Stephanie Rutherford
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674404
- eISBN:
- 9781452946740
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674404.003.0004
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Nature
This chapter focuses on the construction of climate change discourse by examining the personage and work of Al Gore. An Inconvenient Truth relies on the impartiality and unquestioned truth of science ...
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This chapter focuses on the construction of climate change discourse by examining the personage and work of Al Gore. An Inconvenient Truth relies on the impartiality and unquestioned truth of science to warn of impending global apocalypse, reinscribing the pre-eminence of this way of understanding nonhuman nature. An Inconvenient Truth and the persona of Al Gore offer an ethics of the self, an individualized form of green governmentality. Gore acts as a preeminent truth-teller, and his interweaving of science and storytelling is a potent way to narrate environmental crisis, reshaping the categories to meet the needs of the modern world.Less
This chapter focuses on the construction of climate change discourse by examining the personage and work of Al Gore. An Inconvenient Truth relies on the impartiality and unquestioned truth of science to warn of impending global apocalypse, reinscribing the pre-eminence of this way of understanding nonhuman nature. An Inconvenient Truth and the persona of Al Gore offer an ethics of the self, an individualized form of green governmentality. Gore acts as a preeminent truth-teller, and his interweaving of science and storytelling is a potent way to narrate environmental crisis, reshaping the categories to meet the needs of the modern world.
Stephanie Rutherford
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674404
- eISBN:
- 9781452946740
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674404.001.0001
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Nature
Take four emblematic American scenes: the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando; an ecotour of Yellowstone and ...
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Take four emblematic American scenes: the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando; an ecotour of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks; the film An Inconvenient Truth. Other than expressing a common interest in the environment, they seem quite dissimilar. And yet, as this book makes clear, these sites are all manifestations of green governmentality, each seeking to define and regulate our understanding, experience, and treatment of nature. This book shows how the museum presents a scientized assessment of global nature under threat; the Animal Kingdom demonstrates that a corporation can successfully organize a biopolitical project; the ecotour, operating as a school for a natural aesthetic sensibility, provides a visual grammar of pristine national nature; and the film offers a toehold on a moral way of encountering nature. But one very powerful force unites the disparate “truths” of nature produced through these sites, and that, the book tells us, is their debt to nature's commodification. This book's analysis reveals how each site integrates nature, power, and profit to make the buying and selling of nature critical to our understanding and rescuing of it. The combination, it argues, renders other ways of encountering nature—particularly more radically environmental ways—unthinkable.Less
Take four emblematic American scenes: the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando; an ecotour of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks; the film An Inconvenient Truth. Other than expressing a common interest in the environment, they seem quite dissimilar. And yet, as this book makes clear, these sites are all manifestations of green governmentality, each seeking to define and regulate our understanding, experience, and treatment of nature. This book shows how the museum presents a scientized assessment of global nature under threat; the Animal Kingdom demonstrates that a corporation can successfully organize a biopolitical project; the ecotour, operating as a school for a natural aesthetic sensibility, provides a visual grammar of pristine national nature; and the film offers a toehold on a moral way of encountering nature. But one very powerful force unites the disparate “truths” of nature produced through these sites, and that, the book tells us, is their debt to nature's commodification. This book's analysis reveals how each site integrates nature, power, and profit to make the buying and selling of nature critical to our understanding and rescuing of it. The combination, it argues, renders other ways of encountering nature—particularly more radically environmental ways—unthinkable.
Finis Dunaway
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226169903
- eISBN:
- 9780226169934
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226169934.003.0016
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
The conclusion focuses on the surprising of popularity of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. While many journalists, film critics, and others have marvelled at the strange career of An Inconvenient ...
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The conclusion focuses on the surprising of popularity of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. While many journalists, film critics, and others have marvelled at the strange career of An Inconvenient Truth, this discussion has failed to consider the film’s place in the longer history of environmental icons. Indeed, much that seemed novel about the film drew upon tropes and representational strategies that have repeatedly popularized and delimited the scope of American environmentalism. The conclusion explains how the film’s fusion of fact and feeling, its framing of universal vulnerability and responsibility, and its failure to address power relations and environmental injustice all connect to other themes and examples in Seeing Green. From this vantage point, An Inconvenient Truth can be considered both surprisingly innovative and disappointingly familiar, a popular text that visualized the climate crisis but also reproduced the problems and limits of previous environmental icons. After considering the film’s emotional presentation of scientific data, its emphasis on universal vulnerability, and its embrace of green consumerism, the conclusion ends with a discussion of 350.org. Led by Bill McKibben, this climate activist group has created innovative images that both draw on and depart from the visual politics of An Inconvenient Truth.Less
The conclusion focuses on the surprising of popularity of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. While many journalists, film critics, and others have marvelled at the strange career of An Inconvenient Truth, this discussion has failed to consider the film’s place in the longer history of environmental icons. Indeed, much that seemed novel about the film drew upon tropes and representational strategies that have repeatedly popularized and delimited the scope of American environmentalism. The conclusion explains how the film’s fusion of fact and feeling, its framing of universal vulnerability and responsibility, and its failure to address power relations and environmental injustice all connect to other themes and examples in Seeing Green. From this vantage point, An Inconvenient Truth can be considered both surprisingly innovative and disappointingly familiar, a popular text that visualized the climate crisis but also reproduced the problems and limits of previous environmental icons. After considering the film’s emotional presentation of scientific data, its emphasis on universal vulnerability, and its embrace of green consumerism, the conclusion ends with a discussion of 350.org. Led by Bill McKibben, this climate activist group has created innovative images that both draw on and depart from the visual politics of An Inconvenient Truth.
Mike Ingham
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789888028566
- eISBN:
- 9789882206991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888028566.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The cinematic essay, even in the guise of documentary, is now a flourishing and popular form, and one that is no longer viewed as purely experimental or avant-garde. Indeed, the waves of ...
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The cinematic essay, even in the guise of documentary, is now a flourishing and popular form, and one that is no longer viewed as purely experimental or avant-garde. Indeed, the waves of international public concern about climate change triggered by Al Gore's essayistic argument in An Inconvenient Truth were palpable. This low-budget “thesis” film caught the popular mood and contributed significantly to public debate in many countries. Sicko and Capitalism—A Love Story exemplify the kind of impact the cinematic essay form is capable of producing. All of these examples either produce or develop existing sites of social contestation and pursue a keenly argued thesis through the unique resources of film. This chapter assesses the extent to which Hong Kong's New Wave cinema from the 1980s onwards can be said to have essayed this hybrid and very contemporary cinematic form, and whether such explorations in form are indeed recognized in Hong Kong cinema discourse.Less
The cinematic essay, even in the guise of documentary, is now a flourishing and popular form, and one that is no longer viewed as purely experimental or avant-garde. Indeed, the waves of international public concern about climate change triggered by Al Gore's essayistic argument in An Inconvenient Truth were palpable. This low-budget “thesis” film caught the popular mood and contributed significantly to public debate in many countries. Sicko and Capitalism—A Love Story exemplify the kind of impact the cinematic essay form is capable of producing. All of these examples either produce or develop existing sites of social contestation and pursue a keenly argued thesis through the unique resources of film. This chapter assesses the extent to which Hong Kong's New Wave cinema from the 1980s onwards can be said to have essayed this hybrid and very contemporary cinematic form, and whether such explorations in form are indeed recognized in Hong Kong cinema discourse.
