HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for and Himalayan Studies

Volume 40 Number 1 Article 20

November 2020

Review of The Everest Effect: Nature, Culture, Ideology by Elizabeth Mazzolini

Jolynna Sinanan University of Sydney, Australia

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Recommended Citation Sinanan, Jolynna. 2020. Review of The Everest Effect: Nature, Culture, Ideology by Elizabeth Mazzolini. HIMALAYA 40(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol40/iss1/20

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Review is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. with mountain exploration in the justifications of exercising will to early twentieth century and closing master the impossibility of the with commercial expeditions in the elements reinvents the authenticity 1990s and early 2000s, while each of the ability to reach the summit. chapter covers a central theme Drawing on feminist scholarship, embedded in the contextual moment the first chapter presents a history of events in Everest’s history. The of oxygen to frame the limits of thematic overlays of each chapter: the body and how the difficulties authenticity and supplemental of overcoming these limits has oxygen, utility and food, individuality authenticated the achievement of and communications technology, high altitude climbing. extremity and visual technology, The following chapter continues and ability and money, which are the theme of limits of extreme intimately connected to the Everest The Everest Efect: Nature, Culture, physical challenges by exploring experience and industry historically, Ideology. food and waste: how “social and have also been chosen astutely for bodily boundaries on Everest have how avenues of theoretical and Elizabeth Mazzolini. Tuscaloosa: The changed since the early twentieth narrative dexterity open up new University of Alabama Press, 2015. century” (page 49). Mazzolini’s areas ways of thinking about, seeing and 183 pages. ISBN 9780817318932. of expertise in ecocriticism and understanding the significance of environmental rhetoric with a focus Everest in contemporary, albeit Reviewed by Jolynna Sinanan on ideologies of waste are brought Western culture. to the fore by bringing together Elizabeth Mazzolini’s The Everest Each of these themes contributes to a expenditure and conservation, food, Effect takes everything iconic culturally constructed idea of Everest, bodily waste and surrounding moral about mythology where the (highest) mountain discourses, employing Bataille’s in popular imagination: colonial becomes symbolic to different notion of the general economy. An pursuit, adventure, stakeholders and whose regimes overarching concern is the resource nature and environmentalism, and of value shift through different management of bodies, from deaths commercial climbing and capitalism time periods. Most effective is how to how the value of food transformed to argue that culture as a set of Everest is historicized throughout from being a luxury afforded to worldviews may be more “natural” modernization in the twentieth gentlemen mountaineers to being a than a natural site such as Everest century, from periods of nationalism good for efficiency and sustenance. itself. to individualism to consumerism. The second half of the book broadly The numerous books available on Mazzolini’s disciplinary home is explores technologies of Everest: Everest make up distinct genres in English and rhetoric, and she communication, visual and financial, in non-fiction and fiction, from seamlessly links characters and and how the rapid developments historical account and biography to episodes in the modern Everest of the second half of the twentieth thriller, but Mazzolini’s exploration timeline to historical precedents, and century have intensified Everest’s is one of a different kind, she delves contemporary social and cultural symbolic value to new consumer into how Everest has been made theory. markets. As Reinhold Messner is symbolic through imaginative Mazzolini begins by establishing how inseparable to any discussion on and commodified processes. Her the privatization of mountaineering Everest and oxygen, similarly, Jan argument is made all the more that has paved the way for (James) Morris is inseparable from compelling by combining an commercial expeditions, increased the first ascent in the media. Tenzing astounding knowledge of Everest commodification and exploitation Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary’s history, facts and trivia with of the mountain as a natural historic summit conquest in 1953 theoretical agility, written with resource introduces the problem is a well-known story to many, visceral and intellectual appeal. of authenticity. The “easier” it and images that appeared in The The narrative that follows is two- has become for clients to ascend Times of London still endure today. fold: a chronological history of Everest, through supplementary But journalist (and later, author) Everest mountaineering, beginning oxygen, financial access and moral James Morris’ remarkable response

HIMALAYA Volume 40, Number 1 | 129 [Mazzolini] delves into how Everest has been made symbolic through imaginative and commodifed processes. Her argument is made all the more compelling by combining an astounding knowledge of Everest history, facts and trivia with theoretical agility, writen with visceral and intellectual appeal Sinanan on The Everest Efect: Nature, Culture, Ideology.

to challenges in reporting the Into Thin Air and IMAX’s Everest to ecosystem and for the people who breaking story involved innovating commentate on the consequences live and work in the region. a configuration of communication of the commodified experience of The book is clear that it does not seek technologies including airwaves, Everest expeditions and likens the to provide an overall explanation encoded language, and topography, IMAX film to the role of panoramas of what drives personal desires to from Everest Base Camp to the of the eighteenth century in middle- “conquer” Everest, a topic that is Himalayan gateway hub of Namche class homes. These viewpoints, which explored at length in other accounts Bazaar to London. This ostensible depict the sheer size of mountains, of Everest expeditions. The strength beginning of Everest’s media history but from a perspective that renders of drawing on these personal stories is located within Kittler’s perspective the viewer the central owner of however, is that they are historicized on media power and Foucault’s nature that is being viewed, “enact and contextualized, effectively biopolitics to elucidate how, with an Enlightenment ideal of universal presenting a socio-cultural, the advent of media technologies, subjectivity” (page 92), a narrative structural perspective, rather than a Everest as a subject is produced and of Everest tourism that is persistent psychological one. For scholars and constrained by new technological today. enthusiasts of Everest geography and regimes. Mazzolini’s Everest story ends where industry, The Everest Effect provides Most influential in shaping views another era of Everest culture begins: a theoretically and historically of Everest are quite directly views Everest through smartphones and rich cornerstone for culturally and of Everest in technologies of visual social media, an area of inquiry regionally comparative thought on cultures: “Visual culture surrounding that has generated much interest, Everest effects. Mount Everest has rendered Mount but little research to date. Indeed, Jolynna Sinanan is a Research Fellow Everest’s significance increasingly Nirmal Purja’s viral image of the in Digital Media and Ethnography abstract, light, and portable by ‘traffic jam’ approaching the Hillary at the University of Sydney. She has constructing subjects in relation Step during 2019’s summit season an interdisciplinary background in to the mountain’s extreme has reinvigorated debates around anthropology and development and her enormity” (page 96). Arguably, the impossible sustainability of current research focuses on the impact of Everest has always been mediated Everest climbing and the risks of mobile media infrastructures on work and through scientific and then media Khumbu Sherpa and less prominent tourism in the Everest region, Nepal. technologies. Most individuals’ ethnic minorities Rai and Tamang encounter with Everest is through whose livelihoods and own future the popular imagination of Everest, aspirations depend on the tourism, rather than through knowledge or trekking, and climbing industry. scholarship on Nepal, , India or While The Everest Effect focuses on the Himalayas. Coincidently, the film the Western cultural imagination, Everest, an account of the events that retaining its fidelity to Mazzolini’s were the subject of Jon Kraukauer’s areas of expertise in English, critical, Into Thin Air and the landmark and social theory, the depth of IMAX film Everest, directed by David analysis she brings to persisting Breashears and Greg MacGillivray, themes of labor, exploitation, and was also released in 2015, completing waste invites further investigation a trifecta of the 1996 disaster in to several ramifications of the popular culture. Mazzolini references commodification of the fragile alpine

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