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Rieser, Klaus. "Time, Space, and Utopia in Beasts of the Southern Wild." US American Expressions of Utopian and Dystopian Visions. Ed. Saskia Fürst, Yvonne Kaisinger, and Ralph J. Poole. Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2017. 43-62. ISBN 978-3-643-90931-2 (pb). Time, Space, and Utopia in Beasts of the Southern Wild Klaus Rieser [ ... ] in the long run, hope (with a plan and with a link with the potentially possible) is still the strongest and best thing we have [ ... ] (Bloch 33) Plot Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in the Bathtub, a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink's tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he's no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack, temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink's health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother. ("Beasts of the Southern Wild") This Sundance Film Festival teaser text does not give away the full story of Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012). The search for the mother turns out to be a hauntingly beautiful but ultimately short interlude in the enduring quest for independent living and a sustainable future by Hushpuppy and a group of fellow swamplanders. Beasts of the Southern Wild, based on the play Juicy and Delicious by Lucy Alibar, wa scripted by Alibar and director Benh Zeitlin but is u1timately the product of the collective effort of a larger group. In a voice-over, Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) comments on her attempts to come to grips with her problems. She not only has to face Win.k's death but also a hwTicane which floods and contaminates the soil through saltwater. Hushpuppy lives in her own trailer next to Win.k's rusty shanty. On the mainland, their standard of living would be considered as abysmal poverty but, living off what nature and their 44 KLAUS RJESER subsistence farm offer, they seem to feel no deprivation. Although Wink, especially when drunk, keeps his daughter at a distance (he yells at her, once even slaps her), he is also a loving and caring father who more than anything else wants to teach her how to survive on her own. Wink raises Hushpuppy, the story being that when Hushpuppy was still a baby, her mother "swam away" (Alibar and Zeitlin 12). Nonetheless Wink talks respectfully and lovingly of their liaison, and Hushpuppy keeps a little home shrine with her mother's old sports jersey in her trailer. On several occasions, when Hushpuppy feels lonely, viewers can also hear her conversing with her mom. Yet father and daughter do not live an isolated life. Although spending their days mostly alone, cruising the bayous in search of prey in a boat made out of the truck bed of an old pick-up, the two of them are embedded in a supportive community of like-minded bayou people. Fierce individualism-Hushpuppy is constantly reminded that she has to fend for herself-is man-ied to strong communalism-get-togethers and catfish parties punctuate the film. Miss Bathsheba, the admirable teacher of the bayou kids, always insists, "[!]earn to live with one another, and adapt!" And she sums up: "The most important thing I can teach you­ you gotta learn to take care of people smaller and sweeter than you are" (Alibar and Zeitlin 38). The precarious balance in their lives begins to tip when Wink comes back from a hospital visit, exhausted and still wearing the hospital gown and a patient wristband. When Wink does not react to Hushpuppy's urgent appeals, the drama begins to unfold: Hushpuppy-by accident or on purpose-sets her trailer on fire. When Wink hits her, Hushpuppy, umelenting, punches him in the chest, knocking him out, while at this very moment the storm begins to gather. ln the stillness that follows the hurricane, we understand that the bayous are flooded, but the holdouts have survived. In order to drain their turf, a group of men sets out to blow a hole into the levee. While they almost fail to carry out the operation, Hushpuppy, all the while hiding in their boat, sets offthe explosion. The floodwaters recede, but the soil is salinated. The authorities evacuate the bayou people to a sterile government shelter. There Wink's health quickly deteriorates, and he informs Hushpuppy about his terminal condition. The bayou community seizes an opportunity and flees from the shelter, taking Wink back to die on his homeland. Hushpuppy runs from TIME, SPACE, AND UTOPIA IN BEASTS OF TH£ SOUTHERN WILD 45 the scene and, together with some other bayou children, swims off towards a glaring spotlight. The children reach "Elysian Fields Floating Catfish Shack: GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS," a gambling nightclub steamboat. As Hushpuppy roams the glamorous vessel, she suddenly believes she recognizes her mother in a woman who, just like her mother, has a sweet and very tough personality. The woman whips up some fried alligator for them and gives her a big, warm hug before reminding Hushpuppy that she has to fend for herself: "Someday it's all gonna be on you" (Alibar and Zeitlin 67). Hushpuppy takes the fried alligator for Wink and leaves. On their way back, the herd of aurochs suddenly show up in the bayou, but Hushpuppy faces them so fearlessly and proudly that the giant beasts kneel before her. She tells the aurochs that she has to "take care of mine" (Alibar and Zeitlin 73) and walks away. She shares a last supper of alligator with Wink, who cherishes her gift and passes away. His corpse, placed on his pickup-truck-boat and set on fire by little Hushpuppy, is saluted off by the remaining community, before drifting offto sea. In the final scene of the film, we see Hushpuppy and her people walking across a water-licked levee, parading towards the camera with some belongings and black, ragged flags. Realism and Fantasy The collectivist tone of the film reflects its making since it was produced by Court 13, an artists and friends collective, with amateur actors in the leading roles. Despite the low budget, Court 13 pulled offamazing feats both in the realistic and the fantastic settings through makeshift arrangements (such as use of local material) and constant adaptations to the environment (such as local lay actors). The set designer even lived in one of the shacks built for the set. This use of lay actors and local material does not however produce a simple documentary flair. Instead the most distinguishing fomrnl feature of the film is its blend of realism with fantastic elements. Beasts of the Southern Wild, produced and shot on location in southern Louisiana, is characterized by an almost ethnographic realism. The crew used local talent and generally utilized whatever they could find on location. When constructing the shanties, set designers helped themselves with trash materials on the surrounding land 46 KLAUS RIESER and, prior to filming, moved in themselves. As the director recounts: "You never see all the stuffthat's in that house when you watch the film, but you do sense that there's a logic behind it, because it's lived-in ( ... ]" (Foundas 27). This realism is coupled with supernatural story moments such as the revivified "aurochs," the coincidence of the hurricane and Hushpuppy's knocking down her father, or the children's swimming out to the sea. Some reviewers have read these fantastic elements to be themselves realist representations of a child's vision. Franz Lidz claims that Hushpuppy's "fervent imagination fills the screen with magic, from the motes glowing in the air to visions of aurochs [ ...]. She's convinced that animals and her absent mother [ ... ] talk to her, sometimes in code." Similarly Amy Taubin comes to the conclusion that "the film is not so much magic realism as a realistic depiction of a child's imagination" (60). Indeed much of the film is shot from Hushpuppy's eye level, and many of the fantastic elements relate to a child's mindset. However the film goes beyond such psychological realism or naturalism. As Zeitlin puts it, "[t]he movie is sort of pushing past realism all the time into this hyper-real place or this fantasy place [ ... ]" (Foundas 27). The aurochs are a case in point: At first they seem to spring from Hushpuppy's fears as she is grappling with both natural and personal disasters. Eventually they appear on the realistic level of the film, where they are registered not only by Hushpuppy (and the audience) but also by fellow film characters. This mixture of realism and fantasy makes Beasts of the Southern Wildparticularly apt for a utopian reading. If read from the point of view of utopian theories, the film emerges as neither offering a po1trayal of reality nor a child's imagination but rather a "concrete utopia" in Ernst Bloch's sense, 1 which includes both realistic elements and expressions of fantasy and hope.2 1 See Kellner and O'Hara 28-32. 2 For an overview of concepts of utopianism, see Sargent. TIME, SPACE, AND UTOPIA IN BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD 47 Reception Beasts of the Southern Wild has garnered a number of prestigious prize nominations and has won several awards. It was nominated for four Academy Awards (Best Motion Picture of the Year; Best Achievement in Directing; Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay; and Best Perforniance by an Actress in a Leading Role).

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