Not just a reductionist representation of overpopulation, Soylent Green offers a nuanced critique... more Not just a reductionist representation of overpopulation, Soylent Green offers a nuanced critique of capitalism. In the course of the film, audiences learn that the seaplankton of which soylent green is supposedly composed no longerexists. The audience is horrified to discover by the end of the film that “soylent green is people.” While seemingly horrific, the notion of humans cannibalizing themselves in order to survive functions metaphorically for the system of capitalism, where human lives are cannibalized, wasted at ever accelerating rates in order to procure the most profit possible. In this respect, Soylent Green offers avisual representation of what Jason Moore calls the end of cheapfood. Yet, even as Soylent Green offers a powerful representation of capitalism’s crisis state in the era of the end of cheap food, the film asks audiences to re-invest in hegemonic white masculinity, a system of power and oppression intimately linked to capitalism. In particular, the film embodies what Hamilton Carroll writes about as white male injury, a new form of white masculine identity politics. Even as the film offers up a powerful critique of capitalism’s crisis state, it simultaneously does so through reproducing a discourse of white male injury.
The Chicago Feminist Film Festival aims to decenter and destabilize Hollywood norms, including Ho... more The Chicago Feminist Film Festival aims to decenter and destabilize Hollywood norms, including Hollywood’s tendency to place cis-gendered white male protagonists at the center of films structured according to the hero’s journey. Thus, The Fits (2016) was a natural opener to the inaugural festival, embodying many of the festival’s values in destabilizing what constitutes “normal” ways of seeing the world. In particular, in centering black girlhood, The Fits subverts the white and male gaze. Main character Toni takes on the active gaze usually reserved for white and/or male characters, subverting the objectified status generally proscribed to female characters. The Fits also unsettles the heroine’s journey by troubling Toni’s transformative return. While it may seem that through “the fits” Toni is assimilated into normative gender relations, it is also possible to read Toni’s transformation in the film as form of insubordination, a resistance to this assimilation.
My chapter shows that environmental nostalgia as reflected within these two films, Soylent Green ... more My chapter shows that environmental nostalgia as reflected within these two films, Soylent Green (1973) and WALL-E (2008) is not merely environmental but also intimately connected to nostalgia for a privileged construction of race and gender, a hegemonic representation of white masculinity. Both films reflect a longing for that which is seemingly lost within the social world of each film: Edenic nature. Both films, then, utilize environmental nostalgia to push for the preservation of pristine, Edenic nature that still exists in the present outside of each film’s respective diegesis. Yet, in both films, the loss of Edenic nature is equated with the loss of power and dominance traditionally associated with conquering and controlling that Edenic nature, the power and dominance associated with white masculinity.
This article shows how Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) transforms nature into a space of feminist possi... more This article shows how Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) transforms nature into a space of feminist possibility. In particular, I show how the film disrupts a dominant narrative within Western environmentalism, what Carolyn Merchant calls the Edenic recovery narrative. The traditional Edenic recovery narrative reproduces the dyadic relationship between woman/nature as passive (object) and man as active agent (subject). Yet, in disrupting the traditional Edenic recovery narrative, Fury Road allows for a representation of female nature that breaks from its traditionally accorded passive status. In the film, female nature gains agency not traditionally accorded to it. In this way, the film draws connections between women and nature, not in the service of capitalist patriarchy, but rather, as Alaimo writes, to re-cast nature as feminist space.
This chapter examines critical theory’s conceptualization of capitalism’s domination over nature,... more This chapter examines critical theory’s conceptualization of capitalism’s domination over nature, from Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Alfred Schmidt to the work of contemporary scholars like John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett. This literature situates domination over nature in social mediation, specifically that labor mediates and determines the human relationship to nature. However, the narrative of domination over nature as reflected by these scholars is also incomplete. In particular, each of these scholars roots domination over nature in an anthropological notion of labor, a notion of labor per se. In doing so, these scholars examine labor in capitalism one-dimensionally. Yet, as Karl Marx points out, what makes capitalism historically-unique is that labor has a dual-dimensionality, that labor is not merely concrete but also abstract. As Norbert Trenkle and Moishe Postone point out, the abstract dimension of labor in capitalism has a socially-mediating character that produces an abstract form of social domination. It is in analyzing this abstract dimension that what is historically-unique about capitalism’s domination over nature can be unveiled.
Not just a reductionist representation of overpopulation, Soylent Green offers a nuanced critique... more Not just a reductionist representation of overpopulation, Soylent Green offers a nuanced critique of capitalism. In the course of the film, audiences learn that the seaplankton of which soylent green is supposedly composed no longerexists. The audience is horrified to discover by the end of the film that “soylent green is people.” While seemingly horrific, the notion of humans cannibalizing themselves in order to survive functions metaphorically for the system of capitalism, where human lives are cannibalized, wasted at ever accelerating rates in order to procure the most profit possible. In this respect, Soylent Green offers avisual representation of what Jason Moore calls the end of cheapfood. Yet, even as Soylent Green offers a powerful representation of capitalism’s crisis state in the era of the end of cheap food, the film asks audiences to re-invest in hegemonic white masculinity, a system of power and oppression intimately linked to capitalism. In particular, the film embodies what Hamilton Carroll writes about as white male injury, a new form of white masculine identity politics. Even as the film offers up a powerful critique of capitalism’s crisis state, it simultaneously does so through reproducing a discourse of white male injury.
The Chicago Feminist Film Festival aims to decenter and destabilize Hollywood norms, including Ho... more The Chicago Feminist Film Festival aims to decenter and destabilize Hollywood norms, including Hollywood’s tendency to place cis-gendered white male protagonists at the center of films structured according to the hero’s journey. Thus, The Fits (2016) was a natural opener to the inaugural festival, embodying many of the festival’s values in destabilizing what constitutes “normal” ways of seeing the world. In particular, in centering black girlhood, The Fits subverts the white and male gaze. Main character Toni takes on the active gaze usually reserved for white and/or male characters, subverting the objectified status generally proscribed to female characters. The Fits also unsettles the heroine’s journey by troubling Toni’s transformative return. While it may seem that through “the fits” Toni is assimilated into normative gender relations, it is also possible to read Toni’s transformation in the film as form of insubordination, a resistance to this assimilation.
My chapter shows that environmental nostalgia as reflected within these two films, Soylent Green ... more My chapter shows that environmental nostalgia as reflected within these two films, Soylent Green (1973) and WALL-E (2008) is not merely environmental but also intimately connected to nostalgia for a privileged construction of race and gender, a hegemonic representation of white masculinity. Both films reflect a longing for that which is seemingly lost within the social world of each film: Edenic nature. Both films, then, utilize environmental nostalgia to push for the preservation of pristine, Edenic nature that still exists in the present outside of each film’s respective diegesis. Yet, in both films, the loss of Edenic nature is equated with the loss of power and dominance traditionally associated with conquering and controlling that Edenic nature, the power and dominance associated with white masculinity.
This article shows how Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) transforms nature into a space of feminist possi... more This article shows how Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) transforms nature into a space of feminist possibility. In particular, I show how the film disrupts a dominant narrative within Western environmentalism, what Carolyn Merchant calls the Edenic recovery narrative. The traditional Edenic recovery narrative reproduces the dyadic relationship between woman/nature as passive (object) and man as active agent (subject). Yet, in disrupting the traditional Edenic recovery narrative, Fury Road allows for a representation of female nature that breaks from its traditionally accorded passive status. In the film, female nature gains agency not traditionally accorded to it. In this way, the film draws connections between women and nature, not in the service of capitalist patriarchy, but rather, as Alaimo writes, to re-cast nature as feminist space.
This chapter examines critical theory’s conceptualization of capitalism’s domination over nature,... more This chapter examines critical theory’s conceptualization of capitalism’s domination over nature, from Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Alfred Schmidt to the work of contemporary scholars like John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett. This literature situates domination over nature in social mediation, specifically that labor mediates and determines the human relationship to nature. However, the narrative of domination over nature as reflected by these scholars is also incomplete. In particular, each of these scholars roots domination over nature in an anthropological notion of labor, a notion of labor per se. In doing so, these scholars examine labor in capitalism one-dimensionally. Yet, as Karl Marx points out, what makes capitalism historically-unique is that labor has a dual-dimensionality, that labor is not merely concrete but also abstract. As Norbert Trenkle and Moishe Postone point out, the abstract dimension of labor in capitalism has a socially-mediating character that produces an abstract form of social domination. It is in analyzing this abstract dimension that what is historically-unique about capitalism’s domination over nature can be unveiled.
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