The Disposable Camera: Image, Energy, Environment
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THE DISPOSABLE CAMERA: IMAGE, ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT by Nadia Bozak A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Nadia Bozak 2008 The Disposable Camera: Image, Energy, Environment Nadia Bozak Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature University of Toronto 2008 Abstract “The Disposable Camera” theorizes the relationship between the cinematic image and energy resources. Framed by the emergent carbon-neutral cinema, the recent UCLA report on the film industry’s environmental footprint, as well as common perceptions about digital sustainability, “The Disposable Camera” posits that cinema has always been aware of its connection to the environment, the realm from which it sources its power, raw materials and, often enough, subject matter. But because the natural environment is so inextricably embedded within film’s basic means of production, distribution and reception, its effects remain as overlooked as they are complex. “The Disposable Camera” argues that cinematic history and theory can and indeed ought to be reappraised against the emerging ascendancy of environmental politics, all films; as such, all cinema could logically be included within the analytical parameters of this project. Primary focus, however, is given to documentary cinema, as well as notable experimental and narrative films. Selected texts do not overtly represent an environmental issue; rather, they reflexively engage with and theorize themselves as films, thus addressing the technological, industrial, and resource-derived essence of the moving image. Of import here are films that reveal how specific formal or aesthetic choices evidence and critique the ideology attached to resource consumption ii and/ or abuse. While it composes a distinctly environmental trajectory of the cinematic image, this project likewise historicizes and critiques these same stages and also challenges the utopian and/ or apocalyptical tendencies challenging eco-politics. Additionally, “The Disposable Camera” is committed to mapping out the shift from a distinctly tangible celluloid-based cinematic infrastructure to the ostensibly immaterial form of digital filmmaking. Indeed, the tension that now pits cinema’s material past against its immaterial future corresponds with the decline of natural reality on the one hand and the rise of cyber realities on the other, a parallel condition that fully evidences the increasingly palpable overlap between environmental and cinematic politics. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One: Energy 20 Chapter Two: Resource 84 Chapter Three: Extraction 144 Chapter Four: Excess 202 Chapter Five: Waste 259 Conclusion 319 Works Cited 323 Filmography 331 iv 1 Introduction: Cinema Neutralized Industrialization, mass-production and the reproduced image, as Walter Benjamin’s famous essay maintained, are mutually informing social determinants. Even before the explicit need surfaced, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” set the foundations necessary to connect cinema, the environment and the global citizen. Take, for example, Benjamin’s evocation of Paul Valéry. The poet and philosopher contributes to Benjamin’s arguments by expressing the possibilities inherent in the velocity of technological change, while for the contemporary reader he also predicts and encapsulates – and in very literal terms – the conditions that determine industrial resource-based images and the image-culture their profusion has engendered. As Valéry wrote, and Benjamin quotes, “Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our homes from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear with a simple movement of the hand” (219). Arguing that mass production at once democratized the image and aestheticized politics, Benjamin’s focus is on the terms of a work of art’s reproduction and transmission and, specifically, the ways in which these processes dictate aesthetic parameters and reception, finally contributing to the political organization and ideological ordering of society at large. But before these dimensions are explicitly registered, the terms and ideologies embedded in the very systems that produce, reproduce, transmit and receive the work of art and/or image must first of all be identified and accounted for. Indeed, what are the basic terms that facilitate mechanical image production and reproduction? By what process are such images received? With “a 2 minimal effort,” it was and is still assumed, thanks to the energy resources such as gas and fuel and electricity that were in Valéry’s 1930s being mainlined into the home. Of immediate importance here is, first, that Benjamin foregrounds how the terms of industry are embedded in the image itself and, second, that, as Valéry foresaw, having access to an image supply, which also means tapping into a hidden industry, has long been as thoughtlessly simple as receiving water, gas and electricity. But, as the limitless availability of such resources is radically challenged, the question that emerges, and with some urgency, is how this will affect not only industry and culture in general, but the image industry and image culture in particular. The image, cinematic, photographic, digital or analog, is not only inseparable from the politics and culture of resource extraction and therefore the environment, it is now virtually inseparable from the current environmental movement and the broad agenda of forging a new eco-conscious society. Emphatic it is, then, that former US Vice President Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his commitment to educating global citizens about the earth’s mounting environmental imperilments. The prize, to be shared with the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is the second major award that Gore has received of late – An Inconvenient Truth, the film based on his lecture tours, was recognized as Best Documentary Feature by the Academy Awards in 2006. Notable too is that as the film’s popularity has continued to escalate, Gore has begun to recruit volunteers who tour their immediate geographic area and present on his behalf. An Inconvenient Truth confirms, as does the steady rise of environmental documentaries (many of them now replete with large budgets, Hollywood producers and celebrity participation), that the image and digital technology (from DVDs 3 to internet forums to the operating logistics of Gore’s PowerPoint slide show) is proving an auspicious way to educate and agitate, and ultimately spur into action, a global population that is not just sprawling or divergent, but represents every conceivable difference. Indeed, because the environment and its problems are seemingly all-inclusive, how else to target and inform its citizens about what can be a complex scientific issue if not through visual media and the penetrating appeal of the moving image specifically? Engaging the universal problem that is climate change requires a universal language. As such, An Inconvenient Truth might ideally represent a significant moment of cultural dissemination, where every citizen is targeted, inclusive of social strata or ethnicity, and is then mobilized to respond to, if not alter, the hastening conditions of global warming. The digital democracy makes this ambition wholly possible – or at least in those specific realms where the image is, in Valéry’s terms, as cheap and available as water or electricity. So it is that the import of An Inconvenient Truth resides less in the nature of the film or the particulars of Gore’s idealized agenda than in the way that it exemplifies how digital technology, cinema, and ecological politics are yielding a long-coming convergence. It is becoming easy to see how the rise of digital cinema (otherwise known as the digital democracy) finds a parallel in the decline of natural realities; moreover, that they are direct correlates and thus mutually inclusive is less than patent. And yet what does digital technology, indeed all technology, represent if not the processes of industrialization which continue to perpetuate the myriad problems that come with global warming? As such, the cinema and the image, like any other facet of our culture, simply cannot (as yet) unplug from the energy economy that is both the means and ends of 4 current human existence. But, as the popularization and politicization of digitally rendered and often independently produced documentaries attests, the digital mode of expression and communication that is the pinnacle of industrialization might also play an integral role in challenging our culture’s pernicious ecological habits. Indeed, Gore’s film has been more than successful in its ability to reach, communicate with and ultimately convince a sizable demographic of the importance of his message, however factually flawed its content might be. And yet however sophisticated digital’s technology becomes, and however politically affecting as a result, it remains plugged into a turn-of-the-century system of energy generation so outdated it should long ago have been declared, like the commodities it has yielded, not just thoroughly inadequate and antiquated, but obsolete. Notably, the internal combustion engine has also not changed significantly since its standardization: as a result, the average car sold in the US today yields under 20 miles to a gallon of gasoline, less than the ninety-nine-year