Hollywood Utopia

16 Hollywood Utopia
unconsciously expresses, even legitimises, core ecological precepts, especially
ecologism which promotes the principle of sustainability. Titanic suggests humans
have to be educated to consume less and to produce more self-sufficiently to satisfy
their basic needs.
Nature and the Roots of Ecology
'Ecologism', argues Andrew Dobson, makes
the Earth as physical object the very foundation-stone of its intellectual edifice,
arguing that its finitude is the basic reason why infinite population and economic
growth are impossible and why consequently, profound changes to our social and
political behaviour need to take place
(cited in Talshir 1998: 13).
Dobson reconstructs ecologism as a comprehensive ideology in which the
philosophical basis (limits to growth), the ethical perspective (ecocentrism), the
social vision (a sustainable society) and the political strategy (radical
transformation, not reformism) provide a coherent and cohesive ideology (ibid.:
15). Ecologism most certainly validates the non-sustainability of resources together
with its central premise of human interconnectivity with the rest of the biotic
community and even with the cosmos. The abiding strength of these ‘holistic’
approaches is that they regard the interrelationship of environmental variables as a
primary concern which is ‘explicitly anti-reductionist’ (Sklair 1994: 126). This
holistic utopian, even spiritual, perspective will be illustrated in detail in
subsequent chapters, most notably through a comparative study of The Incredible
Shrinking Man (1957) and Contact (1997).
But to begin this process of analysis, a working definition of ecological utopianism
needs to be outlined by tracing its historical, cultural and theoretical antecedents.
Particular emphasis will be placed on the divisions between ‘deep’ and ‘light’
(shallow) ecology which is also reflected in the tensions inherent in ideological
critiques and the debates about utopianism to be explored later. Finally, before an
evolving prototype for the textual analysis of film can be considered, a survey of
philosophical/ political positions will also be used to illustrate critical positions
emerging from ecology. In many ways, ecology has become the most dominant and
inclusive discourse of the late twentieth century.
Most cultural critics generally begin with the premise that ‘our representation of
nature’ usually reveals as much, if not more, about our inner fears and desires than
about the environment. 6 Nevertheless the two attributes can be regarded as