WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT?

Biomovie - Ecocriticism and popular film
The book Biomovie: Ecocriticism and Popular Film introduces the reader to the ecocritical approach of popular, mostly 21th century Hollywood films. The eponymous term ecocriticism refers to the environmentally conscious, biocentric trend of cultural criticism that provides the analytical framework for the interpretation of the movies mentioned in the book, which I hope may incite the reader/viewer to help in making the world more environmentally friendly and more sustainable place after coming out of the cinema complex or switching off the TV.

WHAT IS ECOCRITICISM?

No, it is not a term for the rationalized expression of our revulsion for ecology.

Nor it is (only) an assault directed on the political rhetorics of greenwashing.
And it is not the general working method of an environmentally conscious cultural critic, who switches off the television and the computer when she reads Shakespeare, and buys books only when they are printed on acid-free paper... That is all OK, but ecocriticism is something more special.

Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between cultural products and the environment, which became an academic discipline only in the 1990s.

Abstracts and short paragraphs from

Biomovie: Ecocriticism and Popular Films.


In the following you can read a summary and some citations from each Chapter of the book, from which you can see what it is about.

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Why, how and how long have our future-related hopes and fears been concentrated around the visual representation of our relationship to our environment? Is the rhetorical mode of representation typical of blockbuster feature films able to induce active commitment towards a sustainable world? Since “climate denial” is a defense mechanism, it would seem logical to formulate a hypothesis according to which Hollywood films rather offer the opportunity for narcissistic ignorance towards climate change and ecological crisis in general. However, it is also possible that popular films are effective exactly where open environmental didacticism is inappropriate. The films analyzed in the book Biomovie do not put into operation strategies of climate change denial, quite the contrary, they successfully break through the “defense lines” of the audience, crawl under our skin, and slowly transform us.