Hollywood Utopia

86 Hollywood Utopia
11. The anthropologist critic Kay Milton provides a more problematic critique of these
commonsense eco-utopic assumptions implicit in such films by affirming that one of the
clearest messages that anthropologists can give to environmentalists is that ‘human beings have
no “natural” propensity for living sustainable with their environment’. Milton continues that socalled
‘primitive ecological wisdom is a myth’ and ‘dams built by humans are as “natural” as
ones built by beavers’ (Milton 1996: 222). This apparent apologist rationale for human
intervention in nature appears to scupper the primary oppositions between nature and culture,
particularly in such overtly light eco-texts, by effectively breaking the idealistic illusion of the
harmonious evocation of nature on which many Hollywood nature films are constructed.
12. Shamanism is a worldwide practice in which the spiritual interrelationship of the earth with
other worlds forms an interwoven fabric of physical and psychic being, affecting all forms of life,
both seen and unseen.
13. Nevertheless his prognosis regarding inherent risks to society has achieved consensus within
critical discourse. Slavoj Zizek, in The Sublime Object of Ideology, questions what he sees as the
‘fundamentalist’ attitude of ‘New Left politics’ which (as interpreted by Timothy Morton) since
the late 1960s has advocated women’s rights, civil rights and ecology along with traditional left
politics but ‘which succeeded in ghettoising its area of concern’ and even toyed with ‘extreme
right-wing forms of expression’. Nevertheless, even Zizek in ‘Tarrying with the Negative’ has
qualified his opinions, suggesting that ecology’s impact will ‘sap’ our ‘unconscious belief in the
big Other of power, since events like Chernobyl have rendered “obsolete” notions such as
national sovereignty’ (cited in Bate 1996: 429).
14. Incidentally the author has subsequently become an ecological campaigner for the protection of
sharks and remains somewhat guilty of producing what he considered to have been a negative
representation of the species in his best-selling novel.
15. Because of its specialised address, Jungian theory has remained outside the terms of reference of
this study. Nevertheless, this form of investigation is certainly fruitful for many of the mythic
texts examined.
16. Costner’s enemies are scavengers, as in Mad Max (1979), who abuse and over-consume scarce
fossil fuels, especially oil, with little regard for the future. They are searching for the Holy Grail
of dry land, presumably so that they can continue to manipulate the ultimate precious natural
resource. Not surprisingly, their crude characterisation remains ‘uncivilised’ but not the
valorised otherness of native Americans. Instead, they remain uncouth in every way, which is
even evidenced inter-textually by their ship’s name, the Exxon Valdez, calling to mind a
notorious contemporary pollution disaster. Costner becomes embroiled in their mercenary quest
and as a consequence has to protect a (proto)typical family from their common enemy. He
remains, however, a true outsider, who is later confirmed in his pre-human powers to swim
underwater by acquiring the physical attributes of a fish, including gills and webbed feet.