Hollywood Utopia

270 Hollywood Utopia
Other: drawing connections from applications in feminist and post-colonial studies, and
extending how ‘otherness’ can be used through the agency of cyborgs in particular to promote a
progressive ecological project.
Postmodernist texts: helps create new ways of conceptualising and stimulating representational
debate around the future of humanity. Furthermore this highly contested aesthetic phenomenon
can provide a ‘third space’ for and engagement with ecology outside of rigid Left/Right
ideological structures.
Risk: drawing on Beck’s notion of how Western society is defined by its inherent problems and
risks, especially ecological ones.
Space/place: a defining characteristic and subject for debate within cultural Geography in
particular. The area draws on notions like chronotope that allow critics to historicise the use of
space and time in film. Privileging film studies in terms of space/place is of central importance
for this study.
Spiritualism: helps to valorise a transcendent form of ecological representation and is by all
accounts extremely problematic within film analysis. Nevertheless, like other ‘myths’, moments
of ‘transcendent epiphany’ promote tangible emotions and responses of ‘oneness with nature’
and with our planet.
Tourism: alongside travel, remains a defining characteristic within Western culture. Traversing
landscape involves engaging with nature and ecology in broad terms and ultimately promoting
the possibility of witnessing a sublime spectacle. This strategy helps to foreground readings of
films like Grand Canyon, which engender a deep ecological awareness in the spectators.
Utopian effect: remains a primary focus of this film study and can be traced from
romantic/spiritual/sublime/transcendentalism/communitarian sensibilities, as they evolved in
American culture.