Table Of ContentEcology and Contemporary
Nordic Cinemas
i
Topics and Issues in
National Cinema
VOLUME 2
Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinemas
Series Editor: Armida de la Garza, University College Cork, Ireland
Editorial Board:
Mette Hjort, Chair Professor and Head, Visual Studies,
Lingnan University, Hong Kong
Lúcia Nagib, Centenary Chair in World Cinemas, University of Leeds, UK
Chris Berry, Professor of Film and Television Studies and Co-Director of the
Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre, UK
Sarah Street, Professor of Film and Foundation Chair of Drama,
Bristol University, UK
Jeanette Hoorn, Professor of Visual Cultures, School of Culture and
Communication, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia
Shohini Chaudhuri, Director of the Centre for Film Studies,
University of Essex, UK
Other Titles in the Series:
Volume 1: Revolution and Rebellion in Mexican Film
ii
Ecology and Contemporary
Nordic Cinemas
From Nation- building to
Ecocosmopolitanism
Pietari Kääpä
iii
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014
© Pietari Kääpä 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining
from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or
the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-Publication Data
Kääpä, Pietari, 1977–
Ecology and contemporary Nordic cinemas : from nation-building to ecocosmopolitanism /
Pietari Kääpä.
p. cm. — (Topics and issues in national cinema)
ISBN 978-1-4411-9279-0 (hardback)
1. Environmental protection and motion pictures. 2. Ecology in motion pictures.
3. Environmentalism in motion pictures. 4. Motion pictures--Scandinavia—History
and criticism. 5. Documentary fi lms—Scandinavia—History and criticism. I. Title.
PN1995.9.E78K33 2014
791.430948—dc23
2013046795
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-9279-0
ePub: 978-1-6235-6914-3
ePDF: 978-1-4411-4321-1
Typeset by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
iv
I would like to thank, fi rst of all, Armida De La Garza, the editor of Issues and
Topics in National Cinema. Her guidance and critical feedback have been
invaluable throughout the project.
Th e editorial team at Continuum/Bloomsbury has provided sterling support and
enabled the timely completion of the project.
Finally, I would like to off er my sincerest gratitude to the anonymous peer
reviewers whose insightful and pervasive comments were signifi cant for the fi nal
shape and fl ow of my arguments.
As ever, this book is dedicated to the one and only Yan.
v
Contents
Introduction 1
1 National Cinema as Natural Cinema? 27
2 Ecovariations of Genre Film 51
3 Th e Horror Film in an Ecological Context 67
4 Education or Indoctrination: Children’s Cinema 89
5 Urban Ecologies of the Nordic Welfare State 105
6 Brownfi elds of Late Capitalism 125
7 Intercultural Approaches to Ecocinema 147
8 Ecopolitics of Multicultural and Minority Cinemas 159
9 Responsibility and the Nordic Model 181
10 Eco- cosmopolitan Urges and Documentary Film 193
11 Representing the End Times 217
Openings and Conclusions 235
Notes 241
Bibliography 243
Index 255
vi
Introduction
Nature is [. . .] a common source for myths and beliefs all over the world [. . .] but
for Scandinavian people and for life in Scandinavia nature has a special meaning.
Th e wilderness and its woods and lakes are in particular regarded as a utopia of
abundance and power. It should be noted that within fantasy, nature is almost
always a positive element. Occasionally, it may show itself to be dangerous, even
in fi ction, but that is because it must guard itself against intruders.
Soila 1998: 32
Th e Nordic countries do not only have objectively high levels of ecological
modernisation, but are also perceived as leaders in this policy by other
countries in the EU and their public is generally aware of their individual
responsibility as consumers and citizens.
Tunkrova 2008: 27
As comments from cultural historian Tytti Soila and political economist Lucie
Tunkrova illustrate, the centrality of nature for Nordic fi lm culture cannot be
underestimated. For example, one of the earliest English language academic collec-
tions on Nordic cinema, Nordic National Cinemas (Soila, Widding and Iversen
1998), underlines this conception. Its chapters on the fi lm cultures of the region
(Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) all discuss the central role nature
holds not only as a repository of mythic meaning (as Soila suggests above), but also
as a key part in the politics of the Nordic countries. From summits on climate
change to debating resource and energy production, from sustainable development
policies to enhancing the greening of urban spaces, the Nordic countries maintain
leading roles in ecological progress and policy on an increasingly global level. Th e
politics are conducted within individual national contexts, but also increasingly
with a regional and global scope in mind. Th e Nordic countries pride themselves on
being global leaders and role models in many areas of environmental activity, oft en
for good reason, but it is also clear that much of the economic and resource
1
2 Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinemas
infrastructure of countries such as Norway and Finland relies on resources such as
oil and nuclear power. Th ese contradictions evident not only in environmental
policy, but in cultural refl ections of this policy are at the centre of this book.
Th e societal relevance of cinema, as both a cultural industrialist form of pop-
ular entertainment, and a politicized form of cultural argumentation, positions
it as one of the most dynamic areas for interrogating the multiple variations
ecological discourse takes in the Nordic context, not only as a region but
also as fi ve distinct nation states. While the veracity of ecological arguments in
Nordic cinema remains contested, the importance of Nordic fi lms as topics for
ecocritical analysis is certain. Th us, any study of cinematic evocations of ecolog-
ical rhetoric in this context must work on an interdisciplinary level, combining
culture with politics, aesthetics with economics. Unravelling the role of environ-
mentalist politics in Nordic fi lm culture necessitates considering national myths
and international political movements, anthropocentric forms of cultural pro-
duction and ‘green’ politics. To understand how these ideas and interdisciplinary
frameworks combine in Nordic fi lm culture, a brief overview of key academic
explorations combining ecocriticism and fi lm studies follows.
Th e framework for ecocinema
Th e fi eld of ecocinema – or the ecocritical study of fi lm culture – is a relatively
new phenomenon. While studying the relationship between cinema and nature
has been a common area of, for example, the fi eld of national cinema studies
(with Higson 1984, discussing British heritage cinema and landscape, and Galt
2006, providing a more comparative study of European fi lm cultures). Others
study the ways cinematic anthropology works in depicting cultures that are
perceived to be closer to nature than the ‘civilized’ industrialized world (exam-
ples range from McDougall’s 1998 ethnographic work to Rony’s 1996 dissection
of Flaherty’s Nanook of the North , 1922, to a wide range of other examples).
While landscape and ethnographic studies are vital areas of fi lm research, they
are oft en focused on a more or less taken- for-granted approach to the anthropo-
centric dimensions of cinema. By this I mean that they focus on social or cultural
concerns in a way that does not question the centrality of human experience as
the ultimate arbiter of knowledge.
With the publication of David Ingram’s Green Screen: Environmentalism
and Hollywood Cinema in 2004 and Pat Brereton’s Hollywood Utopia: Ecology
Introduction 3
and Contemporary American Cinema in 2005, critical studies of cinema’s rela-
tionship with the natural world and its environmentalist dimensions have
become more established. Ingram and Brereton’s works focused predominantly
on Hollywood fi lm culture and made a substantial intervention in studies of
cinema and nature by critically interrogating the ways environmentalism is
conceptualized by the commercial machinations of the Hollywood industry.
Th ese key works on the intersections between Hollywood cinema and ecology
attest to the ways cinema has partaken in wider developments in ecocritical
thinking as, for example, fi lms like Th e Omega Man (Sagal 1971) and Soylent
Green (Fleischer 1973) refl ect debates on the depletion of resources and the
limits to growth, seen as integral to concurrent groundbreaking works by Rachel
Carson (1972) and Paul Ehrlich (1968). 1
Taking a more media studies focused approach to environmental communica-
tions, Sean Cubitt’s Ecomedia (2005) and Sidney Dobrin and Sean Morey’s E cosee
(2007) spread out to explore diverse philosophical and material considerations,
including the ways media representations interact with the world they represent as
well as the material footprint fi lm productions leave on the environment which
they represent. While much of this work focuses on mainstream media, experi-
mental fi lm production has received attention from Scott McDonald (2004) as well
as articles in Paula Willoquet-Maricondi’s F raming the World (2010). Willoquet-
Maricondi’s collection expands the scope of existing works, fi rmly planted in criti-
cism of Western modes of representation by including articles on Japanese cinema,
among others. Similar directions are taken by Sheldon Lu and Jiayan Mi and their
collection on Chinese ecocinema (2009) provides an important predecessor for
this collection as it explores the transnational dimensions of Chinese cinema, 2
contributing much to national and ecocinema studies. Finally, Monani, Rust and
Cubitt’s Ecocinema Th eory and Practice (2012) is a more recent and perhaps the
most wide- ranging of ecocinema collections to date, providing many key interven-
tions in the fi eld as well as consolidating its importance further. It, and many of the
other works mentioned above, are explored throughout this work.
Defi ning ecocinema
What exactly is ecocinema, then? Lu and Mi provide a suggestive delineation
that conceptualizes it as a critical grid, an interpretative strategy based on
questioning the conventional ways in which environmentalism and nature are
