Framing The Three Gorges: The Ecocinema Of Nature, Women And Grassroots

Fast integration of China into the trend of worldwide globalization and its relentless efforts of industrialization and modernization has altogether caused unimaginable consequences since 1979. With the economic boom in the reform era, China is now facing unprecedented environmental crises and ecological challenges. The uncontrollable exploitation of nature for the development of modernization and industrialization has caused serious consequences in natural and cultural environment. This paper explores the theme of two representative films of ecocinema—Up the Yangtze(2007) and Still Life(2006), framing the ecological crisis up the Yangtze River to expose the destruction of nature and the down-trodden condition of women and the grassroots caused by the construction of Three Gorges Dam project as is represented in both films.In this paper, a viewpoint of ecocriticism especially the ecofeminist philosophy will be adopted to analyze the subordinated condition suffered by nature, women and the grassroots due to man’s pursuit of progress, rationality, profit, science and technology. Contemporary ecological crisis is in its essence a crisis of the unscrupulous modernization, a crisis rooted in the materialistic modern worldview. For Karen J. Warren, the suppression of nature, women, and the down-trodden grassroots group is of the same logic of domination. The destruction to nature, the suppression of women and the subordination of the grassroots are actually all associated and they can be understood in the same oppressive conceptual framework as is put forward by Warren. When situated in contemporary Chinese context, such an oppressive conceptual framework can be specified as the conceptual framework of a mechanical modern worldview which favors progress, profit, and development as its priorities. It is almost impossible for human beings to solve the ecological problems by merely updating and advancing sciences and technologies, and it is only by abandoning the mechanical modern ecological view and the self-centered anthropocentrism and embracing the postmodern organic ecological view that we can be able to succeed in dealing with the ecological issues.