Ecocinema-00-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:00 Page iii

ECOCINEMA THEORY AND PRACTICE

EDITED BY STEPHEN RUST, SALMA MONANI, AND SEAN CUBITT Ecocinema-00-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:00 Page iv

First published 2013 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted 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. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ecocinema theory and practice / edited by Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, and Sean Cubitt. p. cm. — (AFI film readers) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Environmental protection and motion pictures. 2. Environmentalism in motion pictures. 3. Ecology in motion pictures. 4. Documentary films—History and criticism. 5. Motion pictures—United States. 6. Ecocriticism. I. Rust, Stephen. II. Monani, Salma. III. Cubitt, Sean, 1953- PN1995.9.E78E26 2012 791.43′6553—dc23 2012007629

ISBN: 978–0–415–89942–0 (hbk) ISBN: 978–0–415–89943–7 (pbk) ISBN: 978–0–203–10605–1 (ebk)

Typeset in Spectrum by Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 63

ecocinema and ideology: do ecocritics dream of a

three clockwork green?

andrew hageman

“What exactly is it, sir, that you’re going to do?” “Oh,” said Dr Branom, his cold stetho going all down my back, “it’s quite simple, really. We just show you some films.” “Films?” I said. I could hardly believe my ookos, brothers, as you may well understand. “You mean,” I said, “it will be just like going to the pictures?” “They’ll be special films,” said Dr Branom. “Very special films.” A Clockwork Orange

the case for dialectical ideological critique1 Do ecocritics dream of a clockwork green? This question, in conjunction with the epigraph, invokes a narrative of cinema used to remedy social crises. Ecocinema studies presents a similar narrative when we explore the prospects for, and limitations of, cinema as an aesthetic means to shaping ecological perceptions and actions. Aesthetic social persuasion and pro- gramming are clearly ideological work, thereby requiring vigorous ideological critique. To that end, this chapter has three goals: to demonstrate Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 64

a dialectical ideological critique method of reading films; to demonstrate the utility of this method for ongoing self-criticism of our work; and, thus to argue for dialectical ideological critique as a necessary apparatus for the field of ecocinema studies. The first step is to describe the working concept of ideology in the ecocinema context. There are three fundamental aspects to the concept of ideology at work in this approach to ecocritique. Although this tripartite concept of ideology follows in the particular theoretical footsteps of Louis Althusser and Slavoj ZˇiŽek, the purpose is to incorporate certain critical insights from them in

geman the design of a dialectical critique specific to ecocinema studies. Both Althusser and ZˇiŽek have made vital contributions to the theory of ideology, and this chapter leverages those within a process aimed at locating and drew ha

an analyzing contradictions in cinematic representations of ecology and ecological issues in order to create negative spaces within which subsequent productive work can take place. The first aspect is that all films are bathed in ideology. That is easy enough to say, yet also easy enough to forget when watching and critiquing film. When I watch an ecologically engaged film that affectively and intellectually moves me, my initial reaction is to fantasize that it has occupied a position of ecocritical purity, outside of ideology. But such fantasies must be checked, for the operative concept of ideology here is not of the variety that posits a false consciousness that can ultimately be pierced or removed as scales from the eyes. To sustain this thought can be difficult but is absolutely necessary if we are to avoid merely rehearsing the very ideological structures we seek to critique. Second, ideology works through multiple structural levels and layers in any given text. One example crucial throughout this chapter is a co- structural pair articulated most explicitly by ZˇiŽek. In the “Hollywood Today: Report from an Ideological Battlefield” chapter of Living in the End Times, ZˇiŽek calls this pair constituted and constitutive ideologies. The former operates at the level of content, while the latter operates formally and “provides the coordinates of the very space within which the content is located.”2 As an illustration, ZˇiŽek explains how Avatar (2009) seems to be aimed against the military-industrial forces of capitalism, but that the film nevertheless rehearses a distinct patriarchal social structure. Working with the same film, I will, similarly to Max Cafard, shift the co-structural pair into 64 the ecocinema context by pointing out that spectators get to cheer in solidarity when the exploited indigenous Na’vi rise up against the military- industrial corporate baddies in Avatar to protect themselves and the commons, but we only get to do so within the constitutive technological ideology embodied in the massive pre-release promotional efforts that emphasized the idea that the coolest there, Pandora, is only possible when there is no “there” there—when the material world is reducible to digital code, available for infinite manipulation.3 Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 65

The third aspect of ideology concerns contradiction and consistency. Following Louis Althusser and Pierre Macherey, this chapter presumes that no ideology, eco-friendly or otherwise, is sufficiently consistent to withstand the pressures of figuration when inscribed in film.4 In other words, although this chapter follows Althusser in positing that there is no escaping ideology, ideology always contains contradictions internal and inherent to its structure. For Althusser and other ideology theorists influenced by Lacanian

psychoanalysis, the contradictions are what necessitate and structure ideology and ecocinema ideology. As such, contradictions point to the most crucial matters of ideology. Within this ideological framework, every film contains contradictions— points at which their ecological representations and messages break down. Such breaking points must not be read as signs of failure to be lamented, but as indices of the contradictions within the ideology that determines our current ability to think and represent ecology. This is both good and terrifying news. The good news is: we do not live in a hermetically sealed eco-doom since unsustainable ideologies are incomplete and thereby vulnerable. For contradictions are spaces within ideology where new subjectivities might be produced: new constructions of and relationships between individual subjects and the social totality. The terrifying news is that the current ideology of capital sets the limits of how we can think ecology, so we don’t know what being ecological might be in a non-capital world. As such, what may appear to be alternatives actually remain encoded in the ideological framework. If we ignore this enframing, we seal our doom when we imagine that we have already achieved ecological consciousness and can disseminate it through film for social programming. Here we as critics must be vigilant not to sponsor a talent search for the Leni Riefenstahl of ecological crisis cinema. These aspects of ideology and their implications raise questions for ecocinema studies. What can film, given its ideological constraints and contradictions, do to advance ecological knowledge, attitudes, and behavior? Does the work of ecocinema studies consist in producing critical readings and/or artistic precepts? And, to what extent do we desire “very special films” capable of affecting people to the bone so they will subsequently act ecologically? To work in this field, one must take a position on these questions, and I will insist that we must stake our positions with the understanding that 65 field-grounding questions must be re-posed again and again in acts of self- criticism. For neither ecology nor ideology stands still. This chapter calls for a practice of dialectical critique to read films for what they reveal to us about the contradictions within the culture, society, and ourselves that we readily recognize in such films. By discerning and then working through the contradictions, we begin to shift gears from taking comfort in ideology returning just what we expect of it to the discomfort of noticing the real Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 66

disorder in ecology, society, and ourselves that we had thought of as consistent. A dialectical approach addresses the complex structures and workings of ideology without leading to cynical complacency or to empty forms of resistance that replicate the ideology they are meant to oppose. This approach also makes possible slight glimpses of utopic solutions not framed by the ideology of capital. The sections below demonstrate this practice with a range of films that center upon one specific social-ecological scenario: the World Bank-driven privatization of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia and the protests in 1999

geman through 2000 that led ultimately to the de-privatization of the water. Primary films include The Corporation (2003), Tambien la Lluvia (Even the Rain) (2010), and Abuela Grillo (2009): a documentary, a fiction feature, and an animated short drew ha

an that all mediate the same ecological events. This cluster of Cochabamba water wars films reveals continuities and differences across genres, forms, and contents representing the same ecological matter.5 Dialectical ideological critique of these films locates their revolutionary potential, not in the explicit ecological programming (as in a clockwork green agenda), but in their contradictions as the fissures through which we may glimpse and further imagine an ecology without capital—an ecology to come. In this chapter, I argue that the ecology to come will ultimately be ecology without capital and that the stakes of our critical work is whether it will be an ecology with or without human beings. As such, I agree with the notion articulated from Karl Marx’s Capital to Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine that there is a persistent unsustainability to capitalism, not just in terms of its overwhelming production of the proletariat, but specifically regarding the finitude of objects available for globalized industrial capitalist commodification and consumption. While I take this position, I do so recognizing my own ideological position as defined by current conditions and pointout that I fully embrace a future of ongoing self-criticism concerning ecocinema.

documenting the ecopathology of everyday life This section analyzes ideological presuppositions incorporated into The Corporation about how documentary film works. Of particular interest is the presupposition that underwrites the structural-epistemological approach 66 to the film, namely an acceptance of the personification of capital when corporations are deemed to be people and the subsequent psychoanalysis of this capitalist corporate “person.” The aim of this section is to demonstrate how such presuppositions ignore, at best, and reinforce, at worst, the ideology, and its contradictions, that this genre can productively put in plain sight. Concerning structure, The Corporation opens with a history of the corporation as an institution inextricably tied to the modern nation-state. Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 67

Black-and-white footage and the incorporation of still images encodes this history as a matter of the distant past, almost pre-cinematic. Subsequent “chapters” of the film psychoanalyze the corporation as if it is a person. In one respect, this approach is immanent to the social functioning of the corporation, and to capital itself given the history of corporations making legal claims as a “person” to individual rights such as the freedom to contribute to political campaigns. There is a long and diverse history of court

cases from the lower courts through the US Supreme Court on corporate ideology and ecocinema claims to rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.6 One must, however, question this adaptation of psychoanalysis, a science based upon the individual human psyche, to the multi-human corporate psyche, if such a thing can be said to exist. Although the film presents a diagnosis of the corporation as a psychopathic entity, there is a crucial question to ask about this epistemological assessment: Does the act of diagnosing the corporation dangerously accept its claim to personhood, or is this act radical in its taking corporate personhood entirely at face value? Put another way, does The Corporation present this diagnosis in a good-faith acceptance of corporate personhood as the necessary condition for it, or is the diagnosis a bad-faith move in light of the film’s determined skepticism of the validity of corporate claims to personhood? To answer that question, consider how the psychoanalytic structure of the film makes visible a contradiction within the corporation as institution. When the diagnostic checklist for psychopaths is applied to observable actions, many of which, including the Cochabamba water wars, entail ecological devastation, the personified corporations meet the criteria to be declared psychotic. And yet, the individuals working within these psychotic corporations do not necessarily meet the criteria. Interestingly, Dr. Robert Hare, the psychologist featured in these chapters of the film, later designed a specific test (B-Scan 360) for psychopathology in captains of industry, and this test seems poised to contradict the film’s suggestion that many CEOs are not psychopathic.7 But, to remain within the logic presented by the film, The Corporation documents several CEOs who appear genuinely, personally concerned about ecological degradation and conservation. There is a striking scene of Sir Mark Moody-Stuart (then Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell) and his wife serving tea to protesters on their lawn while discussing environ- mental issues and human rights. The footage selection and sequencing depict the protestors’ emotional anger gradually being mollified and 67 transformed into congeniality as they eat biscuits, drink tea, and have a “civilized” dialogue with the Moody-Stuarts on the lawn. Thus, The Corporation does fine work locating and articulating a crucial point of contradiction where the corporation as person is psychotic but the people who comprise the corporation may individually be sweet if bourgeois people. But, to do subsequent productive positive work within the negative ideological space of this contradiction, the film could have taken its Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 68

psychoanalytical structure much further and posited the unconscious of the corporate psyche as capital. Capital is the structure that produces subjectivities of individuals and corporations, including their relations to ecology. It is the inaccessible and unrepresentable thing that remains when capital is personified. Capital is the force that only appears as that which is indicated by the contradictions within its representation through personi- fication. Without taking this step of imagining the unconscious of corporate persons, the film invokes a bad-faith notion of the corporation as a per-

geman sonification of capital, one that misrecognizes the abstract for the concrete since a corporation is a mere bearer of capital, just as a rock, pinecone, woodpecker, or H1N1 virus is a bearer of ecology. The image of a forlorn drew ha

an polar bear on an iceberg may indicate ecological crises yet does not fully represent ecology since the bear bears ecology but is not ecology. The same applies to the corporation as a figure that bears capital but cannot fully represent capital. That The Corporation stops short of this psychoanalytical move alerts us to a limit within its structure and thus to its own internal contradiction just at the place where it is working explicitly with a contradiction. At the level of content, or constituted ideology, the film transmits explicitly ecological messages. Furthermore, the use of psychoanalysis appeals to ecocritics doing ideological critique since that science has significantly shaped theories of ideology.8 And yet, the constitutive ideology of the film remains regressive, blocking access to a penetrating application of its structural approach to corporate ecological devastation. Not only does The Corporation stop short of claiming capital as the corporate unconscious, but it never questions whether the nation-state, fundamentally grounded in private property- based sovereignty, is responsible for defining the material world specifically as private property and thus ready-made for exchange—for traffic.9 In this way, The Corporation resembles Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (2009). In the final analysis, Moore puts forth his desire for a kinder, more humane form of capitalism. His subtitle is thereby not so much the irony it first appears to be, but a veiled disavowal of Moore’s own deep and enduring love story in which capitalism will one day shed its negative elements and run smoothly and harmoniously with people. Likewise, The Corporation remains tied to certain fundamental matters like the nation-state structure, even as 68 it aims at reform. After all, the nation-state, even when it works through democracy, embodies the logic of private property that enables capitalism to function. One of the risks we run is an over-hasty desire purportedly to reclaim democracy for the people without radically questioning what underwrites the definition of democracy in play. In the context of the Cochabamba water wars, one might examine this potential risk in Paula Willoquet-Maricondi’s review of a film and book on this event. While she, somewhat like this Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 69

chapter, is interested in exploring the fissures of ecologically engaged films, Willoquet-Maricondi seems to take a position in favor of democracy and activism without considering their inextricable ideological figuration when she writes: The lack of closure for the community and in the film, while perhaps leaving the audience with a sense of defeat, invites us to focus on the issue of community engagement and to recognize that such engagement is a necessary and ideology and ecocinema vital part of the democratic process, even when the desired outcome is uncertain or unlikely.10 I admire and agree with Willoquet-Maricondi’s articulation of the need for openness to the unknown as people reconfigure social structures, especially with ecology in mind, but I will insist upon extending that openness to the very questioning of democracy. For, democracy is not a pre-ideological or non-ideological thing, and it therefore cannot simply be accepted as a given and/or neutral social structure in the sort of ideological critical work this chapter proposes. One of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting this assessment of the film’s limit is the interview footage of Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, Earth’s biggest carpet producer. The film valorizes his self-enacted reform through a synthesis of interview content and editing form. Amidst Anderson’s retelling of his personal eco-epiphany as a corporate CEO, the film cross-cuts among Anderson and stills of Paul Hawken’s book Natural Capitalism gently floating in “Ken Burns-effect” movement. Natural Capitalism is the text that peeled the scales from Anderson’s eyes. As the title indicates, Hawkens’s book works relentlessly to naturalize capitalism, a move that forecloses analysis by dismissing questions of origins and alternatives by positing the “natural” inevitability of this political economy. Combined with the close-up shots of an emotional Anderson speaking of corporate ecological responsibilities, the formal valorization of Hawken’s book, promotes an ideology of reform that does not recognize current economic conditions. In other words, The Corporation aligns with a Hollywood trend David Ingram refers to in Green Screen as an “optimistic, ‘win-win’ solution [that] reassures its audience that it can both ‘save the planet’ and continue to consume at current levels.”11 But The Corporation’s depiction of Anderson does not even account for 69 our current situation in which ecological crises are not just about con- sumerist behavior but about capital turning in panic to ever more ecologically devastating methods to sustain growth and keep itself alive, such as fracturing shale with water and chemicals—literally disintegrating the very ground beneath our feet—to squeeze out enough natural gas to get through one or two decades more. In their World Energy Outlook 2010, the International Energy Agency also show that shale oil mining remains Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 70

more carbon intensive than conventional petroleum extraction, so that its ecological costs are greater in process and this area of energy development may impede development into renewable energy sources.12 Underscoring the significance of Anderson in relation to the psycho- analytic structure, Jennifer Abbot, the co-director, has said: I changed the structure of the entire documentary to make room for this charismatic character whose voice resonates so strongly for people like my father, a retired business- person. Anderson sets himself apart from other corporate geman social responsibility proponents by actually saying that if he can’t make carpets sustainably then maybe his business

drew ha doesn’t have a place in this world. I don’t believe we can rely

an solely on the corporate decision makers of the world to have individual epiphanies. As citizens we have no control over such things. But it does help when people who have the ability to do so, decide with missionary zeal to revolutionize their companies.13 The point here is that the whole film was (re)structured around Anderson who exemplifies not revolution, but reform that strictly maintains the frameworks of capital. (Can anyone really believe that Anderson might have truly wondered if he would be able to find a path to perpetually greener carpets while keeping the money-green profit margins high for shareholders?) As such, the film suggests we can diagnose and treat the corporation as personified capital so that it can become a healthy, pro- ductive member of society, despite the film repeatedly demonstrating that the corporation-defining profit-only motive makes this ultimately impossible. With that contradiction in mind, let us move to the film’s address of the Cochabamba water wars. While The Corporation touts the efficacy of the protests in ejecting the multinational super-corporation Aguas del Tunari, the primary mode of representation is a blend of objective shots of water (rain, rivers, etc.) and individual interview clips, chiefly of Oscar Olivera.14 Proportionately less is the footage of collective protests occupying the roadway circuits of capital that led to the eventual de-privatization of the water. That there is footage from professional and myriad amateur sources 70 potentially available, as evinced by videos and stills posted online, the imagistic emphasis of individuals in the film was a selective choice not limited by an absence of footage depicting the collective aspects of the mass actions. I am tempted to read this decision as symptomatic of a reactionary fear of the mob that remains strong today even among many of us who otherwise tout community-driven change. Not only does this focus on individuals effectively reprivatize the social constitution of the successful resistance in Cochabamba, but the film implies Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 71

that severe repression is a key ingredient to instigating ecological change, at least in the Global South. In the Global North, CEOs who are presumed ultimately to be humane in responding to consumer voices, purportedly expressed through purchasing trends and shareholder input. This notion is itself fraught with contradiction as it presumes purchasing and stockholding to be homologous with representative democracy, while clearly the former do not work on a one person-one vote system.15 Still, that is how eco-

resistance is depicted in the Global North. ideology and ecocinema The Corporation presents the Cochabamba protests as an estimable method for bringing about social change, but as a method available for others who live in non-democratic countries. The resulting ideological contradictions rendered visible through these depictions of the Cochabamba water wars are the reprivatization of mass action by focusing on individuals and the diminution of mass action as a possible form of change in the Global North. Put differently, The Corporation lets us enjoy eco-resistance, but on condition that we reframe its collective constitution and that we silently acknowledge that such action is possible elsewhere and at local levels that do not ultimately impede the progress of the global capitalist structure. By way of contrast, Oliver Stone’s documentary, South of the Border (2009), includes interviews with Evo Morales, the first elected indigenous President of Bolivia. Morales historicizes the Cochabamba water wars and the renewed Bolivarian Revolution as he addresses Stone’s intended Global North audience. Featuring Morales and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez seems to present an alternative to the ideology of reformed, sanitized capitalism in The Corporation.16 However, the economic/ecological models of Morales and Chavez remain fully inscribed in the logics of industrial production and the world market that depend no less upon the ecologically devastating extrac- tion techniques as industrial capitalism. In fact, countries like Venezuela and China are among the leading developers of fracturing and other non- conventional methods of fossil fuel extraction.17 What this ideological critique reveals about The Corporation are the limits beyond which an intellectually savvy and rigorous film may not be able to go, even as it performs the vital and laudable work of locating fundamental contradictions in the ideological structures and institutions it aims to critique. After all, I would categorize, following Bill Nichols’ work on documentary film, The Corporation as a reflexive documentary in that it draws attention to itself as a media product attempting to situate its spectators in 71 a certain subject position in order to see, feel, and know something about corporations and ecological devastation.18 As a reflexive documentary, this film continually acknowledges that it is a mediated meditation. But to be reflexive does not extract the film, or the critic for that matter, from ideology, especially not from constitutive ideology. That said, a byproduct of the reflexive documentary mode of The Corporation is the prospect of an ideological critical spectator obtaining glimpses of the dark contours of Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 72

constitutive ideology that produce our subjectivity, including the very limits imposed upon our abilities to perceive and know this ideology.

fiction is truer than strange The Spanish film Even the Rain (Tambien la Lluvia), which won the prestigious “Bridging Borders Award” at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival, is also a sort of bridge between documentary and the fiction feature. Even the Rain is a complex set of films within a film. These include the

geman production of a fiction feature, the production of a making-of documentary about that fiction feature, and a dismissed proposal for a documentary about the Cochabamba water wars. Specifically, Even the Rain narrates the experi- drew ha

an ence of Sebastián (a film director) and Costa (the money-man), the Spanish film production team, and locally recruited indigenous Bolivian amateur actors and extras as they are all involved in producing a cinematic socio- political critique of Columbus and the history of colonization of Latin America from a turn of the twenty-first century perspective, in and around Cochabamba, Bolivia. Throughout the film, Maria (a Spanish assistant) uses a handheld digital camera to capture footage, presumably for a making-of documentary. She records several conversations in which economic considerations conflict with the director’s artistic and political-ideological vision. In one conver- sation, Sebastián proudly explains that they chose Bolivia instead of the Caribbean, but he is then questioned about the mountains being different from those Columbus saw and the fact that the indigenous Bolivian actors will speak Quechua instead of Taíno. It becomes clear that Bolivia was chosen largely due to budget constraints. Land, landscape, and language are subsumed by money: ecology loses to economy and transforms people and the nonhuman world alike into readily interchangeable things. From the outset, Even the Rain explicitly raises issues of ecocinema ideology with a constituted, or explicit, ideological message that filmmakers face choices of artistic and ideological (here, social-ecological) vision in conflict with the capitalist structure of film production and distribution. But we must also attend to the constitutive ideology at work. Drawing upon one of Deleuze’s keen insights, we can identify one element of con- stitutive ideology as a parallel between the formal frame of cinema and the 72 money form of commodity fetish. While people decide between money and vision, such decisions already take place within standard aspect ratios (1.85:1 and 2.40:1) that formally equalize everything projected on screen. As Deleuze put it, eco-suggestively, “the screen, as the frame of frames, gives a common standard of measurement to things which do not have one—long shots of countryside and close-ups of the face, an astronomical system and a single drop of water—parts which do not have the same denominator of distance, relief, or light.”19 Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 73

In other words, while cinema is an art of mediation at the level of content in what is shown, how it is shot, edited, and so forth, cinema also mediates formally by equalizing all content in the ultimate frame of the screen. To unpack this point, the money form of capitalism provides a third thing (money) by which objects and the labor put into them are detached from their discrete individuality and framed inside an exchange-value system of equivalence necessary for capital to function. The standardized cinema

screen operates similarly in that the objects on the screen may still appear ideology and ecocinema as discrete individual objects, like the variety of products on sale in a shop, yet they are contained within a system that enforces an exchange-value system of equivalence. Thus, when Robin Murray and Joseph Heumann describe in Ecology and Popular Film a notion of “environmental themes and aesthetics obscured by the technology presenting them,” they are correct in perhaps another way than they intended.20 In discussing cinema technology as obscuring (or revealing, for that matter) thematic content, we must not overlook the constitutive ideology of the logic of the exchange- value frame in which all content is projected for consumption as well as critique. Such dynamic tension between constitutive and constituted ideologies— among the aesthetics, social critique, and industry economics—intensify as Sebastián’s filming gets underway in Cochabamba and Daniel (the indigenous protagonist cast for the lead Taíno role) helps spark the local protests. When it becomes clear that the government will suppress the protestors, Daniel’s participation threatens the film’s completion. Several water wars escalation scenes include Maria documenting them. At one point she proposes to Costa, who is furious about politics jeopardizing their film, that they should shelve the Columbus movie and make a documentary of the water wars because it is the “real story.” By putting her proposal in terms of reality, Maria posits a stable piece of ideological ground within the multiple, one might say postmodernist, frameworks of the films within a film structure. However, although Maria’s idea instructs the audience to pay close attention to the water wars narrative as the real one, it does so within a diegetic world where she does not get to make her film. Costa unhesitat- ingly rejects her documentary proposal. That Icíar Bollaín, the director of Even the Rain, includes the desire to document the water wars within the complex narrative of cinema pro- duction and socio-ecological struggle reflects her decision to make a fiction 73 film rather than a documentary in order to inform and move the specta- tors.Yet this decision inside the film is made for economic reasons only, so she creates a dynamic tension between film genres and the aesthetics and economics tied up in constituted and constitutive film ideologies. Furthermore, the set of films within the film and genres within genres makes Even the Rain a self-reflexive film constantly drawing attention to itself as a medium that conveys ideology, though in different forms and to varying Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 74

degrees of perceived efficacy. In this way, Bollaín does not construct her cinematic critique as if it were ideologically pure and complete—as if she could simply step outside of ideology. In many respects, Even the Rain is a work of ideological ecocriticism as it constantly emphasizes its status as a film embedded within the eco- nomic and ecological structures of the movie industry. This textual self- consciousness comes into view in the opening scene where Sebastián and Costa are casting the indigenous principals and extras. Hundreds of indigenous people have lined up outside the studio. Sebastián appears

geman thrilled while Costa is bitter about the inconvenience of the multitude, especially as they only need a few people. This is where we first meet Daniel as he nearly initiates an uprising when he and the others are told the casting drew ha

an is done and that they must leave. Against Costa’s pragmatic warning, Sebastián decides they need Daniel to play Hatuey, the Taíno protagonist. This scene frames the film with the dynamic tension between artistic vision and the hard pressures of time and money in tandem with the dynamic tension between the foreign Spanish filmmakers and the unemployed or underemployed indigenous people hoping to get even a small role, all of which sets up the larger parallel between the European–Latin American history of Columbus and contemporary globalization. During this opening confrontation, Daniel argues that the circulated casting-call fliers said everyone would get a chance: “Everyone must be seen.” Later on, a similar though subtler confrontation occurs when Costa switches from Spanish to English on the telephone with film financiers to report gleefully that the indigenous extras willingly accept absurdly small wages. After the call, Daniel repeats one of Costa’s English phrases to inform

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Figure 3.1 Old and new dynamic tensions rise among aesthetics and business, cultures, and ecology in También la Lluvia (Even the Rain) (2010). Courtesy of Moreno Films Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 75

him indirectly that he understood every word, and Daniel goes on to explain that he has worked in construction in the US. Together, these scenes confront us with issues of representation and the troubling susceptibility of even the most well-intended filmmakers to market forces that insist upon exploitation. That is what these scenes explicitly convey. But there is more to the picture here than meets the eye. The film does not create an exact parallel of exploitation past and present.

Unlike the organized and systematic domination and exploitation of the ideology and ecocinema entire population in the scenes of Columbus’ forced labor and gold extraction, the contemporary scenes reveal a crisis in which capital has lost its efficacy. Capital can no longer exploit people or water effectively. The people line up by the thousands for even the most fleeting chance to be a part in the machine of capital, but the machine can barely exploit any of them because it seems to be breaking down. At this level, the film contains a glimpse of capital in desperation, but if this glimpse is in any way utopic, it is envisioned as coming only through a break with previous history through catastrophic unemployment and ecological devastation rather than through the type of nearly seamless transition to a gentrified, clean capitalism on offer in films like The Corporation. The film’s tension among socio-politics, artistic representation, and market forces takes an even more explicit self-referential turn when Costa and Sebastián discuss the latter’s insistence not to make his Columbus film a Hollywood-style production, not even to make it in English, which they agree would have guaranteed them a global box-office boost. At first glance, this seems like Bollaín congratulating herself for making a non-English movie. But let us consider this dialectically.The self-referential dialogue claims, not that independent film is more compassionate, but that it remains defined by the industry and market forces against which it is produced. As such, this little instance of apparent back-patting is significantly contra- dictory. Read dialectically, it provides the feel-good suggestion of resistance, but only on condition that every consideration is still framed by the capitalist structures it initially seemed to resist. Further evincing the intractability of capitalist structures for all cinema, the critically acute Spanish actor who plays Columbus makes a startling admission while criticizing Sebastián’s film. He calls Sebastián’s approach “propaganda” as it negligently erases the deep racism of Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan de Montesinos, the characters that provide compassionate 75 foils to Columbus. Yet, when he is himself questioned why he took a role in Sebastián’sfilm if he is so opposed to it as propaganda, he says that he did so “for the gold. It’s always about the gold.” Thus, the most astute critic within Even the Rain reaches an ideological impasse beyond which he confesses that even he cannot think, or know how to think. In relation to the discussions of transnational production concerns, the director and producers of Even the Rain have pointed out that this is the largest Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 76

foreign film ever made in Bolivia, the local film production matters were conducted by the Bolivian partner company LONDRA, and that the majority of the 3,000 people involved in shooting were local Bolivians, all as if to complete the frame of meta-cinema it evokes.21 Such extra-textual addenda, however, reinforce the notion that capital structures are representable, available for reform. In this way, Even the Rain treats society and ecology just as capital does by positing a program of “fair trade,” to invoke the language grown up around the coffee industry. But, dialectical critique reads the film’s ideological contradictions as illuminating the

geman constitutive structures that recontain the purported resistance. In other words, the film’s core contradictions are where critical potential resides when they are taken not as representations in favor of a supposedly humane drew ha

an capitalism but as indices of totalizing structures that defy representation and that must be broken. One other line of contradiction analysis in Even the Rain is the character development arc of Costa. To be sure, he changes over the course of the film. In fact, Costa seems to be the breakthrough character since he begins as the cold-hearted money-man and transforms into a warm-hearted empathizer with Daniel and the indigenous Bolivian protestors. He apologizes to Daniel, fully recognizes the priority of the protests against the privatization of water, and risks his own life driving Daniel’s wife into the city during the military crackdown to rescue Daniel’s severely injured daughter, Belén. However, Costa changes in spite of, rather than through, his work producing inde- pendent social reform cinema. In one of the final scenes, Costa returns to the studio after the film has been postponed indefinitely. The camera pans around a set-building workshop with Costa looking at piles of papers filled with plans, scripts, and prop designs scattered across tables and the floor. Sitting symbolically in the middle of the workshop is a replica of Columbus’ ship, all but finished. The mise-en-scène and Costa’snon-verbal response imply the impotence of cinema as a vehicle for social reform when read against the grain of the water wars that have intervened in Costa’s work. In other words, this largely dialogue-free scene seems to say that cinema simply is too removed from the harsh realities of protests, sacrifice, and even death involved in bringing about social change. This non-verbal implication of cinema’s impotence is disrupted when Daniel enters the workshop. Costa saved his daughter’s life, and Daniel is 76 here to solidify the solidarity and love for each other he and Costa have found by the end of the narrative arc. The performances are brilliant and affectively moving, but the ideological function they perform is a recupera- tion of cinema’s potency. Sure, Sebastián’s Columbus film turned out to be a facile endeavor, but now we’ve passed through it and, on the other side, we find ourselves still watching Even the Rain. As such, these scenes of Costa in the workshop alone and then joined by Daniel embody a contradiction in their depictions of the impotence of the film-within-the-film and the Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 77

potency of Even the Rain. In this instance, the dialectic of the contradiction may be read as a productive self-administered inoculation against any overhasty presumptions of the power of cinema to represent complex crises and prospective solutions. To shift from dialogue to the visual, at the end of the casting call scene, a helicopter flies low overhead carrying a massive wooden cross suspended by cables. The film alternates between stunningly composed shots of the

helicopter’s approach (reinforced sonically by the Doppler effect of its ideology and ecocinema approach and passing) and medium/close-up shots of Sebastián, Costa, Daniel, and all the indigenous actor-hopefuls as their faces gaze in awe at the machine and its deeply symbolic cargo. Whether intentionally orches- trated by the filmmakers, this brief passage that captivates the spectator as it does everyone inside the film references two previous films of colonialist exploitation of the human and nonhuman worlds: Apocalypse Now (1979), when Captain Willard’s boat is air lifted in for him and the crew to start up the river towards Kurtz, and Fitzcarraldo (1982), with a European rubber baron ordering that a giant steam-boat be hauled manually over the mountain at great cost to indigenous laborers and ecological systems. Through this visual allusion, Even the Rain acknowledges its participation in a cinema history of films explicitly about colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples and ecology. Suggestively, this cinema genealogy is comprised of members with (in)famous production struggles to make films within financial, inter- personal, political, and ecological challenges. Furthermore, these pre- decessor films have been supplemented with making-of documentaries: Eleanor Coppola’s Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), Werner Herzog’s journal Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo, and internet-circulating footage of Fitzcarraldo’s on-set battles between Herzog and Klaus Kinski.22 As such, Even the Rain aligns itself through the helicopter with the multivalent production struggles and the self-docu- mentation of Coppola’s and Herzog’s films, in the process approaching very near to the constitutive ideology of its cinematic work. That this critical work by the film is ultimately recontained within its redemption of cinema’s consciousness-raising potency, further reminds us that films do not themselves possess agency. We are affected by film, but the affect hinges upon how we recognize ourselves, our culture, and our society refracted in these films. This is why dialectical ideological critique is vital to ecocinema studies: holding a film’s constituted and constitutive ideologies 77 together indicates its contradictions, which brings into view the determinate disorder of ecological crises we face within capitalism. By way of concluding this section on fiction features, let us turn briefly to a very different, Hollywood-style engagement with the Cochabamba water wars: the James Bond blockbuster Quantum of Solace (2008). A fic- tionalized version of water privatization in Bolivia serves as the narrative MacGuffin. Specifically, the plot is driven by the cheekily named villain, Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 78

Dominic Greene, a utility mogul who has turned to environmental philanthropy, or so it seems. His Greene Planet organization serves as a cover for Greene’s backdoor deal with a Bolivian general preparing to launch a coup. The big reveal of the film comes when Bond and Camille Montes (the “Bond-girl”) discover that Greene is not after oil, but water. Greene tricks even the General into signing over land rights that guarantee the eco-villain control of 60 percent of the nation’s water, for which he immediately increases the fees. As ecocritics, we might chastise this film as exemplifying Hollywood

geman exploitation of eco chic strictly in the service of entertainment and profit. And, it is true that Quantum of Solace treats Bolivia and the water wars mostly as a MacGuffin. However, dismissing the film too quickly overlooks two drew ha

an crucial elements. One is a suggestive succession of Bond’s automobiles. In the opening car chase, Bond drives a gas-powered Aston Martin. He later catches a ride from Camille in a Ka, heavily marketed by Ford as eco-friendly. Finally, after completing his mission, Bond drives a hydrogen-powered Ford Edge (the SUV says it’s hydrogen, but this model still has not been made). This auto arc posits Bond as a sort of antithesis to Greene’s eco-villainy with the hero seeming to grow ever greener. That said, Bond ends up in these increasingly eco-friendly cars by accident and without remark.23 Were it not for the Ford product-placement deal, one might not even notice the arcatall. But, as product placements, these increasingly green cars reveal the constitutive ideology based on becoming green, as opposed to Greene, by buying green. The film makes a case for good green capitalism, but it does so in spite of numerous other indications throughout the film that global capitalism is only ever a choice between villains—a matter of settling for the least worst possible world. Perhaps the most jaded example of such moments is when the CIA agents agree with Greene during a meeting when the eco-villain says, “You don’t need another Marxist giving natural resources to the people, do you?” This line articulates the poignant truth of the film that, while Greene is a villain, his abhorrence of the people accessing the commons links him to the Western powers whom Bond serves. Second, Dominic Greene and his Greene Planet organization mirror the film’s leveraging an environmentalist front for profit. However, while Greene serves his own greed explicitly and knowingly, he is also an index of 78 the constitutive ideology that structures all environmentalism aimed at reform—at making the best of a bad situation. If we as ecocritics find Quantum of Solace exasperating, perhaps it is because this film points out uncom- fortably the narrowness of our own desires for positive environmental solutions that do not envision a break with capital—an ecology without capital. However, if we can turn our ecocritical approach away from the clockwork green desire for perfect social programming cinema, Quantum of Solace can be read as a revolutionary representation of ecological issues. After Ecocinema-01-c.qxdEcocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/1223/7/12 12:0312:03 PagePage 79/

all,all, thisthis filmfilm offersoffers anythinganything butbut solacesolace inin termsterms ofof ecologyecology andand capital,capital, leavingleaving usus insteadinstead withwith a worldworld ofof violence violence,, torture,torture, andand ecologicalecological devastation.devastation. InIn thisthis way,way, Quantum of ofSolace Solaceconveys, conveys counter-intuitively,, counter-intuitively a, a radicalradical potentialpotential whewhenn readread throughthrough dialecticaldialectical ideologicalideological critique.critique. ToTo bebe specific,specific, thethe surprisingsurprising radicalradical potentialpotential ofof thisthis filfilmm isis thethe wawayy itsits intenseintense contradictionscontradictions provideprovide a negativenegative spacespace withiwithinn whicwhichh wewe cancan withdrawwithdraw fromfrom thethe oftenoften compulsivecompulsive desiredesire foforr clear,clear, concise,concise, immediateimmediate ecologicalecological action.action. ccnm n ideology and ecocinema InsteadInstead ofof sendingsending thethe audienceaudience awayaway withwith a checklistchecklist ofof suchsuch actionsactions and/orand/or ecocinem websitewebsitess toto click,click, learn,learn, andand donate,donate, Quantum of of Solace Solaceforces force uss utos twallowo wallo inw in thethe miremire ofof contemporarycontemporary ecologicalecological crises.crises. WeWe feefeell thethe crisescrises andand havehave anan

opportunityopportunity toto thinkthink ourour wawayy towardstowards meansmeans ofof ameliorationamelioration ratherrather thanthan a an

selectingselecting anan off-the-shelfoff-the-shelf antidoteantidote thatthat isis likelylikely producedproduced by,by, andand eveneven gearedgeared d ideolog to,to, profit:profit: thethe structuresstructures ofof capitalistcapitalist ideologyideology thatthat engenderedengendered thethe crises.crises. y drawingdrawing fromfrom thethe well2244

Finally,Finally, I turnturn toto Abuela GrilloGrillo,,a 2009a 200 9animated animate dshort shor byt b ya groupa grou pof o Bolivianf Bolivian writerwriterss andand directordirector thatthat representsrepresents humanhuman relationshipsrelationships toto waterwater byby dradrawinwingg uponupon a figurefigure fromfrom AyoreoAyoreo mythology—amythology—a peoplepeople whwhoo livelive inin thethe AndesAndes MountainsMountains ofof BoliviaBolivia andand Paraguay.2255 AbuelaAbuela GrilloGrillo isis a formform ofof Direjná,Direjná, a deitydeity identifiedidentified witwithh rain.rain. SheShe doesdoes notnot exactlyexactly ownown thethe rain.rain. Rather,Rather, sheshe mediatesmediates betweenbetween humanhuman beingsbeings andand thethe rain.rain. WhenWhen sheshe singssings herher song,song, “Chillchi“Chillchi Parita”Parita” (“Little(“Little Rain”),Rain”), sheshe conjuresconjures cloudsclouds andand thethe rainrain soonsoon fallsfalls.. AbuelaAbuela Grillo’sGrillo’s statusstatus asas mediatormediator ratherrather thanthan ownerowner ofof thethe rainrain isis vitavitall sincesince itit establishesestablishes herher asas anan alternativealternative toto privateprivate propertyproperty and thethe logiclogic ofof marketmarket relations.relations.

ABUELA GRILLO

7979

FigureFigure 3.23.2 Abuela Grillo(2009) (2009 )features features highlyhighly stylized stylized limitedlimited animationanimation depictingdepicting indigenousindigenous textiles.textiles. CourtesyCourtesy ofof TheThe AnimationAnimation WorkshopWorkshop Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 80

A brief summary of the narrative can also forecast the key significance of this film. After the opening credits, featuring what is called limited ani- mation with highly stylized imagery intended to resemble indigenous hand-woven textiles, the story begins, now in standard animation, with Abuela Grillo visiting an indigenous agricultural village. At first she is warmly welcomed, but then she sings too much and the fields flood. Upset, the villagers roughly turn her out and she makes her way to the city. There, Abuela Grillo is captured by corporate baddies in black suits and forced to sing her song on a stage before live audiences. As the

geman audiences enjoy her music, behind the curtain the corporation has con- structed an elaborate system to capture and bottle the rain Abuela’s sing- ing conjures. They sell the water at exorbitant prices to everyone desperate drew ha

an now that Abuela no longer serves the people. Ultimately, as with the Cochabamba water wars, the people organize and flood the streets until Abuela and the water return to the people. Let us begin with Abuela Grillo’s status as mediator rather than owner. The film uses the visual grammar of product placement to draw our atten- tion to the corporation’s use of her image on their bottled water labels. Their marketing tactic appropriates her role as mediator for profit-driven business. However, as mediator, Abuela Grillo did not simply serve human interests. After all, she flooded the villagers’ fields in an accidental act of contingency. Their response reveals the degree to which the indigenous villagers have already internalized a capitalistic ideology of ecology aimed at total pre- dictability of and control over the material world, even over the rain, by human beings. Indeed, pre-capitalist societies did not likely welcome crop- devastating rains, floods, or droughts. But the villagers’ total rejection of her in response to the flood very closely resembles the logic of the capitalists in the city as they both view water and its hydrological activity as a commodity that should do only what its human users determine. They send her away out of a desire for human-ecological encounters in which humans wield total control for maximum benefit. So, while the indigenous people appear largely as pristine foils to the corporate goons, they represent a resonant ideology of human domination. Though this may seem a failing of the film, this is where its radical potential resides. For, this contradiction prevents the film from reifying them as pre-technological, pre-historical utopic figures. Rather, in their flaws, the villagers make visible the total permeation of 80 capitalist contradictions and violence, located specifically here in the ecological context. The corporate boss and his enforcers, on the other hand, are coded as so thoroughly evil that no one could miss it. At least, that is what spectators outside of Latin America see. However, scenes like the one with Abuela tied in a chair, tortured to conjure the rain, codes the baddies not only as moustache-twirling villains but as late twentieth-century Latin American dictatorship henchmen. Furthermore, Abuela Grillo’s detainment is both a Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 81

form of exploitation, which in this case is a provocative synthesis of work and water, labor and ecology, and an allusion to the disappeared under the brutal regimes. Thus, the apparent simplicity of good and bad in Abuela Grillo also contains a sophisticated synthesis of exploited indigenous populations, privatization of water, and the alignment of corporate structure with corrupt dictatorships. On this last point, the Cochabamba water wars context further aligns corporations and regional dictatorships with the

external powers of globalization. Together, these elements construct the ideology and ecocinema dialectic that reveals both the constituted and constitutive ideologies of the film. To elaborate on the ideologies of Abuela Grillo, consider its divergence from The Corporation and resemblance to Even the Rain in the visual impacts of mass organization and demonstration. Unlike The Corporation, Abuela Grillo contains a proportionately significant quantity of images, many of them repeated for emphasis, of masses forming, filling the streets, and confronting the corporate personnel. And, qualitatively, a diversity of distant and close-up perspectives creates a visual dynamic of protesting masses and movements that formally reinforce their vital collectivity rather than focusing on prominent individuals and/or leaders. Most of the visual representations in Abuela Grillo are constructed as the collective protesters appearing as a moving swathe of color, inattentive to individuals within the movement for change. What is more, at the climax of the confrontation between corporate- dictator forces and the protesters, the latter transform into a blue swathe of color, eventually embodying water as both a flood and lightning storm of revolution. In this way, the representation of collectivity merges with precisely the ecological matter driving the narrative. And such images of nonhuman forces are commoninthe history of representing human revolutions: volcanoes, rising tides, prairie fires, etc. On the one hand, this flood seems to lapse into immediate and therefore potentially hollow action. But, on the other hand, in the Cochabamba context this flood signifies the social-ecological relationship of crisis. Unlike The Corporation’s reprivatization of mass movement into individual figures like Oscar Olivera, Abuela Grillo imagines a transformation of the social into still more radical utopic solutions that transcend the limitations of the individual. In relation to Even the Rain, Abuela Grillo conjures a similar parallel between historical indigenous resistance to exploitation of themselves and the 81 commons and contemporary resistance to exploitation by global capital. Both films suggest potential in the contemporary fights. In the last scene of Even the Rain, Costa asks Daniel, “What will you do now?” and Daniel replies, “Survive, like always. That is what we do best.” Once again, though, the ideological contradictions provide the key to radical potential. Bare survival hardly means to live, and the phrase “like always” implies that despite all of their revolutionary protest and success, there remains an undisturbed Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 82

continuity of exploitation. As such, the constituted ideology of hope gets undermined. However, this despair represents the devastating extent of the social-ecological horror of Daniel and Costa’s worlds, revealing the disorder and violence that require imagined solutions far more radical than the film itself proposes. There is a similar constitutive ideological implication in the final credits of Abuela Grillo. After the narrative is complete, the animation shifts back from traditional to the stylized limited animation form replicating indigenous textiles. Having passed through Abuela’s trials and the successful

geman collective movement, the final credits return to the previous form of people and the world in which the story unfolded at the start. At the level of constituted ideology, this shift in animation form may appear cathartic, drew ha

an even nostalgic, as there is a suggestion of post-revolution return to indigenous traditions. But, read through dialectical ideological critique, the shift in animation also recalls the historical horrors of indigenous peoples and the commons devastated, formally signaling the impossibility and the undesirability of a return to an earlier way of life.26 Without dialectical ideological critique, the end credits run the severe risk of reifying Abuela Grillo into a mere fantasy figure of pre-technological others, both inside Latin America and out. Put another way, there is radical ideological potential in the film Abuela Grillo, but we access it by avoiding the easy, ready-made constituted ideological embrace of Abuela as a commodity that is alternative yet remains defined by market-relation structures of capital. If Abuela provides a utopic solution she does so not in the narrative solution, but in the lesson of its failure of imagination—a failure that illuminates outlines of where we must send our radical imaginative powers.

projecting ecology without capital The films above represent a range of genres, forms, and approaches to a discrete social-ecological event. Through dialectical ideological critique this chapter shows that none of them escapes the constitutive ideology of ecologically unsustainable capital. The Corporation, Even the Rain, and Abuela Grillo all display diverse ecological agendas at the level of content, often in highly sophisticated uses of narrative techniques. Yet, they are all enframed by constitutive ideology that undermines their explicit ecological messages 82 and suggestions. However, the ubiquity of the constitutive ideology of capital points to their breaking points as sites of truly radical potential. To be sure, this chapter has made it appear that any form of resistance is under- mined in two ways: by inherent contradictions and by automatic incorpora- tion within the frameworks of the ideology of capital. This situation would be cause for despair if ideology were entirely consistent and complete. However, the concept of ideology at work throughout this chapter takes ideology to be inherently incomplete and inconsistent. Each film analyzed Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 83

above contains significant internal contradictions that bolster the claim that ideology is inconsistent and incomplete. So, what does the dialectical ideological critique produce that is positive? The answer is: our ability to think irreconcilable elements, whether antitheses or antinomies, together, at least for a time and to analyze their significance. Together, these irrecon- cilable elements cast a light on the otherwise dark contours of capitalism that shape us, ecology, and our capacities to think and represent ecology.

What we observe is not the explicit, constituted attitudes and actions ideology and ecocinema described and prescribed on the screen before us. In fact, dialectical ideo- logical critique makes clear the shortcomings of the films’ ecological agendas as fully bathed in the ideology they are frequently meant to oppose. Instead, we catch a glimpse of the theatre in which we sit, ourselves sitting in it, the ideological material that frames films, and our affective and intellectual responses to these films. These glimpses, enabled by attending to contradictions, indicate to us our desires. Contradiction indicates desire. Freud made this systematically clear in The Interpretation of Dreams as each dream coheres yet contains both elements of wish fulfillment and the prevention of this fulfillment.27 Dreamwork is formally complex as must be working with ecocinema. As such, we must resist temptations of working simply with only the wish-fulfillment component aspects of films. Dialectical ideological critique provides glimpses of contours, but it cannot fully illuminate capital or ecology. After all, capital and ecology share an ultimate unrepresentability. In EcoMedia, Sean Cubitt rightly asserts the impossibility of representing even an ecosystem, qua system.28 This is where ideological critique becomes extremely difficult work. We must not chase after complete views of the objects of critique, capital or ecology, as these are impossible. And we must not establish a Clockwork Green program since we would only rehearse the same constitutive ideology over and over again. As Althusser remarked, “the men who would use ideology purely as a means of action, as a tool, find that they have been caught by it, implicated by it, just when they are using it and believe themselves to be absolute masters of it.”29 To fantasize and act as if in control of ideology is to become ever more firmly and unknowingly its tool—its servant. This chapter has worked to articulate and enact a critical methodology of identifying and analyzing the contours and inconsistencies of ideology without becoming an unwitting tool of ideology. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, such an ecocinema approach must be done with 83 a relentless openness to ongoing self-criticism. What we can and must do is work dialectically to discern the frontiers of thought within the current frameworks of the ideology of capital, for it is around such spaces as those indicated by the points of contradiction in these films that ideology is constituted. Such contradiction points are spaces in which we imagine new, alternative subjectivities and ideological frame- works. Ecocinema studies must attend to the spaces of contradiction with Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 84

an eye to form and content alike because these films cannot show us directly the content of our ecological desires. Rather, they point to the constitutive ideology that forms our current ecological desires, regardless of what con- tents populate their form. Just as one cannot exist biologically without being situated in relationship to ecological totality, one cannot exist subjectively without being situated in relationship to ideological totality. Let us not expend our energies wishing for escape from the ideological totality, but work through dialectical ideological critique to discern our complex desires and relearn to exist ideologically, ecologically. geman acknowledgments drew ha

an As ever, I am indebted to years of conversations with Tim Morton. Mindi McMann and Erin Pazsko reviewed early drafts and provided excellent feedback that reshaped the chapter. Last but not least, I send a big thanks to Min and Sofia for crucial and constant support and inspiration.

notes 1 I am grateful to Erin Paszko for outstanding feedback on this chapter in process, regardless of my successes and failures in utilizing it. 2ZˇiŽek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. New York: Verso, 2010: 55. 3 This constitutive ideology also reflects an emptiness inherent to imagined resistance drained of historical and ecological specificity. For Cafard’s fascinating graphically presented argument, see Cafard, Max. “Intergalactic Blues: Fantasy & Ideology in Avatar.” Psychic Swamp: The Surre(gion)al Review. 1.1. Accessed December 1, 2011. http://issuu.com/stephanz/docs/psychic_ swamp__1/1 4Macherey, Pierre. A Theory of Literary Production. Trans. Geoffrey Wall. London: Routledge Classics, 2006: 218. 5 These primary films are selected from a range of films that engage with the Cochabamba water wars, amongst which are the notables Blue Gold (2008), Cochabamba: Cumbre de los Pueblos (2010), and A World Without Water (2006). See also Willoquet-Maricondi, Paula. “Film and Book Review: The Water Front by Liz Miller and ¡Cochabamba! Water War in Bolivia by Oscar Olivera and Tom Lewis.” Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy. 5.1 (2009): 292–9. 6 This legal history runs from the 1819 US Supreme Court case Dartmouth College v. Woodward to a slough of cases since 2007 attempting to regulate corporate financing of political campaigns through different channels. 84 7See Steinberger, Michael. “Psychopathic C.E.O.’s” The New York Times Magazine. December 12, 2004. Accessed July 17, 2011. www.nytimes. com/2004/12/12/magazine/12PSYCHO.html 8 Psychoanalysis has played a central role in the theoretical development of ideology particularly in the work of Louis Althusser and his students Pierre Macherey and Etienne Balibar as well as Jacques Lacan, Fredric Jameson, and Slavoj ZˇiŽek to name but a few major figures in ideological critique. 9On the fundamental embranglement of the sovereign nation-state with private property, see Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Commonwealth, part 1.1. Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 85

10 Willoquet-Maricondi, Paula. “Film and Book Review: The Water Front by Liz Miller and ¡Cochabama! Water War in Bolivia by Oscar Olivera and Tom Lewis.” Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy 5.1 (2009): 295. 11 Ingram, David. Green Screen. Exeter: Exeter UP 2000: 182. 12 See International Energy Agency. World Energy Outlook 2010. 2010; and Bartis, James T. et al. Oil Shale Development in the United States: Prospects and Policy Issues. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2005. 13 Abbott, Jennifer. Interview. “The Corporation.” Landmark Theatres. Accessed July 17, 2011. www.landmarktheatres.com/mn/corporation.html ccnm n ideology and ecocinema 14 Aguas del Tunari was made up of the US corporation Bechtel Enterprise Holding and other corporations from England, Italy, Spain, and Bolivia. 15 Elaine Bernard of the Harvard University Trade Union Program addresses in the book and film The Corporation the asymmetry of a person’s political vote in a democracy compared with a person’s voting power in the market place either as share-holder or consumer. See Bakan, Joel. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. New York: Free Press, 2004: 144–8; and The Corporation. DVD. Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. 2003. New York: Zeitgeist Films, 2005. 16 Stone’s radicality is evinced by accusations of his being too open to Chavez and the revolutionary changes in Latin America. See Richard Corliss’s Time magazine article on Stone and Chavez attending the 2010 Venice Film Festival. Corliss, Richard. “Oliver Stone and Hugo Chavez: A Love Story.” Time. June 27, 2010. Accessed July 17, 2011. www.time.com/time/arts/ article/0,8599,1920910,00.html 17 See World Energy Outlook 2010. 18 Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010: 155. 19 Deleuze, Cinema I: 14–15. 20 Murray, Robin L. and Joseph K. Heumann. Ecology and Popular Film: Cinema on the Edge. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009: 12. 21 See the “Notes” section of Even the Rain’s Facebook page: www.facebook. com/EventheRainMovie?sk=notes 22 Herzog’s title points to the crisis in capitalist conquest as useless, failing to dominate and exploit the human and nonhuman world alike. 23 More explicit is the Honda Insight gag in Be Cool. 24 I extend deep gratitude to Flora Uehara who recommended Abuela Grillo for this project and discussed its eco-ideological perspectives with me. 25 See the blog: El proceso de la Abuela Grillo. Accessed July 17, 2011. http:// abuegrillo.blogspot.com/ 26 Space does not permit sustained analysis, but one could read the constituted and constitutive ideologies of Abuela Grillo dialectically with the recently passed Bolivian “Law of Mother Earth (Pacha Mama)” that frames national law on ecological matters in terms of indigenous Weltanschauung. 85 27 See Section III: A Dream is the Fulfillment of a Wish and Section IV: Distortion in Dreams in Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated and Edited by James Strachey. New York: Basic Books, 2010. 28 Cubitt, Sean. EcoMedia. New York: Rodopoi, 2005: 51. 29 Althusser, Louis. “Marxism and Humanism.” For Marx. Translated by Ben Brewster. London: Verso, 2005: 234. Ecocinema-01-c.qxd 23/7/12 12:03 Page 86

select filmography Abuela Grillo (Denis Chapon, 2009) Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore, 2009) The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010) The Corporation (Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, 2003) Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982) Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, and

geman Eleanor Coppola, 1991) Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982) Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, 2008)

drew ha South of the Border (Oliver Stone, 2009) an Tambien la Lluvia (Even the Rain) (Icíar Bollaín, 2010)

86