Hollywood Utopia

This thematic preoccupation, explored in Chapter 2, dramatises the universal
tensions of humankind’s relations with nature and ecology.
This phenomenon is clearly recognised in the closure of Grand Canyon (1991), to
be explored in detail in Chapter 3. Danny Glover, the black auto-repair man and
saviour-figure of the film, makes several references to the power of the canyon. He
describes his feelings when he first visited the site: ‘The rocks are so old, it makes
my problems seem so insignificant. I felt like a gnat on the ass of a cow.’ At last, in
the final closing set-piece of the film when the main protagonists re-visit the site,
its sublime power becomes realised. ‘It’s wide, like the gulf between different
sections of society, but it can also bring us together in awe of its size and beauty.’
While such a closure may be unconvincing for many critics, its romantic utopian
impulse - what Kant called the sublime -is what Hollywood has always been good
at exploiting. This transcendental power should not be underestimated, in spite of
the danger of also appearing naive as a utopian fantasy projection of the film’s
protagonists.
The liberal constituency addressed in Grand Canyon and in many recent
Hollywood films needs and craves absolution within a post-colonialist, postindustrial
environment, when all that finally matters is the eco-self. Glover,
embodying the eco-seeing ‘other’, is capable of transforming the white, liberal,
middle-class protagonist’s perspective to concur with his vision. Particularly within
American cultural debates, there remains a major ideological dispute between
determinists who believe that ‘human behaviour is primarily determined by
outside forces’ and would-be ‘voluntarists’ like Glover who believe that ‘humans
possess free will and can act as they wish’ (Haralambos et al. 1990: 817). This
independence of mind allows him to see the ‘bigger ecological picture’ over and
above the ecocidal disharmony of his city space.
The film’s closure can be compared with the famous selfless egalitarian speech at
the end of Casablanca (1942), when Bogart subordinates his private needs to the
common good, a high point of wartime voluntarist sensibility, which finally
legitimises American interventionism in World War Two (see Ray 1985). But in
Grand Canyon, closure presents our heroes gathering around the apex of the
canyon, appreciating for the first time their own insignificance while promoting a
new form of eco-praxis by showing them beginning to accept their communion
with the cosmos. This contrasts, for instance, with the artificial fog in the final
scene of Casablanca (1942), which never obscures Bogart, who does not lose his
individuality in spite of his heroic transcendence for a common cause. In Grand
Canyon the silent, majestic landscape of the canyon remains central both
aesthetically and narratively to the meaning and potency of its closure. In contrast,
the closing mise-en-scène of Casablanca does not envelop, much less obscure, the
human agents who always keep centre stage both thematically and aesthetically.
1 Hollywood Utopia 39