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Ecocinema Theory and Practice 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 ecocinema and ideology 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.
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