An Ecocritical Research Of Contemporary American Cinema

Based on existing ecocritical research of contemporary American cinema,this thesis aims to conduct cinema criticism from an ecocritical perspective,examining the ecological expression of cinema in historical,cultural and realistic contexts,analyzing the ecological consciousness under the ventriloquy of cinema ideology,dissecting the absence of ecological expression in the structure of cinema.The introduction presents the research background and theoretical basis,research literature review,research purpose,methodology,significance and innovation;the first chapter expounds the theories of ecocriticism of contemporary cinema and analyzes the results of cinema ecocriticism at the present stage;the second,third,fourth and fijfth chapters eco-criticize specific movies surrounding four themes that are concerned in contemporary American cinema:environmental crisis,resource crisis,animal care and environmental justice,in an attempt to organically combine theories and case studies in the ecocriticism of contemporary American cinema;the conclusion summarizes the achievements and deficiencies of contemporary American cinema ecocriticism as well as the inspiration for Chinese cinema ecocriticism.The specific content of research is as follows:The introduction gives an overview of the whole thesis.It is first pointed out that the object of ecocriticism in the thesis is mainly contemporary American movies after 1939,that the research background is the increasingly worse ecological ernvironment,and that the theoretical basis is the ecological consciousness improving constantly,the paradigm of human survival shifting from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism,and ecocriticism penetrating from literature into cinema.The thesis employs literature research,work analysis and interdisciplinary research to analyze contemporary American cinema and seek the laws of the image text in historical and realistic contexts.It divides contemporary American cinema by theme of ecological expression into four ecological themes for discussion(environmental crisis movies,resource crisis movies,animal movies and environmental justice movies)and summarizes a framework for contemporary American cinema ecocriticism on this basis.The thesis grasps contemporary American cinema ecocriticism as a whole,which has a reference point for constructing Chinese cinema ecocriticism,which also has some theoretical significance for promoting ecocritical communication between Chinese and Western cinema.Meanwhile,the thesis makes use of the concepts of ecological philosophy and ecocriticism,which have some applications,such as uncovering ideological and cultural roots of ecological crises,popularizing ecological consciousness,and building an ecological civilization,and enhancing natural and social missions of cinema ecocriticism.The innovation of the thesis lies in its interdisciplinary research that reviews and examines cutting-edge views on American cinema ecocriticism and that expounds on the ecological connotations of cinema to exert its due role in reconstructing human ecological civilization.The first chapter expounds three current theories of cinema ecocriticism,respectively.Adrian Ivakhiv's triadic model of cinema attempts to apply the theory of ecological philosophy to cinema ecocriticism,arguing that cinema uses a series of moving images to record the appearance,development and interaction of various things and their activity and convergence that influence the surrounding world;cinematic worlds carry and shape the worlds outside cinema in three forms:the geomorphic,the biomorphic,and the anthropomorphic;the audience has three kinds of cinematic experience:firstness,secondness,and thirdness when they go to the cinema,as cinematic experience connects the worlds produced by cinema with the worlds outside cinema.To understand the relationship between cinematic worlds and the worlds outside cinema,Ivakhiv advocates that we follow the ecosystem analysis model and study how the form and meaning of cinema are circulated in the three ecologies of cinema(material ecologies,social ecologies and mental/perceptual ecologies).Ivakhiv considers cinema as the result of interaction with the real world,so cinema plays a vital role in constructing and changing the ecological environment in the world.David Ingram's diverse ecocriticism of cinema aims to analyze how different ecoaesthetic components work individually and collectively in the ecologic expression of cinema.Ingram holds that from the perspective of aesthetic diversity,art and the public,reality and popularity,morality and immorality,and various cognitive and affective strategies can arouse environmental consciousness and ecological debate,so that any movie can inspire the public to discuss environmental issues.Cinema ecocriticism under Andrew Hageman's dialectical critique aims to read cinema for what they reveal to us about the contradictions within the culture,society,and ourselves.Hageman believes all movies have ideologies,including the constituted ideology at the content level and the constitutive ideology at the form level.Through a dialectical critique of three movies with the same theme yet different expressions,Hageman pointed out that the construction by ideology and of ideology was contradictory in the movies,as they totally adopted the ideology that they were supposed to oppose,namely capitalism,to solve the problem,while the fact is that as long as capitalism existed,it would destroy ecology.Cinema is the product of ideology,so it cannot be separated from ideology,but through a practice of dialectical critique,cinema ecocriticism can discern our complex desires and reconsider existence from the perspectives of ecology and ideology.To sum up,existing cinema ecocriticism theories affirm the important role of cinema in ecological expression,ecological cognition,and ecological consciousness from the perspectives of ecological philosophy,ecological aesthetics,and dialectics,respectively.Ivakhiv's triadic model of cinema applies the theory of ecological philosophy to cinema ecocriticism,noting that cinema is in interaction with the real world,so eco-criticizing movies in historical and cultural contexts can interpret the ecological expression of movies correctly;Ingram,s diverse ecocriticism of cinema argues that all movies can draw more attention to ecology,so the ecological consciousness under the ventriloquy of cinema ideology can be excavated through ecocriticism of various types of movies;cinema ecocriticism under Andrew Hageman' s dialectical critique analyzes dialectics in movies,reminding us that when we eco-criticize a movie,we need to analyze the structural absence of ecological expression.Current cinema ecocriticism theories provide the theoretical basis and interpretive vision for ecocriticism of environmental crisis,resource crisis,animal care and environmental justice,four themes of contemporary American cinema that are covered in the following chapters of the thesis.The second chapter eco-criticizes environmental crisis movies in contemporaryAmerican cinema.Environmental crisis movies in this chapter mainly depict all kinds of environmental degradation caused by human production and life activities in the documentary or prophetic audiovisual language.Soil erosion,sandstorms,marine pollution and the end of the world under the lens awaken us to the ecological collapse brought by anthropocentrism,and thus arouse much of our ecological consciousness to consider our relationship with nature from the angle of ecocentrism and rebuild an ecologically harmonious society.However,if we put environmental crisis movies into historical,cultural and realistic contexts,we can see that the ecological expression of these movies is limited.Despite the recognition that humans are responsible for natural environmental destruction,it is believed that all this can be restored,primarily by humans.The largest structural void in this type of movies is that the root cause of the environmental crisis is not pointed out-it is the unbridled plunder of nature during the rapid development of America,it is the capitalist system that is the culprit of ecological destruction.Environmental crisis movies simply put the blame on the behavior of an individual or a group of people,so their ecological expression is limited.The third chapter eco-criticizes resource crisis movies in contemporary American cinema.Resource crisis movies in this chapter are mainly melodramas that show resource destruction,environmental pollution and ecological degradation caused by railroading,oil mining,gold mining and nuclear energy development through a shocking lens language,a dualism of good and evil,and a multi-strand narrative structure.The ecological expression of resource crisis movies is objective,as plunder of land,oil fire,soil erosion after gold mining and nuclear leak polluting humans and nature still give humans an ecological warning though they are only depicted as the secondary narrative strand.At the same time,the setting of a melodrama makes it easier for people to experience the unbridled plunder of natural resources by humans.Resource crisis movies indicate that human progress is at the cost of ecological balance,revealing the dilemma of human survival in ecological crises,stimulating much ecological consciousness of humans.Yet,if we put resource crisis movies in historical,cultural and realistic contexts,we can discover the void in their ecological expression.The expression of resource exploitation is positive in resource crisis movies,which are a tribute to capitalism.The responsibility for ecological crises is blurred,simplified,and one-sided,with an individual or a group of people to blame,when the solution to ecological issues is still the classic last-minute rescue.The root cause of the resource crisis is not discussed but even concealed-it is the human-centered concept of economic development,it is the capitalist system that forces the ecology to give way to resource development,so by no means can there be a real way to solve the resource crisis in these movies.The fourth chapter eco-criticizes animal movies in contemporary American cinema.Animal movies in this chapter explore the transformation of animal image,correction of hunting attitudes,human consumption of animals,and truth of animal cruelty from human and animal perspectives,and expound the relationship between animals and humans and between animals and natural ecology.The ecological expression of animal movies lies in the shift of animal consciousness from anthropocentrism to zoocentrism,and then to biocentrism and ecocentrism.The expression of ecological consciousness of anti-hunting and anti-consumption in the movies is in a sense an objective correlative of human anxiety about their own survival,and a witness and promoter of greater ecological consciousness.It also draws more attention to the subject of animal protection and sparks discussion on the way to solve the animal crisis.The absence of ecological expression in American animal movies lies in its ecological utopian conception and commerciality:even the narrative from an animal perspective is also a mapping of anxiety of human society,aiming to seek from nature evidence of ideological beliefs about gender,family and other subjects;the ecological wisdom of Native Americans is also believed to be able to save the fallen souls of white Americans and solve ecological crises.The ecological expression of animal movies should represent and dissect the social ecology that evokes ecological anxiety in a deep and thorough manner.It should shift from "why to speak for animals" to "how to speak for animals",and move towards ecocentrism in its true sense.The fifth chapter eco-criticizes environmental justice movies in contemporary American cinema.Environmental justice movies in this chapter mainly make an ecological dissection of class oppression arising from urban development and resource monopoly,racial persecution of Indians and Mexican Americans in the process of Westward Expansion,aphasia of Indians and Mexican Americans in cinema,and biocolonization of developing countries by developed countries.Compared with the ecological expression of nature,resources,and animals in the previous three chapters,this chapter turns to humans as the theme of movies,and argues that to eradicate ecological crises,environmental exploitation and environmental oppression must be addressed first.The ecological expression of environmental justice movies emphasizes the construction of human nature,class,race,and biocolonization,with the purpose of revealing the historical,cultural and realistic roots of environmental justice absence and global ecological crises.In the meantime,it excavates and elucidates the deep-seated ecological wisdom under the way of survival of minority cultures and underclasses,in an effort to provide inspiration for exploring an ecologically sustainable way of survival.The structural void of environmental justice movies is the depoliticization and dehistorization of the issues of social injustice like class oppression and racial exploitation,and the evasion of historical and realistic roots of the problems of environmental justice.The movies fail to attribute the problem to the privatization of capital,to the capitalist system dominated by Western ideology,but try to substitute peaceful coexistence for true equality.Class oppression and racial exploitation require self-resistance in groups to end the new form of colonialism.Only when classes and races retake their right to speak by themselves will it be possible to explore an ecologically sustainable way of survival.The conclusion sums up the results of ecocritical research of contemporary American cinema and points out the inspiration and significance for the ecological expression and ecocritical research of Chinese cinema.The study of American cinema ecocriticism provides theoretical references of ecological philosophy and ecocriticism for Chinese cinema ecocriticism.The expression of ecological concepts in contemporary America cinema in terms of movie theme,structural use,audio-visual expression,and plot setting has set an example for the creation of Chinese ecological movies.As far as ecological expression is concerned,Chinese cinema should avoid the problems in contemporary American cinema,such as the anthropocentric narrative perspective,commercial dilution of ecological consciousness,blurred responsibility for ecological crises,and idealized resolution of ecological issues.The ecological expression of Chinese cinema should draw on local and Western ecological wisdom and expound on the relationship between cinema and local ecological environment;Chinese cinema ecocriticism should be put in local historical,cultural and realistic contexts,and cinema ecocriticism theories with Chinese characteristics should be built.