Hollywood Utopia

1 HOLLYWOOD UTOPIA: ECOLOGY AND
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CINEMA
Prologue
Ecology has become a new, all-inclusive, yet often contradictory meta-narrative 1 ,
which this book will show to have been clearly present within Hollywood film since
the 1950s. This study focuses particularly on feel-good films whose therapeutic
character often leads to their being dismissed as ideologically regressive. By
concentrating on narrative closure and especially the way space is used to
foreground and dramatise the sublime pleasure of nature, Hollywood cinema can
be seen to have within it a ‘certain tendency’ 2 that dramatises core ecological values
and ideas.
The study is committed to a strategy of building bridges and creating crossconnections
between film and other disciplines. In particular, the investigation
draws on Geography (space/place, tourism and so on), Philosophy (aesthetics,
ethics and ontological debates), Anthropology, Feminism and Cultural Studies,
while maintaining close contact with the traditional literary and historical
disciplines.
In the light of this cross-disciplinary approach, the first section of this introductory
chapter sets the scene for an ecological investigation, drawing on a wide range of
ideas and historical contexts, while the second section has a narrower focus,
clarifying a methodology for film analysis to be used throughout the study. Within
many blockbuster films, the evocation of nature and sublime spectacle 3 helps to
dramatise contemporary ecological issues and debates. Filmic time and space is
dramatised, often above and beyond strict narrative requirements, and serves,
whether accidentally or not, to reconnect audiences with their inclusive ecosystem.
As Bryan Norton puts it, environmentalism needs to educate the public ‘to see
problems from a synoptic, contextual perspective’ (Norton 1991: xi). In this
respect, Hollywood films can be seen as exemplifying, and often actually
promoting, this loosely educational and ethical agenda, particularly through the use
of ecological/mythic expression, evidenced in a range of narrative closures.
1 Hollywood Utopia 11