Hollywood Utopia

44 Hollywood Utopia
out in the open as a world-mind-life-thought. Filmosophies should point back to the
film to let its whole voice be heard. The study of film needs these new concepts, and
in one sense to do that it needs to become philosophical - that is . . . to consider (to
mistrust) inherited concepts and terms
(Frampton in MacCabe et al. 1996: 106).
Christine Gledhill, a feminist theorist and critic, tempers such philosophical
reflections with radical ethical politics and strongly argues that ‘meaning . . . is
neither imposed, nor passively imbibed, but arises out of a struggle or negotiation
between competing frames of reference, motivation and experience’. These can be
analysed at three different levels: ‘institutions, texts and audiences’ (in Pribram
1988: 68). This study will concentrate almost exclusively on textual analysis from a
broadly cultural, philosophical and eco-ethical perspective without necessarily
undervaluing the other possible areas of analysis, especially reception theory.
Sue Thornham contends, however, that established feminists like Gledhill must
perform a ‘dual function’. Initially, they must ‘open up the negotiations of the text’
in order to determine the possibilities that exist for a gendered reading, but they
must also ‘enter the polemics of negotiation, exploiting textual contradictions to
put into circulation readings that draw the text into a female/or feminist orbit’
(cited in Pribram 1988: 75). I would contend that feminist theorising most
especially anchors supposed universal meaning(s) and serves to alleviate the
danger of grand philosophical theories having little connection with concrete
social, cultural and ethical problems for the human race. Ecological readings and
criticism explored in this book must also perform this dual function and can learn
a lot from such a position. 30
Positioning texts across the ‘shallow versus deep’ matrix, as explored earlier, may
not finally be able to provide clear measurements of the effective potency of a range
of ecological themes and aesthetic strategies used in film. Nevertheless, this crude
framework is at least initially helpful in breaking down divisions and beginning the
process of an ecological reading of film. In particular, the play between oppositions
in Hollywood texts can highlight the apparently superficial and sometimes
parochial evocation of nature which appeals to be light, transitory here and now, as
opposed to more resonant, deep evocations. It is from within these interconnecting
and often contradictory avenues of investigation that a methodology appropriate to
an ecological textual analysis becomes feasible.
Finally, however, this methodological approach seeks to engage most critically with
the symptomatic (or political/ideological, top-down discourses) alongside the
aesthetic (or technical, bottom-up) reading strategies, with the primary aim of
validating an ecological method of reading film. Each chapter will continue to