Synopses & Reviews
Discussion of Hollywood film has dominated much of the contemporary dialogue on ecocriticism and the cinemaandmdash;until now. With
Transnational Ecocinemas, the editors open up the critical debate to look at a larger variety of films from many different countries and cultures. By foregrounding these films with their economic and political contexts, the contributors offer a more comprehensive and nuanced look at the role of place in ecocinema. The essays also interrogate proposed global solutions to environmental issues by presenting an ecocritical perspective on different film cultural considerations from around the globe.
Synopsis
Environmental Risks and the Media explores the ways in which environmental risks, threats and hazards are represented, transformed and contested by the media. At a time when popular conceptions of the environment as a stable, natural world with which humanity interferes are being increasingly contested, the medias methods of encouraging audiences to think about environmental risks - from the BSE or 'mad cow' crisis to global climate change - are becoming more and more controversial.
Examining large-scale disasters, as well as 'everyday' hazards, the contributors consider the tensions between entertainment and information in media coverage of the environment. How do the media frame 'expert', 'counter-expert' and 'lay public' definitions of environmental risk? What role do environmental pressure groups like Greenpeace or 'eco-warriors' and 'green guerrillas' play in shaping what gets covered and how? Does the media emphasis on spectacular events at the expense of issue-sensitive reporting exacerbate the public tendency to overestimate sudden and violent risks and underestimate chronic long-term ones?
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-264) and index.
About the Author
Tommy Gustafsson is a senior lecturer in film studies at the School of Language and Literature Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University.
Pietari Kandauml;andauml;pandauml; is a research fellow in the School of Film and Television Studies at the University of Helsinki. He has published extensively on transnational Finnish cinema.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Part I: Introduction to Transnational Ecocinema
Introduction: Transnational Ecocinema in an age of Ecological Transformation
Pietari Kand#228;and#228;pand#228; and Tommy Gustafsson
Transnational Approaches to Ecocinema: Charting an Expansive Field
Pietari Kand#228;and#228;pand#228;
Part II: Documentary Politics and the Ecological Imagination
Colorful Screens: Water Imaginaries in Documentaries from China and Taiwan
Enoch Yee-Lok Tam
From My Fancy High Heels to Useless Clothing: and#8216;Interconnectednessand#8217; and Ecocritical Issues in Transnational Documentaries
Kiu-wai Chu
Ecocinema and and#8216;Good Lifeand#8217; in Latin America
Roberto Forns-Broggi
Dimensions of Humanity in Earthlings (2005) and Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
Ilda Teresa de Castro
Part III: Popular Film and Ecology
China Has a Natural Environment, Too!: Consumerist and Ideological Ecoimaginaries in the Cinema of Feng Xiaogangand#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
Corrado Neri
And the Oscar Goes toand#8230;Ecoheroines, Ecoheros and the Development of Ecothemes from The China Syndrome (1979) to GasLand (2010)
Tommy Gustafsson
Part IV: (In)Sustainable Footprint of Cinema
Climate Change Films: Fear and Agency Appeals
Inand#234;s Crespo and and#194;ngela Pereira
Envisaging Environmental Change: Foregrounding Place in Three Australian Ecomedia
Initiatives
Susan Ward and Rebecca Coyle
Afterword-Towards a Transnational Understanding of the Anthropocene
Tommy Gustafsson and Pietari Kand#228;and#228;pand#228;
Contributor Details
Index