Utopianism, alongside its more prevalent dystopian Pat Brereton Pat Brereton opposite, together with ecological study has become a magnet for interdisciplinary research and is used extensively to examine the most influential global medium of all time. This book applies a range of interdisciplinary strategies to trace the evolution of ecological representations in Hollywood film from the 1950s to the present. Such a study has not been done on this scale before. Many popular science fiction, Westerns, nature and road movies are extensively analysed, while privileging particular ecological Hollywood Utopia moments of sublime expression often dramatized in the closing moments of these films. Dr. Pat Brereton is Chair of the B.Sc. in Multimedia, and a Lecturer in Film and Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema Contents include: Media Studies at Dublin City University. • Hollywood Utopia: Ecology and Contempoary American • Cinema “...Its clarity, its reach, its • Nature Film and Ecology: Westerns, Landscape and Road honesty and its originality should • Movies ensure this book a place on the shelves of any media scholar and • Conspiracy Thrillers and Science Fiction: 1950s to1990s many Green activists.” • Postmodernist Science Fiction Films and Ecology This book offers an intriguing and ambitious prospect: an attempt to unearth the emergence of an ecologically-based worldview pervading at least Western consciousness. The author adopts a Raymond Williams-style approach to this project, engaging in deep textual analysis of the Hollywood blockbuster with a view to identifying whether those projects are implicitly informed by some kind of subliminal eco- consciousness. (Dr. Roddy Flynn, Dublin City University) intellect ISBN 1-84150-117-4 intellect PO Box 862 Bristol BS99 1DE United Kingdom www.intellectbooks.com 9 781841 501178 Utopianism, alongside its more prevalent dystopian Pat Brereton Pat Brereton opposite, together with ecological study has become a magnet for interdisciplinary research and is used extensively to examine the most influential global medium of all time. This book applies a range of interdisciplinary strategies to trace the evolution of ecological representations in Hollywood film from the 1950s to the present. Such a study has not been done on this scale before. Many popular science fiction, Westerns, nature and road movies are extensively analysed, while privileging particular ecological Hollywood Utopia moments of sublime expression often dramatized in the closing moments of these films. Dr. Pat Brereton is Chair of the B.Sc. in Multimedia, and a Lecturer in Film and Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema Contents include: Media Studies at Dublin City University. • Hollywood Utopia: Ecology and Contempoary American • Cinema “...Its clarity, its reach, its • Nature Film and Ecology: Westerns, Landscape and Road honesty and its originality should • Movies ensure this book a place on the shelves of any media scholar and • Conspiracy Thrillers and Science Fiction: 1950s to1990s many Green activists.” • Postmodernist Science Fiction Films and Ecology This book offers an intriguing and ambitious prospect: an attempt to unearth the emergence of an ecologically-based worldview pervading at least Western consciousness. The author adopts a Raymond Williams-style approach to this project, engaging in deep textual analysis of the Hollywood blockbuster with a view to identifying whether those projects are implicitly informed by some kind of subliminal eco- consciousness. (Dr. Roddy Flynn, Dublin City University) intellect ISBN 1-84150-117-4 intellect PO Box 862 Bristol BS99 1DE United Kingdom www.intellectbooks.com 9 781841 501178 Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 1 The fruit of years of painstaking study, Pat Brereton's Hollywood Utopia is a landmark in the emerging field of ecological media criticism. The more urban human societies become, the more our media reflect upon the landscapes, the animals and the fragile unities of our planet. Of no media formation is this more true than of Hollywood, as Brereton argues in this meticulously researched and carefully organised work. Far from trashing the planet, Hollywood films have, Brereton claims, a tradition stretching back to the 1950s of care and concern for humanity estranged from its roots, and a world at risk of destruction. Through innovative analyses of Jurassic Park, Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, Star Trek, Terminator 2 and Blade Runner among countless older and newer films, Brereton traces a utopianism often overlooked in traditional film criticism. Not only films with explicitly Green agendas like Emerald Forest and Medicine Man, but in films noted for far different qualities exhibit the saving grace of nature. Films like Dances With Wolves or the towering spectacle of the tornado's heart in Twister provide grist for an original and far-reaching account of the place of nature in contemporary popular cinema. Dissent and disorder emerge in science fiction films of the 1950s and blockbusters of the early 21st century. The book traces complex negotiations with the meanings of nature and humananity's place in it through costume dramas and high-tech special effects bonanzas, always with an eye to the telling contradiction and the emergence of a generalised and liberal but nonetheless impressive and perhaps heartfelt need to restore the bonds that have been sundered between humans and their environment. To these analyses Brereton adds a powerful and persuasive thesis concerning the spatial concerns of contemporary Hollywood, a thesis that leads him through a broad overview of the literature of green cultural studies and postmodernism. Throughout, Brereton manages an easy, graceful prose to immense purpose. Its clarity, its reach, its honesty and its originality should ensure this book a place on the shelves of any media scholar and many Green activists, The ultimate optimism of its case is a challenge to other critics to write for makers and audiences who want more from cinema, both the cinema we have and the cinema we may yet make in the new century. (Sean Cubitt, University of Waikato, New Zealand) Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 2 Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 3 Hollywood Utopia Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema Pat Brereton Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 4 First Published in the UK in 2005 by Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK First Published in the USA in 2005 by Intellect Books, ISBS, 920 NE 58th Ave. Suite 300, Portland, Oregon 97213-3786, USA Copyright ©2005 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Electronic ISBN 1-84150-912-4 / ISBN 1-84150117-4 Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons Copy Editor: Wendi Momen Hollywood Utopia 4 Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 5 Contents 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 9 FILMOGRAPHY 11 1. HOLLYWOOD UTOPIA: ECOLOGY AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CINEMA 51 2. NATURE FILM AND ECOLOGY 91 3. WESTERNS, LANDSCAPE AND ROAD MOVIES 139 4. CONSPIRACY THRILLERS AND SCIENCE FICTION: 1950s TO 1990s 185 5. POSTMODERNIST SCIENCE FICTION FILMS AND ECOLOGY 233 CONCLUSION 241 BIBLIOGRAPHY 259 GLOSSARY OF TERMS Contents 5 Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 6 Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank media staff at my previous university in Luton as well as in DCU for their assistance and encouragement. Other readers who helped in various ways include Nick Heffernan, Peter Brooker, Christine Geraghty and Steve Neale. Finally I wish to thank Angela and my family for their support over the many years it took to complete this project. Acknowledgements 7 Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 8 Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 9 SELECT FILMOGRAPHY Andromeda Strain (1970) Robert Wise Alien Resurrection (1997) Jean-Pierre Jeunet Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott Blade Runner: The Director's Cut (1991) Ridley Scott Contact (1997) Robert Zemeckis Dances with Wolves (1990) Kevin Costner Dances with Wolves - Special Edition (1991) Kevin Costner Dark City (1998) Alex Proyas Easy Rider (1969) Denis Hopper Emerald Forest (1985) John Boorman Endangered Species (1982) Alan Rudolph Fifth Element, The (1997) Luc Besson Grand Canyon (1991) Lawrence Kasdan Incredible Shrinking Man (The) (1957) Jack Arnold Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Don Siegel Jaws (1975) Steven Spielberg Jurassic Park (1993) Steven Spielberg Last of the Mohicans (1992) Michael Mann 9 Filmography Logan's Run (1976) Michael Anderson Lost World, The: Jurassic Park (1997) Steven Spielberg Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 10 Medicine Man, The (1992) John McTiernan Men in Black (1997) Barry Sonnenfeld Safe (1995) Todd Haynes Searchers, The (1956) John Ford Soylent Green (1973) Richard Fleischer Star Trek: First Contact (1996) Jonathan Frakes Straight Story, The (1999) David Lynch Terminator (1984) James Cameron Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) James Cameron Thelma and Louise (1991) Ridley Scott Them(1954) Gordon Douglas Titanic (1997) James Cameron Twister (1996) Jan De Bont Waterworld (1995) Kevin Reynolds Yearling, The (1946) Clarence Brown 10 Hollywood Utopia Hollywoodutopialayout 20/10/04 4:54 pm Page 11 1 HOLLYWOOD UTOPIA: ECOLOGY AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CINEMA Prologue Ecology has become a new, all-inclusive, yet often contradictory meta-narrative1, which this book will show to have been clearly present within Hollywood film since the 1950s. This study focuses particularly on feel-good films whose therapeutic character often leads to their being dismissed as ideologically regressive. By concentrating on narrative closure and especially the way space is used to foreground and dramatise the sublime pleasure of nature, Hollywood cinema can be seen to have within it a ‘certain tendency’2 that dramatises core ecological values and ideas. The study is committed to a strategy of building bridges and creating cross- connections between film and other disciplines.