Hollywood Utopia

34 Hollywood Utopia
creates a space, previously non-existent and still ‘unreal’, in which radically different
speculation can take place and in which totally new ways of being can be envisaged.
In this space transformative thinking can take place, and paradigmatic shifts in
approach can be undertaken
(Sargisson 1994: 63).
Sargisson rejects ‘conventional’ feminists who tended to endorse Derrida’s notion
that ‘utopianism is a masculinized construct in the libidinal economic sense and
that the (universalist, blueprinting and perfectionist) utopianism created by some
approaches is disempowered to all but those who construct it’ (Sargisson 1994: 87).
Feminist utopianism, on the other hand, sets the tone for a post-Enlightenment
utopianism and ‘replaces the old standard with something more flexible, more
interesting and more appropriate’ (ibid.: 64). She convincingly argues that it serves
to create a form of ‘transgressive/(transformative) thinking’ (ibid.: 76). This new
form of utopian optimism can also be detected in Hollywood films, as evidenced
through a range of readings to follow. In the creation of a new conceptual space,
this form of eco-utopianism helps to provide a potentially more effective blueprint
for theorising possible eco-readings of Hollywood texts.
To reiterate, this analysis is premised on the importance of not dismissing the
utopian, even therapeutic, articulation of ecological issues within popular culture
which Jameson suggests is difficult for the ‘Left’ to appreciate. The Gaia model,
for instance, together with conventional structuralist film theory, can be used to
explore light as opposed to deep ecological textual readings; but at the outset both
tendencies remain productive and feed into the debates about ideology and
utopianism discussed above. Finally, this study seeks to endorse Norton’s
proposition that environmentalists must learn to educate the public to see
problems from a ‘synoptic and contextual perspective’ and help develop and
promote a range of ‘ecocentric ethics’ (Stavrakakis 1997). Eco-feminist discourse
in particular provides a tangible trajectory and scaffold for this ecological reading
of Hollywood film.
The following section will explore how conventional ideological textual analysis
together with philosophical and ethical methodologies already highlighted can be
applied to an ecological reading of films.