30 November 2012
AMERICAN NATURE FILM
“The representations of nature in early American cinema reflect an increasingly aggressive assertion of dominion, coterminous with the national expansion of empire…” Ronald B. Tobias, Film and the American Moral Vision of Nature: Theodore Roosevelt to Walt Disney (2011)
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Cover Image: Film and
the American Moral Vision of Nature: Theodore Roosevelt to Walt Disney (2011)
Representations
of dominion and imperialism A book review by Cathy Fitzgerald www.ecoartfilm.com
‘The representations of nature in early American cinema reflect an increasingly aggressive assertion of dominion, coterminous with the national expansion of empire… one by one, the presumptuous moral authority of the Western juggernaut humbled the beasts of the world – and the countries they inhabited.‘
Ronald B. Tobias, 2011, p.14
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Recently I have been thinking about the different types of “nature cinema” in all its forms and definitions, from natural history/wildlife documentary cinema to the growing number of overtly environmental themed films and less well known experimental, more ecocentric1 cinema. I have looked closely at the surprisingly recent number of books and articles on this topic. Surprising, given both the proliferation and global reach of nature cinema (here I broadly include all
its various audio-visual forms and platforms) when the degradation of the earth has been exponentially accelerating since the mid 20th century.
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Nevertheless, these recent writings are important in helping us begin to think ecocritically about the enormous influence cinema, and particularly our hugely popular forms of “nature cinema” have, on how well we perceive and relate to the earth and its inhabitants. and its inhabitants.