Environmental values in American popular-culture narratives

Because popular-culture environmental fiction narratives are communicative acts, they have the potential to affect environmental values on a grand scale. Green cultural studies fields do not adequately explore how popular-culture environmental fiction narratives contribute to the formation of values in the American public, largely because critics too often rely on a single form of criticism for analysis. Therefore, new critical tools are needed to enable green cultural studies scholars to examine what values are being communicated by popular culture, if these values are ethical, and how these values are being transmitted.; I argue that by examining popular-culture narratives using a new critical perspective, called eco-ethical rhetorical criticism, we can better understand how the stories we tell about nature influence our environmental values. Eco-ethical rhetorical criticism is a triangulation of critical perspectives derived from ecocriticism, ethical criticism, and rhetorical criticism. By testing eco-ethical rhetoric on Disney's animated-film Pocahontas (1995) and Barbara Kingsolver's novel Prodigal Summer (2000), I conclude that some (but not all) environmental fiction narratives have the potential to affect environmental values in their audiences.; Environmental fiction narratives can be broken into three levels: Environmental Allegories, New Environmental Stories, and Engaged Environmental Narratives. Classifying types of environmental fictional narratives demonstrates that the potential for a work of fiction to influence environmental values in its audience ranges along a spectrum from low potential (Environmental Allegories) to high potential (Engaged Environmental Narratives). Thus, using a combination of eco-ethical rhetorical criticism and the three levels of environmental fiction narratives, scholars in green cultural studies (particularly those engaged in ecocriticism and environmental rhetoric) will better understand how environmental fiction narratives contribute to the formation of environmental values and potentially our actions towards the world.