smiling Linda, followed by an exterior shot below and to the side of the boat, with its trawl arm sweeping over the camera, as emotional music swells to a crescendo. Individual characters may have died, but the affective experiences they represented are depicted as triumphantly undimmed, and are celebrated.

152 Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ The Perfect Storm is atypical of the films discussed in this chapter, then, because the main characters do not escape aboard any kind of ‘lifeboat’, but even in death the Symbolic values that they represent are repeated and acclaimed. Specific ‘lifeboats’ may fail, in this instance, but the broader community is strengthened and reinvigorated by the loss, and the spectator and other characters do survive to enjoy the experiences lost by those who died.

Summary The next chapter applies the same criteria analysed here to environmental disaster films that raise the narrative threat to the level of potential human extinction or near extinction, so I reserve a fuller set of conclusions about the films discussed here until that analysis is also conducted. For now, it is sufficient to say that the films discussed in this chapter feature various admixtures of spectatorial perceptual mastery, sublimated human causes for disaster, transcendent pleasures over the environmental disaster, displaced threats to the spectator’s perception and perceptual position, masochistic oscillations, and narrative resolutions grounded in both surviving disaster and reaffirming various Symbolic values. Some of the films are atypical in the way that they downplay or even completely elide certain components, but even when this is the case they do utilise other collective components. What all these films do is provide the spectator with an illusory mastery over perceiving warnings of impending environmental disaster, and over being able to survive the effects of that disaster. They may ostensibly condemn attitudes that treat the natural world with disregard or contempt, in various ways, but eventually downplay these condemnations by reinforcing the illusory Cartesian subjectivity that facilitates this disregard and contempt, and they do this at both the narrative and formal levels. Diegetic ‘lifeboats’ of one kind or another, on which protagonists take shelter, are thereby accompanied by the formal grammar of the realist cinema as ‘lifeboat’, positioning the spectator safely above and outside the danger. The next chapter identifies how environmental apocalypse films also operate within these contexts.

Notes 1 The following year also saw the release of another two films demonstrating apocalyptic anxiety, in the form of Armageddon (Bay 1998) and Deep Impact (Leder 1998). These films depict natural disaster caused by extraterrestrial factors rather than explicitly geocentric factors, and are therefore not addressed in detail here, but they also feature spectacular destruction including tsunamis and so on, and demonstrate broad fears about potentially violent nature. 2 Another environmental disaster film, Deepwater Horizon (Berg 2016), has a similar foreshadowing shock. A helicopter transporting a crew out to the titular oilrig is struck by a seabird that shocks both characters and spectator, but the helicopter, crew and passengers are unharmed, and this incident foreshadows the impending more serious disaster, which has also been foreshadowed by numerous incidents which privilege a spectatorial vision that is unavailable to characters.

Environmental disasters and film ‘lifeboats’ 153 3 This masochistic pause in reviving a drowned family member also occurs in The Wave (Uthaug 2015), an environmental disaster film that also utilises the various components discussed in this chapter, such as a privileging of spectatorial vision, sublimated human causes, resolved confusing imagery, and so on. The film concludes with a family rescue in another flooded room, but this time the rescuing father Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) has drowned. His wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) gives him the kiss of life in an attempt to revive him, and she and son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) both desperately pump his chest. The unsuccessful nature of the pause is emphasised by Idun closing Kristian’s eyes. But, like Raymond in San Andreas, Sondre, who had inevitably been in conflict with his father earlier in the film, refuses to accept this family breakup, resumes the CPR, so that Kristian spews up water, and the reunited family hugs. 4 When Paul, Harry’s boss, arrives, he agrees with this scepticism although, like Stan in Volcano, he will have a redemptive arc, helping out when disaster does strike, which culminates with his death on the bridge, as discussed above.

Bibliography Lacan, J. (1977) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. (Translated by Alan Sheridan). London: Hogarth Press. Rust, S. (2013) Hollywood and Climate Change, in Rust, S., Monani, S. and Cubitt, S. (eds.) Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 191–211. Truffaut, F. (1983 [1966]) Hitchcock. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Filmography Armageddon (1998) Directed by Michael Bay. USA: Touchstone Pictures. Children of Men (2006) Directed by Alfonso Cuarón. USA: Universal. Dante’s Peak (1997) Directed by Roger Donaldson. USA: Universal. Deep Impact (1998) Directed by Mimi Leder. USA: Paramount. Deepwater Horizon (2016) Directed by Peter Berg. USA: Di Bonaventura Pictures. Finding Nemo (2003) Directed by Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich. USA: Pixar. Impossible, The (2012) Directed by J.A. Bayona. Spain: Telecinco Cinema. Jaws (1975) Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA: Universal. Perfect Storm, The (2000) Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. USA: Warner Bros. Sabotage (1936) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. UK: Gaumont British Picture Corporation. San Andreas (2015) Directed by Brad Peyton. USA: New Line Cinema. Volcano (1997) Directed by Mick Jackson. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. Waterworld (1995) Directed by Kevin Reynolds. USA: Universal. Wave, The (2015) Directed by Roar Uthaug. Norway: Fantefilm.

5

Surviving environmental apocalypse in film ‘lifeboats’

This chapter repeats the model set out in the preceding one, providing detailed textual analyses which demonstrate that the premises established in earlier chapters are not confined merely to a small number of atypical films. The preceding chapter looked at films in which environmental disasters were localised. This chapter explores films where disaster has the potential to threaten humanity’s entire existence, although each of the films ends by averting the threatened human extinction, with protagonists safe aboard various types of ‘lifeboats’. As with the previous chapter, I look closely at five films, to allow the requisite level of detailed analysis. Unlike the last chapter, certain theoretical discussions have already been conducted, and one of the chosen films, 2012, has already been used as an exemplar of my argument, in Chapter 2. This chapter is therefore somewhat shorter than the previous one, because I have already addressed much of what is relevant here. In order to clarify how the argument in this chapter relates to the argument set out in the previous chapter, the following utilises the same structure, addressing the same components in the same order, as follows:  

Ostensibly ‘natural’ disasters have sublimated human causes Relationships between how the spectator and characters perceive threats a b c d

    

The spectator may perceive what characters cannot perceive The spectator may perceive what certain characters cannot or will not perceive, but other characters do perceive Animals may perceive what characters cannot perceive The spectator may not perceive the impending threat, and be shocked

The spectator may be subjected to confusing imagery while characters are confused The spectator may be threatened directly (though vicariously), but this threat is then displaced The spectator may have traumatic threats displaced only after disastrous events end The spectator may pleasurably transcend the destruction The spectator’s oscillations between different categories are all masochistic

DOI: -6

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 155  

Narrative resolutions operate within the context of the Symbolic Order Symbolic resolutions may reinforce the illusion of the spectator’s perceptual mastery

The five films discussed below include 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, both of which have already been extensively discussed. They both have narratives in which natural disasters are depicted as potentially apocalyptic events, but in which the complete extinction of humanity does not finally occur. I also analyse The Core (Amiel 2003), in which human existence is endangered by solar radiation when the Earth’s core stops rotating, leading to a mission to travel through the Earth to restart the core; Geostorm (Devlin 2017), in which an array of climate controlling satellites nicknamed Dutch Boy malfunctions and threatens to destroy humanity through various forms of cataclysmic weather; and Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, which adapts the Biblical myth of humanity’s almost total obliteration through a divine deluge. Each of these films operates within the context of a political-ecological unconscious which represses anxieties about ecological degradation, and resolves those anxieties at the narrative and formal levels.

Ostensibly ‘natural’ disasters have sublimated human causes In the first two chapters I argued that our culture is aware that human behaviour endangers the biosphere, but that this awareness is repressed in various ways. This repressed anxiety returns in sublimated form in films about environmental disasters, so that various fictional events which aren’t precisely climate disasters have some of the features of impending real-world climate disasters, and the fictional events’ human causes unconsciously refer to real-world anthropogenic ecological degradation. In this sense, The Day After Tomorrow is atypical of all the other films discussed here because it depicts natural disasters explicitly associated with global warming, rather than associated with climate change in a sublimated manner. Geostorm comes closest to sharing this explicit connection between a fictional disaster and real-world anthropogenic climate change, but also subtly disavows this connection. The prologue begins by linking the narrative directly to anthropogenic global warming. A voice-over from Hannah (Talitha Bateman), daughter of the main protagonist and creator of Dutch Boy Jake (Gerard Butler), outlines how climate change began to threaten humanity, stating that ‘everyone was warned, but no one listened. A rise in temperature, ocean patterns changed, and ice caps melted. They called it extreme weather’. She explains that in the fictional 2019 whole cities were wiped out, and the images accompanying her voice-over include both spectacular dramatisations of what she describes, and documentary footage from real-world incidents relating to climate change – ice shelves collapsing; stranded polar bears; floods and their survivors and victims; and so on. The fictional events are thereby explicitly connected to real-world considerations, and even the issue of a lack of awareness about global warming is raised, in terms of how the voice-over states that warnings went unheard.

156 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ Hannah then articulates the response to the disasters of the fictional 2019, saying that in that moment, facing our own extinction […] the world came together as one. And we fought back. Scientists from 17 countries […] found a way to neutralize the storms with a net of thousands of satellites […] overseen by the International Space Station. The accompanying imagery continues to use real-world footage, such as delegates in the United Nations, but also depicts the technological solution in action, with the camera dropping from space alongside tiny devices used to break up a storm. Hannah’s voice-over had begun with an image of a typhoon gathering above an extreme long shot looking onto Shanghai, and it ends with the camera in the same position, but now looking onto a Shanghai with the menacing clouds above it receding. This introduction directly invokes real-world environmental degradation, then, rather than alluding to it in a sublimated manner. The film still alludes to sublimated anxieties about climate change, however, but this time in terms of the fictional technological solution to the problem. In a similar way to how the other films discussed here represent the return of repressed anxieties about the existence of ecological degradation, Geostorm represents the return of repressed anxieties about how humanity might respond to that degradation. The film therefore accepts the problem of climate change, but demonstrates anxiety about the technological solution that it narrativises. The Dutch Boy satellite project is hacked into, and the narrative revolves around Jake’s attempts to find out who is trying to use the technology to cause rather prevent environmental disasters. Dutch Boy’s weaponisation reflects anxiety that this kind of promised solution to apocalyptic disaster may not be effective. And, the narrative’s eventual resolution, with the saboteurs foiled and Dutch Boy restored to its original purpose, demonstrates how this particular anxiety is resolved. Although Noah does not set the Biblical flood in the contemporary world of anthropogenic climate change, it does explicitly depict humanity’s fall in environmental terms. The prologue begins with written text that introduces Adam and Eve’s exile from Eden, and Cain’s murder of Abel, following which ‘Cain’s descendants build a great industrial civilization’. The camera then shows a dark city against a desolate background and, the camera pulling backwards, time-lapse photography shows this city rapidly expanding towards the retreating camera. The written text then lexically articulates the link between Cain’s sin and ecological degradation, stating that ‘Cain’s cities spread wickedness, devouring the World’. This is then shown in an extreme long shot of the planet, with the black marks of the cities spreading like cancerous shadows, covering the land. In contrast, when Noah’s family moves through the blasted landscape to find Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), who Noah hopes can help him understand visions of a coming apocalypse, they arrive at a verdantly green mountain.

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 157 Noah’s family, moreover, do not eat meat, and Noah states that ‘we only collect what we can use, and what we need’. Later, Cain’s descendent Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone) builds an army to seize the Ark, and Noah sneaks into the camp to find wives for his unmarried sons, so that they may repopulate the Earth after the flood. He sees soldiers taking a baby from its mother’s arms, stating ‘we have to eat’. Amidst the confusion of struggling people, a young pig is lifted aloft, and then thrown into the air to be caught by a mass of grabbing hands. The camera pulls back, and the events are now overlaid with Noah’s visions, as fireballs descend on the camp, signalling humanity’s destruction rather than its cleansing. Noah returns to the Ark, refusing to bring the women that would produce another generation of humanity. His decision is partly depicted as a rejection of general sin, such as the strong preying on the weak, but the selected imagery connects eating meat with this broader sin and with cannibalism more specifically, so that it is humanity’s treatment of nature that brings about an apocalypse which Noah thinks, at this stage, must entail humanity’s extinction. The Core also invokes anthropogenic ecological degradation, most explicitly when it is revealed why the Earth’s core has stopped rotating. This information is withheld for most of the film, but geophysicist Josh (Aaron Eckhart) eventually learns that something called the Destiny project, which was trying to cause earthquakes under enemy soil, stopped the core. ‘This isn’t a fluke’, Josh says. ‘We killed the planet!’1 Of all the films discussed here, 2012 has the least specific connections with real-world anthropogenic climate change. Indeed, as discussed in Chapter 2, the film’s apocalyptic disasters function as a fetish that almost entirely replaces repressed anxiety about real-world environmental degradation with a fictionalised apocalypse that is not caused by human behaviour, because it begins with images of massive solar flares that are the narrative cause of the disaster. Nevertheless, even this fetishistic disavowal of human causes points towards the mechanisms of repression, as the prologue’s solar flares are followed by a scene where geologist Adrian is told about the impending effects of the solar flares down a copper mine, which is a location that functions as both a repressed subterranean environment and as part of an industry that contributes towards ecological degradation.

Relationships between how the spectator and characters perceive threats As established in the preceding chapters, realist film facilitates ecological degradation by reinforcing the spectator’s illusory Cartesian centrality. In the films discussed in this and the previous chapter, this illusion can allow the spectator to see that which certain or even all characters cannot see, so that the spectator seems to be the locus of perceptual knowledge, but the films can also temporarily withhold this perceptual knowledge in various ways. As in the preceding chapter, the following breaks down various filmic approaches to perceptual knowledge thus:

158 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 1 2 3 4

The spectator may perceive what characters cannot perceive The spectator may perceive what certain characters cannot or will not perceive, but other characters do perceive Animals may perceive what characters cannot perceive The spectator may not perceive the impending threat, and be shocked

The spectator may perceive what characters cannot perceive The first of these categories allows the spectator to perceive that which no diegetic person can perceive, so that entirely objective shots grant the spectator a transcendent form of vision warning about impending dangers that would be absolutely impossible to see were something like the fictional events to occur in reality. I have already provided a detailed example of how 2012 grants the spectator the ability to see impending dangers that no character can see, in the supermarket scene where cracks in the earth move towards Kate and Gordon, discussed in Chapter 2. This spectatorial privileging begins right from the film’s outset, however, with the camera showing an image of the sun, and moving to follow a unidirectional beam of rays towards the Earth. A closer-in shot on the sun then shows massive solar flares, so that these shots establish first that the sun’s rays reach the Earth, and second that large flares might make a dangerous addition to these rays. The next image is with geologist Adrian, who will soon have his knowledge of the impending disaster aligned with the spectator’s. To begin with, however, the spectator has more knowledge, firstly from the images of the sun, and then from the impact of the taxi Adrian is taking, as it splashes through a large puddle, upsetting a toy boat that a boy is playing with, with the camera picking out a close-up of the boat lying on its side. Following the images of the sun, this image of a capsized boat suggests something amiss, and functions as a subtle form of foreknowledge, because an actual boat capsizes in a similar manner, later in the film. Subsequent dialogue between Adrian and Satnam (Jimi Mistry), the scientist he has come to meet, reveals that the boy is Satnam’s son Ajit (Mateen Devji), and the wave in the puddle that capsizes his boat thereby also functions as foreknowledge about a massive tsunami wave that will later kill Ajit and his parents. These spectatorial signs of impending disaster thereby work at both a vague level, suggesting impending disaster, and at a specific level, alluding to the particular forms that the impending disaster will take. Importantly, these signs would be absent in the prelude to a real-world disaster, and they are also accompanied by a suggestion that Adrian will soon be able to see what is to come, as he noticed Ajit playing with the boat, and warned the taxi driver to look out for him, so that a hierarchy of knowledge derived from perception is established from the film’s outset. In a similar manner to the supermarket scene discussed in Chapter 2, 2012 introduces one of the main protagonists Jackson by using dramatic irony to differentiate the spectator’s mastery about what is going to happen over a character’s lack of knowledge. The spectator has already seen Adrian discovering that the Earth’s core is being heated by the solar flares, and Wilson (Danny

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 159 Glover), the President of the United States, telling other world leaders that ‘the world as we know it will soon come to an end’, but Jackson has not been party to this. The scene introducing Jackson begins on a television news report about a mass suicide amongst Mayan ruins. As the camera moves over towards Jackson, asleep on a sofa, the reporters state that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of time to occur on the 21st of December of this year due to the Sun’s destructive forces. […] Strangely enough, scientific records do support the fact that we are heading for the biggest solar climax in recorded history. There is already a degree of dramatic irony to this dialogue, as the reporters repeat what the spectator knows is about to happen, but the reporters have not seen the full array of information that the spectator has, and therefore respond as though they do not believe that the predicted disaster will really happen. Jackson is not woken by the television, but by another sign of what is to come, as a mild earthquake causes the room to move slightly, and sets off car alarms. Looking at his watch, Jackson leaps up repeating ‘I’m a dead man’ three times. His statement does not refer to the events that the spectator knows will occur, and which are repeated here more subtly with the news report and minor earthquake, however, and Jackson instead rushes to his car to pick up his children for the weekend, so that he was referring to being in trouble with his ex-wife for being late, rather than his impending involvement in an environmental apocalypse. Throughout, of course, the spectator has had this information, so that Jackson’s statement is an act of not seeing and not knowing, in contradistinction to the spectator’s mastery over seeing and knowing. The scene ends with Jackson driving past a group of people looking at a large crack in the ground which is, again, unseen by the protagonist. The Day After Tomorrow also shows the spectator impending dangers that are unseen by any characters. The opening scene has a team of paleoclimatologists gathering data in Antarctica. A crack in the ice shelf threatens to pull them to oblivion, and this is first shown to the spectator, with a cut to an objective shot showing the ground with a crack beginning to emerge. The camera moves up to show this crack expanding towards Jason (Dash Mihok), who is drilling, and oblivious to the impending danger. The perception of the group’s leader, Jack, will soon be aligned with the perception of the spectator, but at this stage he does not see the threat coming. An indication is made that he is looking for danger, however, as he is introduced reading data sheets, and then peering into a microscope. Indeed, he expresses doubt that Jason should be allowed to activate the drill, and the film cuts from him saying this to a close-up of the drill bit, all of which precedes the objective shot of the crack, so that a vague warning about something that might go wrong is filtered through Jack, even though the more definitive image showing that this is about to happen is objective, at this stage.

160 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ Certain other dangers are also first shown to the spectator whilst characters are entirely unaware. Jack’s later expedition to reach his son Sam, who is trapped in a frozen New York, trudges across an icy wasteland. At one point, however, the team cross the glass roof of a shopping mall. The roof is covered in ice and snow, so they do not know this, but this information is shown to the spectator through a number of shots. The first of these is an extreme long shot, with the transparent side of the mall’s roof visible from the position adopted by the camera, but with the top of the roof, over which the team is slowly moving, covered in snow. The next shot is obscured by snow, so that its location and angle is at first unclear, but this snow begins to be blown away to reveal that the camera is positioned below the glass roof, looking up at the party’s feet above. The camera tilts to show the extent of the drop, and then cuts to a low angle close-up of a foot on the glass causing cracks to appear. The team are then shown above the ground/glass roof level, and they begin to plunge through into danger. In another similar scene, when Sam and his friends head into the snow to find supplies, they are followed by wolves which have escaped from the zoo. The first sight of this threat is shown to the spectator, but not to any characters, and there is a repeated editing oscillation from Sam’s group scavenging and the wolves approaching their location. The Core privileges spectatorial vision to the extent that its opening sequence turns the production company’s logo into an opportunity to show the spectator signs of the impending disaster, with a rapid objective camera movement down and through the Paramount mountain into the Earth’s molten core. Text stating the title ‘CORE’ appears over the glowing liquid, with the letter ‘O’ spinning, foreshadowing the narrative threat of the core ceasing to spin. As the camera moves down through this ‘O’, the core itself can be seen spinning like a Fibonacci spiral, and this image lap dissolves into a confusing swirl. A cut to an objective shot shows this swirl is now the top of a carousel above ground, linking different locations through the significance of this spinning. Having granted the spectator images pointing towards the impending disaster, the film goes on to establish the inability of characters to share this knowledge. The camera moves up from the carousel towards a watch on someone’s arm, and rack focuses into an extreme close-up on the ticking watch, suggesting that time is running out. The watch then stops, suggesting that time is up. Characters do not recognise the significance of this – Dave (Christopher Shyer), wearing the watch says ‘it’s stopped’. ‘What’s that Dave?’ asks his colleague, but Dave does not recognise the significance that has been shown to the spectator, replying ‘nothing’. Moments later he dies, as the cessation of the Earth’s core’s rotation causes not only watches but also pacemakers to malfunction. The Earth’s electromagnetic field then begins to stop functioning, causing disasters such as a lightning storm that destroys much of Rome. The spectator is granted a mastery over this disaster partly because the events are depicted from unthreatened objective positions, and partly through an ability to see what is about to happen in a manner that is beyond the vision of the threatened characters. The scene begins with an extreme long shot of the city, with

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 161 ominous clouds and flashes of lightning in the sky. The next shot is close in on the top of an espresso machine in a café, with electricity flashing around the metal object. The camera moves down the machine to a barista whose eyeline is away from that which the spectator has seen. The barista moves a cup from the machine, and another electricity flash is seen by the spectator but not by her. A cut shows what she was looking at – football on a television – and a reverse shot shows a group of people watching this. To emphasise a lack of perceiving that which is significant, a waiter is shown almost spilling cups that he places on a table while looking up at the television. An image is then shown of something that does perceive the impending threat, but this is merely a cat under a table, which backs away, hissing, again signalling to the spectator that something is amiss, but again unseen by any characters. The diegetic television screen then fills with static, and the customers gesticulate in frustration. The waiter moves to the television in an attempt to restore the football match, and cutting back to the cat turning and fleeing signals that this is dangerous. The cut back to the waiter pressing a button on the television shows him being electrocuted. External shots then show fleeing tourists, rapidly intercut with shots back in the café, where the barista is electrocuted by the espresso machine, so that the spectator’s first image of the café’s interior has become a definitive foreshadowing of very specific elements of the impending disaster. Geostorm also provides the spectator with images of imminent disaster unseen by any character. For example, in the prelude to a series of gas explosions caused by rapid temperature increases in Hong Kong, Dutch Boy scientist Cheng (Daniel Wu) is shown leaving his office and then opening a fridge door in a shop. He holds a bottle of cold water to his sweaty cheek, signalling how hot it is. A cat jumps into the fridge, and in a series of shot/reverse shots, Cheng takes the cat out, it jumps back in, and he picks up a box of eggs. Walking back to his car, he wipes his brow, and turns when he hears a rumbling noise behind him. In so doing he drops his eggs, and first his concerned reaction, and then his point-of-view of the cracked eggs cooking on the pavement, signal that the temperature is now becoming dangerous. The rumble is heard again, a reaction shot of Cheng shows him looking up, and his point-of-view then shows red hot gas pipes pushing through the pavement. The spectator could not have been precisely sure, here, about exactly what was going to happen, and the definitive signs of imminent disaster are directly aligned with Cheng’s perception. However, a more vague sense that the heat is linked to a forthcoming, rather than immediately imminent, disaster is encouraged by the different responses of diegetic cat and diegetic human, and by the very act of editing from Cheng’s office to the moment with the fridge. Between Cheng leaving his office and driving to the shop, numerous insignificant events would have occurred, if the fictional events were real. The elision of these events, through editing, encodes the selected events as being significant, and the ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ element of the selected events – the heat – is thereby marked as a precursor to an impending event of spectacular significance. In an example such as this, editing, with all its potential to disrupt the spectator’s Cartesian centrality, far from revealing the Real-like limits of the spectator’s

162 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ perceptual mastery, in fact allows that perceptual mastery the ability to transcend time and space, reinforcing the cogito’s illusory sense of supremacy. Noah is atypical because it does not include any examples of the spectator perceiving that which is unseen by any character. The aforementioned prologue provides the spectator with information about mankind’s fall and Cain’s descendants, but this is almost immediately repeated by Noah’s father Lamech (Marton Csokas), and the opening scene includes images of the tempting snake and murderous Cain that are repeated later in visions that Noah shares with the spectator. These visions also connect Noah’s knowledge with a degree of spectatorial foreknowledge predicated on even a passing familiarity with the Biblical narrative, so that the spectator begins with a form of foreknowledge beyond that of any characters, expecting a flood and an Ark. The other films discussed in this and the previous chapter all include images that grant the spectator foreknowledge beyond that granted to characters, but Noah’s spectator already has this foreknowledge, in an extra-textual form. Noah’s subsequent visions of the future allow him to catch up with this extra-textual information. The spectator may perceive what certain characters cannot or will not perceive, but other characters do perceive In addition to allowing the spectator to perceive that which no characters can perceive, these films can also align the spectator’s perception with certain characters who have more information than certain other endangered characters, establishing a hierarchy of knowledge derived from perception. Chapter 2 provided a detailed example of how 2012 does this – the spectator shares oligarch Yuri’s view of a text message informing him it is time to seek safety, and a boxer, looking for his mentor, does not see this information and is knocked out by his opponent, so that seeing is associated with safety whereas not seeing is synonymous with danger. The Day After Tomorrow repeatedly aligns the spectator’s perception with those characters who warn about the impending disaster. Jack tells a climate change conference that his findings in Antarctica demonstrate that dramatic climate shifts have occurred before, and he is soon shown computer data demonstrating that this pattern is happening again. He and the spectator share this perceptual information, but when he tries to tell US Vice President Becker (Kenneth Welsh) that a rapid climate shift is imminent, he is ignored. This quite specific form of perceptual information, relating to the particular events that are to come, is soon followed by a more general privileging of perception that relates to the cogito’s more vague illusion of perceptual centrality. So, characters may not see an impending threat because their focus is displaced onto unimportant activities. A group of British climatologists, for example, are introduced whilst watching a football match, and much like The Core’s football fans, watching sport on television functions as a distraction from more important perceptual information that is seen by the spectator. The scene begins with a computer displaying a flashing bar of data, but this is unseen by

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 163 the distracted scientists, although only for a moment, so that in this example the perceptual information that the scientists eventually see can be used to warn other characters about the impending disaster, unlike in the café scene in The Core. Slightly later, two American scientists, Bob (Kenneth Moskow) and Tina (Caroline Keenan) do not see changes in data because they are distracted kissing and undressing one another. This sequence begins by showing ominous clouds from an objective position before cutting to numerous computer screens and televisions in the scientists’ office, with the television’s reporter warning about the impending storm, and finishing by mentioning that which Bob and Tina should be doing, but are not – ‘just take a look!’ When vast twisters strike Los Angeles, Bob and Tina’s colleague Jeff (Jack Laufer) is stranded by this dangerous weather on the highway. They speak on the telephone, Bob warning Jeff that he can see him and his car on television. An objective shot from high above shows a bus crushing a car, the television reporter says ‘that bus just got dropped on top of that Porsche!’ and the image of the bus descending from above is repeated on a diegetic television screen, from a news helicopter’s perspective. Bob’s phone line goes dead, signalling that the crushed Porsche contained Jeff. Bob, granted a perceptual transcendence over the threat to Bob, is not harmed at this point, so that a character gazing through a diegetic screen is safe whereas a character rendered object by that screen is killed. A few moments later there is a repetition of a character who cannot see being killed, and a character who can see surviving. A news reporter is standing amongst the storm, talking to a diegetic camera that is shown held by a cameraman. The non-diegetic camera moves around these two characters to reveal that a large piece of metal debris is hurtling towards the reporter. The spectator sees this coming, but the reporter does not, and he is swept away by it to his death, but the diegetic cameraman is unharmed, and even points at the approaching danger, in an attempt to warn his colleague. This diegetic cameraman is perhaps the film’s ultimate fetishisation of the Cartesian eye, providing information which allows that eye to transcend danger. The Day After Tomorrow also shows a character who can see warning another character who cannot see in time to save the latter. When the disaster strikes New York, Sam and his friends flee from flooding by heading to safety in New York Public Library. Sam’s friend Laura (Emma Rossum) stops to help a trapped mother and child, and then heads back to their taxi to retrieve their passports. Sam is higher up on the library steps, and his point-of-view shot tilts up from the retreating Sam towards a tsunami roaring up the street towards them. His perceptual information helps him prevent Laura’s lack of perceptual information from being deadly, and he warns her in time. These last examples all occur in the middle of spectacles of destruction, but the fullest example of how perceptual information links certain characters’ knowledge with the spectator’s illusion of perceptual mastery occurs in a sequence where more considered decisions can be made. Jack uses a computer to model a projection of how the burgeoning ice storm will spread, and the spectator is shown this image. Jack’s son Sam is not shown the image, because

164 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ he is trapped in the library, but he risks his life to speak to his father on the telephone, and is told not to leave the safety of the building where he is sheltering, because massive drops in temperature that will instantly freeze those who are unprotected are imminent. When a large group of people announce that they plan to venture out of the library to try and find better refuge, Sam tries to warn them about the information that he and the spectator have been given. ‘Look, look, look. Just look for a second’ he implores them, privileging that which the spectator has seen, but which those characters who depart, and are later shown frozen outside, have not. In this diegetic life-or-death decision the spectator is armed with more perceptual information that the doomed characters, whereas in a similar realworld life-or-death decision the spectator-turned-potential survivor would not have this perceptual information. The cinematic illusion makes this decision simple, suggesting that the spectator would also make the right choice, in the similar real-world situation, even though the information necessary to make this decision is predicated on a privileging of perception that would not be possible in that comparable real-world situation. In The Core, spectatorial perception is aligned with different characters in various ways. The duplicity of scientist Zimsky (Stanley Tucci) is temporarily withheld from the main protagonist Josh, but revealed to the spectator, when the latter leaves the former’s office, and Zimsky pulls out a file labelled ‘SECRET’ in big red letters. More typically, Josh’s perception is linked with the spectator’s, to the extent that Josh’s ability to transcend the normal constraints of vision allows the team of scientists to travel to the Earth’s core because he invents a device that can see through solid rock. After successfully restarting the core, only Josh and pilot Beck (Hilary Swank) are still alive aboard Virgil, the vessel that has travelled to the core but has now lost power, and cannot return to the surface. Beck is looking screen left, and does not see the possibility of survival that the spectator and Josh will soon perceive. The camera cuts to a shot above Josh, who is looking up. Recognition crosses his features, he tilts his head and opens his eyes wide, signalling that he has seen something. The camera moves up, so that a dangling unobtanium bauble is in shot, but out of focus. A rack focus onto the bauble, away from Josh, and the beginnings of stirring non-diegetic music, signal that this is what has given Josh an idea. He leaps up towards the bauble, so that he comes back into focus, and then explains to Beck that the bauble has given him an idea how to use Virgil’s unobtanium shell to generate power from the core’s heat. Here, he saw the means for survival momentarily before the spectator, but the cinematography and non-diegetic sound linked his perception with the spectator’s. In Geostorm perceptual information that reveals how Dutch Boy’s weatherchanging satellites are being used to cause environmental disasters is filtered through the two main protagonists Jake, who designed Dutch Boy, and his brother Max (Jim Sturgess). Max begins to suspect that a series of weather disasters are part of a nefarious plan to use the satellites to cause an apocalyptic global geostorm, and models a pattern of where will be struck next on his handheld device, so that the spectator sees this information before the disasters strike.

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 165 Geostorm also has unusual and ambiguous forms of spectatorial perceptual information relating to characters’ perceptual information. Prior to any explicit indication that Dutch Boy is being hacked, satellite engineer Makmoud (Richard Regan Paul) is shown doing something vaguely secretive. The camera first lingers over the spectacle of a satellite docking with the space station, and Makmoud then extracts digital information from it, dismissing colleagues who walk with him to do this. He then transfers some information from the satellite onto a handheld device. Although the content of the information is as yet uncertain, the significance of it is established through a close-up of the device’s screen saying ‘TRANSFER COMPLETE’. Makmoud then tucks the device into a bundle of paper files, and walks through a restroom and into a locker-room, ignoring chat from a colleague, and with the camera picking out his furtive eyeline darts from side to side. Sweat can be seen on his brow, and the non-diegetic music suggests anticipation and excitement. He puts his files in a locker, and the camera lingers over the handheld device as he shuts the door. As he leaves the locker-room a colleague stares after him suspiciously, and the cut back to Makmoud has him looking over his shoulder. He then enters a corridor, the doors shut before and behind him, and the transparent panels to space open, blasting him out to his death. To some extent, this last event is something of a surprise for the spectator, because a specific character’s murderous intent towards Makmoud has not been explicitly shown, but the more vague sense of something unusual occurring has been heavily emphasised, as has the suggestion that other characters are aware of this. Sometime later, Jake suspects that Makmoud’s death may have something to do with satellite malfunctions, and he reviews the security footage of Makmoud’s movement from the satellite to the locker room, and extracts the pertinent information from the device that Makmoud placed there, so that the perceptual gaps in what had occurred in the earlier scene are filled in by the later scene, and the spectator’s knowledge of these events is thereby eventually aligned with the film’s main protagonist. Animals may perceive what characters cannot perceive Some of the sequences discussed above provide examples where the spectator’s perceptual mastery over what characters know and perceive is shared with the perception of animals – in both The Core and Geostorm it is cats that signal a danger which characters cannot yet perceive. Many of the examples of this phenomenon in the previous chapter involved birds, and these animals also signal impending danger in 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow. In 2012 vast flocks of birds fly out of Yellowstone National Park just before it erupts into an enormous volcano, but in this example the characters witnessing the birds also know that the disaster is coming, although not precisely when, so that these birds signal that the disaster is about to strike immediately, rather than that one is due at some more distant point.

166 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ Bird flights in The Day After Tomorrow foreshadow a natural disaster that will occur somewhat later – the disaster striking this location occurring almost half an hour later in film terms, and the next day in narrative terms – and are used to align the spectator’s foreknowledge with some characters, but not with others. The scene prior to this bird flight is with British scientist Rapson (Ian Holm) and his colleagues, looking at a computer screen signalling that rapid temperature changes are occurring in the Atlantic. The film cuts from the computer image to New York, where Jack’s son Sam and his friends are traveling to an academic decathlon. The sound of off-screen birds begins to crescendo, and this is first noticed by a dog, barking up at the sky. A cut to Sam, looking upwards, signals that he too has noticed, and his point-of-view then shows vast flocks all flying in the same direction. An objective shot from the birds’ level shows that they are all flying inland, away from the ocean that the spectator knows is a source of rapid temperature change. The next ground level shot of the birds tilts down to show zoo animals also responding with fear. ‘What’s gotten into them?’ asks a zookeeper, and his colleague replies ‘no idea’, as wolves howl and begin to bite through their cages. Sam’s (and more explicitly the zookeepers’) lack of knowledge is juxtaposed not only with the spectator’s, but also with numerous different types of animals’ knowledge, so that the spectator shares an ostensibly ‘natural’ knowledge about the impending disaster that the characters in this scene do not have access to. Each of these examples thereby aligns the spectator’s perceptual mastery with an ostensibly ‘natural’ form of perceptual knowledge displayed by various animals but not by humans. None of these animals, moreover, are shown being harmed or killed in the disasters that they know is forthcoming. Indeed, when the zookeepers in The Day After Tomorrow later return to the wolf enclosure, they find that the animals have escaped, and they will later be shown hunting for food in the frozen city. This alignment with animals unconsciously suggests that the spectator’s perception is also ‘natural’ in a manner denied to various characters. The spectator may not perceive the impending threat, and be shocked The previous chapter gave examples of minor moments of shock in environmental disaster films, where elements of the disasters struck characters without the spectator being granted foreknowledge of the impending strike. In each of these examples, however, any moments of shock occurred as part of a more sustained privileging of spectatorial vision, in which any specific moments of shock were only more particular components of broader disasters that spectators are granted a perceptual mastery over. Events depicted as shocks, moreover, are less deadly than those that the spectator sees coming. The same is true of the environmental apocalypse films discussed in this chapter. Early in 2012, for example, two musicians are boarding a cruise ship. They discuss their family relationships standing on a gangplank between the dock and the ship, when the water level between the dock and ship suddenly

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 167 makes the gangplank lurch, although this movement is relatively slow, so that the characters manage to remain standing upright, and nobody is hurt. No indication was given, prior to these shots, that a change in water level was coming, in a manner akin to the other signs of impending disaster that occur throughout the rest of the film. Any shock is mitigated, however, by the fact that the spectator does know that disaster more generally is coming, and by the relatively minor nature of the shock, so that it functions as part of a broader landscape of spectatorial foreknowledge about the main disasters that are to come. The Core has one moment of shock that is more deadly, when a crystal drops onto Virgil’s pilot Bob (Bruce Greenwood), when he leaves the vessel to dislodge it after it gets stuck. The crystal tears through his helmet, killing him, and his last words ‘we got lucky! I think we’re going to swim right out of this one’ signal that he was not expecting the surprise. Even this surprise, however, is somewhat filtered through the spectator’s perceptual mastery, as the camera adopts a position above the falling crystal, and drops towards Bob in a rapid movement that follows the crystal’s trajectory. The crystal strike thereby still privileges spectatorial vision, even in a moment where the depicted event is a surprise. Geostorm and Noah both have moments of shock that the spectator is not allowed to see coming, but in which the shocking events are a narrative relief, saving protagonists from danger. During a car chase in Geostorm during which a henchman pursues protagonist Sarah (Abbie Cornish) through a mass lightning storm, the camera temporarily follows the henchman in a number of medium close-ups from in front of his vehicle, from behind, and finally from the side. Sarah’s car suddenly irrupts into this side shot, flipping over the pursuing vehicle. This is shown from exterior shots from the side; from inside the henchman’s car; from a shot looking into the vehicle and flipping along with it; and finally from a low angle with the car lurching towards and over the spectator’s position. The henchman then frantically tries to unclip his seatbelt before the car explodes, which is shown from an objective shot directly above the car, with a fireball moving towards the screen, although a cut occurs before it engulfs the camera’s position. The irruption of Sarah’s car here was a surprise. The film could have shown Sarah preparing her attack, so that the spectator knew it was coming. This rare deferral of spectatorial knowledge therefore functions as something of a shock, but this is mitigated by the fact that the shock actually harms an antagonist rather than a protagonist, and by the fact that spectatorial mastery is quickly reasserted through the transcendent positions occupied by the camera when witnessing the flipping and destruction of the narrative threat personified by the henchman. Similarly, in Noah, Tubal-cain manages to sneak aboard the floating Ark, and fights with Noah and his son Ham (Logan Lerman). The fight is about to culminate with Noah prone, and Tubal-cain ready to pick up a knife, stating ‘now we finish it!’ The knife is shown in close-up, but it suddenly moves, as though in flight. The next images are medium close-ups of the three characters thrown from their feet in slow motion, followed by a longer shot from the side showing them moving through the air. Images of falling debris within the Ark

168 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ follow, before an external shot shows the reason for these events – the Ark has hit some rocks, and lurched to the side. This sequence functions as something of a shock, because the film could have shown the Ark approaching the rocks before showing the knife’s movement. However, the shock is not unpleasant, because it saves the main protagonist and signals that the flood is receding, and because the images signalling the shock occur in slow motion, so that they are nothing like a narratively threatening jump scare. Furthermore, there are subtle signals that some kind of shock is about to occur, with the image of the knife preceded by an image of some objects next to a ladder rattling and falling somewhat, and by a reaction shot where Ham’s eyeline moves up to notice this. Even this moment of shock is thereby preceded by a subtle signal of its coming.

The spectator may be subjected to confusing imagery while characters are confused The previous chapter established that confusing disruptions to stable spectatorial positions are used to signal temporary threats to characters, and that there are two main strategies regulating resolution to this confusion. In environmental disaster films based on real events resolutions to confusing imagery only occur after the cessation of the events that caused characters to be confused. In films not so directly based on real events, confusing imagery can be used to demonstrate the bewildering nature of a disaster’s onset, but characters quickly respond to the disaster proactively, and confusing imagery is replaced by a spectatorial transcendence over the disaster. The films discussed in this chapter employ this latter strategy, since although they relate to cultural anxiety about an impending environmental apocalypse, that apocalypse has not yet happened, so that the films are not reticent about displaying disasters in a pleasurable manner, as I address in more detail below. 2012, for example, initially represents the onset of the first major disaster, where much of California collapses into the sea, with confusing imagery. Jackson has come to believe that a major disaster is imminent, but before this he had dropped his children back off with their mother and stepfather, so that he has to rush back to collect them so they can escape aboard an airplane. The family sit around the breakfast table, oblivious to the impending disaster, when a major earthquake strikes. The confusion and terror of this event is depicted through rapid editing and shaky handheld cinematography, so that the spectator shares the affective experience of the characters, who are temporarily passive victims of nature’s might. Jackson bursts through the door, however, and evacuates the family into his car. As they turn the vehicle, the bewildering imagery is sustained for a while, with a continuation of shaky cinematography and confusing edits around the narrative space. Once Jackson has turned the car and begun to drive back towards the airport whence they will escape, however, the camera occupies a transcendent position high above the devastation, looking directly down, and the escape sequence discussed in Chapter 2 begins. Confusing imagery was used to represent a temporary moment of passivity quickly replaced with a transcendent spectacle that represents heroic action.

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 169

The spectator may be threatened directly (though vicariously), but this threat is then displaced In addition to confusing imagery, the spectator’s unthreatened transcendence over danger may be disrupted when the camera’s position is struck by the debris, waves, explosions and so on caused by the films’ various fictional disasters. These disruptions are mitigated and displaced in various ways. 2012 has a number of direct strikes against the camera’s position that demonstrate different displacement strategies. When waves enter the unsealed door of one of the arks, for example, the water strikes the screen, but this only buffets characters rather than maims or kills them on impact. A more definitively destructive example involves the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican crashing to the ground and rolling over people gathered in St. Peter’s Square. This rolling movement engulfs the camera in darkness, but this ostensible destruction of the spectator’s position is followed by a restored spectatorial position, via crosscutting to survivors aboard an airplane flying to the arks. These characters, moreover, are not just alive at this point, but have a perceptual mastery over events, with this sequence beginning with a computer image of the Earth, and the characters discussing the unfolding events whilst running simulations among banks of glowing computer screens. The scene ends with data showing ‘two underwater quakes’, and the next sequence moves to the location that is about to be affected by these earthquakes. The dome’s direct impact on the camera’s position thereby functions as part of an oscillation between threats to characters (and vicariously to the spectator) and scenes of safety from threat and information about that threat. The Day After Tomorrow also features two different types of strikes on the camera’s position. The threat of the first of these is minimised in a similar manner to many others discussed in this chapter and the previous one. A news van is travelling into the storm, and cars are thrown by it towards the van, which manages to swerve and avoid the danger. The last flying car strikes the camera’s position. In the real world, this kind of impact would have deadly consequences, but the cut away to other characters immediately resurrects the previously struck spectatorial position, and the vehicle with which the spectator was being encouraged to identify was unharmed, so that the forward movement of the flying car did not strike a diegetic subject of any kind. The film’s second main strike on the spectator’s position occurs when a tsunami engulfs New York. It is similar to a number of other examples I have discussed in the sense that water striking the camera is not necessarily as damaging as a strike from something like a flying car. This particular example minimises the damage in an unusual manner, because the strike occurs in a relatively long shot, with small human figures dwarfed by the size of the wave that strikes the camera position. It is reasonable to assume that such a strike, in real life, would be deadly. However, the edit to the next image occurs in such a way that the confusion of water and debris right up against the screen gives way to a much closer-in shot, with the human figures pulling themselves up

170 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ from the waters now in medium shot. The close proximity of the water to the screen functions as something like an editing wipe, because it happens so fast, and with both images intertwined because the first ends and the second starts with a confusion of water. This edit thereby functions as a movement from a deadly strike on the spectator’s position to something more like an uncomfortable buffeting of the spectator’s position. Sam and his friends, moreover, are not caught up in this strike, and the threat to characters with whom the spectator has been encouraged to identify is thereby also displaced. Geostorm and The Core also use cutting to displace direct strikes. In the former, a crane holding a satellite in place aboard Dutch Boy malfunctions, and the satellite thrashes about the hanger, threatening to crush the crew. At one point it crashes into the camera position, but an immediate cut to the reverse shot of the satellite going past allows the spectator to transcend this ostensible destruction of his/her position. The spectatorial position here, moreover, is entirely objective, so that no character is harmed when the satellite strikes. In other scenes, similar strikes presumably kill people, given the scale of the devastation, but the details of this are elided, such as when a large part of the top of a skyscraper drops onto the camera’s position. Rather than the destruction caused by this being shown, the film cuts to other objective camera positions showing the disaster. The film can also make a link between a character’s death and the camera position’s obliteration, but only when the character is insignificant. A mega-tsunami that strikes Dubai is introduced by a long shot of a man riding a camel in the desert, with sand dunes behind him. A reverse shot closer in shows his startled reaction to something behind him, before a cut back to the front has him galloping away from the huge wave that emerges from over the dunes. The wave engulfs both him and the camera, so that he is almost certainly killed, and the camera position is thereby struck by a deadly impact. However, a cut then shows the wave striking the main buildings in Dubai, so that even when the camera position was engulfed, and explicitly associated with death, transcendent editing can resurrect a new camera position safely beyond the destruction. In The Core, similarly, the aforementioned lightning storm in Rome includes shots where blasts of lightning destroy the Colosseum and the Victor Emmanuel Monument, and both buildings explode violently towards the camera. At the moment when debris from the Colosseum explosion strikes the screen, the film cuts to an overhead shot following a bolt of lightning down to the city, moving into the Victor Emmanuel Monument, so that the spectator’s position here moves from passively being destroyed to actively doing the destroying; shifting from threatened to threatening. In Noah, the apocalyptic flood is also shown striking at the camera’s position. There are two images of people from the army which is struggling to get on Noah’s boat being engulfed by waves at the same time as the camera is engulfed, with bodies roaring past the camera’s position, although the camera itself remains static and is not similarly buffeted. The vicarious threat of these camera strikes is minimised in two ways. First, the strikes are preceded and

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 171 followed by images above and beyond the destruction, so that the spectator’s position is temporarily threatened, but then renewed. Second, Noah is one of the characters threatened by these waves, as he holds onto a rope outside the Ark’s entrance. The fact that he manages to keep his grip and survive, despite being buffeted, means that the strike on the camera’s position is not definitively deadly, so that the waves kill lots of insignificant (and sinful) antagonists, but not the main protagonist, who clings onto his ‘lifeboat’. Cutting away from a direct strike’s impact can also occur prior to the strike, and both Noah and 2012 reserve this strategy to depict the deaths of characters who have been encoded as virtuous. 2012 has two examples. In the first, US President Wilson has stayed behind to comfort his doomed people, and he walks around a field hospital when a mega-tsunami carries a huge aircraft-carrier to Washington. The camera cuts from Wilson’s accepting reaction, as the wave and carrier bear down on him, to a side shot of the wave rolling the carrier forwards, back to Wilson’s reaction, and then to a shot just behind him with the carrier filling the screen as it moves forwards to crush the President. If this shot were held for a moment longer then the spectator’s position would be struck, but the films cuts to a side shot of the impact, so that it does not strike the camera directly. Something similar occurs when Satnam, the geologist who first warned Adrian about the coming disaster, telephones his colleague to tell him that he has not been evacuated in time. Satnam, his wife and child are shown hugging, with a mega-tsunami rushing directly towards them and towards the camera position. The reverse shot is then shown, closer in, focusing on their loving relationships, but no cut back to the first angle is shown, so that the tsunami is not shown striking them directly. Indeed, in this example, not even a side shot of the impact is shown, as the film cuts back to Adrian, with the phone line now dead. In Noah, when the apocalyptic wave approaches Noah’s grandfather Methuselah, who has helped Noah’s family and been depicted as entirely benevolent, he looks up, smiling, stretches out his arms in a Christ-like pose, and is shown engulfed from a side angle, without a direct threat to the camera’s position. In these last examples, virtuous characters are not subjected to the kind of direct impact destruction that would also strike the spectator’s position, with the characters accepting their fate, and cuts away showing them struck from the side, or even not at all.

The spectator may have traumatic threats displaced only after disastrous events end The previous chapter discussed how certain environmental disaster films based on recent real-world events display a respectful reticence to linger over the destruction in the kind of pleasurably transcendent manner analysed in the next section. The Impossible is a clear example of this, where this reticence means that traumatic threats to characters are only displaced when the disastrous events end. In terms of the environmental disaster films discussed in the last chapter

172 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ this strategy is atypical, but in terms of the environmental apocalypse films discussed in this chapter this strategy is entirely absent. These films depict apocalyptic events that relate, in various ways previously discussed, to repressed anxiety about impending real-world environmental catastrophes, and in this sense they do not retell precise real-world events, even if they do relate to existing real-world disasters in various ways. As such, they have no specific survivors of real-world disasters to carefully worry about respectfully representing. Instead, as the following section addresses, they can depict environmental apocalypse as unprecedented spectacles of various kinds.

The spectator may pleasurably transcend the destruction Chapter 2 used 2012 as an exemplar of how the spectator is allowed to pleasurably transcend unfolding environmental catastrophes. The car escape and airplane escape sequences repeatedly and masochistically oscillate between positions that locate the spectator in and amongst the danger, and objective positions outside and beyond the dangers experienced by characters, and these scenes depict the devastation as a transcendence of bodily constraints that activate the pleasures of the Imaginary Order. Further detailed examples from 2012 are not necessary here, but one other sequence is worth mentioning because it demonstrates the extent to which this transcendence over destruction is pleasurable. Hippy conspiracy theorist Charlie explicitly revels in the beauty of the violent nature that causes his own death. Jackson, now aware that the apocalypse is nigh, rushes back to Yellowstone to get Charlie’s map which shows where sanctuary can be found. He finds Charlie atop a hillside, babbling into a microphone connected to his pirate radio station. Jackson is told that the map is in Charlie’s van, and he manages to escape with it, but Charlie stays to witness what he calls ‘the last day of the United States of America’, with the camera swinging around his hill, creating a parallax effect in which the foreground is relatively static but the background seems to rush past in a blur. This disembodied transcendence is followed by the violence of Yellowstone erupting into a massive volcano, and as huge chunks of debris rush towards Charlie he shouts ‘I wish you could see what I’m seeing people, I wish you could be here with me!’ His diegetic radio listeners cannot ‘be there’ with him, of course, but the film spectator can, and can share Charlie’s pleasure at the awesome destruction, but with a safety ensured by the fact that the spectator is merely witnessing fictional events. This pleasurable transcendence is also ensured by the camera’s mobility around Charlie, with shots looking at him from the front and from behind; with extreme long shots showing the debris falling towards the small figure; and with Charlie’s demise shown closer in. A massive piece of earth strikes his position and almost engulfs the camera, which is positioned behind him, although the image cuts away from this near impact with the spectator’s position to show Jackson, in the van, driving away from the devastation. There are two principal spectacles of destruction in The Day After Tomorrow. The first – twisters destroying Los Angeles – is somewhat atypical in the sense

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 173 that no main protagonists are involved. The camera still follows certain more minor characters, however, and a number of these – the news reporter killed by the metal debris, Bob, Tina and Jeff – are killed by the devastation. The spectator partly shares their experiences, so that the reporter weaves his van to avoid the flying cars, and the spectator is shown close-ups of Jeff’s key in his Porsche’s ignition, as he desperately tries to flee. As discussed above, the spectator is also aligned with characters who can perceive the threats that other characters cannot, such as Bob watching Jeff’s demise on television, and the diegetic cameraman filming the reporter’s death. In addition, the spectator is granted a form of perception that transcends bodily constraints, so that there are objective shots above and outside the devastation, including in slow motion. And, as with some of the other examples discussed in this chapter, in the absence of a main protagonist, the film picks out a random survivor, ending with a cleaner in the scientists’ lab tentatively opening a door to reveal that Bob and Tina, sheltering behind it, have been swept away along with the whole side of the building. The second main spectacular sequence, when the tsunami strikes New York, does threaten some of the main protagonists. As discussed above, a perceptual hierarchy regulates the extent to which they are endangered, with Sam able to see a threat that Laura cannot, so that he is able to save her in time. The camera moves between ground level shots in and amongst the characters, and objective extreme long shots far above the disaster, including a graceful languid movement around a vast wave rising just off the coast, and overhead shots of water moving though the city’s streets. As mentioned above, the sequence also strikes directly at the spectator’s position. The oscillation between these different positions transcends bodily constraints, and repeatedly moves between threats to the spectator and disembodied objective positions beyond the reach of such threats. The Core also has two main spectacular natural disasters. The first of these has already been discussed, with the exploding debris from monuments in Rome striking the camera’s position, only for the film to cut to different positions, including an overhead shot following a bolt of lightning down to the city. The destruction of the Victor Emmanuel Monument, towards which the camera and the lightning were moving, is shown as repeat cuts of slow motion explosions. The film’s second main natural disaster strikes Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. This sequence begins with an objective shot in space, pointing at the sun. The camera moves to follow a beam of rays, and shows these penetrating the Earth’s collapsing electromagnetic field and clearing a hole in clouds. The spectator has thereby already been positioned over and above the impending devastation. The next image is an underwater shot of dead fish floating towards the surface, and as the camera moves up with them the Golden Gate Bridge comes into view. An aerial objective side shot shows the beams of radiation moving towards the bridge. (The composition of the shot is almost identical to one of the images of the tsunami approaching the same bridge in San Andreas, discussed in the previous chapter, with both representing an invasion from violent nature towards civilisation.) The next series of shots moves in towards

174 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ various insignificant people on the bridge, but also includes longer objective shots beyond the danger threatening these people. The bridge melts and begins to collapse, and a broken pylon swings towards a man in a car, with a cut to him looking at it in horror followed by his point-of-view with the camera position struck. This threat to the spectator’s position is then displaced by a cut to below the bridge and then to the side, showing vehicles falling and exploding in slow motion. The sequence ends with an extreme long shot of the bridge collapsing. As with the other spectacular transcendences discussed in this chapter, the sequence repeatedly oscillates between closer-in shots amongst the danger and objective shots safely and pleasurably beyond the threat. Geostorm repeats these oscillating patterns. The first main example of this follows the aforementioned sequence where the spectator was granted perceptual knowledge about an impending disaster that was denied to scientist Cheng. When Hong Kong’s heated-up gas pipes break through the pavement the scene moves from indications of an impending disaster to the spectacle of the event. Cheng gets in his car and drives away from the exposed gas pipe. The spectator is immediately aligned with Cheng’s experience, through a point-of-view shot in the rear-view mirror, showing a massive gas explosion, but also safely beyond Cheng’s experience, through a cut to a high up objective shot showing buildings around Cheng collapsing. There follows a repeated oscillation between shaky shots close in showing Cheng in the car (from the front, side, and from behind) and longer objective shots showing the car manoeuvring though exploding streets (from above, the front, side, and from behind his car). In some of these objective shots the camera holds on buildings collapsing like dominos, before returning to the car. The disaster is undoubtedly killing many people, none of whom are focused on, with attention instead paid to how Cheng’s vehicle narrowly avoids disaster. Towards the end of the sequence a large 44 behind Cheng’s car races towards him. This is first shown looming behind Cheng, from a position looking at the vehicles from in front, and then in a long objective shot from the side. It seems that the larger vehicle may be about to ram Cheng’s car out of the way, but this fear is averted when the camera cuts back to a lower shot looking at the two vehicles travelling forwards, and a large segment of building collapses onto the pursuing 44. That vehicle’s windows were blacked out, and the camera did not cut to show the driver or passengers, who remain entirely anonymous and insignificant, so that there is no attempt to generate sympathy for those who are killed here – indeed, the spectator is encouraged to think of their deaths as a narrow escape for the important character. This is the last incident in this disaster, as Cheng’s windows steam up to signify a change in temperature, and a point-of-view shot of the car’s thermometer confirms a return to normalcy. The character with whom the spectator’s perception and identification was partly aligned has survived, and the spectator’s experience of the sequence is thereby somewhat threatened, but the worst is averted. In addition, the spectator’s perception went beyond Cheng’s, and this transcendence is repeated in the sequence’s final shot, when the camera cranes up to linger on the devastated city behind Cheng.

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 175 Later, when a storm of large ice shards strikes Tokyo, various individuals are shown being hit, and at times the camera is positioned in amongst those who are threatened, utilising shaky handheld cinematography, and whip pans to vehicles being struck. A cut to the interior of a car shows a vast lump of ice hurtling towards (unknown and insignificant) characters and the screen, but a cut occurs just before the strike, so that it is shown from the safety of an objective position to the side. Moments later a particular character is picked out for more attention than others, with an old woman who is not seen in any other scenes shown shuffling down the street from three different angles. The next image is positioned high above, rapidly moving towards the street, with another ice lump ahead of it, so that the camera’s position is now that of the threatening object rather than the threatened person. A cut back to street level shows the ice lump hurtling towards the old woman, but she is pulled through a doorway just in time to prevent her being hit, and the camera somewhat takes the impact of the object striking just to the side of the screen. This focus on one particular survivor, who is an otherwise insignificant character with no other narrative function or backstory, is repeated and extended in the next natural disaster that strikes Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. A brief scene between the incidents in Japan and Brazil has shown characters who are monitoring the weather reporting anomalies occurring in these locations, so that when the spectator is shown a sunny Brazilian beach (s)he knows that something disastrous is about to unfold, unlike the numerous people on the beach. A waxing wave is shown freezing, and the cut to the reactions of people on the beach picks out a young heterosexual couple in medium shot. The oscillation back and forth from this couple to the encroaching ice returns to show the man continuing to look forward in disbelief while the woman is already running away. The ice is shown engulfing the beach, instantly freezing various insignificant people. Crosscutting then demonstrates how the disaster might be ended, with Jake explaining a plan to send out replacement satellites to destroy the infected devices that are causing the weather anomalies. Oscillations between the crew deploying these satellites and the fleeing woman in Brazil focus this process on an individual – will the plan work in time to save her? When the first satellite is launched, an off-screen voice confirms this individualisation by stating ‘satellite replacement for Rio on its way’. In the back and forth editing the man who did not see the danger coming in time is frozen, while his more insightful partner continues to run from danger, with the spectator offered transcendent positions over and around the disaster, seeing her from street level; from directly above dodging traffic on a road, with a frozen airplane (presumably full of people who are not shown experiencing the same kind of narrow scape) dropping towards her; and from below, with the airplane crashing between buildings, which break off its wings, so that its main fuselage rushes down an alleyway after the woman. She crouches against a wall at the end of the alley, with the airplane narrowly avoiding crushing her, and with crosscutting to the satellite knocking out its infected counterpart signalling that the specific disaster threatening her has been averted just in time.

176 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ Two otherwise insignificant survivors are also shown in a more deferred manner. The final series of disasters caused by Dutch Boy include twisters in Mumbai and a mega-tsunami striking Dubai. In the former, the camera picks out a small boy holding a dog. It leaps out of his arms in terror, and crosscutting at this stage returns only infrequently to Mumbai, where the boy is shown searching for the dog under a market stall. Part of this crosscutting includes a focus on a survivor in Dubai. When the mega-tsunami first strikes the city, a businessman wearing traditional thawb is in a meeting high up in a skyscraper. He looks out in horror at the huge wave, and his position in the skyscraper is somewhat threatened moments later when the building lurches a little, so that other businessmen fall, with one sliding along a table towards the camera position and striking it. In each of these examples, numerous antlike people are killed, but the momentary focus on one particular individual, even though that individual is not important to the narrative in any other way, stresses the illusion of individual survival against mass natural disaster. Noah is somewhat atypical in the sense that it devotes only a small portion of its running time to the spectacle of environmental disaster, but survival is still central to the narrative, and is still represented as a transcendent spectacle, albeit relatively briefly. After the title character’s vision of the Ark leads him to state ‘the storm can’t be stopped. But it can be survived. We build a vessel to survive the storm’, this archetypal lifeboat is displayed in visually transcendent terms. Doves are shown flying above a forest, and the camera follows after them to reach the building site of the Ark, where it triumphantly swirls around this image of escape from destruction. The apocalyptic event of the flood striking the Ark is shown relatively briefly, compared to the other films discussed in this chapter, but this spectacle, and the prologue to it, still conforms to the relevant conventions in the other films. The first sign that the flood is about to begin is an extreme high angle shot up above the Ark, and the camera rapidly plummets down to Earth. The next image is a close-up of Noah, with a drop of water running down his face, indicating that the previous shot was a falling raindrop’s point-of-view. This transcendence of space and normal human perception continues in the battle that ensues. Hoping to find refuge, Tubal-cain’s army attacks the Ark, which is defended by the Watchers, large fallen angels encased in rock. The camera wheels around and tracks across the spectacle of this combat. When the Watchers are killed their rocky bodies explode and their spirits soar upward towards heaven, and the last of these is shown from multiple angles, with the camera first positioned in front of the Watcher at roughly ground level; then from further away tilting upwards to follow the ascending angel’s flight; and finally from above tilting down. The angel moves upwards towards the camera’s position, and this pulls back rapidly through clouds to show the whole Earth covered in massive hurricanes. This spectacular transcendence of space and perception extends here to an explicitly God’s eye view, granting the spectator disembodied viewing positions that are not only safe from the depicted catastrophe, but are actually aligned with the divine architect of the disaster.

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 177

The spectator’s oscillations between different categories are all masochistic As I established in Chapter 2, all of the above components are masochistic. The spectator mostly enjoys a mastery over perceptual knowledge, but also experiences the temporary unpleasure of a disruption to that perceptual knowledge, such as in the scene in 2012 where the spectator shares the other characters’ uncertainty about whether Jackson has escaped drowning. The revelation that Jackson has survived is the resolution component of the scene’s masochistic oscillation from the unpleasure of a lack of perceptual knowledge to the pleasure of the restoration of that perceptual knowledge. All of the films analysed in this chapter employ similar masochistic deferrals in the spectator’s perceptual mastery. For example, the culmination to The Day After Tomorrow has father Jack cross the frozen landscape to rescue his son Sam in New York. A deadly strike of freezing weather hits both Jack’s and Sam’s groups, with intercutting between both as they run for shelter, and with both slamming doors in the face of the pursuing ice. The spectator’s last glimpse of Sam’s group is with them throwing books onto a fire in a desperate attempt to survive the freezing. The screen cuts to black, signalling and emphasising the disruption of perceptual knowledge about their fate. Indeed, previously, a cut to black had signalled death for Rapson’s group of scientists, when they were struck by a similar ice strike. Firelight then emerges from the blackness, and this is Jack recovering from the ice strike at his end. He then resumes his journey, uncovering, along the way, the frozen bodies of those who had ignored Sam’s warning and left the shelter of the library. At no point is there any crosscutting back to Sam to reveal that he has survived, so that there is a sustained unpleasurable possibility that he has not. Jack arrives at the library, pushes through its snow covered interior, and eventually finds his son alive, but not before one last masochistic suggestion that he and his friends have died, with Jack’s searchlight moving over their still bodies, which are soon revealed to be sleeping rather than dead. In The Core, after Virgil completes its mission, and heads back to the surface, the command centre loses the craft’s signal. The spectator is temporarily aligned with the command centre’s lack of perceptual knowledge, with two members of the command team shown putting their heads in their hands in grief. Cutting back to Virgil breaking through the Earth’s crust then shows the spectator what the command team cannot perceive. Geostorm has a very similar sequence where the survival of important characters is in doubt. When Jake and the space station’s captain Ute (Alexandra Maria Lara) get into a satellite to escape from the exploding Dutch Boy, and attempt re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, the film temporarily withholds information about whether or not they are successful. As with Jackson’s potential drowning in 2012, this tension is emphasised through cutting between multiple reaction shots, in the command centre, where large text on the diegetic screen confirms the danger by stating ‘SELF DESCTRUCT COMPLETE’, and in Hannah’s (Jake’s daughter’s) house, where she watches

178 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ television footage of the space station exploding. Flashing on a command centre screen then suggests that Jake and Ute may have escaped. The visual components of this potential survival are then emphasised through the dialogue ‘take a look’; through the diegetic screen showing an object coming through the atmosphere; through the camera moving closer to this diegetic green dot which dissolves into an objective shot of the satellite itself; and finally through a shot from within the satellite, where Jake says ‘hopefully someone sees us’. An escaping space shuttle then docks with the satellite, with both vessels operating as lifeboats which offer escape even to those who selflessly offered to sacrifice their lives. Crosscutting then shows the command centre staff cheering, Hannah watching on television celebrating, the water receding from Dubai, and the aforementioned revelations that the businessman and the boy searching for his dog have both survived, amidst the destruction, all of which plays out over stirring non-diegetic music. Noah also temporarily withholds perceptual information about whether the title character managed to hold onto a rope and survive, when the aforementioned waves crashed into the Ark. After a series of confusing images, amongst the buffeting waves, within the rolling Ark, and transcendently above and over the destruction, the camera cuts to the blackness of the ship’s interior, again signalling the absence of perceptual information. Ila (Emma Watson) articulates this lack, asking ‘Mother, where’s Father?’ The darkness holds on this unpleasurable irresolution for a moment, before light is introduced as Noah lifts the Ark’s door, and enters, unharmed. In addition to these masochistic deferrals in perceptual mastery, transcendent spectacles of destruction can also unpleasurably threaten the spectator, by aligning the camera with characters who are in mortal danger; and can then repeatedly and pleasurably resolve these threats by also positioning the spectator over and above the danger. At its most masochistic, these two forms of resolution from unpleasure to pleasure can be combined. In 2012, for example, when Jackson gets the map of the arks’ location from Charlie, a temporary lack of knowledge about his survival is combined with the kind of masochistically transcendent spectacles discussed above and in Chapter 2. Jackson manages to drive Charlie’s van to the waiting airplane just in time, with volcanic debris following closely behind, and with the camera repeatedly oscillating from unpleasurably threatened positions in the van and the waiting airplane to pleasurably transcendent positions sweeping over and around the devastation. As the rest of the family begin their take-off, Jackson searches for the map in the van. The runway collapses behind the plane, swallowing the van and Jackson. Gordon wants to take off, but Kate and the children tell him to wait. Their reaction shots looking out the windows, and point-of-view shots on the lip of the crack which has swallowed Jackson are intercut with Gordon’s hand on the airplane’s throttle, and an external shot of it moving slowly forward. This editing suggests that Jackson may possibly have survived, and at the same time extends the unpleasurable possibility that he has not. Resolution begins when his hand is shown grabbing the lip of the crack, and the oscillation from

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 179 Jackson to the family on the plane is repeated, with the second image of Jackson’s hands now also showing the map, grasped in one of them. His run to the airplane continues to be masochistic, with Kate reaching her arm out to grab him as the airplane taxis forwards, Gordon stating that ‘we’re running out of runway!’ Resolution comes with Jackson grabbing Kate’s hand and climbing aboard, but even this last moment includes one last oscillation from unpleasurable threat to pleasurable resolution, as he almost drops the map while clambering aboard, but manages to hold on to it. These films can also employ specifically masochistic reflexes. In a sequence almost directly repeated in San Andreas, discussed in the previous chapter, The Day After Tomorrow shows the famous Hollywood letters being destroyed. There are some differences between the two examples, with twisters rather than an earthquake responsible in The Day After Tomorrow, but there are also key similarities, with both seen by characters in diegetic helicopters safely above the devastation, and with both seen by the spectator from an even safer vantage point. The fact that this specific form of destruction focuses on a sign representing realist filmmaking is particularly masochistic – just as the spectator’s cinematic jouissance relies on temporarily consenting to experience various unpleasurable threats, so too these reflexive destructions of the Hollywood letters involve filmmakers self-imposing images of the cinema’s destruction, but within sequences in which such unpleasures function as precursors to pleasurable transcendences over destruction.2

Narrative resolutions operate within the context of the Symbolic Order As with the examples from environmental disaster films discussed in the previous chapter, environmental apocalypse films locate their narrative resolutions within the context of the Symbolic Order, emphasising how survival restores heteronormative and social bonds. These films thereby not only valorise the central component of the contemporary Symbolic Order, Cartesian subjectivity, but also normalise various other components of the Symbolic Order. Chapter 2 provided detailed examples of how 2012 represents heterosexual family reunion, with Gordon punished for disrupting Jackson’s family, and with Sasha and Tamara punished for their infidelity and vague failure to comply with modest codes of sexual behaviour. Chapter 2 also discussed how billionaire Yuri’s greed is punished, and how the worst aspects of society are destroyed by or transcended through the disaster, with Las Vegas dragged below the Earth’s surface, and Anheuser’s refusal to open the arks’ doors overcome through the benevolence of the future society’s ruling classes. The final scene brings these various Symbolic resolutions together, as the arks find land, ready to build a new society. The utopian elements of this ending resolve the real-world problems that the film had set up, both in terms of the heteronormative family and in terms of economic inequality relating somewhat to real-world ecological degradation. In terms of the former, one of the signals

180 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ of Jackson’s family’s breakup was daughter Lilly’s bedwetting, but the film’s last dialogue is her whispered line ‘no more pull-ups’, and her father’s response ‘nice!’ In terms of the latter, Yuri’s and Tamara’s punishments for their conspicuous wealth leave behind Yuri’s boys, who are now cured of their father’s flaws, and tell Lilly, when she asks if she can hold Tamara’s dog, who also survived, ‘he can be your dog too, if you like’. Anheuser, who had refused to allow people aboard his ark, and thereby failed to appropriately contribute to this improved new society, is not shown during this final utopian sequence, which ends with a God’s eye view above the arks, and moves back to show a peaceful Earth from space, rebalanced now than heteronormativity has been restored and individual greed has been abolished. Jackson is the figure who brings these two Symbolic resolutions (to heteronormativity and to economic inequality) together. Along with the restoration of his nuclear family, Jackson also reasserts the ostensible importance of the individual within what is in reality a depersonalising and unjust capitalist system. At the start of the film Jackson has not only lost his family, but he has also lost any dignity in his career. Jackson’s aforementioned introduction presents him asleep on a sofa, in a messy room including a plate of half-eaten food. When he leaves the building he knocks over a pile of novels which are emblazoned with his photograph, and these lie next to boxes of the same. Dialogue later clarifies the fact that Jackson is an ‘unknown writer’, and Kate explicitly criticises this failed attempt at self-expression, saying ‘you could just block everything out and write. You blocked us out’. His lack of financial success at writing is the reason why he drives a limousine for Yuri, and Yuri’s children treat him with open contempt because of this. Nevertheless, Jackson learns about the impending apocalypse both because of his family breakdown and because of his humiliating job – he hears of Charlie’s conspiracy theory when he takes the children to Yellowstone, and this allows him to understand Yuri’s children’s taunt ‘we have tickets to go on a big ship. We will live, and you will die’. Jackson’s family can then escape, and be reunited, because he has access to this information, and later to Yuri’s airplane and sports car. The film’s conclusion finally resolves all of these tensions. As mentioned above, Jackson’s family is reunited, and Yuri’s children’s selfishness is overcome, but the way that capitalism had contemptuously treated him is also resolved, not just because he managed to survive thanks to his job working for Yuri, but also because Adrian happened to be one of the few people reading Jackson’s novel, so that a copy of it survives alongside the paintings by Old Masters which have also been salvaged. ‘This book is part of our legacy now’, Adrian says, so that Jackson’s attempt to express himself within the contexts of depersonalising capitalism is finally successful, and his individual worth, as well as his heteronormative family, is reasserted. In The Day After Tomorrow, the introduction to Jack’s family suggests a similar family fragmentation that will eventually be resolved. Jack has already been seen, in the opening sequence on the ice shelf, and at the climate change meeting. The scene preceding the introduction of his family has large chunks

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 181 of ice falling in Tokyo, and amongst the victims of these is a businessman talking to his partner on a mobile phone before and during the disaster. The sequence ends with him being killed by a strike to the head, with the last image a close-up zooming into his hand gripping his phone, his partner desperately asking after him. A cut to an image of the White House in the distance signals a shift in location, and Jack gets out of a taxi and enters a house. The disaster in Japan then repeats on a television screen, and a young man and his mother are shown in a kitchen, watching the television and eating breakfast. The telephone rings, the woman answers, and a cut shows Jack, in a different house, complaining that ‘I just saw that Sam got an F in calculus’. This establishes that the young man is Jack’s son, and that the woman is Sam’s mother – her name, Lucy (Sela Ward), is not given at this stage. Whether Sam’s parents are still a couple is not clear, but Lucy articulates at least a familial fracture by stating ‘I’m not the one who’s away for months and months at a time’. The editing from Jack entering a house to two characters in a house had suggested they were in the same location, but this expectation is subverted when Jack is shown on the other end of the telephone. In the previous sequence in Tokyo the final shot of a telephone had emphasised family disruption, so the repeated use of another telephone develops this theme. When Jack takes Sam to the airport his son expresses frustration at his lack of contact with his father, and this disruption is repeated later when Jack looks at pictures of his son as a child on holiday, and is told by Lucy that he was in Alaska while that particular family holiday took place. Jack’s journey across the ice to rescue Sam and his friends from New York resolves this prior disruption. Father and son hug, and their happiness is last shown in smiling shot/reverse shots, as they are helicoptered away to safety, with a cut demonstrating that this familial reunion is part of broader societal restoration, as the helicopter sweeps past a frozen but defiant Statue of Liberty. Economic conflicts are also erased by the disaster. On the individual level, this means that a homeless man Luther (Glenn Plummer), originally denied access to shelter in the library because he has a dog, eventually becomes part of a unified community, with his experience of life on the streets allowing him to advise rich student J.D. (Austin Nichols) that paper stuffed into clothing functions as insulation. On the broader societal level, economic conflicts are erased when countries near to the Equator allow in refugees from countries devastated by the disaster. The film ends with these societal resolutions mirrored by resolution to the biosphere. Following the image of the helicopter-as-‘lifeboat’ carrying the unified party of Jack, Sam, his friends, and the formerly homeless Luther away to safety past the Statue of Liberty, the final scene is aboard the International Space Station, with astronaut Parker (Sasha Roiz) gazing out at the Earth in wonder and asking ‘have you ever seen the air so clear?’ The final image is almost identical to that which ended 2012, with the space station moving out of shot so that the camera is positioned behind and beyond it, and the image of the Earth, restored to its Gaia-like benevolence, is more a God’s eye view than the astronauts’ perceptive.

182 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ Geostorm has another disrupted family, with Jack divorced, and his daughter worried that he will not return from his trip to repair Dutch Boy, stating ‘I want you to come back alive. And you’re not exactly the reliable type’. As discussed above, the possibility that Jack dies aboard the space station is partly shown through Hannah’s tearful reactions to television news about the space station exploding. After he survives and returns to Earth, resolving this fragmentation, father and daughter reprise their dialogue about him going into space again, however this time his statement ‘but I’ll be back’ is met with the reply ‘I know’. This final sequence plays out six months after the main events, and finishes with Hannah returning to her opening voice-over, stating the restoration of the technological solution, even after all the masochistic anxiety about such solutions narrativised throughout the film – ‘we rebuilt the space station. We made it safe, we made it stronger. […] We will survive’. Familial resolution is thereby accompanied by resolution to the film’s repressed anxieties about technological solutions to climate change, so that the film concludes, not by suggesting that the technological solution itself is flawed, but rather within the melodramatic context of individual human flaws, which might misuse technology, but which can be overcome by inverse individual human virtues. Noah also threatens familial disruption, when the title character plans to kill his new-born grandchildren to ensure sinful humanity’s extinction. His wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) tells him that if he does this ‘you will lose your sons, you will lose Ila, you will lose me. […] You will die alone!’ When Noah finds that he cannot kill the children, he not only prevents this family disruption, but also ensures the survival of humanity. And, significantly, this survival brings about a restored Symbolic Order, with the Biblical story itself functioning as an archetypal example of how environmental apocalypse purges societal failings. Noah articulates this idea after his second dream-like vision of the Ark, stating ‘fire consumes all. Water cleanses, […] destroys all, but only to start again’. The final images of resolution bring heteronormativity and societal renewal together, with Noah’s family living below a green mountain much like Methuselah’s earlier sanctuary from Cain’s industrial civilisation, and with Noah instructing his progeny to ‘replenish the Earth’. A transcendent aerial shot sweeps around them, and around flocks of birds, before moving up towards a sun pumping out halos of rainbow light. The Core is atypical in the sense that its main protagonist is not the father of a fragmented family. His narrative trajectory still points towards the idea of building a family, however, with his early statement ‘I’m married to my work’ eventually replaced by a kiss with Beck, after they restore power on the stranded Virgil. With this heteronormative component downplayed, the film stresses the social virtues of self-sacrifices that rebuild broken connections to the natural world. For example, Josh plugs his oxygen tube into Braz’s (Delroy Lindo) oxygen-powered cutter, so that his colleague can free Virgil when it is trapped, but Josh survives this incident. Braz then sacrifices himself by volunteering to manually release the modules needed to activate the nuclear weapons that will restart the core, which involves subjecting himself to lethally hot temperatures.

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 183 Josh has a second attempt at self-sacrifice when he is crushed by one of the nuclear weapon casings, and tells Zimsky to leave him behind as there is no time for a rescue. Pilot Beck then has to lurch Virgil to the side, which frees Josh and instead pins Zimsky, who now sacrifices himself by telling Josh to leave. Josh’s third attempted self-sacrifice, with Beck, involves using Virgil’s nuclear core to increase the impact of the last explosion, meaning they have no fuel to escape. But even this third attempt is overcome, as he works out how to use Virgil’s unobtanium shell to get back to the surface. Another character’s self-sacrifice is filtered explicitly through Symbolic heteronormativity. As Josh comes round from his first near self-sacrifice, his colleague Serge (Tcheky Karyo) says that thinking about saving the whole world is too much, and he just thinks about saving three people – his wife and two children. When the rear segment of Virgil is about to break off and be destroyed, Serge stays behind to get the nuclear codes they will need to restart the core. He manages to pass a book with important formulas in it to Josh, and after Serge has died, Josh looks through this to see, in addition to the formulas, a child’s drawing labelled ‘Papa’ and a photograph of Serge’s wife and children. Josh berates Beck for not endangering the mission to save Serge, and she replies that Serge died ‘not [to save] the whole world, Josh. Just three of ’em’. The Core is also a film that depicts a technological solution to the natural disaster, as the scientific mission manages to restart the core’s rotation. This solution restores broken bonds with nature, which are depicted through the monstrous behaviour of birds in Trafalgar Square, and unexplained cases of whale and dolphin beachings. The final means to find Virgil, stranded on the seabed, is through the vessel’s weak sonar signals that are repeated by a pod of aquatic mammals, with the team’s computer scientist Rat (D.J. Qualls) – himself named after an animal – realising this and joyously shouting ‘they’re singing to them. You gotta find the whales!’ Like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, The Core ends by looking at the Earth from space, dissolving from an image of the world on a computer screen on which Rat is transmitting information about the unseen heroics of Virgil’s crew, to a God’s eye view of the gently and benevolently spinning Earth.

Symbolic resolutions may reinforce the illusion of the spectator’s perceptual mastery The previous chapter demonstrated that many components of Symbolic resolutions in environmental disaster films function within the context of perceptual knowledge, so that the spectator is granted mastery over knowing how disrupted families will be reconstructed, and so on. The environmental apocalypse films analysed in this chapter have a somewhat different approach to perceptual knowledge about Symbolic resolutions, in the sense that they do not focus so much on allowing the spectator to see possible resolutions before characters do, and instead focus on the transcendent aspect of the resolutions themselves. In part, this is a matter of the films’ emphasis, so that The Impossible and The Perfect Storm,

184 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ for example, downplay transcendent spectacle in favour of perceptual knowledge. The films analysed in this chapter do not display a similar reticence to linger over the spectacle of destruction and survival, so that they activate different spectatorial responses that nevertheless still reinforce the ideological illusion of the spectator’s Cartesian centrality. If perceptual knowledge and spectacle are both strategies that can position the spectator as locus of meaning, and a film based on recent real-life events chooses to respectfully refuse to indulge one of these strategies, then it is necessary for that film to activate the other strategy all the more frequently and intensively. The films discussed in this chapter display no such reticence, and therefore place less emphasis on perceptual mastery over Symbolic resolutions. That is not to see that there are no examples of this kind of perceptual mastery in environmental apocalypse films. As with examples discussed in the previous chapter, these films can set up various Symbolic relationships between characters, have these characters display uncertainty about the safety and/or whereabouts of other characters, and provide the spectator with this information instantaneously. When Noah fears that his son Ham and stepdaughter Ila may be lost in Tubalcain’s camp, for example, he instructs Shem (Douglas Booth) to find them, while crosscutting provides this information to the spectator. In The Day After Tomorrow, when Jack tells Sam, over the telephone, that he must stay within the shelter of the library, Sam struggles to stay above rising water and complete the conversation. Jack conveys important information to his son, but the dialogue is cut short when water envelops Sam. His parents, on the other end of the line do not know that he has survived, but crosscutting allows the spectator to see that Sam has not drowned, after a suitable (and masochistic) deferral where Laura stares at the flooded corridor from which he eventually emerges. The aforementioned scene in Geostorm, where the command centre and Hannah watch screens showing them that the space station with Jake aboard has been destroyed, and then that a small object has escaped the blast, temporarily aligns the spectator’s lack of knowledge with the characters’ lack of knowledge. However, even this alignment privileges the spectator, and emphasises Jake and Hannah’s pending Symbolic resolution. Prior to the destruction, the spectator has seen Jake and Ute try to get onto the satellite which the characters and spectator will subsequently see. None of the characters had seen this attempt, however, so that when the characters are shown responding to the space station’s destruction with what they think is definitive grief, the spectator knows that there is at least a possibility that Jake may have escaped. More important than these examples of perceptual mastery over Symbolic resolutions, though, are those Symbolic resolutions that focus on the Earth’s restored benevolence, following the narrowly averted apocalypse. As discussed in the previous chapter, environmental disaster films also focus on a restored and renewed society following disaster, but environmental apocalypse films place additional emphasis on this element, because the scale of the disaster (or threatened scale of the disaster) is so much greater, and there is therefore more potential for a fresh start that resolves various perceived societal weaknesses. The final images of 2012, The Day After Tomorrow and The Core, in particular,

Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ 185 demonstrate both images of a restored Earth, seen from high above, representing a reinvigorated society, and a perceptual transcendence, with the spectator positioned over and above this newly balanced relationship between humanity and nature.

Summary As with the environmental disaster films analysed in the previous chapter, the environmental apocalypse films discussed here are sublimated returns of repressed anxieties about anthropogenic environmental degradation which both depict ecological catastrophes as threats and simultaneously grant formal and narrative resolutions to these threats. These films are thereby expressions of our culture’s political-ecological unconscious. They allow the spectator to experience a perceptual mastery over these threats, unconsciously normalising the same Cartesian illusion of the human subject’s centrality that facilitates realworld ecological degradation. This same Cartesian illusion is also normalised through spectacles which allow the spectator to transcend the embodied limitations of the characters who are threatened by disaster, turning survival into a pleasurable form of escapism. Masochistic threats to this perceptual mastery and spectacular transcendence function as part of a repeated oscillation that reaffirms the spectator’s illusory centrality. These ideological manipulations all function within the context of the Symbolic Order, representing various societal conventions that determine the Cartesian subjectivity of the spectator as natural, immutable and desirable. The difference between the more localised disasters depicted in films discussed in the previous chapter, and the more global ones pertinent here, is largely a matter of degree. Both forms of film depict certain attitudes towards the natural world as harmful, but allow characters to escape these in various kinds of ‘lifeboats’, and simultaneously position the spectator in formal cinematic ‘lifeboats’ that reinforce an illusory complacency about the consequences of real-world environmental degradation. Those films that raise the narrative threat to the level of potential human extinction also raise the level of spectacle, although it is still possible for a film about a more localised disaster like San Andreas to also focus principally on a pleasurable spectacle of destruction. Both types of film are similar in the sense that cutting from one image of spectatorial stability that is associated with the geometric centrality of the Cartesian subject in the Symbolic Order does not reveal a Real-like glimpse of that position’s illusory nature. Instead, cutting from one position to another shows either a mastery over perceptual information grounded in a new centralised position, or an hommelette-like transcendence over bodily constraints associated with the pleasures of the Imaginary Order. There are some final conclusions to make about how this kind of filmmaking inflects our culture, and our potential responses to anthropogenic ecological degradation, but before those are made it is necessary to consider a few other forms of filmmaking that might function as counter examples to that which has

186 Environmental apocalypse and film ‘lifeboats’ been outlined here. Films that might depart from the Cartesian grammar I have outlined thus far are addressed in Chapter 7, but before that I turn to films that continue to employ a Cartesian grammar, and continue to reflect sublimated anxieties about ecological degradation, but which focus on the dystopian consequences of having survived apocalypse, rather than on the utopian act of surviving the apocalypse.

Notes 1 The film first depicts the effects of the cessation of the core’s movement through a more subtle breakdown in various animals’ natural behaviour. The main focus of this, in a reference to how Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) depicts the breakdown of the natural order, is a scene in London’s Trafalgar Square where pigeons become (accidentally) destructively monstrous, with multiple shots of birds smashing through office windows, a taxi windscreen, a bus window, and finally, in repeated shots and in slow motion, the large windows of a theatre where people have run for shelter. Amongst the confusion, two people cover a damaged eye, reprising the infamous scene in Hitchcock’s film where a farmer is found with an eye eaten away. The Trafalgar Square sequence had also begun from the birds’ perspective, from the top of Nelson’s Column, like another famous scene in The Birds, where the camera adopts the position of seagulls flying above Bodega Bay, after a petrol station explodes. In The Core’s next scene, Josh tries to link the events he is seeing on the news with the deaths of people with pacemakers, which he had discovered earlier, and asks his research students to investigate cases of ostensibly ‘unnatural’ whale and dolphin beachings, although these are not shown in the manner that they are in World War Z, as discussed in Chapter 2. 2 2012 is also masochistically reflexive because it was released in 2009, three years before the events depicted in the film which refer approximately to real-world predictions about the end of the world based on popular misunderstandings about the Mayan dating system, and which are included in the film amongst other dramatised pieces of diegetic television news footage. I have already argued that the natural catastrophes depicted in the films discussed in this chapter relate to anxiety about potential real-world apocalypse. 2012 puts this broad anxiety into a particular context, so that it begins with characters finding out about impending disaster in a fictional 2009, and stages events that the spectator watching the film in the real 2009 might have some form of more specific real-world anxiety about.

Filmography 2012 (2009) Directed by Roland Emmerich. USA: Columbia. Birds, The (1963) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. USA: Universal. Core, The (2003) Directed by Jon Amiel. USA: Paramount. Day After Tomorrow, The (2004) Directed by Roland Emmerich. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. Geostorm (2017) Directed by Dean Devlin. USA: Warner Bros. Impossible, The (2012) Directed by J.A. Bayona. Spain: Telecinco Cinema. Noah (2014) Directed by Darren Aronofsky. USA: Paramount. World War Z (2013) Directed by Marc Forster. USA: Paramount.

6

Survivors in post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias

The preceding chapters provided detailed examples of how films depicting the immediate act of surviving environmental disasters and apocalypses align the spectator with small groups of survivors. This alignment reinforces the illusory centrality of the spectator’s Cartesian subjectivity. The films resolve their fictional disasters in various different ways, but a common theme is the triumphant ending of conflict between humanity and nature, with all that is best about mankind’s Symbolic Order restored and reinvigorated by the end of the film. This chapter considers films that are set some time after fictional apocalyptic disasters which in one way or another relate to contemporary anxieties about anthropogenic ecological degradation. As such, these films are also expressions of our culture’s political-ecological unconscious. These films potentially challenge some of the conventions that I have discussed in previous chapters, however, because utopian resolutions to environmental apocalypses may be replaced with dystopian accounts of what happens to survivors and/or their descendants. For E. Ann Kaplan, this means that these films can be defined as “the genre of pretrauma cinema” (2016: 23–24), both because the films refer to future events “as they are imagined on film before they happen in reality” (24, original emphasis), and because these fictional events are a product of what Kaplan has “called ‘cultural trauma’, when people live in fear of imminent disaster and fears of future threat dominate consciousness” (24). It is significant that Kaplan does not include the kind of environmental disaster and apocalypse films I have analysed in the preceding chapters in this ‘pretrauma’ genre, because these too represent events “imagined on film before they happen in reality”, but Kaplan does not categorise these films as being similarly traumatic, so that her ‘pretrauma’ genre is confined to films where “viewers witness probable futurist dystopian worlds” (24, my emphasis). There is an important difference, then, in terms of what kind of trauma is evoked by these two categories of film; between the way that the films discussed in the preceding chapters end with utopian resolutions, and the sustained dystopias of what Kaplan calls the ‘pretrauma’ genre. As the following discussion demonstrates, this dystopianism is tempered in various ways, but if I have made the broad argument that the act of surviving environmental apocalypse is generally depicted as a triumphant transcendence over nature’s destructive powers, then DOI: -7

188 Post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias films set after such apocalypses have the potential to subvert this transcendence, and depict the consequences of survival as unpleasurable and continuing traumatic struggles against the powers of nature. The chapter follows the structure set out in the previous two, although space limitations mean that it only analyses four as opposed to five films in detail. This is a more limited corpus, but it nevertheless demonstrates some different strategies that films can use to negotiate the issues I am interested in. These films are Waterworld (Reynolds 1995), set on a future Earth drowned by global warming, in which a wanderer who has evolved gills and is known only as The Mariner (Kevin Costner) attempts to protect a young girl from pirates; The Road (Hillcoat 2009), in which an unnamed Man (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) try to avoid cannibals in a world devastated by an unspecified ecological collapse; Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller 2015), which is the latest instalment of a franchise set in a dystopian future Australia dominated by savage road warriors; and 28 Days Later (Boyle 2002), in which humanity’s hubristic attempts to tamper with ‘nature’ unleash an apocalyptic virus that turns people into zombies. The categories discussed in the previous two chapters are applied to these films in the form of questions, to determine how post-apocalyptic films relate to my overall argument, thus:  

Do ‘natural’ disasters have sublimated human causes? What are the relationships between how the spectator and characters perceive threats? a b c d

    

Does the spectator perceive what characters cannot perceive? Does the spectator perceive what certain characters cannot or will not perceive, but other characters do perceive? Does the spectator not perceive the impending threat, and experience shock? Is the spectator subjected to confusing imagery while characters are confused?

Does the spectator have traumatic threats displaced only after disastrous/ post-apocalyptic events end? Does the spectator pleasurably transcend the destruction/post-apocalyptic spectacle? Is the spectator threatened directly (though vicariously), and is this threat then displaced? Are the spectator’s oscillations between different categories masochistic? Do narrative resolutions operate within the context of the Symbolic Order?

Do ‘natural’ disasters have sublimated human causes? Like the films discussed in the preceding chapters, films set in post-apocalyptic wastelands frequently position the events leading to this situation in

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environmental contexts with either explicit or sublimated human causes. Waterworld makes the most direct connections between the post-apocalyptic future and contemporary concerns about anthropogenic climate change. Before the film proper begins, the Universal production company’s introduction sequence moves over the surface of the spinning globe, as with any other film produced by Universal, but then moves in towards Antarctica, where the ice melts and covers the land. Although the opening voice-over’s verbal repetition of this image – ‘the future: the polar ice caps have melted, covering the Earth with water’ – does not directly state that this flooding was caused by humanity, the film does go on to link the antagonists with environmentally damaging technology. These pirates are called ‘smokers’, and they use jet skis, boats, and an airplane which all billow black clouds, frequently covering their skin in soot. Their base, moreover, is the hulk of the Exxon Valdez, so that they are associated with an existing real-world example of industrial environmental disaster. Mad Max: Fury Road also connects a fictional dystopia with human behaviour, with Max’s (Tom Hardy) opening voice-over grunting ‘oil wars. […] The world is running out of water. […] Thermonuclear skirmish. The earth is sour’. In so doing, Max refers to a nuclear war context that relates to, but is also potentially somewhat dissimilar from, contemporary anxieties about climate change, industrial pollution, and so on, but even if this reference muddies the waters somewhat, it is accompanied by more explicitly environmental concerns about pollution and the burning of carbon. Of all the films discussed here, 28 Days Later ostensibly has the least explicitly environmental dystopia, but the film nevertheless begins by invoking a binary opposition between humanity and nature, and by suggesting that human behaviour contaminates nature to make it monstrous. The opening images are documentary clips of human violence, and these clips often focus on the specifically political (that is the specifically human) components of violence, so that riot police charge into protestors, civilians duck to avoid the violence of war, men beat a body hanging for some unspecified crime, and so on. The camera moves back to show chimpanzees strapped down and forced to watch this very human form of violence, and a zombie outbreak then begins when animal rights protestors release these chimpanzees which are ‘infected’ with a ‘rage virus’ that turns them, and subsequently humans, into mindless murderers. The Road has a dystopia that is more specifically about ecological degradation, but it does not explicitly state that this degradation was caused by humanity. The film makes clear juxtapositions, however, between the pre-apocalyptic benevolence of nature, and the devastating consequences of how this collapses following an unspecific apocalypse. The opening scene has a bright colour palette, and begins with images of green leaves, and then flowers, and then humans in and amongst nature, with the protagonist Man butting his head up against a horse’s. The camera is then positioned inside a building, with a door closing on a mass of flowers outside, and the rest of the film is set amongst a desaturated environment in which, as Man’s opening voice-over puts it, ‘each day is more grey than the one before […] as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived. All the crops have

190 Post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias long gone. Soon all the trees in the world will fall’. Trees are then shown falling, and other images suggesting nature gone awry that have been discussed in other films in the previous chapters are repeated, so that a forest burns, and the skeleton of a whale has been washed up on a beach. And, as with Noah, discussed in the previous chapter, the film associates cannibalism with alienation from the environment.

What are the relationships between how the spectator and characters perceive threats? These films, then, are concerned with some of the same broad anxieties about ecological degradation which inform the environmental disaster and apocalypse films discussed in the previous chapters. There are three principal areas in which post-apocalyptic films differ from the previously discussed films, however. The first of these differences concerns a hierarchy of perceptual knowledge. As discussed, films depicting environmental disasters and apocalypses frequently allow the spectator to see impending threats before any characters, or along with characters who are warning others about those threats. This is one of the ideological effects of such films – they reinforce an illusory Cartesian centrality which suggests that the spectator is the locus of all meaning and perception, so that just as the spectator can see a fictional disaster before it comes, and/or is aligned with the survivors who also have perceptual knowledge that disaster is coming, so too the spectator is encouraged to believe that (s)he would also see signs of an impending real-world disaster. The films discussed in this chapter are set in the aftermath of such disasters, so that no warnings about an impending environmental catastrophe are given to either spectator or certain characters. As such, these films might be less ideological and less ecologically damaging, because they do not suggest that natural disasters can be survived through perceptual knowledge. This section therefore manipulates the previous two chapters’ explanation of how the spectator can be granted and/or deferred/denied perceptual mastery over disastrous events into the following questions: 1 2 3 4

Does the spectator perceive what characters cannot perceive? Does the spectator perceive what certain characters cannot or will not perceive, but other characters do perceive? Does the spectator not perceive the impending threat, and experience shock? Is the spectator subjected to confusing imagery while characters are confused?

These films do have examples of a spectatorial perceptual mastery over and above the perceptual faculties of any characters, but this mastery refers to events which are enacted by people rather than events which are enacted by violent nature. For example, Waterworld shows the spectator threats to principal characters before those characters see them, so that when The Mariner first dives underwater, the camera remains above water to show hands entering into shot

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to steal limes from his one and only plant. Slightly later, when smokers attack the atoll where The Mariner is imprisoned, an objective shot shows many smokers on boats backlit by a huge rising sun. A dissolve to the atoll, with a lookout surveying an empty sea, shows a much smaller rising sun in the distance, with the smokers’ vessels too far away to be seen by this character. Mad Max: Fury Road, too, shows the spectator events enacted by certain characters that are unseen by other characters. For example, when War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult) is still allied to the authoritarian tyrant Immortan Joe’s (Hugh Keays-Byrne) pursuit of Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who is trying to liberate Joe’s wives, the spectator sees that Nux, previously thrown out of his pursuing vehicle, has managed to climb onto the back of Furiosa’s war rig, unseen by anyone on board. Similarly, when Max and Furiosa reluctantly join together to escape this pursuit, Max climbs onto the top of the rig, allowing Furiosa to pull a knife out of the top of her gearstick, showing the spectator that she has a means to attack him if necessary. 28 Days Later allows the spectator to see animal rights activists arriving at the chimpanzees’ lab on a CCTV monitor, but no-one in the lab sees this, so that when a scientist does enter the room he is surprised, and unable to stop the release of the chimps. The first scene after this prologue privileges the spectator’s perception in a manner that comes close to the signs of impending environmental disaster discussed in the previous chapters. This is because the threat that is unseen by a character falls somewhere between being another dangerous character and a dangerous force of nature – as mentioned above, the film’s zombies represent anxiety about humanity’s relationships with nature. So, text on screen signals that it is 28 days after the chimps first infect people, and Jim (Cillian Murphy) is shown waking from a coma in a hospital. He wanders through a desolate London repeatedly shouting ‘hello’, which the spectator knows is a bad idea, because the spectator has seen the prologue in which the ‘rage’ virus was unleashed. Jim and the spectator see the first batch of zombies in a church at the same time, but the spectator suspects that the motionless bodies lying on pews may be zombies, whereas Jim says ‘hello’, alerting them to his presence, and they chase after him. The Road, too, shows the spectator threats from certain characters which are unseen by other characters. When the Man swims out from a beach to a ship to search for supplies, an unusual shot moves up slightly over a sand dune behind the Boy, and shakes a little, signalling that this is someone’s stealthy point-of-view. The fact that this point-of-view belongs to an antagonist is demonstrated soon after by a shot of someone approaching the sleeping Boy, framed from the waist down, and holding a knife. An axial cut moves closer into this threatening weapon. When the Boy wakes, his tent and possessions have all been stolen. The films discussed in the previous two chapters all have certain characters who perceive and warn about impending disasters, and the spectator’s perception can be aligned with theirs. The post-apocalyptic films analysed here are set in fictional worlds where the disaster has already occurred, so that there are no

192 Post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias similar characters perceiving and warning about environmental disasters with whom the spectator’s perception can be aligned. Nevertheless, post-apocalyptic films can still align the spectator’s perception with the perception of certain characters in ways that allow the characters to avoid and survive dangers other than those posed by environmental disasters. In Waterworld, for example, the leader of the smokers, The Deacon (Dennis Hopper), sets a trap for The Mariner, killing the inhabitants of a floating platform, but using ropes and pulleys to move their arms in order to appear like they are waving to their friend. Reaction shots of The Mariner suggest that he is suspicious, and he looks through both a traditional and an underwater telescope to see the antagonists pulling at the pulleys and preparing to attack from underwater jet skis. This perceptual information is shared with the spectator via point-of-view shots through both telescopes. In The Road, perceptual alignment with characters is used more to present ambiguous perceptual information than to allow the spectator a definitive perceptual mastery. When the Boy sees another child, for example, this other character is only shown to the spectator in two brief glimpses, and the Man prevents his son from pursuing what might be a trap, so that neither the protagonists nor the spectator are given a more definitive sight of this other character. Slightly later, the Man and Boy shelter in an underground bunker, and hear voices and a dog barking above, but neither they nor the spectator see whether these people are a potential threat or potential allies. More frequently, the film allows the spectator to see threats only at the same time as those threats become imminent for the characters, so that the Man and Boy see decapitated heads on sticks, blood on the ground, and then a group of cannibals chasing a woman and a child, at the same time as the spectator is shown these objects and events. The film generally uses this close alignment of characters’ and the spectator’s perception to generate suspense, inviting the question ‘will the protagonists escape from this threat which has not yet seen them?’ Earlier scenes where a group of potentially dangerous men appear out of a tunnel, or when cannibals return to the house in which the Man and Boy have just discovered chained human livestock in the basement, repeat this suspense, so that the protagonists see the impending threat just in time to hide, but it is temporarily unclear whether they will hide successfully or not. But this close alignment of the protagonists’ perception with the spectator’s perception can also include more definitive moments of shock, such as when an unexpected arrow strikes the Man, without any signal having been given to either the protagonists or the spectator that an archer was preparing to shoot. Indeed, in this example, the shock is increased through juxtaposition, because the Man and Boy had just found a beetle, the first animal they or the spectator have seen since the apocalypse, so that they are distracted by a sign of hope. This kind of explicit shock based on a gap in the spectator’s perceptual mastery is a rare exception to The Road’s more subtly suspenseful relationships between the spectator’s and the protagonists’ perception, and the other films discussed in this chapter generally follow this logic too. In Waterworld, for

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example, the aforementioned sequence where The Mariner dives underwater and the spectator sees a thief board his boat is reprised later when the smokers track him down. This time, however, the camera follows The Mariner underwater, and does not cut back to the surface to show the smokers’ approach. When The Mariner resurfaces the camera tilts up to show the smokers’ boats behind him at the same time as he turns to see this himself. This is not precisely a moment of rapid shock, but it is an example of a gap in the spectator’s perception which is aligned with a character who also does not perceive the impending threat. Indeed, when the film does include a moment that is closer to a genuine shock, it does so in a manner that the protagonist knew would come. So, when The Mariner jumps overboard to catch food, and a sea monster, unseen yet by the spectator, lurches up at him, The Mariner is prepared for this, and kills the monster for food. 28 Days Later is also somewhat ambiguous about how it presents shocking moments. When Jim uses candlelight to move around a house at night, for example, an external shot from the street jerks sideways towards the light, and the camera then rushes towards the window. This shaking and movement suggests that the shot is a zombie’s point-of-view, and this suggestion is confirmed when a zombie crashes through the window to attack Jim. This all happens incredibly fast, however, preventing any sustained sense of suspense, so that even if the spectator is somewhat less shocked than Jim, this is still a violent irruption of movement into an otherwise still scene. Somewhat later this kind of distinction between suspense and shock is even clearer when Jim stops at a roadside building to search for supplies. The suspenseful suggestion that he may soon be attacked is indicated by the darkness of the room, by camera movements around him positioned behind shelves, by the fact that he holds his shirt to his nose to cover the smell of decay, and then by a bloody body on the floor confirming that an attack has occurred here at some point. A boy zombie then drops down behind a medium close-up of Jim, and the camera quickly switches to a reverse shot behind the zombie which moves towards its prey. Both of these shots signal the impending attack to the spectator, while Jim continues to be unaware, but the rapid editing makes them function more as a shock that had been pointed towards by the suspenseful imagery, even though the spectator is shocked by this before the character, and therefore has more perceptual information than Jim does. The rapidity of sequences like this contributes towards a confusing form of imagery, which operates in these post-apocalyptic films much like similar confusing sequences in the films discussed in the preceding chapters. That is, characters may be temporarily confused by bewildering events, and the film temporarily aligns the spectator’s perception with the characters’ perception by utilising appropriately confusing imagery. In 28 Days Later this begins in the prologue, when an infected chimpanzee first attacks a human, turning her into a zombie. The camera rapidly oscillates between positions aligned with the attacker and the attacked, it shakes up and down and from side to side to signal the struggles of biter and bitten, utilising darkness and red light to create a

194 Post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias confusion of blood, and canted angles to suggest extreme abnormality. This technique is used throughout the film during the various zombie attacks, and escapes from the zombies use similar techniques, such as when Jim and Selena (Naomie Harris) run away up a stairwell in a block of flats, and the camera represents their panic by rapidly cutting between them and the pursuing zombies, and swirling and shaking around them. The various ways in which these examples arrange hierarchies of perceptual knowledge have some similarities with those analysed in the preceding chapters, but also some differences. They are different in two senses. First, films depicting ecological disasters and apocalypses place much more emphasis on providing the spectator with perceptual information signalling impending dangers than films set in the post-apocalyptic wastelands following disasters. Second, films depicting ecological disasters and apocalypses provide the spectator with perceptual information about specifically environmental threats – volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, and so on – whereas films set in the post-apocalyptic wastelands following these disasters provide perceptual information about non-environmental threats – most specifically antagonists, with zombies functioning as liminal threats halfway between an antagonist and a destructive environmental force. In both these senses, post-apocalyptic films are less ideological than the films discussed in the preceding chapters, because they do not as frequently suggest that the spectator has a form of perception which can transcend the real-world constraints of the embodied subject, and because when they do make such a suggestion the spectator’s perceptual mastery is not as directly associated with an ability to foresee impending ecological disasters. Nevertheless, these post-apocalyptic films still do employ instances of spectatorial perceptual mastery, and these instances still reinforce the illusion of the Cartesian subject’s perceptual centrality. This is no surprise, because I have argued that all realist film partakes in and reinforces this Cartesian illusion. These post-apocalyptic films may be less ideological than the films discussed in the preceding chapters, therefore, but they are still ideological. Indeed, these films can still fetishise the perceptual powers of the Cartesian subject. Waterworld, for example, imposes a clear lack of vision on its main antagonist. When the smokers first attack the atoll, and The Mariner escapes with Enola (Tina Majorino), a girl who has a map pointing to the plenitude of ‘Dryland’ tattooed on her back, The Deacon loses an eye when his boat is blown up by his own underling, who himself did not see semaphore flags ordering him to ceasefire. Telling the smokers to find Enola and the mutant Mariner she has escaped with, The Deacon states that they should ‘keep an eye out for that ichthy-freak’, whilst lifting an eyepatch to reveal his useless eye. In The Road, vision is fetishised by linking its absence with death. Flashbacks show how the Boy’s mother (Charlize Theron) surrendered hope and set out from shelter one night to kill herself. The Man implores her not to go, saying ‘you can’t even see out there’. ‘I don’t need to’, she replies, and the Man’s voice-over then comments that ‘she died somewhere in the dark’, so that the subject’s survival requires perception, whereas the subject’s annihilation does not.

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Does the spectator have traumatic threats displaced only after disastrous/post-apocalyptic events end? Chapter 4 makes a distinction between two broad approaches to representing how characters respond to disasters. The first approach is mostly restricted to films based on recent real-world events, with catastrophes portrayed through a temporary confusion for characters and spectator alike, which only ends once the depicted disaster stops. The second (and more frequent) approach depicts the characters’ survival as a pleasurable transcendence over and above the destruction. The post-apocalyptic films discussed in this chapter also utilise these two broad strategies, in various ways, but they also include a bleakness that is more associated with the former strategy, as though the films owe some kind of respectful reticence about depicting the fate of the future survivors of a real-world apocalypse as a pleasurable spectacle. This is an important difference between the films discussed here and those that depict the act of surviving disasters and apocalypses. As discussed in the preceding chapters, such films end with utopian visions of renewal and reinvigoration – surviving the catastrophe may have been tough, and lots of people didn’t make it, but those who did survive have purged society of its worst excesses, and look forward to rebuilding civilisation with hope. The films discussed in this chapter are set in the aftermath of various ecological apocalypses, but they do not share this utopianiam, and are instead dominated by a melancholy dystopianism that potentially mitigates against some of the ideological effects of the films discussed in the preceding chapters. Thus, survival in these post-apocalyptic films is less a means to an end – the pleasurable utopian cessation of disastrous events that characters struggle against – and more the continuous unpleasurable existential state of being in the fictional dystopia. Max’s opening voice-over in Fury Road is therefore ‘I exist in this wasteland. A man reduced to a single instinct: survive’. This instinct dehumanises those who are ‘reduced’ to it. In The Road, as mentioned above, this dehumanisation reduces people to being potential food for cannibals. In Fury Road, this dehumanisation reduces Max to being a blood bag connected intravenously to feed the War Boys. Many characters in these films prefer to die rather than merely survive like this. As mentioned above, in The Road, the Boy’s mother kills herself, telling the Man ‘I don’t want to just survive’. The Boy states that he wishes he, too, was dead. Perhaps most unpleasurably, the Man prepares to kill himself and his son to prevent their capture, keeping his last two bullets for this purpose. He teaches his son to hold the gun in his mouth, and his voice-over asks the spectator to consider the almost incomprehensibly traumatic problem of ‘when it comes to the Boy I have only one question: can you do it, when the time comes?’ The shift from first person to second person, here, extends the unpleasure more directly to the spectator, so that the question is posed to ‘I’ – the character, the Man – but the necessary event is to be enacted by ‘you’ – the spectator. Thus, if a fictional apocalypse like 2012 aligns the spectator with a protagonist who transcends destruction, The Road closely aligns the spectator with a protagonist who cannot escape post-apocalyptic trauma.

196 Post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias Waterworld and 28 Days Later are both less melancholy films, partly because of spectacular components that I discuss shortly, but they too have characters who prefer death to survival. In the first of these films, an old man (William Preston) confined to the bowels of the Exxon Valdez to monitor its oil levels, welcomes a fire ball that engulfs him with a whispered ‘thank God!’ In the latter film, after waking from his coma, Jim travels to his parents’ home to find them lying dead in bed. A suicide note to their son which states ‘don’t wake up’ expresses their opinion that survival, so central to the pleasures in the films discussed in the preceding chapters, is a fate worse than death. It is also the case, however, that these films have various different narrative conclusions which alleviate this pessimistic approach to survival in various different ways. Given that these conclusions relate to the Symbolic Order, I address these below, in order to follow the structure set out in the preceding two chapters as closely as possible. In addition, and despite the more melancholy tone of many post-apocalyptic films, it is also possible for this pessimism to be mitigated by a similar kind of spectatorial transcendence over fictional life or death events.

Does the spectator pleasurably transcend the destruction/postapocalyptic spectacle? Much like the above discussion about how these post-apocalyptic films grant the spectator various forms of spectatorial mastery, but this mastery does not directly relate to warnings about impending environmental disasters, so too these post-apocalyptic films feature pleasurable transcendences of bodily constraints which allow the spectator to safely observe dangerous events from various disembodied positions, but such transcendences do not directly relate to environmental disasters. That is, the characters in these films may escape from dangers, and the spectator may pleasurably observe this escape from various positions of safety which would be impossible to occupy in real life, but the characters are escaping from the actions of other humans (or liminal zombies) rather than from violent nature in the form of volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, and so on. As such, these post-apocalyptic films are less ideological than the films discussed in the preceding chapters, because they do not suggest that the spectator could pleasurably survive a real-world environmental disaster. At the same time, however, they are still ideological because they continue to suggest that the spectator can pleasurably survive less explicitly environmental threats, and this illusion continues to reinforce the spectator’s Cartesian subjectivity. An additional distinction relates to something that I have already briefly mentioned, and which repeats a distinction I identified in Chapter 4 between films based on recent real-world events, such as The Impossible, and those films not based on such events. The Impossible stages an environmental disaster which devastates the protagonists, but out of respect for the real-world survivors it does not include pleasurable spectatorial transcendences over and above the devastation, as most of the films I discuss in this book do. Although a film like

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The Road does not relate to a recent real-world disaster, because it is set in a future dystopia not directly based on any existing real-world events, it displays a similar reticence to depict the characters’ struggles in a pleasurably transcendent manner. The Road therefore portrays the survival experiences of the protagonists as entirely traumatic, without any pleasurable lingering over the danger and destruction. Despite the fact that the other films analysed in this chapter also depict a similarly (though in some ways less) bleak dystopian future, they do represent specific experiences of surviving various near-death encounters as spectatorially pleasurable spectacles. Indeed, a film like Mad Max: Fury Road devotes most of its running time to spectacles of combat and narrow survival from combat. Numerous sequences show Furiosa’s war rig being chased by Immortan Joe and his War Boys driving motorbikes, cars and monster trucks. The camera transcends bodily constraints by cutting and sweeping around these carefully choreographed spectacles, and slow motion is used at points to linger over the beauty of stunts and explosions. Waterworld also has numerous disembodied spectacles, with the camera cutting and sweeping around chasing boats. Explosions, such as that at the culmination of the smokers’ attack on the atoll, are shown via repeat cuts from several angles. As with Mad Max: Fury Road, these spectacles do not directly relate to a narrative escape from a natural disaster, but Waterworld actually depicts the narratively bleak post-apocalyptic world as transcendently beautiful, when the camera glides around The Mariner’s boat as it sails into a watery sunset. This sequence, moreover, occurs just after the aforementioned moment where The Deacon cannot see where The Mariner has escaped to, so that the spectator’s transcendent position over and above the escaping boat also emphasises the knowledge aspect of the spectator’s perceptual mastery. In this sense, Waterworld may not be as ideological as those films that position the spectator alongside those who experience and survive environmental disasters and apocalypses, but it compensates for this deficiency by allowing the spectator to experience the transcendent beauty of the future dystopia. The film also closely connects the spectator’s transcendence of space with the main protagonist. Most frequently, this is shown through the way that The Mariner uses ropes and pulleys on his boat to swing around from vessel to vessel, or up onto a wall to open the sealed gate to the atoll, from which he needs to escape. The climax of this connection between spectatorial movement and The Mariner’s movement comes in the final conflict with The Deacon, when this antagonist and two of his henchmen drive three different jet skis towards their target Enola, who is flailing in the water. The Mariner is high above in a hot air balloon, and he uses a bungee rope to dive down, grab Enola, and then bounce back up to the balloon so that the three jet skis crash into one another. The protagonist and spectator both thereby transcend traditional spatial constraints, and contrast their transcendence with the antagonists, who are punished by death for their inability to do likewise.

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Is the spectator threatened directly (though vicariously), and is this threat then displaced? The preceding two chapters provided examples of how transcendent spectacles also include moments where the camera position is directly threatened and sometimes struck by the damaging effects of the depicted disasters. Such oscillations between ‘safe’ and ‘threatened’ spectatorial positions function within the masochistic context that I address in the next section. Post-apocalyptic films can also incorporate threats to the spectator’s position as part of their spectacles. Indeed, it is possible for these direct threats to occur even in films which eschew transcendent spectacle. As discussed above, The Road has no such pleasurable transcendences over destructive events, but it does include one example of a direct threat to the camera position. The Man and Boy are hiding from cannibals pursuing a woman and child, when a dead tree falls, threatening to crush them. The camera occupies a low angle looking up at the falling tree, but is positioned so that a fork in the tree trunk means that the space around the camera is impacted, but the camera position itself isn’t. This qualifies, therefore, as a narrow miss, rather than a direct impact on the spectator’s position. Nevertheless, this example comes closer to those discussed in the preceding two chapters than the other examples analysed below, because the threat that is posed is explicitly environmental, with this single dead tree part of the film’s broader dystopia in which all of ‘nature’ has died. Even this threat from nature is less ideological than the threats posed in the films discussed in the previous two chapters, however, because being threatened by an earthquake or tsunami is depicted as a temporary assault from nature, which subsequently ends. The Road’s falling tree, on the other hand, is part of a continuing dystopia, rather than a temporary disaster that will soon cease. Post-apocalyptic films make typically less overt connections between threats to the spectator’s position and explicitly environmental issues. At times, there are sublimated connections, such as when an explosion of the oil inside the Exxon Valdez, in Waterworld, engulfs the camera. This event mirrors and exaggerates the environmental damage caused by the real-world Exxon Valdez, so that this assault on the spectator is not quite the same as a natural disaster like an earthquake or tsunami, but the assault relates to ecological issues in a not particularly subtle manner. More often, threats to and assaults on the camera have no (or at least far less clear) connections to ecological issues. It is the case, as with the threats to the spectator discussed in the preceding chapters, that such assaults are quickly transcended by cutting to positions of safety. This applies to the Exxon Valdez example, where the image of the camera engulfed in flames is almost instantly replaced with slow motion repeat cuts from numerous angles, including an extreme long shot from above. Mad Max: Fury Road also utilises this strategy, such as when motorbikes chase Furiosa’s war rig, and one crashes underneath the rig’s wheels. The camera occupies a position underneath the rig, with the bike’s debris rushing towards the spectator’s position, before a cut along the rig’s 180° axis shows the debris moving away from the

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camera. Moments later, a fuel pod pulled by the rig crashes into the camera’s position when it comes loose, but the pod is shown exploding from another, objective, position. It is certainly possible to argue that the motorbike and fuel pod relate to ecological issues, particularly given the film’s connection between ‘oil wars’ and dystopia, as discussed above. Nevertheless, the somewhat visceral nature of these threats connects more to sensations of being crushed and killed by metal vehicles than threats connected to explicitly natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis. In the rapidity of the spectacular experience, then, the spectator is not being encouraged to worry about environmental disaster in the same manner as (s)he is by a film like 2012, and this makes Mad Max: Fury Road less ideological because it doesn’t as directly suggest that the spectator could survive a real-world ecological disaster. Nevertheless, the oscillation from ‘threatened’ to ‘safe’ positions is still ideological, because it reinforces the sense that the spectator is the centralised locus of meaning and perception. The film’s final example of a strike against the spectator’s position demonstrates the extent to which the assault on the spectator’s position can shift from something threatening into something transcendentally beautiful. Nux, now turned against Joe’s totalitarian regime, deliberately overturns his war rig to block a chasm and allow his new friends to escape. The flipped vehicle rushes towards the camera, but this is delayed by the use of slow motion. A vehicle following behind, which carried a diegetic guitarist whom Joe uses to enliven chases, smashes into the rig, causing the guitar to rush forwards faster. The threat of this striking the camera is averted because it is connected to its vehicle by straps, and after moving forwards it moves back. Then, with slow motion continuing, the war rig’s steering wheel flies towards the camera, spinning to show a skull design. This finally strikes the spectator’s position, with the camera engulfed into the skull’s mouth, and the image turning to blackness, which is held for some moments. Ostensibly the debris from the vehicles threatened the spectator’s position here, but the slow motion and balletic movement of the guitar and then steering wheel suggest events unfolding for the pleasure of the spectator, rather than to harm the spectator. And, as with numerous other examples of such strikes on the camera’s position, any vicarious threat to the spectator is replaced with an objective image of safety, when the blackness is replaced by an image of a rising sun, into which the protagonists’ vehicle drives, safe.

Are the spectator’s oscillations between different categories masochistic? This kind of oscillation between threat to the spectator and to a ‘safe’ camera position beyond that threat is an example of how realist film’s pleasures are masochistic, in the sense that they stage an unpleasurable disturbance or danger which is repeatedly replaced with a pleasurable resolution to that disturbance or danger. This oscillation operates within the broader context that regulates all

200 Post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias realist film, in which the potentially unpleasurable displacement of the illusory Cartesian subject’s centrality, which is inherent to editing, is resolved by the restoration of the spectator’s centrality in the subsequent image, and is further enhanced by the manipulation of disembodied pleasures associated with the Imaginary Order. The films discussed in this chapter all follow these realist conventions. The preceding two chapters argued that films depicting environmental disasters and apocalypses are particularly masochistic because they stage unpleasures that relate to potential real-world ecological catastrophe, and suggest that such real-world unpleasures will be resolved because protagonists survive fictional versions of these potential real-world events, and because the spectator is granted an illusory transcendence over them. The films discussed in this chapter do not have narratives where the disaster or apocalypse temporarily unfolds and then ends, and are therefore less definitively masochistic in this sense, because they place less focus on the pleasurable resolution of environmental disasters. Instead, environmental disasters act as a backdrop to continuing unpleasures of various kinds, although these unpleasures still employ the kind of masochistic resolutions inherent to realist film grammar, and although they also feature various kinds of narrative resolutions, as the next section addresses. Nevertheless, it is the case that these films depict dystopian unpleasure as a form of normalcy which is very different from the films analysed in the preceding chapters. A film like 2012 follows the narrative logic of beginning with equilibrium, which is then disrupted by the disequilibrium of an ecological apocalypse, before restoring a new utopian equilibrium. The films analysed in this chapter have no similar opening pleasurable equilibrium (or at the most show a brief prologue preceding the apocalypse). Instead, the films stage an elongated unpleasurable state of survival, as I discussed above in detail. Potential resolutions to this unpleasure still make their narratives masochistic, as I address in a moment, but it is certainly the case that these films have the potential to linger over a sustained unpleasure rather than repeatedly oscillate between unpleasure and pleasure. 2012, for example, repeats this oscillation many times, with disaster followed by narrow escape staged over and over again. The post-apocalyptic films discussed in this chapter still have a masochistic architecture, but when 28 Days Later holds a freeze frame on Jim and Selena thrown forwards in a crashing taxi to defer knowledge about whether they will survive the crash, or when The Road shows the Man holding a gun to his son’s head in the desperate hope that a cannibal will not find them and force him to use it, unpleasurable lack of resolution is sustained, and pleasurable resolution minimised.

Do narrative resolutions operate within the context of the Symbolic Order? In spite of this enhanced focus on the unpleasurable component of masochism, these post-apocalyptic films continue to offer narrative resolutions that resolve masochistic tensions, and which function within the framework of the

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Symbolic Order. These resolutions operate within a broad context that reintroduces hope into ostensible hopelessness, so that the post-apocalyptic future is not entirely dystopian; and within a more specific component of this context that repeats the motif, discussed in the preceding two chapters, in which the society of the survivors purges the sins of the pre-apocalyptic society. Mad Max: Fury Road demonstrates the broader context most clearly. When Max first heard of Furiosa’s attempt to lead Joe’s wives to the ‘green place’, he told them not to try because ‘hope is a mistake’. He seems to be proved right when they find that the ‘green place’ has become a desolate swamp, but when he articulates a plan to seize Joe’s base, which has plenty of water, Nux says that the idea ‘feels like hope’. In the battle to take this prize Furiosa is badly wounded, and Max saves her by turning that which the film had set up as dehumanising into a heroic form of humanity. Previously, he had been used as an involuntary blood bag, had been called ‘blood bag’ by his captives, and had refused to answer when Furiosa asked his name. Now, he volunteers to transfuse blood into Furiosa, and whilst doing this he tells her that his name is Max, so that his ‘blood bag’ nonhumanness becomes ‘Max’ humanness when he names himself as a human subject. To emphasise the Symbolic history of this kind of self-sacrifice, moments before this he stops a crossbow bolt by holding his hand up to the shot, and continues to fight with this bolt sticking out of his palm, in a reference to Christ’s stigmata. The more specific societal renewal context of these films is grounded in the same form of Symbolic catharsis addressed in the previous two chapters, and which goes back at least as far as the Biblical Noah myth. Waterworld employs this trope most directly. The narrative consists of attempts by Enola’s friends, and then by the smokers, to decipher a map tattooed on her back that will lead to the mythical ‘Dryland’. The film ends with the protagonists arriving there via hot air balloon. Weary from thirst, they do not post a lookout, but Dryland’s plenitude is signalled to them by a bird which lands on their balloon, although this bird is a seagull as opposed to the Biblical dove. The camera moves up to show the green mountain of Dryland. Once ashore, they find the bones of Enola’s parents. With only one child, they knew that human civilisation on Dryland would end with their daughter’s death, so they sent her out to sea to bring back a sufficient number of people to, like Noah’s descendants, ‘replenish the Earth’. Even the bleakest of all these films, The Road, ends with the possibility of a similar replenishment. After the Man dies, the Boy is approached by another man who says that his family has been following them, and offering him refuge. The conclusion is ambiguous because the Boy sensibly asks whether the family will eat him, and the film does not provide the spectator with an answer to this question, but it does show the Boy greeting the new man’s spouse and two children, one boy and one girl, so that there is a possibility for this adopted son, like the adopted Ila in Noah, to again ‘replenish the Earth’. Mad Max: Fury Road and 28 Days Later both problematize this replenishment theme by suggesting that repopulation is akin to rape. The former has a totalitarian leader jealously guard his harem of potential mothers behind locked

202 Post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias doors and metal-toothed chastity belts, and the future generation is manipulated into the self-destructive cult of the War Boys, with Nux described by the mothers as ‘just a kid’. In 28 Days Later the survivors are lured to an army base where Major West (Christopher Eccleston), the leader of a small platoon of soldiers, explains to Jim that I promised them women. […] Eight days ago I found Jones with his gun in his mouth. He said he was going to kill himself because there was no future. […] What do nine men do except wait to die themselves? […] I promised them women. Because women mean a future. Selena and the young girl Hannah (Megan Burns) are forced to dress up in what the soldiers think is alluring clothing, and await their fate. Both of these films resolve this problematization of the ‘replenish the Earth’ trope, however. Max’s plan works, Joe is killed, and the mothers return to his base to assert a new regime where they allow the water which the tyrant had previously hoarded to flow freely. In this example, however, Max and Furiosa do not themselves join to become new parents of the future, as the film ends with Max nodding at Furiosa and leaving. 28 Days Later more definitely links the protagonists’ future role as replenishers with the ending of the film’s earlier unpleasurable threats. Jim manages to save Selena and Hannah from the soldiers, so that rape was a threat rather than an accomplished fact, and in so doing Jim and Selena become a couple. Selena’s previous unpleasurable statement to Jim ‘do you want us to find a cure and save the world or just fall in love and fuck? Plans are pointless. Staying alive’s as good as it gets’ is replaced by an effective cure, when the zombies begin to starve, and by her realisation, following a kiss, that ‘I was wrong when I said that staying alive was as good as it gets’.

Summary This chapter began by manipulating the relevant characteristics I have identified in films that depict environmental disasters and apocalypses into a series of questions in order to determine whether films set after an ecological apocalypse are similarly ideological expressions of a political-ecological unconscious. The answer to this is yes, the films are also ideological, reinforcing the spectator’s illusory Cartesian centrality, but with three main qualifications that temper this ideological effect. First, these post-apocalyptic films place less emphasis on the spectator’s perceptual mastery, because they do not have narratives that are so heavily focused on warnings of impending disaster. In this sense they are less ideological, because they relate less to our contemporary disavowal of impending realworld ecological catastrophe. These films do not therefore suggest that the spectator would see the disaster coming, but they nevertheless continue to reinforce the ideological Cartesian illusion that the spectator is the locus of perceptual meaning, principally because they are filmed according to the

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conventions of film realism, but also because they continue to suggest that certain characters have more perceptual information than others, and align the spectator with those who perceive over those who don’t. Second, these post-apocalyptic films are also less ideological in the sense that they depict the act of survival as broadly dystopian as opposed to utopian. Whereas a film like 2012 stages the environmental apocalypse as a temporary unpleasure resolved into the pleasure of survival, a film like The Road depicts that survival as a sustained form of unpleasure in and of itself. Nevertheless, these films still have various forms of narrative resolution that resolve this unpleasure, and manipulate dystopia into something closer to utopia. Third, these post-apocalyptic films are also less ideological because even if and when they present transcendent spectacles of destruction, the forces wreaking that destruction are not exaggerated examples of nature’s violent potential, but are instead caused by antagonists who are also trapped in the unpleasurable equilibrium of dystopian survival. As such, the spectator’s transcendence over destruction does not as explicitly suggest that (s)he would survive a real-world environmental disaster. In each of these senses, post-apocalyptic films are less ideological than films which stage environmental apocalypse or disaster. An ideological effect continues to operate because of their realist film grammar, however. As such, there is one final area of filmmaking that needs consideration. Various types of non-realist filmmaking might dispense with this Cartesian grammar altogether, and offer an anti-Cartesian form of spectatorship which would not reinforce our culture’s illusory superiority over the environment. The next chapter briefly considers some different forms of potentially non-Cartesian cinema.

Bibliography Kaplan, E.A. (2016) Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Filmography 2012 (2009) Directed by Roland Emmerich. USA: Columbia. 28 Days Later (2002) Directed by Danny Boyle. UK: DNA Films. Impossible, The (2012) Directed by J.A. Bayona. Spain: Telecinco Cinema. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Directed by George Miller. Australia/USA: Warner Bros. Noah (2014) Directed by Darren Aronofsky. USA: Paramount. Road, The (2009) Directed by John Hillcoat. USA: Dimension Films. Waterworld (1995) Directed by Kevin Reynolds. USA: Universal.

7

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film

The preceding chapters have argued that even films which have narratives about environmental dangers employ a Cartesian film grammar that reinforces the spectator’s illusory alienation from nature. This final chapter examines various forms of filmmaking that might diverge from this Cartesian grammar, in whole or in part, and in various different ways. I have argued that Cartesian film dialectically reflects and contributes towards our culture’s ecophobic dualism. This chapter considers how potentially non-Cartesian forms of film might contribute to cultural changes that can ameliorate ecological degradation. These potentially non-Cartesian forms of film can be broadly broken down into four categories: documentary ‘nature’ films; avant-garde ‘ecofilms’; aspects of non-realism in otherwise realist films; and various non-occidental filmmaking traditions, with the example focused on here being Japanese films. To an extent, the ideas discussed in this chapter are developments of existing scholarship. Certain academic discourses in ecocriticism try to identify environmentally-friendly forms of literature and film, and they often do this in a manner that addresses the same issues I have been discussing throughout this book, even if they generally do this indirectly. This chapter therefore mostly repositions existing scholarship with an explicitly Cartesian context.

Documentary ‘nature’ films One category of films with a potential environmental use-value that might ameliorate the Cartesian subjectivity normalised by realist fiction is documentaries about various aspects of ‘nature’. Some of the scholarship about these films addresses certain aspects similar to my own focus on how film relates to Cartesian subjectivity. Sean Cubitt, for example, claims that nature documentaries can depict vaguely nonhuman experiences beyond such subjectivity, arguing that the BBC’s nature documentary The Blue Planet (Byatt and Fothergill 2001) represents aquatic life as a “subjectless creativity, without requiring that it be like […] the life of the mind” (2005: 51). Cubitt is not very specific about how documentary captures this subjectless-ness, and most scholars argue that ‘nature’ documentaries operating within the contexts of film realism tend to reinforce the spectator’s human-like separation from the DOI: -8

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 205 films’ subject matter. Karla Armbruster states that “[b]y identifying […] with the perspective of the camera […] the viewer is constructed as omniscient and capable of penetrating the most inaccessible reaches of the natural world” (1998: 232). Armbruster doesn’t stress the transcendent aspect of this process, in the manner that I have done in previous chapters, but her analysis conforms to my broader argument that the dominant tradition in filmmaking is fundamentally anthropocentric. In addition, these kinds of documentaries frequently represent nature as a beautiful bounty fundamentally separated from the human world. A review for the recent Netflix documentary Our Planet (Chapman et al. 2019) states that it looks as spectacular as you would expect. Vast aerial sweeps […] take your breath away. […] On every scale, it is amazing. You can only boggle at the endless precision of the natural world, and of the people who devote themselves to capturing its wonders. (Mangan 2019) The review mentions how both the transcendent cinematography and the subject matter function as spectacle. Pietari Kääpä and Tommy Gustafsson note how this kind of documentary “put[s] ‘nature’ on display […] in a way that partly relocates the viewer to the space of the ‘Cinema of Attractions’, Tom Gunning’s idea of early film culture where images in themselves were more important than story” (Kääpä and Gustafsson 2013: 7), and I would add that this transcendent form of distanciation reinforces the Cartesian separation between observing res cogitans subject and observed res extensa object. Even if the subject matter of such documentaries is represented as more than spectacular object then the same kind of anthropomorphic techniques employed by the fiction films discussed in previous chapters may be activated to privilege the spectator’s Cartesian subjectivity. Thus, in March of the Penguins (Jacquet 2005), Luis Vivanco claims that “the narrative privileging of character and story tend to erase the penguins’ identities and subjectivities. In other words, humans will be humans, but there is little evidence that cinematic penguins will be anything more than humans as well” (2013: 119). Jennifer Ladino argues that this anthropomorphism is speciesist: “A camera becomes speciesist when it privileges an anthropocentric […] way of seeing whereby nonhuman animals are depicted as humans see and understand them, and often simply as humans” (2013: 131, original emphasis). Fundamentally, this failure to express a sense of becoming-animal is grounded in the realist filmmaking tradition, so that Ladino states that “this worlding of the animals is typically masked – particularly in documentary films – by a false sense of cinematographic reality” (131). Realist ‘nature’ documentaries, therefore, by focusing on the spectacular beauty and/or humanness of wildlife, and of the cinematic eye that ‘captures’ it in a transcendent manner, only reinforces the ecologically destructive illusion of Cartesian dualism.

206 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film

Avant-garde ‘ecofilms’ In contrast to this documentary realism, Ladino (2013: 131) and Adrian Ivakhiv (2013: 244) both think of a film that problematizes the conventions of realism, such as Grizzly Man (Herzog 2005) as “zoomorphic”. Chapter 3 discussed how realist fiction films’ potentially zoomorphic nature is limited and contained through various techniques that reinforce borders between the human and the nonhuman by anthropomorphising the nonhuman or by making the nonhuman abject in some manner. I have also introduced, in Chapter 2, academic debates about how non-realist ecofilms can potentially deliver a form of non-anthropocentric film by dispensing with or challenging the realist techniques which facilitate this anthropocentrism. I have used the term ‘avant-garde’ to describe this anti-realism, because of a tradition within poststructuralist film scholarship that identifies realism’s grammar as inevitably ideological, and thinks of deliberate departures from that grammar as attempts to challenge realism’s inevitable ideological effect. Terms like ‘avant-garde’ and ‘ecofilms’ are contested, then, and used in various different ways by different scholars, but in terms of my focus on film’s Cartesian effect the salient question is whether any given film is Cartesian or non-Cartesian. Most of this book has been focused on how realist films, including those narrativising environmental disasters or their apocalyptic aftermaths, ‘train’ spectators in the transcendent illusion of Cartesian subjectivity. Despite the fact that a detailed analysis of this ‘training’ was hitherto absent from the ecofilm studies scholarship, this normalising of Cartesian subjectivity inherent to realism can be juxtaposed with Scott MacDonald’s claim that “the fundamental job of eco-cinema […] is a retraining of perception, as a way of offering an alternative to conventional media-spectatorship” (2004: 109). Existing scholarship has almost positioned such avant-garde ecofilm within the Cartesian context I am interested in. As I discussed in Chapter 2, Paula WilloquetMaricondi recognises that “[f]or Descartes, the power of vision becomes the power of the mind to attain absolute knowledge. […] Perspectivism and scientism both strive to organize, rationalize, normalize, and mathematize the visible” (2008: 182). Willoquet-Maricondi identifies how, in Prospero’s Books (1991), director Peter “Greenaway’s antidote to the hegemonic eye of modernity […] is to offer a postmodernist ‘playful gaze’ of multiple reflections, superimpositions, and metaframings of images” (182). His “postmodernist ‘visual essay’ […] critically investigates […] the hegemonic role of vision, the rise of transcendental reason, and the concomitant Cartesian subject’s colonization and mastery of the world” (178). However, Prospero’s Books may conform to certain conventions of avantgarde filmmaking, but it does not as explicitly conform to the conventions of ecocinema. Granted, its critique of the Cartesian eye may help to ‘retrain’ perception, and thereby have an ecological use-value, but this use-value suggests that it is the explicit anti-realism of avant-garde filmmaking itself, rather than MacDonald’s narrower definition of ecocinema as “a garden – an ‘Edenic’ respite” (2004: 109, original emphasis), which might provide the most

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 207 meaningful filmic antidote to Cartesian realism. I have no problem with this conclusion – after all, I have argued throughout this book that realist film grammar itself is cinema’s principal ideological illusion, and that narrative subject matter is only subsidiary to this grammar. What I have called realism’s political-ecological unconscious is influenced by texts’ particular narratives but also by what Jameson calls the ‘ideology of form’, which is concerned with “formal processes as sedimented content in their own right, as carrying ideological messages of their own, distinct from the ostensible or manifest content of the work” (1981: 99). This brings the analysis of ecocinema back to certain poststructuralist claims about the different effects of realism and the avantgarde. For Jean-Louis Baudry, the central question to ask of a film is as follows: is the work made evident, does consumption of the product bring about a ‘knowledge effect’, or is the work concealed? […] In which case, concealment of the technical base will also bring about an inevitable ideological effect. Its inscription, its manifestation as such, on the other hand, would produce a knowledge effect, an actualisation of the work process, as denunciation of ideology. (Baudry 1985: 533–534) The direct issue is not specifically whether the film in question is zoomorphic or not, which was not the particular topic Baudry was concerned with. However, his delineation between an ideological ‘reality effect’ and an anti-ideological ‘knowledge effect’ lies somewhere beneath MacDonald’s argument that ecocinema should ‘retrain’ perception, and Willoquet-Maricondi’s distinction between the Cartesian eye and Greenaway’s cinematic critique thereof. Poststructuralist scholarship defines filmmaking that attempts to generate this kind of ‘knowledge effect’ through foregrounding a film’s artifice as reflexive, with Robert Stam describing reflexivity as “the process by which texts, both literary and filmic, foreground their own production, their authorship, their intertextual influences, their reception, or their enunciation” (1985: xiii). Reflexivity, then, can challenge Jameson’s ‘ideology of form’, and given that I have argued that realist film’s form is inherently anthropocentric, reflexivity can challenge that formal anthropocentrism. Specific analyses of ecocinema’s zoomorphic potential frequently stress how anti-realist reflexivity contributes towards a potential spectatorial experience approximating becoming-animal. The aforementioned Grizzly Man, for example, combines footage shot by Timothy Treadwell, living amongst wild bears, with footage of director Werner Herzog piecing together a film about how Treadwell was eventually killed by these bears. These layers demonstrate artifice in a potentially reflexive manner, and Ladino thinks of the film’s ecological use-value in terms of both zoomorphism and reflexivity, so that films like Grizzly Man […] represent working relationships between human and nonhuman animals as a kind of becoming with. […] These films’ selfconsciousness about human–animal relationships enables them to probe

208 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film […] species boundaries, disrupt expectations about wildlife films, foreground the constructedness of documentary film, and challenge cinematic tendencies to simulate, objectify, and marginalize nonhuman animals, […] including zoomorphic footage and commentary that remind human viewers of our own animality. (Ladino 2013: 131, my emphasis) The spectator’s potential experience of animality is therefore grounded in the film’s reflexive critique of Cartesian realist grammar in which, as Baudry puts it, “an actualisation of the work process [functions] as denunciation of ideology” (1985: 534). If reflexivity is the first main element that existing scholarship identifies in avant-garde ecocinema, then the second – and related element – is ‘slow cinema’. For MacDonald, ecofilms must be “the inverse of the fundamentally hysterical approach of commercial media […] where consumption of the maximum number of images per minute models unbridled consumption of products and the unrestrained industrial exploitation of the environment” (2013: 19). Ecocinema thereby “offers audiences a depiction of the natural world within a cinematic experience that models patience and mindfulness – qualities of consciousness crucial for a deep appreciation of and an ongoing commitment to the natural environment” (2013: 19). There is a potentially problematic deep ecology premise underlying MacDonald’s claim that consciousness can be modelled towards patience and mindfulness, but I absolutely accept that film form inflects consciousness, and that there is use-value in a film grammar which attempts to make this inflection in a manner that might ameliorate ecological degradation. However, Cartesian subjectivity has more substantial flaws than a lack of patience, and ‘slow cinema’ is potentially more useful in terms of its reflexive departure from realist conventions. Again, existing scholarship points towards this idea. David Ingram, for example, discusses Gideon Koppel’s sleep furiously (2008), which poetically documents life on a farm, and notes how the film’s pace and reflexivity both contribute towards its ecologically useful effect. Of a scene lasting two minutes showing sheep moving in somewhat different directions through an extreme long shot, Ingram states that “[b]y allowing such small events to unfold at length, Koppel’s camera and editing decisions construct a sense of animal agency” (2013: 46). In addition, sleep furiously manipulates film grammar to encourage Baudry’s “actualisation of the work process” (1985: 534): “Koppel’s sparing use of time-lapse and fast-motion effects, as well as Aphex Twin’s ambient music, also move the film beyond documentary realism into expressionistic effect” (Ingram 2013: 46). Various aspects of ecocinema have the potential, then, to challenge Cartesian realist film conventions, and function as a kind of non-Cartesian cinema. Is it enough, then, for me to end the book by stating that we should dispense with realist environmental disaster films and instead produce and watch more non-Cartesian avant-garde ecofilms? Such a conclusion is tempting, because it

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 209 is possible to identify a cinematic antidote to a cinematic poison. Such a conclusion is not feasible, however, because avant-garde ecofilms do not reach anything like the size of audiences that realist films do. Indeed, even an advocate like MacDonald recognises this limitation, stating that “[b]ecause these films have been so consistently underutilized, their economic viability is seriously in jeopardy” (2001: 14). As I have discussed throughout this book, realist films activate spectatorial pleasures grounded in the Symbolic Order, whereas the avant-garde activates an asceticism which aims to challenge the spectator’s entire Symbolic identity. This strategy, in a culture which predominantly evaluates films by asking how ‘entertaining’ they are, seriously limits the wide appeal of the avant-garde. The extent to which ecofilm spectatorship is limited to very small numbers is demonstrated in the introduction to a scholarly work like The Environmental Documentary: Cinema Activism in the 21st Century, in which author John A. Duvall states that his “hope is that readers will take the next step and actually watch some of these informative and important [eco-] films” (2017: 2). Indeed, Ingram claims that an understanding of scholarship is required in order for ecofilms to achieve any kind of use-value, because an avant-garde grammar may not necessarily foster the critical thoughts their advocates wish for, precisely because the meaning of a film is not simply inherent in the formal elements of the text itself. In the case of sleep furiously […] prior training appears to be necessary if [it is] to be interpreted as ecocinema, in Willoquet [sic] and MacDonald’s sense. (Ingram 2013: 47) As such, non-Cartesian avant-garde ecofilms have the potential to inflect the consciousness of spectators, encouraging certain anti-Cartesian sensibilities, but this potential is seriously limited by the small scale of their exhibition. These films may offer a meaningful alternative to the hegemonic dominance of film realism, but this alternative is not seen by a sufficient number of people to make a substantial difference to how our cultures continue to degrade the environment. Nevertheless, one of the traditional purposes of avant-garde art is to generate potentially new ways of thinking and perceiving. Time is short and, as Richard Kerridge has argued, the “ecocritical avant-garde cannot be content with marginal bohemian space, but must aim for rapid normalization: hence the conflict between the depth of this strategy and the urgency of a crisis that asks deep cultural questions but requires rapid answers” (2014: 368). Filmmaking history does suggest, however, that avant-garde practices can be assimilated into broader industrial trends or, in different national cinemas, certain filmmaking traditions might employ techniques that could be considered avant-garde from an occidental perspective. As Ivakhiv has argued,

210 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film [d]espite their inaccessibility to broader audiences, […] experimental filmmakers have been influential in the development of mainstream cinema. Techniques developed by [Stan] Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Jean-Luc Godard, and others […] can today be found in mainstream films, television series, music videos, and even commercials. (Ivakhiv 2008: 16) As the following discussion demonstrates, this process frequently contains and blunts the radicalism of avant-garde influences, but as Ivakhiv puts it, “to the extent that a technique can […] retrain perception, its potentials remain worthy of critical consideration” (2008: 16). The following last two sections of this chapter consider aspects of films that are ostensibly ‘mainstream’ as opposed to avantgarde, but which also include certain potentially non-Cartesian elements. I turn to a potentially non-Cartesian tradition in Japanese cinema shortly, but begin with a discussion about how Hollywood realism can incorporate two potentially anti-realist elements – ‘slow cinema’ and an absence of transcendent cutting in ‘found footage’ films – into otherwise unambiguously realist films.

Non-Cartesian components of realist films ‘Slow cinema’ and ‘found footage’ films As discussed, one strategy by which ecocinema can ‘retrain perception’ is through exaggerated slowness. Certain realist films can also include similarly exaggerated slow lingerings over ‘nature’. The opening to The Road, for example, discussed in the preceding chapter, shows relatively still images of verdant nature, against which the rest of the film’s muted greyness is juxtaposed. The realist film relating to environmental issues that depicts nature most slowly, however, is Silent Running (Trumbull 1972), which opens with the camera moving slowly and very closely over flowers and small animals, the first of which is a snail, to emphasise this ponderous pace. A human enters shot only after 103 seconds of what one might call ‘slow nature’. However, even though this lingering over the details of ‘nature’ is longer than that in any of the other realist films discussed in this book, this slowness is still replaced with the conventions of realism in a film that last an hour and a half. Opening credits appear over the images of ‘nature’, moreover, so that the sequence establishes context and theme, which the rest of the realist film then goes on to narrativise. Even this kind of ‘slow cinema’ component, then, functions within a broader and more sustained realist Cartesian context. Another potentially non-realist component of otherwise realist films doesn’t have a direct connection with avant-garde ecocinema, but still has the potential to challenge one of the most ideological elements that I have identified in environmental disaster films – editing which allows the spectator to transcend bodily constraints and/or narrative threats to those bodily constraints. As discussed in previous chapters, this kind of transcendent editing is absolutely

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 211 central to realism’s masochistically pleasurable ideological effect, but it is possible for mainstream Hollywood films to dispense with this kind of effect if they present the images as subjective ‘found footage’ shot by characters on diegetic cameras, rather than from objective positions around and outside the depicted events. The film that comes closest to presenting an otherwise definitely realist disaster film from this subjectively-limited perspective is Cloverfield (Reeves 2008). The narrative disaster, however, does not have an ecological component, not even in the kind of sublimated manner discussed in previous chapters. Instead, the narrative threat is provided by possibly extraterrestrial monsters rampaging through New York, and the film’s political unconscious relates principally to non-environmental events, with Glen Donnar claiming that “Cloverfield overtly evokes the amateur street-level footage that constituted much of the most iconic coverage of 9/11’s early destruction and panic” (2020: 67). Nevertheless, Cloverfield demonstrates how a Hollywood film can eschew transcendent editing entirely, because all of the film’s imagery comes from a single subjective perspective shot by a diegetic video camera, with the characters beginning by filming a party, and then continuing to record events as the disaster unfolds. In terms of the various categories of spectatorial perception that I discussed in previous chapters, Cloverfield employs lots of confusing imagery whilst characters are confused, as they run away from falling debris and monsters, and as they look about for clues to what is emerging from smoke and out of darkness. The spectatorial position also comes under assault a number of times, as smaller monsters attack the characters including Hud (T.J. Miller), who holds the camera for most of the film; most significantly near the end of the film when the largest monster leaps up and bites the helicopter on which the protagonists are escaping; and when Hud is then killed by this monster once he is on the ground. These strikes against characters are also strikes on the spectatorial position, with the last of these fatal to Hud. Indeed, after the camera is shaken around violently to show Hud being killed, the camera lands next to his dead face, but the automatic focus cannot select a definitive target, so that it continuously racks from grass in the foreground, to Hud just behind this, and to the smoking cityscape in the background. This is as close as any of the realist films discussed in this book comes to Anat Pick’s question, discussed in Chapter 3, “what is the meaningful difference between a wall and a man from the point of view of cinema?” (2011: 114). Briefly, here, the cinema dispassionately depicts grass, a dead human face, and a destroyed city as one and the same thing. Even this moment, however, is punctured by a spectatorial pathos at the indignity meted upon Hud, and is closely followed by an assertion of Symbolic significance, when the reunited couple Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Yustman) finally say ‘I love you’ to one another, even as the camera is covered in the debris which kills the last two surviving protagonists. The fact that these characters don’t survive is ameliorated by Symbolic values, then, but the film overall never shifts from a threatened subjective position, and never cuts to a safe objective position over and above the narrative threat.

212 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film It could be possible for an environmental disaster film, therefore, to employ a similarly subjective strategy, and one film, Into the Storm (Quale 2014), almost does this. This film has a similar conceit where characters are recording an event, this time a school graduation. The disaster that strikes is explicitly environmental, as huge tornados ravage a town, and includes sublimated references to how the fictional disaster relates to anthropogenic environmental degradation, through dialogue about looking after the planet, and about how events like Hurricane Sandy have changed from once in a lifetime to once a year events. Into the Storm begins with the same kind of limited subjective diegetic camera conceit as Cloverfield. The first image is a potentially reflexive direct address of a man looking into the screen, but the spectator is prepared for this breaking of the fourth wall by voices over an initial darkness, which include the dialogue ‘you’d better not be filming us’. A twister then approaches these characters, and the cinematography adopts confusing imagery as the car is swept up into the vortex, before cutting to blackness. Like Cloverfield, this prologue aligned the spectator with threatened characters through this restricted cinematography, but Into the Storm’s next scene returns to the more conventional grammar of transcendent editing, as an objective aerial shot shows storm chasers’ vehicles, followed by more objective shot/reverse shot conversations of the characters in the vehicles. The restricted subjective found footage cinematography is thereby followed by transcendent objective cinematography and editing. The film uses this more conventional realist grammar to depict environmental disaster in the same manner as those films discussed in the preceding chapters. This allows the spectator to safely observe imperilled characters, with objective shots wheeling over and above the devastation. The editing regime also grants the spectator a perceptual mastery over impending threats, so that an image of the storm chasers shouting ‘it’s headed for the school’ is followed by a cut to an objective shot of the school, where characters are oblivious to the coming danger. At times, Into the Storm uses diegetic subjective camera shots to repeat this perceptual mastery, because unlike in Cloverfield, multiple characters use cameras. These various subjective shots are edited together in a manner that is analogous to conventional realist editing, so that both spectacular transcendence and the spectator’s perceptual mastery can be aligned with multiple diegetic cameras. In terms of the former, the first major tornado is shown from multiple diegetic cameras on the ground, and from a news helicopter in the sky, with ‘2KPYN’, the fictional news station’s logo, written in the bottom right of the screen, indicating that this is a point-of-view shot recorded from the helicopter. In terms of the latter, father Gary (Richard Armitage) telephones to warn his son Donnie (Max Deacon), who has accompanied his friend Kaitlyn (Alycia Debnam Carey) to make a documentary at an abandoned paper mill, that a tornado is approaching him. The spectator already knows that the son is in danger, from the conversation between Gary and the storm chasers, and can hear this repeated in the editing oscillation between both sides of the telephone call. Donnie doesn’t hear the warning, however, as the phone signal breaks

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 213 down, and is unprepared for the hurricane strike. The editing oscillation between the two sides of this conversation is constructed entirely from images recorded by the diegetic cameras, with Gary’s younger son Trey (Nathan Kress) filming his father, and with Kaitlyn filming Donnie. However, the editing between these two sequences of diegetic filmmaking repeats realist film’s transcendence over space, allowing the spectator to experience a perceptual mastery that is not possible in Cloverfield’s entirely restricted subjective cinematography. A restricted form of subjective found footage cinematography has therefore not yet been used to depict an environmental disaster in a non-transcendent manner. Rather, Into the Storm’s oscillation between restricted subjective cinematography and transcendent objective cinematography repeats realist film’s masochistic movement from Real-like revelation to Symbolic and Imaginary obfuscation. The film also repeats many of the other conventions I have identified in environmental disaster films. Not only do the principal protagonists survive the narrative threats, but they also rise to the challenge in a manner that resolves conflict and valorises a restored Symbolic Order. The opening sequence’s conflicts, where Donnie lambasts his father for caring more about his job than his sons, where storm chaser Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies) experiences guilt for being separated from her young daughter, and where lead storm chaser Pete (Matt Walsh) is criticised for callously endangering his crew, are all resolved – Gary saves his son from drowning in an objectively shot sequence where he pumps Donnie’s chest in an almost identical manner to the sequences I have already discussed in San Andreas and The Wave; Allison vows to return to her Symbolically-designated maternal position; and Pete heroically sacrifices himself to save others. After the hurricane has passed, rescue workers clean up, with the camera cutting to two images of American flags, and with a news voiceover stating that ‘our faith will carry us through, and we will rebuild’. Japanese cinema Elements of ‘slow cinema’ and ‘found footage’ in otherwise unambiguously realist environmental disaster films cannot therefore be described as non-Cartesian in any meaningful sense. It may be, however, that certain traditions in non-occidental, non-Eurocentric/Anglophone cinema might employ various non-Cartesian aesthetic and/or narrative components. I have argued that ecological degradation is both caused and legitimised by the historically and culturally specific form of subjectivity associated with Cartesian dualism. Academics have looked to different cultures to investigate forms of subjectivity which might evade or resist this culturally specific dualism. Postcolonial scholarship, for example, can demonstrate how ecophobic dualism is a legacy of imperialism, with Gitanjali Gogoi stating that “[t]he convergence of postcolonialism with ecocriticism is justified from the point that colonial exploitation of nature was inspired by European Enlightenment philosophy, knowledge of nature, conservation policy etc.” (2014: 1–2). There are a number of strands to the scholarly work on how formerly colonised cultures differ from this Enlightenment imperialism. At the broadest level, postcolonial

214 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film ecocritics focus on the relationships between colonised cultures and the environment, with Gogoi, for example, claiming that Nigerian novelist Chinua “Achebe shows how the Igbos’ agricultural life, religious beliefs, festivals, their ideas about the world and human life are all intertwined with nature” (Gogoi 2014: 2). More specifically, this kind of analysis can stress how these relationships with nature differ from Cartesian subjectivity’s anthropocentrism, with Willoquet-Maricondi, the editor of Jennifer A. Machiorlatti’s Ecocinema, Ecojustice, and Indigenous Worldviews: Native and First Nations Media as Cultural Recovery (2010) discussing “Native and First Nations film narratives as expressions of a specifically indigenous worldview, one more closely aligned with an ecocentric rather than an anthropocentric ethos” (Willoquet-Maricondi 2010: 15). Most specifically, in a manner that is useful for my analysis of how certain forms of non-occidental filmmaking might challenge Cartesian subjectivity at the formal level, scholars have addressed how non-occidental filmmaking might challenge Cartesian anthropocentrism at the formal grammatical level. Discussing Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, for example, May Adadol Ingawanij claims that The fundamental attraction of Apichatpong’s films lies in their combination of sensorial intensity and temporal reflexivity. […] Rather than privileging sight, in accordance with the paradigm of monocular perspective and its epistemological assumption of human centrality, [Apichatpong’s filmmaking] stimulates spectatorial perception through sound and tactility. (Ingawanij 2013: 91) There are a number of culturally specific components which scholars identify as determinants in various non-occidental responses to Cartesian subjectivity, but there are also a number of commonalities which account for shared responses. These commonalities include certain religious traditions that coalesce to some extent in the Japanese example which I am coming to. Most of these shared religious traditions are variations of animism, which holds that the nonhuman world, rather than being a passive res extensa, is full of the same kind of spiritual agency shared by humans. Ingawanij’s aforementioned claim about Apichatpong’s non-monocular filmmaking, for example, is located in an understanding that “[a]nimism makes real the permeability of human and nonhuman worlds” (2013: 91), which is “the same epistemological grounding as that which underscores Apichatpong’s layering of diegetic worlds in which material immaterialities are perceived as real” (2013: 92). Another wide and in certain cases culturally shared religious tradition which existing scholarship has identified as being potentially non-Cartesian, and which again has pertinence in the Japanese example I am most interested in, is Buddhism. To some extent, ecocriticism has a long association with certain aspects of Buddhism. Deane Curtin’s A State of Mind Like Water: Ecosophy T and the Buddhist Traditions (1996) positions Arne Næss’s deep ecology in the Buddha’s insight that “[a]buse of the Earth reflects our own suffering; suffering issues from ignorance of our true nature” (Curtin 1996: 239). Analyses of various

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 215 forms of non-occidental filmmaking, such as Sheldon H. Lu and Jiayan Mi’s collection Chinese Ecocinema (2009), claim that [b]ecause of the scale of modernization-cum-destruction, an ethical imperative and a bioethics have come to the fore in Chinese cinema. […] The return to (Buddhist) holistic thinking, the non-anthropocentric treatment of animals, […] are some of the manifestations of a new biocentric approach to nature, humanity, and modernity. (Lu 2009: 7) Chia-ju Chang argues that elements of Buddhist belief and practice can challenge the damaging effects of Cartesian dualism, and this insight can be transmitted through film, asking if Zen meditation practice can produce a fundamental transformation of consciousness that allows us to see that all things, sentient or non-sentient, are empirically interconnected, […] thereby disenfranchising the exploitation of the nonhuman world, can we employ film as a vehicle for disseminating that experience and wisdom? (Chang 2013: 226) Chang answers that South Korean director Bae Yong-kyun’s work demonstrates that films “devoted to Zen soteriology and to an aesthetic expression of enlightenment can be as transformative ecologically as […] spiritually” (2013: 227). In terms of how these potentially non-Cartesian religious traditions influence Japanese aesthetics and fictional narratives, scholarly emphasis has tended to be placed on the animistic properties of indigenous Shinto- over the imported Buddhism, with the important caveat that these two religious traditions are remarkably syncretic in Japanese culture (Ogihara-Schuck 2014: 19). Shinto- is understood as particularly important because of the way that it diverges from the Cartesian dualism of active human res cogitans and passive nonhuman res extensa. Instead, various nonhuman beings and natural forces are believed to possess spirits called kami. Thus, as Yamakage Motohima puts it, “Shinto teaches to revere ‘Great Nature.’ That means that everything in nature is the transformation and creation of Kami, therefore the sacredness of Kami dwells within it” (Yamakage 2012: 29). Existing scholarship principally focuses on how these religious attitudes towards nature function at the narrative rather than the formal level, so I will address narrative issues first. Much of this writing explores a certain branch of filmmaking that I will also use as an example, focusing on the animated tradition of anime more generally, and the filmmaking of Miyazaki Hayao more specifically. Miyazaki is often thought of as, in Anthony Lioi’s terms, an “environmental visionary” (2010: no pagination), whose environmentalism is based in a religious context so that, for Lucy Wright, “Miyazaki is cinematically practicing the ancient form of Shinto […] which emphasised an intuitive, non-dogmatic

216 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film relationship with nature” (2005: para 40). One Miyazaki narrative that demonstrates this ecologically mindful aspect of Shinto- is Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), and this is the one example of Miyazaki’s work which I will have room to analyse in detail below. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic future where a vast Toxic Jungle and its insect inhabitants threaten to engulf the last small spaces where humans can survive. The title character Nausicaä (Shimamoto Sumi), however, attempts to learn how humanity can coexist with ostensibly threatening nature. Pamela Gossin sees this narrative as part of Miyazaki’s ‘ecophilosophy’, and gives an example of how, as Nausicaä rushes to help someone, her quick physical wince and even quicker ‘excuse me’ to the insect she accidentally steps on never fails to evoke a delighted and enlightened ‘ah ha’ from the audience. […] This girl has a deep regard for all living things, so of course, even in times of emergency, she tempers her behaviour accordingly. (Gossin 2015: 220–221) Miyazaki’s ‘ecophilosophy’ has also been located within a Buddhist context, with David R. Loy and Linda Goodhew claiming that a protagonist like Nausicaä “becomes a bodhisattva”, one who is on the path to Buddhist Enlightenment, in her attempts to “selflessly […] stop the violence between [humans] and the creatures of the forest” (2004: 84). This ecological awareness is more frequently positioned in the aforementioned Shinto- context, however, and this context demonstrates some potentially limiting anthropomorphising tendencies. James W. Boyd and Nishimura Tetsuya, for example, claim that there are many “Shinto perspectives embedded” (2016: 3) in Spirited Away (Miyazaki 2001). In this film, a young girl Chihiro (Hiiragi Rumi) stumbles into a strange spirit world inhabited by many curious beings including kami. One of the beings who helps her first appears in the shape of a boy called Haku (Irino Miyu). Boyd and Nishimura argue that when Chihiro helps to purify a river, she reveals that Haku is the kami of the Kohaku river, “an identity which he could not remember because the river had been filled in and covered with buildings (likely Miyazaki’s critique of the over-building in Japan at the expense of nature)” (2016: 10). This connection between Chihiro and Haku/Kohaku is an example of Shinto-’s deep reciprocal encounters between persons and places, i.e. a deep sense of mutual relation […] between persons or with nature. Miyazaki is possibly portraying Chihiro as being in a genuine, authentic relation with the kami presence of the Kohaku river. (Boyd and Nishimura 2016: 10) Haku’s human form potentially anthropomorphises this notion that the nonhuman may have a kami essence, however. This is particularly evident in the aforementioned scene discussed by Boyd and Nishimura, because Haku has

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 217 taken the form of a dragon before Chihiro reveals that he is the kami of the river, and as soon as he hears this he morphs back into human form. His ‘true’ kami identity therefore manifests itself as literally anthropomorphic, with the nonhuman kami essence which pervades the natural world represented in definitively human terms. Anthropomorphising kami in this manner is by no means unique to Miyazaki, with Bernard Faure claiming that there is a complex aesthetic tradition, stretching back at least to the fourteenth century, in which although artistic representations of “kami are usually ‘formless’” (1996: 270), it is also the case that “there are in Shinto- all kinds of kami, individualized to varying degrees, from god-object to anthropomorphic deity, and various representations, more or less figurative” (270). Shinto- may problematize the Cartesian separation of the active human from the passive nonhuman, then, but various aesthetic traditions based on Shinto-, including Miyazaki’s filmmaking, effectively extend humanlike-ness to the nonhuman, rather than celebrate the specific non-humanness of the nonhuman, in the same kind of manner that a film like District 9 (Blomkamp 2009), discussed in Chapter 3, extends attributes which are perceived to be essentially human onto the nonhuman. These are predominantly narrative issues, whereas I have been arguing, throughout this book, that realist film’s primary ideological effect is its monocular anthropocentric grammar. I have not selected Japanese film as potentially non-Cartesian because of its narrative content, since I have already made the case that potentially ecologically-aware narratives can still function according to the logic of ecologically-damaging realist grammar. Instead, I am interested in Japanese film because of an anti-realist aesthetic tradition which informs certain Japanese filmmakers including, arguably, Miyazaki. Shinto- has an important influence on this aesthetic tradition. Yu Beong-Chu states that “the secret of [Japanese] art is not to copy the object realistically but to capture its soul” (1962: 66), demonstrating that objects have a kami-like unseen essence which is more significant that their seen exterior. The specific conventions of various Japanese art forms are derived from this lack of emphasis on surface mimesis. The classical kabuki theatre, for example, features kurombo, who are stagehands, dressed in black, and who assist characters proper with props and scenery. Although the kurombo can be literally seen by spectators, the audience responds to them as though they are not part of the fictional diegesis. Through such conventions, claims Earle Ernst, the kabuki audience “is not required to suspend its disbelief, willingly or unwillingly, for it accepts art on the premise of its being nonrealistic” (1956: 81). When these aesthetic traditions are applied to film, there is the potential for what Noël Burch describes as a “fundamental incompatibility between the West’s ‘codes of illusionism’ and Japanese indifference to ‘illusionism’ in the Western sense” (1979: 66). Burch focuses on this indifference to illusionism in the work of one particular director, Ozu Yasujiro-, an early to mid-twentieth century filmmaker frequently lauded as one of the world’s greatest auteurs. Given that I have not been analysing equivalent occidental auteurs of this era, it is not appropriate to directly compare contemporary environmental disaster films with Ozu’s oeuvre.

218 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film However, Burch’s claims about Ozu are useful, because they identify a potentially non-Cartesian grammar in a particular tradition of Japanese filmmaking which may also influence more contemporary Japanese films, such as Miyazaki’s. One of the key components of Ozu’s anti-realism is his disregard for the suturing effect of shot/reverse shot conventions, which I set out in Chapter 2. In the occidental realist tradition, each film image positions the spectator as the centralised res cogitans locus of meaning. A cut to another image is potentially decentring, revealing that the film does not emanate out, res extensa-like, from the focal point of the res cogitans spectator. Editing conventions like shot/ reverse shot, accompanied by eyeline matches, allow the spectator to make sense of the cuts, and to move around the narrative space in a transcendent manner. For Burch, Ozu disrupted these conventions by deliberately confusing the relationship between shots and reverse shots when he “set up his camera in such a way as to produce invariably incorrect eyeline matches […] as part of a fundamental textual economy” (1979: 159, original emphasis). In so doing, Ozu challenged “the dominant western […] principle of continuity, for the ‘bad’ eyeline match produces a ‘jolt’ in the editing flow, a moment of confusion in the spectator’s sense of orientation to diegetic space” (159, original emphasis). Although Burch doesn’t mention Cartesian optics directly, he does recognise that “the ‘incorrect’ eyeline match denaturaliz[es] that standard procedure which, in the [occidental] classical system, ensured the biological and imaginary centering of the spectator-as-individual” (1991: 195), and he contrasts this occidental tradition with “Ozu’s approach [which] express[es] a typically Japanese approach to the perception of three dimensions by stressing that their representation is not to be taken for granted” (1979: 160, original emphasis). Burch also understands that this nonoccidental approach has the potential to challenge a fundamental component of Cartesian dualism’s separation of the human from the nonhuman, claiming that Ozu’s mismatching […] is not simply a signature, an individual stylistic trait, but a culturally and complexly determined sign of dissent from the world-view implicit in the Western mode. This mode, of course, is profoundly anthropocentric, as demonstrated by the rules of centering applicable both to composition within the frame and to the whole camera/diegesis relationship. (Burch 1979: 160–161, original emphasis) Burch argues that this non-occidental and non-anthropocentric disruption to the three-dimensionality of occidental realism produces “a single effect: the elimination of depth indices, the flattening of the image, its reduction to the two-dimensional surface of the screen. […] Ozu uses every technique at his disposal to produce the filmic image as picture plane” (1979: 174, original emphasis). Given that this two-dimensionality is a potentially fundamental Japanese trait, with the artist Takashi Murakami stating that in Japan, “[s]ociety, customs, art, culture: all are extremely two-dimensional. It is particularly apparent in the arts that this sensibility has been flowing steadily beneath the surface of Japanese

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 219 history” (2000: 4), it is possible to apply Murakami’s broader question “[d]uring the modern period, as Japan has been Westernized, how has this ‘super flat’ sensibility metamorphosed?” (2000: 4) to contemporary Japanese films about ecological issues, such as those made by Miyazaki, and ask whether such films are in some manner grammatically ‘super flat’, and whether this grammar is non-Cartesian. Again, existing scholarship has already partly addressed this question. Some of this work is grounded in the analysis of Murakami’s explicitly ‘super flat’ fine art practice, and this scholarship identifies how Murakami’s rejection of geometric perspective encourages a departure from Cartesian subjectivity. The two most influential writers on this subject, Azuma Hiroki and Saito- Tamaki, both locate this divergence from Cartesian optics within the same kind of Lacanian context I have been using throughout this book. Azuma uses Lacan’s discussion of the same painting which I addressed in Chapter 2, Holbein’s The Ambassadors, to frame his argument, comparing the way that “The Ambassadors ‘imaged’ the establishment of linear perspective’s gaze (of lifelike space), and turned it around in a lack of eyes (in the space of death)” with Murakami’s “painting’s deficiency of space” (Azuma 2000: 149). Saito- devotes more attention to applying Lacanian psychoanalysis to the phenomenon of otaku fan culture than flatness, but nevertheless claims that the super flat nature of anime “indicates an imaginary space without depth or thickness, where even the eye of the camera does not exist” (2007: 243). Animation scholars have then developed this account of how Japanese aesthetic traditions inform anime. Deborah Shamoon, for example, states that the “tendency towards a 2-D picture plane and rejection of three-point perspective in both classical Japanese art and contemporary Japanese animation” means that “anime presents a radically different scopic regime and use of space in the picture plane, compared to both live action film and the conventions of animation in the United States” (2015: 93). For Thomas Lamarre, both Japanese aesthetic traditions and the specificities of animation account for anime’s super flatness, which is the result of both “a fundamental difference between Japanese traditions of flat or planar composition on the one hand and Western traditions of one-point, linear, or geometric perspective on the other” (2009: 113), and the fact that the “effect of depth generated by the animation stand is very different from the depth of field […] ‘monocular perspective’ associated with the movie camera” (17). Lamarre also locates this discussion about geometric perspective within a specifically Cartesian context, stating that the combination of perspective in the visual arts with Cartesian ideas of subjective rationality produced the dominant and even totally hegemonic visual model of the modern era [which] results in a fixed and stable viewing position that appears to stand outside and to rule over the hierarchically ordered world presented in the image. This is Cartesianism. In contrast to Cartesianism, superflat composition is said to disperse and distribute elements across the surface of the image, thus dispensing with the

220 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film fixed viewing position of the subject as well. Because eyes are compelled to pursue restless lines across the flat image, the viewing position and thus the modern subject become dispersed across the visual field. (Lamarre 2009: 113) Lamarre calls these two different scopic regimes cinematism and animetism, writing that the essence of cinematism lies in the use of mobile apparatuses of perception, which serve (1) to give the viewer a sense of standing over and above the world and thus of controlling it, and (2) to collapse the distance between viewer and target. (Lamarre 2009: 5) Conversely, “animetism is the separation of the image into multiple planes” (6) which produces an effect in which [r]ather than move into the landscape, you seem to move across it. […] [A]nimetism is not about movement into depth but movement on and between surfaces. This movement between planes of the image is what I will call the animetic interval. (Lamarre 2009: 7, original emphasis) This animatic interval, then, has the potential to disrupt the illusory effect of centralising the Cartesian spectator which is inherent in the realist films (Lamarre’s ‘cinematism’) I have been discussing in previous chapters. Anime images may reveal that they are constructed of various flat planes which slide over one another, and this revelation of (super) flatness may not position the spectator as the locus of geometric space in the same manner as Cartesian realism. Lamarre takes care to point out that this animatic interval is not an inherent component of animation as a medium, but rather a potential effect that a director like Miyazaki may exploit. He therefore argues that the cinematism of digital animation frequently appears to push the limits of liveaction camerawork. If, as Nam June Paik says, ‘cinema isn’t to see, it’s to fly,’ then such animation has the potential to fly faster, deeper, and farther. This might be thought of as hypercinematism and hyper-Cartesianism. (Lamarre 2009: 35)1 However, animation can also facilitate super flatness: Animetism begins with an image composed of two or more layers, separated in the animation stand. […] [B]ecause the camera is fixed on a rostrum (the rostrum camera), camera movements are largely limited to tracking in and tracking out. If you don’t adjust the distances between layers to keep things

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 221 perfectly in scale when you move the camera, the elements in different layers will appear to pull apart or to draw closer together as they become smaller or larger, as you track in or out. (Lamarre 2009: 37) Animators can choose either to compensate for or embrace this animatic interval, and even though digital compositing would make it possible to produce effects of motion in depth, Miyazaki emphasizes lateral movement in ways that undercut the sensations of depth. Almost as a rule, his films avoid or undermine sensations of movement into depth. (Lamarre 2009: 41–42) The extent to which Miyazaki employs this animatic interval is important, however. Lamarre does accept that Miyazaki also employs a Cartesian sense of depth, but the example he gives of this perhaps indicates that Lamarre principally locates Miyazaki’s cinematism in certain spectacular action sequences: In Castle in the Sky [1986], for instance, the chase sequence on the train tracks over the gorge is full of images of things rushing out of the screen at you, and while Miyazaki mostly generates thrills with lateral views of motion, there are nonetheless many views down the rails that exploit perceptual ballistics. (Lamarre 2009: 6). I would extend Miyazaki’s Cartesian cinematism beyond this kind of sequence, however. Even quieter, more contemplative scenes produce three-dimensional depth effects. The sequence in which the eponymous princess from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is first introduced, exploring the Toxic Jungle, demonstrates how that which may be perceived as ecocentric continues to employ Cartesian optics. Nausicaä finds the discarded shell of a vast insect called an ohmu, detaches one of the creature’s eye lenses, encases herself within the lens, and contemplates the simultaneous beauty and danger of the jungle. Gossin interprets shots of Nausicaä lying within the lens, and then her point-of-view shot through the lens, as an example of “Miyazaki’s environmental philosophy” (2015: 212), claiming that In a single iconic image, Miyazaki depicts her unique ability to see humankind as a small part of a much larger complex whole: he draws his usually active natural investigator supine – quite still – […] in a meditative state between consciousness and unconsciousness, at peace with the natural space she occupies and, literally, looking at the spore-fall of the toxic forest through an ohmu’s lens. (Gossin 2015: 223)

222 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film This moment may have an environmentally friendly narrative, with Nausicaä “at peace with the natural space”, but it is not the case that Miyazaki’s formal grammar is similarly environmentally friendly. The way that Gossin stresses how Nausicaä is “literally looking […] through an ohmu’s lens” (2015: 223) suggests that this is some kind of non-anthropocentric vision, but this is not the case. The falling spores which Nausicaä looks at are shown through her human point-of-view, even if she looks through the transparent nonhuman lens, and the spores are depicted in a replication of three-dimensional perspective rather than within the context of what Lamarre calls the (super) flat “animatic interval” (2009: 7) of sliding planes which draw attention to how the image is composed of multiple flat layers. The spores are not arranged into these separated planes, but are drawn as various different sizes designed to create the impression of depth as those closer to the centralised point of vision are larger than those further away, and these spores also fall downwards, and are therefore designed to create the impression of movement through this depth. Even when Nausicaä looks through a nonhuman lens, then, she is shown doing so through an animated attempt to replicate the conventions of Cartesian geometry, with both the character Nausicaä and the spectator fixed in position by those conventions. It is also the case, as I discuss in more detail below, that cinema is Cartesian not just because of whether a single image is (super) flat or has the illusion of three dimensions, but because of the suturing editing between images, which continuously decentre and reposition the spectator as locus of meaning. Lamarre’s discussion of Miyazaki’s animetism focuses on the flatness of images rather than on editing between images, and Gossin’s analysis quoted above elides editing almost completely, when she states that “Miyazaki’s environmental philosophy” (2015: 212) is here encapsulated “[i]n a single iconic image” (223). Film does not operate in single images, so that even if Gossin’s point is valid, in the brief moment when Miyazaki depicts Nausicaä in a long shot looking up through the ohmu’s lens, this ‘single image’ is part of a sequence of other images, in which the spectator is continuously decentred and repositioned, including images where the spectator is given a disembodied transcendent objective position looking down on Nausicaä from above, and in which this repositioning includes the aforementioned alignment of the spectator with Nausicaä’s Cartesian perception through a subjective point-of-view shot. As discussed, Lamarre accepts that Miyazaki’s filmmaking employs threedimensionality, at points, concluding that “a sort of Cartesianism lingers in Miyazaki’s worlds, minimized and perplexed but not eliminated. It lingers in Miyazaki’s commitment to conveying a sense of depth” (2009: 104). The sequence of Nausicaä looking through the ohmu’s lens suggests, however, that Miyazaki’s lingering Cartesianism is less minimised than Lamarre claims. Another example that Lamarre provides demonstrates this difference in emphasis. Lamarre writes that there is a tension in Miyazaki’s animation between panoramic depth, which evokes a subject standing apart from the perceived world, and relative movement, which makes the subject’s perception of the world relative to its

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 223 movement. It is in scenes of soaring and flying that he strives to overcome this tension, artfully spreading the animetic interval across the depths of the multiplanar image, effectively channeling the force of the moving image into the sliding of a glider through the clouds. (Lamarre 2009: 104, original emphasis) This “sliding of a glider through the clouds”, which refers directly to Nausicaä’s means of travel, does include moments which include both panoramic depth and relative movement. The second of these two ocular regimes demonstrates the image’s (super) flatness, with foreground and background moving against one another in a manner that emphasises the distinction between flat planes. For example, when Nausicaä’s vision through the ohmu’s lens is disturbed by gunfire, she leaps aboard her glider to rescue Yupa (Naya Gorô), another jungle explorer who is being chased by an enraged ohmu. Some of the images in this action sequence show Nausicaä flying overhead in the foreground, with Yupa and the ohmu below her in the background. The sense that this is an image composed of two planes, rather than an attempt to mimetically replicate geometric optics, is most explicit when the film cuts from a ground level shot looking back at Nausicaä’s glider skirting over the floor just ahead of the pursuing ohmu, to an overhead shot looking down on the pursuit. When this overhead image begins, three-dimensional depth cues are almost entirely absent, and it is not clear whether the ohmus’s tendrils are above, below or aligned with the small glider just in front of it. The glider then grows in size, which is to say, narratively, that it moves upwards, towards the camera, and in this movement it begins to cover over the ohmu, establishing depth in at least two planes. For a moment, then, the image appeared to be entirely flat on one plane, before the glider’s movement revealed a second plane. But it is also the case that the glider’s movement upwards is gradual, so that it does not shift abruptly from one plane to another. The momentary sense of there being a single plane is not replaced by the revelation that there are two planes, then, but instead by the revelation that the glider moves through space in a manner that replicates three-dimensional geometric perspective. The other movements of the glider, in this scene, as well as Nausicaä’s movements more generally, also employ this Cartesian perspective. When Nausicaä begins the action sequence, by running from the jungle to her glider, she emerges from the canopy, in the background, but does not step directly from a background plane to a foreground plane. Instead, she runs through the gap between these planes, creating the impression of three-dimensional space as opposed to revealing two flat planes. When she launches her glider into the sky, her movement between planes is similar, although in this instance she travels through space from the foreground towards the background. Lamarre states that in flying scenes like this Miyazaki “strives to overcome this tension” between “panoramic depth, which evokes a subject standing apart from the perceived world, and relative movement, which makes the subject’s perception of the world relative to its movement” (2009: 104, original

224 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film emphasis), but my account of this example from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind suggests that Miyazaki’s representation of flying does not necessarily “overcome this tension” between different ocular regimes, but rather oscillates between them. In Chapter 2 I set out the Lacanian logic of how editing in realist film inevitably and repeatedly fluctuates between a new image which threatens to decentre the Cartesian spectator, and the suturing conventions which reposition the spectator as centre of the new image. This process is anamorphic and masochistic, in the sense that it repeatedly stages an unpleasurable decentring only to pleasurably resolve this disruption, and re-centre the spectator. It is possible to say something similar of Miyazaki’s oscillations between what Lamarre calls his animetism and his cinematism – a sense of an image’s (super) flatness may temporarily disrupt the illusion of Cartesian vision inherent in an image which replicates the conventions of geometric perspective, but the movement back to the illusion of three-dimensional space, and the spectator’s ability to move through it in a transcendent manner, undercuts the reflexive potential of the animetism. This is particularly the case because Cartesian cinematism is itself anamorphic, continuously oscillating between disruption and resolution, whereas Lamarre stresses one part of this process when he states that Miyazaki’s “panoramic depth […] evokes a subject standing apart from the perceived world” (2009: 104). As I have discussed at length in the film examples analysed in previous chapters, Cartesian realism does reinforce the impression of the spectator as a res cogitans “standing apart from the perceived world”, in Lamarre’s words, but this impression gains its efficacy precisely because of formalised threats to its consistency. The clearest examples I gave of this process, in previous chapters, are the movements of explosions, tsunamis and debris etc. towards the camera, including movements which strike and overwhelm the spectator’s position. Such moments are not examples of Lamarre’s “panoramic depth [which] evokes a subject standing apart from the perceived world” (104), because the perceived world momentarily threatens to reach out and engulf the perceiving subject. Edits away from the overwhelmed camera position, however, allow the spectator to transcend this threat, and reposition the Cartesian subject’s perceptual mastery. It is significant, then, that Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind also includes this technique of striking the spectator’s position, both when an airship crashes and explodes near Nausicaä’s village, and when another ship attacks the village, slamming into the ground, and throwing debris up into the camera’s position. The first of the explosions also has a repeat cut which shows the same event from two different locations, so that the spectator’s position shifts from one engulfed by fire to one safely observing the same fireball from a different, safe location. I therefore agree with Lamarre’s statement that “panoramic depth […] evokes a subject standing apart from the perceived world” (2009: 104), but if this evocation can involve and resolve moments when the perceived world threatens to violently disrupt the subject’s safe “standing apart”, then this evocation can also involve and resolve moments when the perceived world temporarily reveals that it is composed of (super) flat planes as opposed to the illusion of three dimensional space.

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 225 It is perhaps an open question whether the (super) flat elements of Miyazaki’s filmmaking can contribute to challenging Cartesian spectatorship, but it is certainly the case that films like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind employ many of the same Cartesian conventions that I have identified in occidental environmental disaster films, in previous chapters. The aforementioned strikes on the camera position are one of these conventions, and in the first of these I also mentioned a repeat cut of an explosion, which Miyazaki also uses during the sequence where Nausicaä attempts to save Yupa from the ohmu. The film also uses crosscutting to allow the spectator to know that threats are imminent, such as when attack ships are shown moving towards oblivious villagers who will soon be taken unawares. The potentially anamorphic properties of editing are thereby sutured into a spectatorial mastery, with the potentially alienating questions ‘why has the image shifted to ships?’ and ‘where am I, as spectator, positioned in relation to this new image of ships?’ transformed into a physically impossible transcendence of space which encourages the spectator to imagine that (s)he can also see real-world threats coming before they cause harm. It is also important to note that neither anime nor Miyazaki’s filmmaking is necessarily representative of Japanese films about ecological issues. A live action film like Sinking of Japan (Higuchi 2006) includes almost all of the Cartesian features that I have identified in occidental environmental disaster and apocalypse films in the preceding chapters. This film stages a collision of tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean which threatens to (but finally does not) pull Japan beneath the waves. The disaster is eventually prevented through the technological solution of exploding bombs in shafts bored into the seabed, so that even a film with the title Sinking of Japan does not finally have the country sink. Before this elimination of the threat, however, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic explosions wreak their spectacular havoc. Like occidental environmental disaster films, Sinking of Japan grants the spectator a perceptual mastery over the dangers it depicts. The opening sequence, for example, begins in the aftermath of an earthquake. A young girl, Misaki (Fukuda Mayuko), wanders through the devastation. Submersible pilot Toshio (Kusanagi Tsuyoshi) is the only other survivor around, and he notices that petrol is coming out of a pump dangerously close to Misaki. This is signalled to the spectator via a whip-pan point-of-view shot. He shouts to Misaki, who is oblivious to the danger that he and the spectator know is coming, when power cables collapse onto it, causing explosions. Following this prologue, which ends with Misaki and Toshio both saved by a member of a rescue team, Reiko (Shibasaki Kô), the film relates this perceptual mastery to more explicit environmental issues. Credits roll over a montage of various Japanese locations, which ends with shots looking down at the country from space, with a satellite in the foreground. The Japanese landmass starts to crumble and sink. A voice then begins to say ‘These images, based on our research, show the end of the Japanese islands’. The next shot shows politicians watching a presentation outlining how this event will occur in the next few decades, with the flicker of a projector’s light behind them, but when the projected images are shown a few

226 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film seconds later, they are not the same shots from space seen by the spectator moments before, but lower quality images alongside text. ‘These images’, therefore, are different for spectator and for characters. The spectator sees the ostensibly ‘real’ sinking of the country, whereas the politicians see explicit simulations, and the spectator sees these images as part of a montage of other ‘real’ locations in Japan, suggesting that the spectator has seen what will objectively ‘really’ happen, rather than a subjective projection of what might happen. This gap between perceived certainty and simulated speculation is emphasised, throughout the film, when certain politicians choose to ignore further scientific advice about the disaster which is about to unfold. The leader of Toshio’s underwater geology team, Yusuke (Toyokawa Etsushi), then investigates the tectonic plates further. Vision is fetishised, during this process, when the camera on one of his deep sea submersibles malfunctions, and the crew are left literally in the dark, although the spectator is granted external shots of the submersible, and is allowed to continue to see. Yusuke runs the data he has discovered through a computer, which shows him and the spectator that there are only ‘338.54 days’ left before the full disaster strikes. When Yusuke delivers this news to the government, he is at first disbelieved, and violently thrown out of the room, but the spectator always has this perceptual information, which is used to create dramatic irony when Yusuke’s team are sworn to keep this secret, deceiving other characters, such as Reiko and her family, and when the callous acting Prime Minister (Kunimura Jun) lies in a television address to the nation, saying that the disaster will occur in 5 years. This address is watched by Reiko’s family, who do not know that there is less than a year left, but the spectator is reminded of this, when the film cuts from them back to shots of Japan from space, with some parts of Japan beneath the sea, reprising the spectator’s God’s-eye view from the opening credits. The spectator is also granted perceptual mastery over the attempts to overcome the disaster. For example, a member of an observation team looking at a volcano says ‘without a miracle Mount Fuji’s going to blow sky high!’ The film then cuts to Toshio’s colleague Yuki (Kunimura Jun), in a submersible, trying to provide this ‘miracle’ by placing a bomb in its shaft on the seabed. The attempts to engineer this technological solution go on for some time, and the film cuts back to Mount Fuji at the peak of its volcanic activity, and again when this activity subsides, after the technological solution is successful, so that the spectator can effortlessly move from threat, to attempt to create a ‘miracle’, and to the effects of that ‘miracle’. As with occidental environmental disaster films, Sinking of Japan also subjects spectators to confusing imagery when confusing events are occurring, so that the onset of earthquakes, for example, is signalled by shaky cinematography. The spectator is also threatened directly (though vicariously), with this threat then displaced. So, when the camera is engulfed by a black cloud of volcanic debris, the film cuts to scientists in a car. When the Prime Minister (Ishizaka Koji) is killed by a volcano strike on his airplane, smoke engulfs the camera, followed by the explosion itself engulfing the camera, and the film then cuts to different locations being struck by lava bombs, where the spectator experiences

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 227 the disembodied transcendence of seeing a repeat cut of a tower struck by a lava bomb from different positions. Following this spectacle, the film cuts to the government disaster centre where these images are shown on diegetic screens, at a safe distance. Slightly later, a huge tsunami engulfs the screen, and a tower falls directly onto the camera, but this ostensible destruction of the spectator’s position is followed by a cut to a shot looking down onto the devastation from the safety of outer space. These repeat cuts and edits from imperilled positions to safe positions allow the spectator to pleasurably transcend the fictionalised destruction. Like occidental environmental disaster films, Sinking of Japan also has narrative resolutions which operate within the context of the Symbolic Order. When the politicians are first told that the impending tectonic movements mean that there is ‘no hope for Japan’, the Prime Minister leaves the briefing and sees a wedding, which is shown in slow motion. In part, the newly married couple represent this lack of hope for the future, given what will become of their future and their children’s future, but they are also a signifier of the same patriarchal heteronormative family which was such a consistent theme in the occidental films discussed in previous chapters. This Symbolic patriarchy becomes more important as Sinking of Japan develops, reaching its apogee, as in many of the occidental films I have analysed, in the notion of heroic male self-sacrifice. The fact that Yuki is a father acting on behalf of his wife and young daughter is established early on. When he attempts to arm the bombs on the seabed, his detonator falls down a chasm. Yusuke tells him to return to the surface, but Yuki bravely heads into a space where he knows his submersible will fail. Steeling himself for death, he removes his headset, and the film cuts to close-ups of a photograph of his wife and daughter on the wall. When he realises that he is about to die, Yuki’s eyeline match goes towards the photograph, so the spectator shares his subjective experience of family, and he then holds it, reaffirming the reason for his self-sacrifice. Toshio then undergoes a similar noble death. Yuki hadn’t managed to attach the bomb’s detonator, so Toshio volunteers for the suicide mission. Instead of sacrificing himself to save his own family, Toshio’s narrative trajectory revolves around an attempt to restore unity with his (m)other, who has not died, but is still ‘lost’. He is offered a place on an English research team, and so has the opportunity to escape the destruction of Japan, but when he visits his (m)other she refuses to leave her home, inspiring her son’s self-sacrifice. The location of his death, moreover, is definitively associated with his separation from his (m) other. When he and love interest Reiko first open up to one another, he explains how his affinity for the seabed stems from his childhood: ‘I’ve liked the ocean ever since I was a kid. […] When I’m at the bottom, it’s like the planet’s holding me, like, I don’t know, I feel safe’. ‘Maybe like you’re in your mother’s womb?’ Reiko asks him, with Toshio replying ‘Yeah, like that’. Toshio also links his travels to the seabed with an attempt to recapture something lost in time, telling Reiko ‘deep down there are creatures unchanged in millions of years’, and later telling his (m)other ‘The ocean’s like a time

228 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film machine. The deeper you go, the further back in time you get’. His self-sacrifice on the seabed is therefore a return back through time to the lost connection with his (m)other’s womb. Reiko is also trying to compensate for a lost connection with her (m)other. After rescuing Misaki, whose parents die in the earthquake, Reiko tells Toshio ‘I’m like Misaki. I was in the Kobe earthquake. My parents got killed. I was left alone. […] Someone from the Rescue Unit saved me. So, I always thought I’d become someone who could rescue a girl like me’. Her rescue work, then, is an attempt to compensate for a traumatic loss, and her success in rescuing Misaki and her family, at the end of the film, cathartically resolves this masochistic repetition of her own trauma. Like the occidental environmental disaster films discussed in previous chapters, Sinking of Japan also ends by suggesting that natural disasters are trials to be overcome, and with a commitment to restore what has been lost. When Toshio’s sacrifice successfully stops the tectonic plates sinking Japan, the Disaster Management Minister (Daichi Mao) announces, from the safety of a ‘lifeboat’-like ship acting as temporary government headquarters, that the country ‘must stand the test of this ordeal, and unite in heart and soul in joining to rebuild Japan’. The film ends with Reiko descending from a ‘lifeboat’-like helicopter to rescue her family and Misaki, who are stranded on a mountainside which had nearly collapsed. The sun’s rays burst through clouds, and they all look up in wonder. The film cuts to an overhead shot pointing down on them, and zooms out far into space looking down on the partly, but not completely, sunken Japan. The film also suggests that this conclusion includes a restored plenitude of nature, as swallows, which Toshio’s (m)other complained had abandoned their nest at her home years ago, return. These Symbolic resolutions also operate within a context which reinforces the illusion of the spectator’s perceptual mastery. When Toshio is about to die, the film cuts to a slow motion image of Reiko, busy with her rescue work, looking upwards in recognition. The spectator’s engagement with this Symbolic idea of virtuous self-sacrifice thereby transcends space and the normal perceptual constraints which allow individuals to communicate with one another. It is also the case that Sinking of Japan does not include any challenges to geometric perspective, either in the Ozu-like manner or in anime’s (super) flatlike manner which I discussed above. The closest this film comes to an aesthetic of flat planes as opposed to the illusion of three-dimensional space comes in the opening credits scene’s potential two flat planes of satellite in the foreground, and Earth below in the background, and in three rack focuses at different points of the film. In the first of these rack focuses, the camera racks from fire, in the foreground, to Toshio, in the background, coming round from the effects of the opening scene’s earthquake. In the second, the camera racks from Yuki, in the foreground, to a picture on the wall of him in his submersible drawn by his child, in the background. In the third, the camera racks from the Disaster Management Minister in the foreground, to a wall screen listing the number of dead and missing people, in the background. In each of these examples, the rack from foreground to background potentially separates these two spaces into different planes, with one in

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 229 focus and one out of focus. But rack focus is hardly a technique unused in occidental realism, and Ozu often used focus in a very different manner to these examples from Sinking of Japan, with Donald Richie stating that “Ozu [typically] used a single composition that as often as not left a person in the background out of focus, the focus being on a still life in the foreground” (1977: 128). Each of the examples from Sinking of Japan racks to something of narrative importance, rather than to an Ozu-like disruption of narrative importance. Even if it were possible to describe these three rack focuses, or the potential distinction between foreground satellite and background Earth, as images which reveal flat planes as opposed to the illusion of three-dimensional space, it is still the case that they are part of a broader and more sustained aesthetic which edits around space in a conventional realist manner. The first example of racking from fire to Toshio’s face, for example, occurs in a scene which moves around the devastation of an earthquake using shot/reverse shots, eyeline matches and point-of-view shots to establish a coherent illusion of three dimensionality. There are also moments which more explicitly repeat these potentially ‘flat’ images in a non-‘flat’ manner, so that the first potentially ‘flat’ shot from space is repeated, at the end of the film, by the aforementioned image where the camera pulls away from Reiko and her family all the way into outer space, with the distance between the background of the Earth and the foreground up in space literally traversed by the camera. Images where significance shifts from foreground to background are also repeated without the use of rack focus, such as when Toshio decides that he will sacrifice himself underwater. He begins this scene at the back of a hanger, next to part of the submersible he will use, and then moves forwards towards the foreground, with the submersible now behind him in the background. There is no shift in focus, but Toshio literally moves through the space to demonstrate that it is not divided into two flat planes. Sinking of Japan therefore demonstrates that Japanese films about environmental issues can be just as Cartesian as occidental films. The film also demonstrates, however, that my analysis of how a film like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is Cartesian is relative. Miyazaki’s film is clearly not as Cartesian as Higuchi’s, and some of this mitigation of Cartesianism is grounded in Japanese aesthetic, cultural and religious traditions. Japanese anime therefore has the potential, at least, to challenge certain Cartesian filmmaking conventions which have dangerous repercussions for humanity’s relationship with the biosphere.

Summary This chapter has analysed four broad categories of potentially non-Cartesian filmmaking, in order to identify if and how such filmmaking might offer the potential for a form of spectatorship which does not reinforce and normalise Cartesian subjectivity, and which therefore does not reinforce and normalise a damaging relationship with the biosphere.

230 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film The first category, documentary ‘nature’ films shot in a conventional realist manner, continues to position the spectator as locus of meaning, and continues to enforce a binary distinction between humanity and nature. Such films are therefore definitively Cartesian rather than non-Cartesian. The second category, avant-garde ‘ecofilms’, employ various reflexive techniques to challenge the conventions of Cartesian perception, but the potential use-value of this challenge may be limited because, as Ingram puts it, “if the audience for eco-films is self-selecting, […] such films may only be preaching to the converted” (2013: 48). Nevertheless, the development of a non-Cartesian film grammar may still be important, if ideas and practices currently considered marginal and esoteric are to be transformed into the new ‘normal’. It may be necessary to do this, if humanity is to survive the vicissitudes of the Anthropocene era. I return to this issue in the Conclusion. The third category, aspects of non-realism in otherwise realist films, explored how certain ‘mainstream’ films employ certain quasi-avant-garde devices, such as moments of ‘slow cinema’ and ‘found footage’ cinematography. Although these devices have thus far been subsumed into a realist aesthetic, there remains the possibility for filmmakers to produce work which can reach beyond the avant-garde’s “preaching to the converted” limitations, and challenge Cartesian subjectivity for wider audiences. This is a potentially interesting route for filmmakers interested in environmental justice to explore. The fourth and final category, certain non-occidental cinematic practices, analysed how Cartesian film grammar might be challenged by filmmaking traditions that have not been developed from Cartesian foundations. Given that I only had room to address Japanese filmmaking in any kind of detail, this is an area for further research – indeed, as discussed above, some existing research already addresses this issue. Tentatively, however, it is possible to conclude that non-occidental filmmaking can produce work which is just as Cartesian as any occidental film, as well as work which departs from or challenges certain aspects of Cartesian subjectivity. Although I am perhaps not as optimistic about this non-Cartesian challenge as certain scholars mentioned above, given the lingering Cartesian components I have identified, it is nevertheless the case that some non-occidental filmmaking traditions can encourage the spectator to question certain Cartesian assumptions in a manner which may have a use-value in humanity’s desperate need to transform our relationship with the natural world. Given the largely pessimistic tone of my overall analysis, this potentially useful challenge to Cartesian subjectivity must be embraced and celebrated, however hesitantly.

Note 1 This account of digital animation as a flying form of hyper-Cartesianism helps to clarify my analysis of animated movements in films like Bee Movie in Chapter 3.

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232 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film Kerridge, R. (2014) Ecocritical Approaches to Literary Form and Genre: Urgency, Depth, Provisionality, Temporality, in Garrard, G. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 361–376. Ladino, J. (2013) Working with Animals: Regarding Companion Species in Documentary Film, in Rust, S., Monani, S. and Cubitt, S. (eds.) Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 129–148. Lamarre, T. (2009) The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lioi, A. (2010) The City Ascends: ‘Laputa: Castle in the Sky’ as Critical Ecotopia. ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, 5(2). Loy, D.R. and Goodhew, L. (2004) The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. Lu, S.H. (2009) Introduction: Cinema, Ecology, Modernity, in Lu, S.H. and Mi, J. (eds.) Chinese Ecocinema In the Age of Environmental Challenge. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 1–14. MacDonald, S. (2001) The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place. Berkeley: University of California Press. MacDonald, S. (2004) Toward an Eco-Cinema. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 11(2), 107–132. MacDonald, S. (2013) The Ecocinema Experience, in Rust, S., Monani, S. and Cubitt, S. (eds.) Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 17–41. Machiorlatti, J.A. (2010) Ecocinema, Ecojustice, and Indigenous Worldviews: Native and First Nations Media as Cultural Recovery, in Willoquet-Maricondi, P. (ed.) Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, pp. 62–80. Mangan, L. (2019) Our Planet Review – Attenborough’s First Act as an Eco-warrior. The Guardian, 5 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/ 2019/apr/05/our-planet-review-david-attenborough-netflix-eco-warrior-activist-bbc (Accessed 9 November 2019). Murakami, T. (2000) The Super Flat Manifesto, in Murakami, T. (ed.) Super Flat. Tokyo: MADRA Publishing, p. 4. Ogihara-Schuck, E. (2014) Miyazaki’s Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences. Jefferson: McFarland. Pick, A. (2011) Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press. Richie, D. (1977) Ozu. Berkeley: University of California Press. Saito-, T. (2007) Otaku Sexuality, in Bolton, C., Csicsery-Ronay Jr, I. and Tatsumi, T. (eds.) Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 222–249. Shamoon, D. (2015) The Superflat Space of Japanese Anime, in Chee, L. and Lim, E. (eds.) Asian Cinema and the Use of Space: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 93–108. Stam, R. (1985) Reflexivity in Film and Literature: From Don Quixote to Jean-Luc Godard. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. Vivanco, L. (2013) Penguins are Good to Think With: Wildlife Films, the Imaginary Shaping of Nature, and Environmental Politics, in Rust, S., Monani, S. and Cubitt, S. (eds.) Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 109–127. Willoquet-Maricondi, P. (2008) ‘Prospero’s Books’, Postmodernism, and the Reenchantment of the World, in Willoquet-Maricondi, P. and Alemany-Galway, M.

The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 233 (eds.) Peter Greenaway’s Postmodern / Poststructuralist Cinema. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, pp. 177–201. Willoquet-Maricondi, P. (2010) Introduction: From Literary to Cinematic Ecocriticism, in Willoquet-Maricondi, P. (ed.) Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, pp. 1–22. Wright, L. (2005) Forest Spirits, Giant Insects and World Trees: The Nature Vision of Hayao Miyazaki. Journal of Religion & Popular Culture, 10(1), 3. Yamakage, Motohima (2012) The Essence of Shinto: Japan’s Spiritual Heart. New York: Kodansha International. Yu, Beong-Cheon (1962) Lafcadio Hearn’s Twice-Told Legends Reconsidered. American Literature, 34(1), 56–71.

Filmography Bee Movie (2007) Directed by Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner. USA: DreamWorks. Blue Planet, The (2001) Directed by Andy Byatt and Alastair Fothergill. UK: BBC. Castle in the Sky [Tenkû no Shiro Rapyuta] (1986) Directed by Miyazaki Hayao. Japan: Studio Ghibli. Climate Change: The Facts (2019) Directed by Serena Davies. UK: BBC. Cloverfield (2008) Directed by Matt Reeves. USA: Paramount. District 9 (2009) Directed by Neill Blomkamp. New Zealand/USA/South Africa: WingNut Films, TriStar Pictures. Grizzly Man (2005) Directed by Werner Herzog. USA: Discovery Docs. Into the Storm (2014) Directed by Steven Quale. USA: New Line Cinema. March of the Penguins (2005) Directed by Luc Jacquet. France: National Geographic Films. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind [Kaze no Tani no Naushika] (1984) Directed by Miyazaki Hayao. Japan: Topcraft. Our Planet (2019) Directed by Adam Chapman et al. UK: Silverback Films. Prospero’s Books (1991) Directed by Peter Greenaway. UK: Allarts. Road, The (2009) Directed by John Hillcoat. USA: Dimension Films. San Andreas (2015) Directed by Brad Peyton. USA: New Line Cinema. Silent Running (1972) Directed by Douglas Trumbull. USA: Universal. Sinking of Japan [Nihon Chinbotsu] (2006) Directed by Higuchi Shinji. Japan: Toho. sleep furiously (2008) Directed by Gideon Koppel. UK: Bard Entertainments. Spirited Away [Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi] (2001) Directed by Miyazaki Hayao. Japan: Studio Ghibli. Wave, The (2015) Directed by Roar Uthaug. Norway: Fantefilm.

Conclusion

This book has explored how various filmmaking practices contribute to humanity’s failure to meaningfully address anthropogenic ecological degradation. There is a very real danger that our contemporary lifestyles will render the biosphere uninhabitable for humans, or at least will continue to damage the biosphere in an accelerating manner which will increase existing inequalities, social injustices, and biodiversity loss. Immediate and radical action is required in order to ameliorate the damage that has already been done, and to prevent the situation from getting exponentially worse. Despite much talk, very little concrete action is being taken, and the situation continues to deteriorate. Ecocriticism examines how our ecophobic cultural practices contribute to our ecophobic behaviour. Existing ecocriticism has already demonstrated how specific changes in thought developed during the European Scientific Revolution, and most clearly exemplified in Cartesian dualism, have facilitated a fundamentally anthropocentric culture dangerously alienated from the nonhuman world around us. The root cause of ecophobia is therefore an illusory epistemological separation between the human and the rest of the natural world. This book adds to this insight by utilising a scholarly tradition of psychoanalysis and poststructuralism to demonstrate the extent, and the precisely unconscious nature, of this epistemological separation. Cartesian dualism is not just a vague cultural tendency, or a certain bias in only very scientific ways of thinking, or a possible attitude which each of us may or may not consciously assent to. Rather, Cartesian dualism is a fundamental component of contemporary human subjectivity that dominates thought at the unconscious level, to the extent that it is integral to our very sense of self. Ecophobic dualism is therefore what I call an ‘epistemology we live by’ – human subjectivity is inescapably alienated from that which is conceptualised as ‘external’, ‘passive’, and ‘there for us’. Individual human subjects assent to this ecophobic dualism through what Lacan calls the Symbolic Order, which designates patterns of thought and behaviour that individuals unconsciously assent to internalise, without being aware that they are so doing. This book has explained how this Lacanian concept demonstrates that Cartesian dualism is integral to our sense of individual selfhood, and how psychoanalysis demonstrates that this ecophobic form of consciousness cannot be simply willed away, as deep ecology claims. Rather DOI: -9

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than consciously controlling our attitudes towards the nonhuman world, Lacanian psychoanalysis demonstrates that such attitudes are unconsciously designated by the Symbolic Order, and the book has explained how Symbolic aesthetic practices like film contribute to our anthropocentric and ecophobic Cartesian subjectivity. The book has argued that realist films with narratives about various forms of ‘natural’ disaster express, manipulate, and cathartically resolve our repressed anxieties about anthropogenic ecological degradation. These films are manifestations of what I call our culture’s ‘political-ecological unconscious’. The Symbolic Order legitimates ecological degradation by artificially alienating the human from the nonhuman. Traumatic revelations of the ecologically damaging real-world consequences of this alienation are repressed and resolved by the political-ecological unconscious. The Symbolic Order thereby contains mechanisms to regulate and resolve its contradictions. Thus, the narrative causes of fictional disasters are frequently obfuscated and fetishised, so that something akin to anthropogenic ecological disaster occurs, but that ‘something’ is not precisely anthropogenic. This allows narrative blame to be apportioned, and the punishment which stems from this blame facilitates a mythic and fetishised form of resolution, in which humanity as a whole is innocent of ecological degradation, so that certain individuals instead carry our collective guilt, and absolve us of it with their deaths. In contradistinction, virtuous protagonists survive, and reforge various aspects of the previously threatened Symbolic Order, such as broken patriarchal families and broken relationships between humanity and ‘nature’. The spectator, moreover, is aligned with these heroic protagonists, perceiving threats which the destroyed masses do not perceive, and pleasurably escaping the spectacle of destruction alongside the protagonists. These spectacles even allow the spectator to transcend the perception of the protagonists, joyously cutting and pirouetting around the devastation, masochistically turning the unpleasure of environmental disaster into the pleasure of disembodied safety from the threat of that disaster. Diegetic ‘lifeboats’, which protagonists use to escape narrative dangers, are accompanied by the formal grammar of the realist cinema as ‘lifeboat’, with the spectator moving safely above, around and outside those dangers. This illusion encourages the spectator to think that, like the protagonists, (s)he could survive a similar real-world disaster, and might, indeed, be ‘cleansed’ and ‘renewed’ in the process; rewarded for their virtue by that which is most important to them being restored and reinvigorated through the process of ‘rising to the challenge’ of such a disaster. The illusion repeats and normalises the Cartesian effect of this spectatorship, revalidating the same form of subjectivity which threatens real-world ecological disaster in the first place. Some of the films analysed in this book are less ideological than others, in the sense that they repeat some of the above-mentioned features, but also depart from those features in particular ways. Certain films are explicitly based on recent real-world events, for example, and are therefore reticent to emphasise the pleasurable aspects of spectacular destruction, even though they continue to align the spectator with a perceptual mastery over the impending

236 Conclusion onset of that destruction. In addition, the post-apocalyptic dystopian films discussed in Chapter 6 continue to align the spectator with certain protagonists who have more perceptual information than other characters, but this perceptual information does not include the same warnings about impending hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and so on, which are such an integral component of environmental disaster films. These post-apocalyptic films therefore relate less to our culture’s disavowal of impending real-world disaster, and do not as clearly suggest that the spectator would perceive such a real threat coming. The dystopian nature of these films also means that their narratives are not so focused on the environmental disaster film’s trajectory from unpleasurable threat to the pleasurable cessation of that threat. Instead, the post-apocalyptic films discussed in this book depict survival as a sustained form of unpleasure, although they do also have some form of resolution to this unpleasure, in various ways, so that dystopia is reworked into something closer to utopia. These films are also less ideological because any spectacles of destruction are less focused on the violence of ‘nature’, and more on the violence of other survivors as antagonists. The spectator’s transcendence over danger does therefore not as explicitly suggest that (s)he would survive a realworld ecological disaster. Chapter 7 analyses four categories of film which may be less ideological because of their potentially non-Cartesian film grammar. The first of these categories is documentary ‘nature’ films, which are in fact shot in something like a conventional realist manner, and therefore continue to position the spectator as an external Cartesian observer over and above passive ‘nature’. The second category, avant-garde ‘ecofilms’, can disrupt Cartesian perception through various reflexive filmmaking practices. The impact of these films is constrained, however, by their limited circulation, but they nevertheless have the potential to help transform Cartesian subjectivity by developing new forms of perception which may achieve wider circulation in the future, as I discuss below. The third category concerns the use of certain avant-garde or non-realist practices in otherwise realist films, such as ‘found footage’ camerawork and moments of ‘slow cinema’. Existing examples of this category tend to subsume this non-Cartesian potential into the mechanisms of realism, but filmmakers could certainly utilise some of these elements to create widely seen films that could challenge some aspects of Cartesian subjectivity. The final category of potentially non-Cartesian films is various non-occidental cinemas, with a focus here on how Japanese filmmaking traditions diverge from the Cartesian conventions of occidental realism. This is an area for further research, but the examples I discussed suggest that Japanese films about environmental issues can both be every bit as Cartesian as any of the other films discussed in this book, but can also depart from and challenge certain Cartesian conventions in important ways.

The prospects for transforming Cartesian subjectivity I finish by briefly outlining how the claims made in this book can contribute to the ecocritical attempt to change our culture’s thinking and behaviour in meaningful ways. There are two components to this – first, how my argument

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fits in with existing scholarly attempts to adhere to Marx’s famous maxim that “philosophers have only interpreted the world: the point is to change it” (1976 [1845]: 5, original emphasis); and second, how the kind of non-Cartesian filmmaking which I have tentatively championed can be extended and expanded to have a transformative impact on spectators’ attitudes and behaviour. Given that human subjectivity is the cause of ecological degradation, I have argued that ecocriticism should study this human subjectivity. This is an anthropocentric approach which runs counter to ecocriticism’s broad movement away from the human to the nonhuman. Sabine Wilke claims that ecocritics are broadly divided into two camps […]. One group of scholars has suggested that environmental criticism explores the linkages between natural and cultural processes and that both realms need to be acknowledged in their own right. […] On the other hand, there are those who eloquently insist on the historical and cultural construction of nature. (Wilke 2009: 91) I am essentially advocating a third camp. Although I accept the importance of studying “the historical and cultural construction of nature”, the study of the human subjectivity which does this “construction of nature” is arguably even more important. There is an aspect of semantics to this distinction, given that the ecocritical study of the “construction of nature” inevitably involves a concomitant analysis of the people who do that constructing, but I want to briefly set out why and how my suggested focus on (Cartesian) human subjectivity fits in with broader trends in the critical theory of psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and postcolonial scholarship. In 1996 Cheryll Glotfelty wrote that [i]f your knowledge of the outside world were limited to what you could infer from the major publications of the literary profession, you would quickly discern that race, class, and gender were the hot topics of the late twentieth century, but you would never suspect that the earth’s life support systems were under stress. (Glotfelty 1996: xvi) To a large extent, this elision of ecocritical issues has been remedied since 1996, and it is also the case that twenty-first-century ecocritics have conducted important postcolonial and feminist (though possibly less Marxist) work addressing the relationships between the environment and race, class and gender, as I have mentioned at various points throughout this book. But Glotfelty’s perhaps inadvertent binary opposition between the human topics of “race, class, and gender” and the nonhuman topic of “earth’s life support systems” (1996: xvi) still has the potential to shift ecocritical attention away from the direct cause of anthropogenic ecological degradation – human subjectivity

238 Conclusion itself. The broader study of “race, class, and gender” outside of ecocriticism, however, has focused directly on this human subjectivity, and has contributed valuable insights which can have a real use-value for ecocritical analyses of how human subjectivity conceptualises and acts on the biosphere. The critique of Cartesian subjectivity which I have undertaken in this book can be aligned with critiques of how Cartesian subjectivity relates to race, class and gender (and also sexuality, disability, and so on). In terms of feminism, for example, Elizabeth Grosz argues that Cartesianism today indicates a problematic site for feminist theory and for theories of subjectivity [because] [t]he male/female opposition has been closely allied with the mind/body opposition. […] [M]ind is rendered equivalent to the masculine and body equivalent to the feminine. (Grosz 1994: 13–14) In terms of postcolonialism, Cartesian dualism has been understood as an Enlightenment (sic) mechanism for justifying slavery by denying the human status of the enslaved African, which established a dualist category of race that continues to influence contemporary racist attitudes. This historical process begins with Joan Dayan’s claim that Cartesian dualism is the basis for the literal expropriation and dehumanization necessary to turn a man into a thing. What is this thing that does not think or feel, and cannot will, refuse, deny or imagine? [European imperialism] responds by inventing the slave, whose only rights and duties […] are those shared in society by beasts. […] Descartes’s experiment with himself to establish the idea of the white universal subject is thus recovered as a collective experiment to legally produce black nonpersons in the New World. (Dayan 1998: 204–205, original emphasis). The legacy of what Radhika Mohanram calls this dualistic “embodiment of blackness with a simultaneous disembodiment of whiteness” (1999: 3) leads Lindon Barrett to state that in terms of the mind/body split so central to post-Enlightenment Western thought, the African American body signifies an existence entirely or virtually within the bodily half of the antithesis. It signifies a supposed remove from privileged mindfulness and an entrapment in the mindlessness of corporeality. […] Our bodies become marks of our exclusion from a privileged presence of mind. […] Reason, rationalism, and enlightenment sanction a hostility toward African Americans endemic to the U.S. social, political, and economic order. (Barrett 1997: 318)

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Cartesian dualism, then, is not merely responsible for ecological degradation, but also for certain significant aspects of misogyny and racism. The ecocritical analysis of film’s or literature’s Cartesian nature is therefore not necessarily a big departure from the traditions of poststructuralist, feminist and postcolonial scholarship – indeed, as mentioned above, these approaches are all coming together. The ecocritical focus on Cartesian subjectivity can clarify, however, how these approaches are all studying and critiquing the same subject matter – the specific causes and effects of Cartesian subjectivity. This interdisciplinarity is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in the kinds of action that would be required to reverse the ecologically damaging effects of Cartesian subjectivity. This is because of the specific manner in which the dualistic ideas articulated by Descartes are materially applied to the natural world within a capitalist system. As Jason W. Moore puts it, capitalist civilization produces both symbolic forms and material relations that lend Cartesian dualism its kernel of truth; the law of value does indeed reproduce a way of seeing reality that is dualist. Capitalism […] creates the idea and even a certain reality of ‘the’ environment as an external object. (Moore 2014: 284) Moore therefore claims that Cartesian dualism is a problem not merely because it is philosophically problematic, but because it is practically bound up with a way of thinking the world […] that took shape between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. These centuries saw the rise of capitalism. (Moore 2016: 84–85, original emphasis) We therefore live in a socioeconomic system which materialises Cartesian principles – capitalism is the Cartesian system par excellence. This insight can bring ecocriticism back to the same ground as that which is the central concern of poststructuralist scholarship. Poststructuralism, particularly in its psychoanalytic inflection, has been concerned with how human consciousness is (over)determined by various factors beyond the awareness of the subjectivity experiencing that consciousness. I have made the same claim in this book. The human consciousness which is responsible for ecological degradation is (over)determined by the same linguistic, unconscious, historical, aesthetic and material factors which (over)determine our culture’s attitudes towards gender, race, sexuality, and so on. This means that I would like to go one further than Žižek’s prescription for our ecological ills. Žižek states that the natural parameters of our environment are […] threatened by the dynamic of global capitalism. […] [T]he fate of the Whole (life on earth) hinges on what goes on in what was formerly one of its parts

240 Conclusion (the socio-economic mode of production of one of the species on earth). This is why we have to accept the paradox that, in the relation between the universal antagonism (the threatened parameters of the conditions for life) and the particular antagonism (the deadlock of capitalism), the key struggle is the particular one: one can solve the universal problem (of the survival of the human species) only by first resolving the particular deadlock of the capitalist mode of production. In other words, the commonsense reasoning which tells us that, independently of our class position or our political orientation, we will have to tackle the ecological crisis if we are to survive, is deeply misleading: the key to the ecological crisis does not reside in ecology as such. (Žižek 2011: 333–334) I go one further than this in the sense that Žižek’s particular antagonism (capitalism) can only be solved if we can change our Cartesian subjectivity (and, to be fair, it should be noted that Žižek does not oversimplify the task of overthrowing capitalism – far from it, given that his work is devoted to the study of ideology). I agree with Žižek, then, that “the key to the ecological crisis does not reside in ecology as such” (2011: 334). But the key does not reside in capitalism (or the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism) as such, either. Žižek claims that capitalism must be overcome before ecological crisis can be overcome, but I add a further layer to this regress – capitalism can only be overcome if Cartesian subjectivity is overcome. Again, however, this returns us to the familiar ground of critical theory. Since at least as long ago as the Frankfurt School, scholars have argued that capitalism successfully prevents revolution by controlling the subjectivity of the potential radical in various different ways. The study of this ideological process is the principal task of critical theory. The task I have set out in this book is grounded in this tradition – the analysis of how cultural practices influence subjectivity, and the consequences of this influence. The last point I want to make concerns the emancipatory project of critical theory. As many scholars have pointed out (see Geal 2019: 233–237), critical theory has hardly been successful at fashioning new revolutionary subjectivities. The Revolution has not yet come, and the ecophobia, racism and misogyny inherent in Cartesian subjectivity continue to exist, and in some instances may even be getting worse. But there is no inevitability to this. As I have argued, consciousness is (over)determined by factors which are not static. Despite the claims of neoliberals like Francis Fukuyama (1992), History did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. I complete this conclusion in June 2020, during the lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the midst of global Black Lives Matter protests. There is much current debate about the possible economic, social and cultural effects of these somewhat interrelated phenomena. Whether this will be a genuinely transformative moment, and precisely how such potential transformations will impact on environmental and social justice, remains to be seen. But I mention these

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phenomena to demonstrate that History continues to unfold, and that the subjectivities (over)determined by History will continue to change, in response to how humans attempt to make sense of and act in the world around them. The activist tradition in critical theory has always attempted to not only understand these historical processes, but to be prepared for those moments in History when, as Julius Caesar poetically put it, Alea iacta est, ‘the die is cast’, and no one is quite sure where it will fall. There may be as much to fear in our contemporary predicament as there is to be hopeful about, but either way change can happen. Marx famously argued that “[m]en [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves” (2008 [1852]: 15), so that even if we cannot choose those circumstances, we have some agency in terms of how we act in relation to them, particularly when those circumstances are in flux. This is where ecocriticism can find a use-value for my earlier point about the potentially non-Cartesian components of various avant-garde ‘ecofilms’ and non-occidental filmmaking traditions. I have argued that the use-value of the ecofilms’ anti-Cartesianism is limited, because ecofilms are only watched by very small groups of people, who are mostly already committed to environmental justice. However, the avant-garde has a tradition of attempting to create new ways of thinking and perceiving which can go on to achieve wider circulation at a later point. Richard Kerridge has already discussed how ecofilms relate to this idea, writing that this approach to the “term ‘avant-garde’ recovers its original aspiration here: its vision of a future in which what is now startlingly experimental has become normal” (2014: 368). I am suggesting that the shifting course of History provides moments in which subjectivity itself can be transformed, and that aesthetic practices like ecofilms and non-Cartesian traditions in non-occidental filmmaking can help to create future subjectivities which do not share the cogito’s ecophobia, racism and misogyny. Just as perspectival painting and realist film are the dominant aesthetic practices of a culture determined by Cartesian subjectivity, so too non-Cartesian aesthetic practices can be used to help create a non-Cartesian culture, society and economics. The relationship between aesthetics and subjectivity is dialectic – each one informs and perpetuates the other. So when History offers moments of flux, when various aspects of society, economics and culture might alter in one way or another, aesthetics can be used in an attempt to influence how we think, and therefore how we act. This has always been the avant-garde’s most lofty ambition, and the radical tradition in poststructuralist film theory has always been an attempt to inform and strategically position this avant-garde ambition; to, as Lapsley and Westlake put it, ask “what is the appropriate form for an oppositional cinema that will break the ideological hold of the mainstream and transform film from commodity to instrument of social change” (2006: 2). I don’t want to sound too optimistic about the prospects of this kind of change, either in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, or in response to future moments of Historical flux. As discussed in detail in Chapter 1, human societies can assimilate pressures which might be

242 Conclusion expected to cause significant changes. For example, an interesting phenomenon which was widespread particularly during the early stages of the COVID-19 lockdown demonstrates the desire to fall back on the reassuring certainties of Cartesian subjectivity. This phenomenon was the rise up the streaming charts of realist films about fictional pandemics (Sperling 2020). People were drawn to watch films like Contagion (Soderbergh 2011), in which, in a strange case of life imitating art, a bat-borne virus infects humans in China and then spreads across the globe. Although devoid of spectacles of destruction, Contagion repeats all of the other Cartesian features I have discussed throughout this book, offering the spectator a sense of illusory control over something which, at that precise historical moment, was very much out of the spectator’s control in the real world. The film begins with a woman, Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), at a bar, coughing, eating peanuts, and shaking the crumbs from her fingers. ‘You alright?’ she is asked. ‘Yeh, just jet lag’, she replies, but the camera’s movement down to the peanuts she has been touching, and the beginnings of ominous non-diegetic music, allow the spectator to perceive more than this doomed woman, or the person she has just infected. This perceptual mastery continues as she passes her credit card to a barmaid, and the camera holds on a close-up on the infected card, as it moves through space. This pattern is repeated throughout the film, as the camera lingers over touched surfaces as people pass by. There are also examples of perceptual mastery which align the spectator with certain protagonists who know about the infection while other (unimportant) characters do not, such as when the spectator shares point-of-view shots with government scientist Dr Sussman (Elliott Gould) looking at people coughing, touching and eating in a restaurant; and when the spectator witnesses the decision to quarantine Chicago, trapping other characters who did not have access to this perceptual information. Contagion also fetishises cinematic vision, so that when scientists identify the restaurant where human to human transmission first occurred, they watch CCTV footage, freeze-framing the key moments when hands shake and when a barman picks up an infected glass. The film also resolves its narrative threat, with protagonists celebrating the end of their lockdown thanks to a vaccine, and with government scientist Dr Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) administering the vaccine to his wife whilst saying that he is ‘taking care of the people in my lifeboat’. After these celebrations, the film concludes with a flashback to the incident that caused the outbreak, showing bulldozers displacing bats which drop half-eaten food into pigpens, and then following an infected pig to the restaurant where a chef contaminates Beth. The real-world COVID-19 patient zero may be unknown, but the fictional equivalent of this pandemic allows the spectator to perceive the fictional patient zero. The film’s choice to make Beth the person who brings the virus to America also operates within the context of Symbolic values, because she reprises an extramarital affair when she lays over in Chicago, and her guilt for both spreading the virus and disrupting a heteronormative relationship is punished with a grizzly death. Watching this film during lockdown also demonstrates one of the key masochistic points I have been making throughout this book, in terms of the

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spectator’s unconscious attempt to control what are in reality uncontrollable events. I watched the film through the Box of Broadcasts archive, which allows members of subscribing institutions to stream films and television programmes that have been broadcast on various British platforms, and which provides the dates of when the broadcasts were made. Box of Broadcasts also includes the advertisements that were originally shown along with the film or programme. The broadcast of Contagion that I watched1 was screened on the 29th of December 2019, prior to any knowledge about COVID-19 outside China, but during a period when the virus was already spreading between humans. A spectator watching the film when it was broadcast, therefore, was experiencing all of the illusory cinematic sensations of perceptual control over the fictional narrative threat at the very moment when a comparable real-world threat was entirely unknown to him/her. This gap between filmic perception and realworld perception is most stark during one of the adverts, for a company called Furniture Village, which states that its products will help the spectator ‘make your home beautiful for the big year ahead’. At the time of broadcast, the spectator could not know exactly what was in store for this ‘big year ahead’, but Contagion was encouraging the spectator to experience an illusory mastery over perception, suggesting that (s)he would perceive any real-world threats which might disrupt this ‘big year ahead’. The phenomenon of streaming films like Contagion during the COVID-19 lockdown suggests that people experiencing a lack of control over events, and over knowledge about those events, were retreating to the illusory masochistic pleasures of films which stage a narrative threat similar to that present in the real world, but in which the spectator experiences perceptual mastery rather than perceptual ignorance. Films like Contagion, certainly, reinforce Cartesian subjectivity. The inevitable Hollywood films about the COVID-19 pandemic which will be made over the next few years will almost certainly repeat this Cartesian focus on perceptual mastery. It will be up to filmmakers interested in environmental and social justice to produce alternative non-Cartesian responses to contemporary events. This book has made clear distinctions between how film relates to Cartesian and non-Cartesian forms of perception, and filmmakers could use these distinctions to avoid the ecologically destructive repetition of an aesthetics which reinforces humanity’s alienation from the rest of the biosphere. Non-Cartesian films about the pandemic, about other environmental disasters, or about any topic for that matter, should use reflexive techniques to disrupt the spectator’s ocularcentrism. ‘Found footage’ cinematography, the languid pace of ‘slow cinema’, or Ozu-like or Miyazaki-like forms of (super) flatness, for example, could be used to decentre the spectator’s illusory mastery, particularly in order to avoid a spectatorial transcendence over visual spectacle. Non-Cartesian films should not grant the spectator an informational mastery over impending threats, through crosscutting which either aligns the spectator’s perception with that of protagonists who warn about the coming disaster, or through objective images showing the same. Non-Cartesian films should not provide mythic resolutions to real-world problems; should not melodramatically

244 Conclusion suggest that such resolutions turn on conflict between individuals; should not valorise the restoration of heteronormative families and other Symbolic values; and should focus directly on the real-world problems we face, rather than turning those problems into fetishes which deflect attention from and obfuscate the specificities of such real-world problems. The Cartesian films I have analysed in this book express our culture’s politicalecological unconscious because they fetishise, repress and resolves anxieties about real-world problems, and because they normalise the anthropocentric grammar of realism. Non-Cartesian films must not fetishise, must not repress, and must not provide what Jameson calls “the imaginary resolution of a real contradiction” (1981: 77). Such films would therefore not be part of a political-ecological unconscious, but would rather point towards a more conscious engagement with the pressing real-world issues that realism so effectively obfuscates. If this Historic moment, or another in the future, can be used to transform our Cartesian subjectivity, then this book will describe a temporary historical phenomenon which humanity managed to overturn just in time to avert disaster. If not, then film’s illusory suggestion that the spectator would survive the inevitable realworld ecological catastrophe will not be enough to save the vast majority of our species and our civilisations. Real-world ecological disasters may currently happen in the peripheries of the occidental imagination, more often occurring in the Global South, and only beginning to spill out into richer countries. But if our culture’s ecological degradation is not radically reversed then such disasters will accelerate to become an existential threat to humanity as a whole. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s claim that “there are no lifeboats here for the rich and privileged” (2009: 221) will not be disproved by the realist cinema’s fetishisation of such ‘lifeboats’. The films I have studied in this book suggest that, even should the worst happen, the spectator will survive, and be renewed, but this illusion obfuscates the cold mathematics of the real world, where each individual is statistically more likely to be amongst the hordes of antlike victims, than one of the few survivors. If we do not overcome our destructive Cartesian subjectivity then each individual’s prospects are very bleak, and this book is less likely to be saved aboard one of Chakrabarty’s ‘lifeboats’, like Jackson’s novel in 2012, and more likely to end up as part of one of WALL-E’s vast towers of human detritus.

Note 1 https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/02CF6781?bcast= 130942470

Bibliography Barrett, L. (1997) Hand-Writing: Legibility and the White Body in ‘Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom’. American Literature, 69(2), 315–336. Chakrabarty, D. (2009) The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Enquiry, 35(2), 197–222.

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Dayan, J. (1998) Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin. Geal, R. (2019) Anamorphic Authorship in Canonical Film Adaptation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Glotfelty, C. (1996) Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis, in Glotfelty, C. and Fromm, H. (eds.) The Ecocriticism Reader. London: University of Georgia Press, pp. xv–xxxvii. Grosz, E. (1994) Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jameson, F. (1981) The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Methuen. Kerridge, R. (2014) Ecocritical Approaches to Literary Form and Genre: Urgency, Depth, Provisionality, Temporality, in Garrard, G. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 361–376. Lapsley, R. and Westlake, M. (2006) Film Theory: An Introduction. 2nd Edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Marx, K. (1976 [1845]) Theses on Feuerbach. Collected Works, Volume 5. (Translated by Clemens Dutt and W. Lough). New York: International Publishers. Marx, K. (2008 [1852]) The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. Rockville: Wildside Press. Mohanram, R. (1999) Black Body: Women, Colonialism, and Space. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Moore, J.W. (2014) The Value of Everything? Work, Capital, and Historical Nature in the Capitalist World-Ecology. Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 37(3–4), 245–292. Moore, J.W. (2016) The Rise of Cheap Nature, in Moore, J.W. (ed.) Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Oakland: PM Press, pp. 78–115. Sperling, N. (2020) ‘Contagion,’ Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 Thriller, is Climbing Up the Charts. The New York Times, 4 March. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/ 03/04/business/media/coronavirus-contagion-movie.html (Accessed 14 June 2020). Wilke, S. (2009) ‘The Sound of a Robin after a Rain Shower’: The Role of Aesthetic Experience in Dialectical Conceptions of Nature. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 16(1) 91–117. Žižek, S. (2011) Living in the End Times. London: Verso.

Filmography 2012 (2009) Directed by Roland Emmerich. USA: Columbia. Contagion (2011) Directed by Steven Soderbergh. USA: Warner Bros. WALL-E (2008) Directed by Andrew Stanton. USA: Pixar.

Index

2012 (film) 49–57, 66–67, 73, 75–79, 92, 157–159, 165–169, 171–172, 177–180 28 Days Later (film) 188–189, 191, 193–194, 200–202 abjection 94–98 Agricultural Revolution 12 Alaimo, Stacy 93, 97–99 Alien (film) 95 Aliens (film) 95, 99 anamorphosis 48–58, 92, 224–225 animals 15–16, 65, 85–93, 100–103, 110, 122, 127–128, 165–166, 183, 189, 205, 207–210 Avatar (film) 74 Ambassadors, The (painting) 47–48, 219 anime 215–217, 219–225, 229 animism 13, 214–215 anthropocentrism 11–12, 23, 28–30, 34, 42–48, 58–67, 85–93, 102–103, 205–207, 214–218 anthropomorphism 60, 65, 81, 86–87, 90–96, 99–106, 205–206, 216–217 avant-garde 62–65, 88–90, 206–210, 241 Azuma, Hiroki 219 Babe (film) 102–103 Bambi (film) 87–88, 99–101 Baudry, Jean-Louis 207–208 Bazin, André 59–60, 88–90 ‘becoming animal’ 88, 91–93, 205, 207–208 Bee Movie (film) 90–92, 100 Bennett, Jane 25–26 Black Lives Matter protests 240–241 Blade Runner (film) 108–109 Blue Planet, The (documentary) 204 Boime, Albert 43–44 Brereton, Pat 59, 85

Buddhism 214–216 Buell, Lawrence 29–30, 73–74 Burch, Noël 217–218 Cahill, James Leo 59–60, 88–90 capitalism 5, 12, 66, 71, 143–144, 149, 180, 239–240 Cartesian dualism 13–18, 21–22, 25–26, 41–44, 61, 213–215, 234, 238–240 Cartesian subjectivity 31–34, 41–44, 47–48, 58–60, 70, 109, 206–208, 236–244; non-Cartesian film 91, 204–230, 241, 243–244; non-Cartesian subjectivity 204–210, 213–219, 240–241, 243–244 Castle in the Sky (film) 221 Chicken Run (film) 102 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 79, 244 climate change 4–9, 71–73, 114, 116, 155–157, 182, 188–189; climate change denialism 40–41, 72–73 Climate Change: The Facts (documentary) 8–9 Cloverfield (film) 211–213 Code, Lorraine 16 cogito 14–17, 20–25, 31–33, 42, 52–54, 58–60, 85–86, 92–94, 101–109 consciousness 9–10, 19–26, 31–34, 93, 107–108, 208–209, 215, 239–240 Contagion (film) 242–243 Core, The (film) 157, 160–161, 164, 167, 170, 173–174, 177, 182–183 COVID-19 pandemic 240–243 Creed, Barbara 94–95 Cubitt, Sean 6, 204 cyborg 86, 96–97, 108–109 Dante’s Peak (film) 117, 120–121, 123, 127–129, 132–134, 136, 142, 149

Index 247 Day After Tomorrow, The (film) 6–7, 159–160, 162–166, 169–170, 172–3, 177, 179–181, 184; surveys of audience responses to 7–9 deep ecology 11–12, 17–21, 23, 27–34, 208 Deleuze, Gilles 88, 91–93 Demolition of a Wall (film) 88 Descartes, René 13–17, 20, 31–32, 41–3 disavowal 41, 69, 71–73, 77, 79 District 9 98–100 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (novel) 105 documentary ‘nature’ films 8, 65, 204–205 Donovan, Josephine 16, 102 Dumbo (film) 200 dystopia 108, 187–203, 236 earthquakes 50–51, 53–54, 119–121, 124–126, 129–130, 140, 159, 168–169, 225–229 ecocriticism 4–5, 11–20, 22–30, 39–41, 58–69, 204–210, 213–216, 237, 239–241 ecolinguistics 4–7, 24–25, 33 ecological consciousness 19–21, 23–24, 39, 47 ecological unconscious 29–30, 73–74 ecofilm/ecocinema 62–65, 206–210, 214–216, 230, 241 ecophobia 11–14, 65, 232 ecosophy 11–31, 67–69 environmental apocalypse film 77–80, 154–186 environmental disaster film 70, 113–152, 212–213, 225–229 epistemology 16–17, 21, 26, 42 ‘epistemology of mastery’ 16–17 ‘epistemology we live by’ 1, 11–17, 234 Estok, Simon 12, 65 executions on film 88–89 ‘extensionism’ 101–106 eyeline match 81, 92, 122–124, 140, 149, 218, 227 false consciousness 7–10, 19, 24 Fay, Jennifer 88–90 fetish 72–73, 157, 163, 194, 226, 235, 242, 244 film grammar 45, 48–58, 60–67, 77–79, 88–93, 206–212, 217–224, 230, 244 fort/da game 54–58, 69, 98, 138–141; see also masochism

‘found footage’ film 210–213, 243 Freud, Sigmund 20–21, 30–31, 46, 54–55, 72–73 Gaia 67, 70, 74, 87, 181 Garrard, Greg 4, 12–13, 40 ‘gaseous perception’ 91–92 geometric perspective 41–48, 55, 219–224, 228 Geostorm (film) 155–156, 161–162, 164–165, 167, 170, 174–176, 177–178, 182, 184 Giddens’s Paradox 8–9 global warming see climate change Gogoi, Gitanjali 213–214 Gossin, Pamela 216, 221–2 Grear, Anna 15–16 Grizzly Man (film) 206–207 Guattari, Félix 88, 91–93 Habitat (film) 98 Hello Dolly! (film) 103–105, 107 heteronormative family 65–66, 75–76, 101, 141–149, 179–183, 227–228, 242, 244 hommelette 52–54, 92, 136–139 Holbein the Younger, Hans 47–48, 54–55, 140–141, 219 Holliday, Christopher 90–93 Hitchcock, Alfred 117–119 human/nonhuman binary 12–17, 42–44, 73–76, 85–109, 189, 230, 237 hurricanes 126–128, 136, 176, 212–213 ideology 9–10, 20–25, 30–33, 43–45, 54, 58, 62–67, 73–74, 77–78, 194–199, 206–211, 235–236, 240–241 ‘ideology of form’ 44, 78, 207 Imaginary Order 52–54, 57–58, 92; see also hommelette Impossible, The (film) 114, 116–117, 120, 122, 130–132, 135, 139–141, 141–147, 150, 171–172 Inconvenient Truth, An (documentary) 9 Ingram, David 6, 65, 70–71, 208–209, 230 Into the Storm (film) 212–213 Island of Dr. Moreau, The (film) 93, 95, 97–98 Ivakhiv, Adrian 60–62, 68–69, 81, 87, 209–210 Jameson, Fredric 29–30, 44, 73, 78, 207, 244

248 Index Japanese aesthetics 213–225, 229 Japanese cinema 213–229, 243 Jaws (film) 55, 110, 128 Juon: The Grudge (film) 55 kami 215–7 Kaplan, E. Ann 187 Kerridge, Richard 9, 26, 33, 209, 241 King, Geoff 73–75 Kristeva, Julia 40, 94–96; see also abjection Lacan, Jacques 2, 31–34, 39–40, 43–48, 52, 57–58, 62, 67–69, 108–109, 219, 234–235; see also anamorphosis; see also Imaginary Order; see also (m)other; see also Real, the; see also suture; see also Symbolic Order Lamarre, Thomas 219–224 Latour, Bruno 25, 40–41 Lauro, Sarah Juliet and Karen Embry 93–94, 105–106 Leopold, Aldo 27–30 ‘lifeboat’ 2, 79–80, 117, 135, 138, 141–143, 152, 171, 176, 178, 181, 228, 235, 242 MacDonald, Scott 62–64, 206–209 McGowan, Todd 74 Mad Max: Fury Road (film) 188–189, 191, 195, 197–199, 201 March of the Penguins (documentary) 205 MacCabe, Colin 44, 49, 55 Marxism 9–10, 25, 30 Marx, Karl 20–21, 31, 237, 241 masochism 54–60, 69, 78–79, 98, 135–136, 138–142, 147–150, 177–179, 198–200, 228, 242–243 Matrix, The (film) 14, 94, 107 melodrama 65–68, 74, 143–145, 182, 243–244 Miyazaki, Hayao 215–225, 229, 243 monotheism 12–14, 18, 94 (m)other 52, 54–55, 100–101, 103, 141–143, 145, 150–151, 227–228 Murakami, Takashi 218–219 Næss, Arne 11–12, 27–29, 214 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (film) 216, 221–225, 229 New Materialism 25–26 Nietzsche, Friedrich 20–21, 31 Noah (film) 75–77, 155–157, 162, 167, 170–171, 176, 178, 182, 184, 201

Oppermann, Serpil 39, 41 Our Planet (documentary) 205 Ozu, Yasujirō 217–218, 228–229, 243 parapraxis 72–73 Perfect Storm, The (film) 114, 116, 119, 126–128, 131, 136, 139–140, 150–152 perceptual mastery 48–52, 57, 78–79, 117–128, 132–134, 145–152, 157–167, 177–178, 183–185, 190–194, 197, 212–213, 224–228, 242–243 personal experience 26–30, 32–33, 39–41, 43 perspectival painting 41–45, 47–48, 140, 241 Pheasant-Kelly, Fran 99 Pick, Anat 58–59, 85–86, 88–90, 211 political unconscious 29–30, 35, 44, 73–74 ‘political-ecological unconscious’ 2, 74, 109, 155, 187, 207, 235, 244 Pompeii (film) 71–72 postcolonialism 213–214, 237–239 poststructuralism 25–26, 33–34, 39–41, 63–65, 88–90, 206–207, 234, 237, 239, 241 progressive politics 10 Prospero’s Books (film) 64, 206 racism 10, 144, 238–241 Real, the 46–48, 52–55, 58, 67–69, 140–141, 161–162 realism/realist film 44–60, 62–65, 67, 69, 77–80, 85–90, 107–109, 204–213, 217–218, 224, 228–229, 235–236, 241–244 ‘reality effect’ 44, 207 reflexivity 44, 47, 140–141, 179, 207–208, 214, 224, 243 repression 30–31, 68–69, 71–74, 113–114, 116–117, 155–157, 182, 244 res cogitans 15–16, 20, 23, 28, 32, 42–45, 48–49, 52, 55–58, 60–62, 79–80, 93–97, 101–107, 205, 215, 224 res extensa 15–16, 20, 23, 28, 32, 42–45, 48–50, 53, 55, 60–61, 93–94, 97, 101–102, 205, 214–215 Ricœur, Paul 20–21, 31 Road, The (film) 188–189, 191–192, 194–195, 197–198, 200–201, 210 Robisch, S.K. 40–41 Rosenhek, Ruth 18–19, 26–27 Roszak, Theodore 23, 29–30

Index 249 Said, Edward 3 Saito-, Tamaki 219 San Andreas (film) 114, 116, 124–126, 129–132, 137–144, 147 ‘school of suspicion’ 20–22, 31, 39 ‘school of truth’ 20–21 Scientific Revolution 13–14, 234 Shinto- 215–217 shock 48, 117–118, 128–129, 166–168, 192–193 shot/reverse shot 48–51, 78, 81, 91–92, 130–131, 140, 212, 218, 229 Silent Running (film) 210 Sinking of Japan (film) 225–229 sleep furiously (film) 208–209 ‘slow cinema’ 208, 210, 244 social constructionism 22–24, 41 social media 46 Sobchack, Vivian 103 Sontag, Susan 56, 60 Spirited Away (film) 216–217 Stibbe, Arran 5–7, 24–25 ‘stories we live by’ 5–7, 24–25 sublime, the 28–29 ‘super flat’ art 219–220, 222–225, 228, 243 suspense 51, 117–118, 129, 146, 192–193 suture 48–55, 57–58, 60, 69, 74, 77, 92, 98, 107, 136–141, 225 Symbolic Order 31–33, 42–48, 52–57, 62, 66–69, 74–76, 92, 95, 100, 103–107, 141, 145, 148–149, 179, 182, 200–201, 217–218, 235 technological solutions to ecological degradation 155–156, 182–183, 225–226

Terminator, The (film) 96–97 Terminator 2: Judgement Day (film) 96–97, 100 tornados 212 trauma 47, 54–56, 68–69, 72–76, 101, 113–114, 150, 187–188, 195–197, 228 tsunamis 71, 73, 77, 114, 116, 122, 131–132, 135, 138, 158, 163, 169–171, 173, 176, 225–227 Thoreau, Henry David 8–9, 17–18 Turner, J. M. W. 27 Utopia 179–180, 187, 195, 200 Volcano (film) 114–117, 119–124, 127, 129, 132, 136–137, 140, 142, 144–145, 148–149 WALL-E (film) 103–107 Warm Bodies (film) 105–108 Wave, The (film) 153, 213 Waterworld (film) 116, 188–194, 196–198, 201 Willoquet-Maricondi, Paula 64–65, 69–70, 206–207, 209, 214 ‘wokeness’ 10, 19 World War Z (film) 70–73 Yaeger, Patricia 35 Žižek, Slavoj 5, 28, 31, 67–68, 76, 79–80, 105, 108–109, 239–240 zombies 70–72, 93–95, 105–108, 188–189, 191, 193–194, 196, 202 zoomorphism 59, 85–93, 206–208