Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 3-10-2021 "Will God Forgive Us?": Christianity and the Climate Crisis in Auteur Cinema Margaret Alice Parson Louisiana State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation Parson, Margaret Alice, ""Will God Forgive Us?": Christianity and the Climate Crisis in Auteur Cinema" (2021). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 5477. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/5477 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. “WILL GOD FORGIVE US?”: CHRISTIANITY AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS IN AUTEUR CINEMA A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Communication Studies by Margaret Alice Parson B.A., Otterbein University, 2015 M.A., Ball State University, 2017 May 2021 For Tegan ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation, as with all dissertations, is a communal act. Without the massive support of my community, it never would have come into being. Most significantly, Dr. Bryan McCann. This project was completed because of your empathy and guidance. I can never thank you enough. The other members of my committee, Drs. Mack, Saas, and Shaffer have all offered their expertise and kindness in this project’s growth, and I of course am indebted to them for their comments and encouragement. I wish to thank also the entire department of Communication Studies, as well as the College of Humanities, for their support. Beyond the academic, the friendships in my life that have continually helped this dissertation go from a lofty idea to a completed document cannot be overemphasized. Taylor, thank you for being my first friend in the state of Louisiana and for your unending dedication to me as a scholar and a person. William, your love and kindness, your distanced reinforcement and constant offerings of edits and renaming, they are the reason I was ever able to get this far. Every step I have taken has been with you. Finally, Dylan, you encouraged me and helped me far away from the academy when I needed it the most. You were all there in the deepest, muddiest parts of it all and without you it simply would not have been written. How lucky I am to be able to rely on each of you in my life. It can never be repaid. Finally, to my parents, Claire and John Parson. Where would I be had you not told me one million times that I could do anything? My mom for guiding the way through my undergraduate and then graduate career, working so hard to give me the education I hope to never take for granted. My dad, for telling me the world needs leaders and strong women. You are both the greatest parents in the world. This dissertation is an homage to both of you. Thank you. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................. v INTRODUCTION. IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT................................. 1 Cinema and the Auteur.................................................................................................... 10 Environmental Film.......................................................................................................... 17 Christian Discourse........................................................................................................... 23 Preview of Chapters.......................................................................................................... 27 CHAPTER ONE. INEFFABLE ECOLOGY............................................................................... 31 (Re)Conceptualizing Nature............................................................................................. 32 The Real and New Materialism........................................................................................ 37 Genre, Lacanian Psychanalysis, and Affect..................................................................... 40 CHAPTER TWO. FIRST REFORMED AND THE BATTLE BETWEEN DOMINION AND STEWARDSHIP....................................................................... 50 Transcendence, Genesis, and Dominion as Form and Genre........................................... 52 Paul Schrader as Auteur.................................................................................................... 57 Transcendence and Environmental Doom in First Reformed........................................... 64 Conclusion........................................................................................................................ 80 CHAPTER THREE. INTERSTELLAR AND THE ECOLOGICAL JEREMIAD OF THE HOPELESS PLANET EARTH..................................................................................... 82 Jeremiad and the Final Frontier....................................................................................... 84 Christopher Nolan’s Deep Blockbusters .......................................................................... 97 The Final Frontier and Ecological Jeremiad in Interstellar............................................ 100 Conclusion...................................................................................................................... 112 CHAPTER FOUR. MOTHER!’S MOTHER NATURE AND THE WHITE FEMININE APOCALYPSE................................................................................ 113 Apocalyptic Rhetoric...................................................................................................... 116 The White Mother Nature............................................................................................... 120 Darren Aronofsky’s Dark Depressing Cinema............................................................... 129 The Inescapable Cycle of the White Woman’s Apocalypse in mother!......................... 132 Conclusion...................................................................................................................... 145 CONCLUSION. HOW TO PREVENT THE END OF THE WORLD..................................... 147 The Missing Pieces of Environmental Cinema .............................................................. 149 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 160 VITA ......................................................................................................................................... 186 iv ABSTRACT Climate change is an unavoidable and real catastrophic threat to the future of Planet Earth. This dissertation is interested in how contemporary auteur cinema draws on Christian forms to give expression to the ineffability of environmental collapse. In this rhetorical generic criticism, I discuss three recent auteur films: First Reformed (2017, directed by Paul Schrader), Interstellar (2014, directed by Christopher Nolan), and mother! (2017, directed by Darren Aronofsky). In order to best rhetorically analyze these films, I perform a generic criticism which utilizes aspects of psychoanalysis and affect theory as per the work of Gunn. Each film is discussed both for its auteur qualities, but also for the Christian forms that are utilized by the auteur to express the cultural anxieties of climate change. Through this analysis, I argue several important conclusions, most importantly that current environmental cinema fails to present opportunities for intervention in global warming, forming audiences with little to no efficacy. By utilizing Christian forms to tell stories about climate change, audiences are both challenged and reaffirmed in their understandings and misconceptions about the links between contemporary Judeo-Christianity in America and global warming. v INTRODUCTION. THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT We may be doomed. As in, the future of the human species on Planet Earth may indeed be hopeless. Increasingly, popular press authors, scientists, and politicians are positing that the human race may have waited too long to prevent total global collapse due to climate change (Wallace-Wells).1 Take, for instance, the opening words of noted climate change journalist Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, “It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of delusions” (1). As Roy Scranton so joyfully puts it, “to even ask the question of what the future holds today is to face an abyss of suffering that defies all reasonable thought” (par. 5). There are obvious and clear downsides to advertising the inevitability of total ecological collapse. Morton argues to advertise the apocalypse due to climate, is “part of the problem, not part of the solution” (103). However, as Franzen argues, Some climate activists argue that if we publicly admit that the problem can’t be solved, it will discourage people from taking any ameliorative action at