Afraid of the Dark and the Light: Visceralizing Ecocide in The Road and Hell

Authors

  • Alexa Weik von Mossner University of Fribourg

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2012.3.2.471

Keywords:

science fiction film, ecocide, setting, landscape, non-human agency, viewer engagement, película de ciencia ficción, ecocidio, escenario, paisaje, agencia no-humana, implicación de la audiencia

Abstract

The essay is concerned with the ways in which contemporary science fiction films explore the future subjectivities and societies that may result from radical ecological changes, looking at two pertinent examples from two different national traditions: John Hillcoat’s 2009 film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning novel The Road (2006), and one of the very few German-Swiss science fiction films with an environmental theme, Tim Fehlbaum’s Hell (2011). It is particularly interested in the relationship between the films’ imagined ecological spaces and the actions of the protagonists of each film on the one hand, and in the relationship between these futuristic diegetic spaces and the contemporary real-life ecological spaces that “play” them on the other hand. Together with the performances of the human actors and the tension and suspense built by the narratives, it argues, the spectacle and insinuated agency of these ecological spaces are centrally responsible for the films’ emotional force and for their ability to engage viewers in stories of global ecocide and human survival.

 

Resumen

 

            El ensayo analiza cómo las películas de ciencia ficción exploran las sociedades y subjetividades futuras que pueden surgir de cambios ecológicos radicales, atendiendo a dos ejemplos relevantes de dos tradiciones nacionales diferentes: la adaptación cinematográfica de 2009 de la novela de Cormac McCarthy The Road (2006), ganadora del premio Pulitzer, dirigida por John Hillcoat; y una de las muy escasas películas de ciencia ficción germano-suizas de  temática medioambiental, Hell (2011) de Tim Fehlbaum. Se presta especial interés a dos aspectos: por un lado,  la relación entre los espacios ecológicos imaginados en las películas y las acciones de los protagonistas de cada película; y por otro lado,  la relación entre estos espacios diegéticos futuristas y los espacios ecológicos reales que los representan. Junto con la interpretación de los actores humanos y la tensión y el suspense que construyen las narraciones, el espectáculo y la agencia insinuada de estos espacios ecológicos son en gran medida responsables de la fuerza emocional de las películas y de su habilidad  para implicar a la audiencia en historias de ecocidio global y supervivencia humana.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Alexa Weik von Mossner, University of Fribourg

Alexa Weik von Mossner is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, and an Affiliate of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at the University of Munich in Germany. She earned her Ph.D. in Literature at the University of California, San Diego in 2008. Her essays have appeared in journals such as the African American Review, English Studies, Environmental Communication, Ecozon@, and in the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. Her current research focuses on the imagination of global ecological risk in American popular culture narratives.

Downloads

Additional Files

Published

2012-10-06

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 2 (2012): The Invention of Eco-Futures

Section

The Invention of Eco-Futures

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal (CC BY-NC for articles and CC BY-NC-ND for creative work, unless author requests otherwise.

b) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

c) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).