Ecology and Popular Film

At Eastern Illinois University, Robin L. Murray is Professor of English and Joseph K. Heumann is Professor of Communication Studies.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgments Introduction: Reading the Environment in Popular Cinema 1.   Ecology and Spectacle in Oil Wells of Baku: Close View: The First Eco-Disaster Film? 2.   Environmental Politics: Pare Lorentz’s The River and the Tennessee Valley Authority 3.   Reconstructing Underground Urban Space in Dark Days 4.   Ecology, Place, and Home in Dark City: Is It Our Nature to Live in the Dark? 5.   Environmental Nostalgia and The Tragic Eco-Hero: The Case of Soylent Green and the 1970s Eco-Disaster Film 6.   The Comic Eco-Hero: Spoofing Eco-Disaster in Eight Legged Freaks 7.   Eco-Terrorism in Film: Pale Rider and the Revenge Cycle 8.   Car Culture and the Transformation of the American Landscape in The Fast and the Furious 9.   Film Ecology: Simulated Construction and Destruction in Hooper 10.  Apocalypse as a "Return to Normality" in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later Conclusion: Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and its Skeptics: A Case of Environmental Nostalgia  Filmography Works Cited Index

"A timely and significant contribution to the growing field of ecomedia studies, Ecology and Popular Film: Cinema on the Edge explores the explicit and subtle portrayals of socio-ecological issues at play in a wide range of popular films … [it] will inspire literary and media eco-critics to continue a conversation sure to shape the future of both fields." — Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media"…Murray and Heumann's book positions itself firmly in the field of ecocriticism, expanding its scope and influence to include film." — Film & History"…delivers an interesting and decidedly unusual take on popular films in America." — Toledo Alumni Magazine"At once compact and daring, this remarkable book examines a wide variety of texts that deal with issues of the Earth's rapidly dwindling natural resources … Illustrated throughout with superbly reproduced 'frame grabs' and imbued with a tone that is at once scholarly and accessible, this book deals persuasively with a topic of great concern to contemporary audiences." — CHOICE"The authors discover something like an 'ecological consciousness' at work in popular film, finding that movies as diverse as Pale Rider and Eight Legged Freaks bring to light large-scale concerns about ecological well being, and what might be called ecological trauma—opening up a space for hope and change." — James Morrison, author of Roman Polanski