Table Of Content“Robert Geal’s meticulous and wide-ranging discussion seeks to understand why
despite the heavy presence of environmental issues in film … things are getting
muchworse.Ratherthanpromotingaction,Gealargues,contemporary…films…
reinforce the Cartesian separation between the human and nonhuman, what Geal
calls the “epistemology we live by.” This timely book is refreshing and original,
persuasiveandaccessible,complexandprovocative.”
— Simon Estok, Professor, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul. Author of
The Ecophobia Hypothesis (Routledge, 2018).
“This is an engaging and compelling analysis of how various filmmaking tra-
ditions express, reinforce, and normalize our dominant dualistic Cartesian
worldview grounded in a subjectivity of human separation from and domina-
tionovernature. RobertGealproductively appliesvarioustheoretical strandsto
the study of cinematic form and content, revealing how films both repress and
resurface our awareness of the “ecological precipice at which we stand.” This
eye-opening study concludes with a cautiously optimistic exploration of a
potentially non-Cartesian cinematic practice that, if embraced, could offer an
alternative form of spectatorship, one that might be capable of meaningful
action in the face of ecological disaster.”
— Paula Willoquet-Maricondi, Champlain College. Editor of Framing the
World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film (2010).
“This accessible, interdisciplinary and carefully argued book contributes to
ongoing environmental theories about the impact of dystopian films on spec-
tators. Geal argues that realist dystopian Hollywood films construct the specta-
tor as mastering environmental devastation—a mastery that prevents our taking
responsible action. An important book that should be required reading in
Environmental Media Studies and beyond.”
— E. Ann Kaplan, Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s Gender,
and Sexuality, Studies at Stony Brook University. Author of Climate
Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film
and Literature (Routledge, 2015).
“In Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis, Robert Geal brings psychoanalysis
tobearon ourresponseto theoncoming environmental disaster.Thisapproach
enables him to see the ideological forces responsible for our inability to act in a
way adequate to the disaster. This urgent book is necessary for gaining our
bearings today and for understanding the reasons why we can’t.”
— Todd McGowan, Professor, University of Vermont
“Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis addresses the urgent question: What
cultural biases might explain our lack of action in response to ongoing ecolo-
gical destruction? Looking at how a broad range of films deal with non-human
beings, ecologies, disasters, and environmental crises, Geal ultimately discovers,
like Lacan, that “this lack is beyond anything which can represent it.” The
challenge of this book lies in the very lack of cinematic solutions it finds to the
symbolic hold of Cartesian subjectivity, which reinforces human alienation
from the biosphere with every monocular turn of the camera.”
— Thomas Lamarre, Professor, University of Chicago
“Inthis timely book, Geal contributes tothe field of ecocriticismandecocinema
studies by developing a new Lacanian psychoanalytic ecocritical methodology.
This book convincingly explains why a rationalistic, Cartesian response to eco-
crisis fails. The potential cure, Geal argues, liesin a radical, non-Cartesian turn in
aestheticandculturalpractices.Amust-readforenvironmentalhumanists!”
— Chia-Ju Chang, Professor, Department of Modern Languages and
Literatures at Brooklyn College
“An ambitious and daring work distinguished by a rare clarity of expression
that adds force to its argument about the psychological alibis enabling our
ecological crimes. This is a study of the separation ideologies of our time. …
Geal’s theoretically surprising, even bracing, approach illustrates that the “eco-
logical unconscious” glimpsed and obscured in contemporary cinema is the
very terrain of the frightening unknown that governs our collective impotence
in responding to our ecology crisis.”
—Anil Narine, Professor, University of Toronto, Editor of Eco-Trauma
Cinema (Routledge, 2015)
Ecological Film Theory and
Psychoanalysis
This book applies ecolinguistics and psychoanalysis to explore how films fic-
tionalising environmental disasters provide spectacular warnings against the
dangers of environmental apocalypse, while highlighting that even these
apparently environmentally friendly films can still facilitate problematic real-
world changes in how people treat the environment.
Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis argues that these films exploit cine-
ma’s inherent Cartesian grammar to construct texts in which not only small
groups of protagonist survivors, but also vicarious spectators, pleasurably trans-
cend the fictionalised destruction. The ideological nature of the ‘lifeboats’ on
which these survivors escape, moreover, is accompanied by additional elements
that constitute contemporary Cartesian subjectivity, such as class and gender
binaries, restored nuclear families, individual as opposed to social responsibilities
for disasters, and so on. The book conducts extensive analyses of these pro-
cesses, before considering alternative forms of filmmaking that might avoid the
dangers of this existing form of storytelling. The book’s new ecosophy and film
theory establishes that Cartesian subjectivity is an environmentally destructive
‘symptom’ that everyday linguistic activities like watching films reinforce.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of film studies,
literary studies (specifically ecocriticism), cultural studies, ecolinguistics, and
ecosophy.
Robert Geal is a Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of
Wolverhampton, UK, where he teaches classes on film spectacle, representa-
tion, adaptation, psychoanalysis and Japanese cinema. He is the author of the
monograph Anamorphic Authorship in Canonical Film Adaptation, as well as
numerous articles and chapters on topics including science fiction spectacle,
sexuality and gender in animation, race in television comedy, adaptation studies
and film theory.
Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media
Series editor: Thomas Bristow
The urgency of the next great extinction impels us to evaluate environmental
crises as sociogenic. Critiques of culture have a lot to contribute to the endea-
vour to remedy crises of culture, drawing from scientific knowledge but adding
to it arguments about agency, community, language, technology and artistic
expression. This series aims to bring to consciousness potentialities that have
emerged within a distinct historical situation and to underscore our actions as
emergent within a complex dialectic among the living world.
It is our understanding that studies in literature, culture and media can add
depth and sensitivity to the way we frame crises; clarifying how culture is per-
vasive and integral to human and non-human lives as it is the medium of lived
experience. We seek exciting studies of more-than-human entanglements and
impersonal ontological infrastructures, slow and public media, and the struc-
turing of interpretation. We seek interdisciplinary frameworks for considering
solutionstocrises,addressingambiguousandprotractedstatessuchassolastalgia,
anthropocene anxiety, and climate grief and denialism. We seek scholars who
are thinking through decolonization and epistemic justice for our environ-
mental futures. We seek sensitivity to iterability, exchange and interpretation as
wrought, performative acts.
Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media provides accessible
material to broad audiences, including academic monographs and anthologies,
fictocriticism and studies of creative practices. We invite you to contribute to
innovative scholarship and interdisciplinary inquiries into the interactive pro-
duction of meaning sensitive to the affective circuits we move through as
experiencing beings.
Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis
Surviving the Environmental Apocalypse in Cinema
Robert Geal
Ecocriticism and the Sense of Place
Lenka Filipova
Forfurtherinformationaboutthisseries,pleasevisit:https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Environmental-Literature-Culture-and-Media/book-series/RELCM
Ecological Film Theory
and Psychoanalysis
Surviving the Environmental Apocalypse
in Cinema
Robert Geal
Firstpublished2021
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
andbyRoutledge
605ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10158
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2021RobertGeal
TherightofRobertGealtobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen
assertedbytheminaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,
DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orin
anyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwriting
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Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
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intenttoinfringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguing-in-PublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Geal,Robert,author.
Title:Ecologicalfilmtheoryandpsychoanalysis:survivingtheenvironmental
apocalypseincinema/RobertGeal.
Description:NewYork:Routledge,2021.|
Series:Routledgeenvironmentalliterature,cultureandmedia|Includes
bibliographicalreferencesandindex.|
Identifiers:LCCN2021000655(print)|LCCN2021000656(ebook)|
ISBN9780367373412(hardback)|ISBN9780367373429(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Environmentalisminmotionpictures.|Ecologyinmotion
pictures.|Environmentalpsychology.|Motionpictures--Psychological
aspects.|Motionpictures--Philosophy.|Environmentaldisasters--
Psychologicalaspects.|Ecocriticism.
Classification:LCCPN1995.9.E78G432021(print)|LCCPN1995.9.E78
(ebook)|DDC791.43--dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2021000655
LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2021000656
ISBN:978-0-367-37341-2(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-032-02776-0(pbk)
ISBN:978-0-367-37342-9(ebk)
DOI:
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
For Abby and Livia
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Environmental crisis and epistemological crisis: Ecologically-
destructive Cartesian subjectivity 4
2 Cinema spectatorship as an illusory Cartesian ‘symptom’ 39
3 Realist film as cogito-centric film 85
4 Surviving environmental disasters in film ‘lifeboats’ 113
5 Surviving environmental apocalypse in film ‘lifeboats’ 154
6 Survivors in post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias 187
7 The possibilities of non-Cartesian film 204
Conclusion 234
Index 246
