Hollywood Utopia

with subtitles extensively used. But as many cultural critics assert, even this form
of verbalisation can further increase the surfeit evocation of exoticism. There
appears to be no easy, much less formulaic, representational method of avoiding
such polarising (mis)representations between so called western ‘civilised’ and
‘primitive’ societies.
Nonetheless, for Boorman and many other romantically inspired film-makers, the
‘primitive’ embodies all that is ecologically enviable. Charlie, the little white boy, is
kidnapped because he has a ‘love of the forest in his eye’ and learns to be at ‘one
with nature’. Only patriarchal white culture brings disease and disharmony, which
results in the corruption of the natural world. Boorman (like Kevin Costner in
Dances with Wolves) avoids any fears of contamination by reinforcing a simple
opposition between ‘good’ natives and the ‘fierce’ people who, owing to the erosion
of their lands, are forced to adopt western ways and end up acting as pimps for girls
kidnapped from other tribes. White imperialist culture is shown to corrupt
absolutely.
In the end the main protagonist and engineer comes to the realisation that white
men and their dams must be stopped not only for the survival of the natural ecology
of the area but also for the protection of his son’s chosen people. Like most western
‘non-believers’, he rationalises that he must help nature fight the enemy and
consequently sets explosives to blow up the dam, which is affirmed as ‘unnatural’.
Unlike his son, who becomes like a primitive shaman, 12 the architect father does
not have faith in nature’s power. But the ‘miracle’ of the flooding which arrives
suddenly to protect the ecological balance of the habitat succeeds in destroying the
dam, leaving no need for the father’s artificial and interventionist solution. As the
Gaia mantra articulates, ‘nature will find a way’.
Leo Braudy states that in Emerald Forest audiences are provided with two closely
related endings, exemplifying that ‘there is also often a syntactic disjuncture at the
point of narrative closure in which the discourses of real (dystopian civilisation)
and ideal (natural community) clash’ (Braudy 1998: 291). This clash echoes
theoretical positions affirmed by Jean Baudrillard and Ulrich Beck. Beck’s ‘overly
pessimistic’ 13 and gloomy prognosis regarding the prospect of environmental
accidents and disasters like the ones used above can be compared with
Baudrillard’s and his notion of ‘manufactured catastrophe’, which somehow might
be ‘deliberate and experimental, triggered by our compulsion to generate
something novel and marvellous’, something ‘which exceeds the nature which we
have become so familiar’ (Clark 1997: 79). Contemporary special effects driven
disaster movies appear to promote Baudrillard’s thesis; however, a more measured
insight can be detected in the ostensibly cautionary ecological tales of Jurassic
Park explored at the end of this chapter.
2 Nature Film and Ecology 61