Eco MediaRodopi, 2005 - 168 pages For the last twenty years ecology, the last great political movement of the 20th century, has fired the imaginations not only of political activists but of popular movements throughout the industrialised world. EcoMediais an enquiry into the popular mediations of environmental concerns in popular film and television since the 1980s. Arranged in a series of case studies on bio-security, relationships with animals, bioethics and biological sciences, over-fishing, eco-terrorism, genetic modification and global warming, EcoMediaoffers close readings of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, Miyazake's Princess Mononoke, The Perfect Storm, X-Menand X2, The Day After Tomorrowand the BBC's drama Edge of Darknessand documentary The Blue Planet. Drawing on the thinking of Flusser, Luhmann, Latour, Agamben and Bookchin, EcoMediadiscusses issues from whether animals can draw and why we like to draw animals, to how narrative films can imagine global processes, and whether wonder is still an ethical pleasure. Building on the thesis that popular film and television can tell us a great deal about the state of contemporary beliefs and anxieties, the book builds towards an argument that the polis, the human world, cannot survive without a three way partnership with physisand techne, the green world andthe technological. |
Contents
| 7 | |
| 25 | |
Virtual nature and natural virtue | 43 |
The Perfect Storm and Whale Rider | 61 |
ecoterrorism and the public sphere | 79 |
Are we not men? XMen X2 and GM apologetics | 99 |
green media in global context | 117 |
biopolitics and ecommuncation | 133 |
Bibliography | 147 |
Filmography | 159 |
Index 165 | |
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Common terms and phrases
achieved action aesthetic Agamben Andrea Gail animal Aotearoa New Zealand Aragorn argues argument articulated audiences Balrog become biopolitics Blue Planet British Film Institute broadcast cinema communication complex construction contemporary Craven creature culture destiny dialectic dialogue dimensionality distinction distinguishes drama ecological economic Edge of Darkness effects emphasises environment environmental ethics existence extent fear film film's Flusser forest freedom Gandalf gesture global green politics green world Habermas Hegel human and natural individual industries innocence Kant's knowledge living Lord Lyotard magic Middle Earth Mononoke moral mutants narrative natural world networks nonetheless object Paikea palantír Perfect Storm physical physis polis political popular media possible Princess Mononoke production public sphere recognise relationship responsibility Rings Saruman Sauron scientific screen semiosphere sense sequence shots significant social society space speak species sublime techne television themes Tolkien's tradition University utopian Whale Rider whales X-men
Popular passages
Page 1 - Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.
Page 25 - The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Page 107 - Arendt writes of the principle of natality: the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting.
Page 46 - All the misunderstandings with his interpreters, with the existentialist 'dissidents' and finally with himself, have arisen from the fact that in order to see the world and grasp it as paradoxical, we must break with our familiar acceptance of it and, also, from the fact that from this break we can learn nothing but the unmotivated upsurge of the world. The most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction.
Page 102 - Article 6 No one shall be subjected to discrimination based on genetic characteristics that is intended to infringe or has the effect of infringing human rights, fundamental freedoms and human dignity.
Page 96 - two symmetrical figures' in this sovereign space 'that have the same structure and are correlative: the sovereign is the one with respect to whom all men are potentially homines sacri, and homo sacer is the one with respect to whom all men act as sovereigns'.
Page 107 - However, of the three, action has the closest connection with the human condition of natality; the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities. Moreover, since action is the political activity par excellence, natality, and not mortality, may be the central category of...