A Filmmaker's Guide to: Eco-criticism

In this chapter of ‘the filmmaker’s guide’ we’re actually going to be learning about literature and film together. I understand that many of you are sitting in university during difficult times and finding it increasingly hard to study and I understand that many of you who are not at university or not planning on it are possibly stuck of what to do, need a break or even need to catch up on learning film before you get to the next level. This guide will be brief but will also contain: new vocabulary, concepts and theories, films to watch and we will be exploring something taboo until now in the ‘filmmaker’s guide’ - academia (abyss opens). Each article will explore a different concept of film, philosophy, literature or bibliography/filmography etc. in order to give you something new to learn each time we see each other. You can use some of the words amongst family and friends to sound clever or you can get back to me (email in bio) and tell me how you’re doing. So, strap in and prepare for the filmmaker’s guide to film studies because it is going to be one wild ride.

Eco-Criticism

What is it?

Sometimes spelt as one word without a hyphen, this branch of criticism seeks to look through the lens of environmental treatments and concerns we have during our time and the time of the author/filmmaker in order to come up with a meaning for the work. The three states we can normally analyse in order to do this are:

1) The work's treatment of nature

2) The work's treatment and depiction of animal/human relations

3) Descriptions of pathetic fallacy and links between the climate/weather and the mood of the protagonist and/or supplementary characters

During the 20th Century, there has been an overt concern with how we treat nature and the natural world, but believe it or not, the treatment of nature was discussed far before the days of the Second World War. As we know, the mid-1800s was also a great time for the rise of the 'forest gothic' in which nature would work against us and squash us under its everlasting grip. When Shelley's "Frankenstein" decides to bend nature and play God, he is rewarded with psychological torture and the murder of his brother, his lover and his best friend. Not to mention, his father dies of heartbreak and sadness. Nature has prevailed and punished us.

When the Second World War got underway, people were dying left, right and centre but more importantly for eco-critics was that we were releasing horrid gases etc. into the air with everyone trying to kill each other with the biggest weapon imaginable. And it is this: the destruction of nature and the destruction of the natural order, that they are concerned with. In literature, this is possibly perfectly presented in Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and EM Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" with the first exploring the destruction of nature by man and the second, the destruction of the natural order by the Great War.

What about in film?

Well, film in the modern age is definitely getting bolder in its exploration of the eco-critical side of modern life as, in various warnings of the great risks of climate change, things have hit far closer to home. What was previously fictitious in our attempts to control ourselves without nature, has now become the existential nightmare that we are now responsible for its destruction in more ways than one. Films are amazing at exploring this shift, especially new-age 21st Century Social Commentary Film. Remember there are two types of eco-criticism: the one in which we destroy nature via our destructive human condition and the second is when we create something unnatural and self-destructive (also known as my theory on the Frankenstein effect). The films include but are not limited to:

- Avatar (2009)

- Limitless (2011)

- The Revenant (2015)

- The Shape of Water (2017)

Within the eco-critical sphere, there is definitely a requirement to have a character/character(s) who are protectors of the natural world and then there are the opposition who are the destructors. In film, this could either be towards the protection of a person or of a natural resource.

So, if you're going to make an eco-critical film - here's some books you probably want to read and yes, Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" is the first one.

Further Reading

• Arvay, C (2018). The Biophilia Effect: The Healing Bond Between Humans and Nature: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond Between Humans and Nature. USA: Sounds True.
• Basu Thakur, G (2015). Postcolonial Theory and Avatar. USA: Bloomsbury Academic USA.
• Carson, R (2000). Silent Spring. UK: Penguin Classics
• Carson, R (2018). The Sea Around Us. 3rd ed. USA: Oxford University Press.
• Carson, R (2007). Under the Sea-Wind. 2nd ed. UK: Penguin Classics .
• Coupe, L (2000). The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. UK: Routledge.
• Glotfelty, C. Fromm, H. (1996). The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. USA: University of Georgia Press.
• Hiltner, K (2014). Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader. UK: Routledge.
• Jones, L (2020). Losing Eden:Why Our Minds Need the Wild. UK: Allen Lane