Ice Age and Redefinitions of Animal Families

The newest installment of the Ice Age animated film franchise, Ice Age: Continental Drift, focuses on both extended and nuclear definitions of family, but it also extends the family structure beyond blood relatives to different animal species. In this Ice Age installment, Manny, a Woolly Mammoth; Diego, a Smilodon or Saber-Toothed Cat, and Sid , a Ground Sloth, are cast adrift on an iceberg after the earth opens up, separating landmasses into the seven continents. Their journey back home to Manny’s wife Ellie  and daughter Peaches  provides laughs and conflicts with both natural forces and anthropomorphized animal pirates, but it more importantly serves to redefine family, a definition Diego explains when asked about the difference between a pack and a family. In a family, he explains, “We have each other’s backs.” To illustrate this definition, the film explores a variety of family dynamics using effective and sometimes spectacular 3-D animation. The film first highlights conflicts between Manny and his teenaged daughter Peaches in their traditional nuclear family.

More importantly, however, the film also amplifies the importance of Manny’s extended family and their relationships. Manny, Diego, and Sid grow even closer during their struggles to return to their home. But they also serve as a positive counterpart to the pirate pack they outmaneuver. The contrast between the pirates and the Manny-led extended family ultimately lead to an addition to their group and a partner for Diego when Shira, a female Smilodon, chooses their strong connections over the dysfunctional pirate crew that willingly abandons her.  Sid’s Sloth family also plays a role in the film, again providing a stark contrast to the interdependent family unit Manny has built with his multi-species clan. Whereas Sid’s Sloth family abandons him, leaving him to care for an aging Granny, his Manny clan “has his back.” Sid also contributes to the family group when he builds an alliance with the Hyrax herd, which helps steal the pirates’ ship. To her credit, Granny becomes less of a burden when her pet whale helps them return home and escape the pirates. These different illustrations of the ideal family build toward the film’s climax, when Manny reunites with Peaches and Ellie, recreating  the multi-species herd. Although Ice Age: Continental Drift certainly has many weaknesses, it successfully redefines the structure and purpose of family. 

Fashion Industry Films and the Move to Fast Fashion

Most clothing industry films concentrate on individual designers, who rise from obscurity to fame. For example, Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008) grounds its hero’s journey by connecting it with that of the protagonist of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), who struggles to make a life for himself as an artist in the decadent world to which he is attracted. Unlike Marcello, Valentino meets and pairs up with Giancarlo Giametti for more than 45 years, both in business and life, building both a vital domestic relationship and a vibrant business career with Giametti’s strengths focused on his mind for money, as well as his role of protector and life partner. Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum notes that the Nino Rota’s score for the film “provides a Fellini overlay,” reinforcing the connection between the 1960 film and Valentino’s life. The documentary, however, primarily highlights preparations for one of Valentino’s couture shows and culminates in a climactic commemoration of Valentino’s 45^th anniversary in the fashion industry, a striking acknowledgment of his ability to overcome bankruptcy and succeed for the long term as a multi-millionaire designer.

            But the film also reveals another reason for Valentino’s retirement, according to Stephen Holden of The New York Times: “Swallowed up by big business, the great fashion houses of Europe are now mass-market franchises with designer names attached to all manner of clothing and accessories.” The documentary primarily concentrates on the spectacle, first of the final show, and then of Valentino’s 45^th anniversary event. Here the extravagance includes spectacular fireworks. For Valentino, the world of fashion was once a world of “floating fairies” in red. In the hands of Italian millionaire Matteo Marzotto, that is sure to change, the film shows us, and the fairies will be missed. Here the rise of the individual Valentino is aided by a partner, Giametti, who, perhaps, finds a way to shield Valentino and his fashion line from multinational bankers and the inevitable changes they will require.

            One of the most provocative examples of a design artist succeeding in spite of poverty and lack of support is Anne Fontaine’s biographical drama, Coco Before Chanel (2009). The film highlights Chanel’s (Audrey Tautou) rise from dire circumstances to success as “France’s famous mademoiselle,” exploring the journey Gabrielle (Coco) takes from an orphanage where her father leaves her and her sister and never returns to fashion design fame. Beginning as a seamstress for performers and a part-time singer at a cabaret where she earns her nickname, Coco, from a song she sings with her sister to opportunities to design hats, the film portrays Chanel as a fighter who overcomes adversity with help from her relationships with Baron Etienne Balsan (Beoit Poelvoorde) and Arthur Capel (Alessandro Nivola), who dies tragically in a car accident. In spite of these forays, in the context of the film, “she’s elegant in relation to the extravagant luster of the rich.” 

            The story, according to Roger Ebert, is “not about rags to riches but about survival of the fittest,” and provides a single vision of Chanel’s rise in the fashion world, a vision that glosses over her diminished popularity during and after World War II due to collaboration with the Nazis and ends with her death in 1971, when she was still working, as the film says, “on a Sunday.”  Although the film’s portrayal of Chanel is unsympathetic and suggests her decisions to create fashions that “liberated women from the hideous excesses of the late 19^th century” was based more on her own preferences for sailor suits than any feminist leanings, it demonstrates well how an individual artist can overcome adversity and become an unlikely hero, at least in the fashion world. As Ebert asserts, “To the winner belongs the spoils, even if in life, you started pretty far back from the starting line.”

            Ebert’s claim aligns well with the fictionalized version of fashion show preparation found in Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear, an illustration of the behind-the-scenes activity before and during Paris Fashion Week 1994. The film provides a uncomplimentary portrayal of the fashion industry, a “hate letter” according to Richard Corliss, but a “comedy crossed with a home movie,” according to Roger Ebert. What stands out, however, amid the personal injustices and competitions, is a nod toward the environment missing from most films. At the ready-to-wear show, one reporter asks a designer, “How do you feel that fifty percent of the world’s pollution comes from textile mills,” shocking the designer and prompting the viewer to wonder if she’s right. Do the fashion and clothing industries contribute this significantly to everyday environmental disasters such as air and water pollution? And of course the answer is yes.

Film Ecology: Simulated Construction and Destruction in Hooper

The idea of film ecology raises issues related to environmentally friendly approaches to filmmaking like carbon-neutral production, as with The Day After Tomorrow, or set recycling, as with The Matrix 2 and 3. Yet films and filmmaking have impacted on the environment since at least 1896 when Oil Wells of Baku was shot. Deliberate manipulation of the environment during the filmmaking process has also been a part of film history since the inception of the film industry, as in The Life of an American Fireman (1903), directed by Edwin S. Porter, where a fireman, played by Arthur White, battles flames and saves a girl from a burning building. The fury of fires on-screen entertains audiences in films from San Francisco (1936) and In Old Chicago (1938) to City on Fire (1979), Daylight (1996), and Wild Hogs (2007).

Such spectacular effects have their own impact on the screen, but they also damage the ecology involved in each film’s production, causing environmental destruction with spectacular effects that is sometimes used to publicize the film. Gone With the Wind (1939), for example, was promoted before and during its production before the epic spectacle made it to the screen. The success of the novel, Gone With the Wind,a highly publicized talent search for the film’s stars, and the burning of the Atlanta Depot scene as the first scene shot in the film, were meant to impress potential audiences. The film gained notoriety in part because it resulted in so much actual ecological destruction, destruction used as part of the promotion package for the film. The Atlanta Constitution, for example, states, “Ranking with the greatest spectacle scenes in motion picture history is the burning of the ammunition trains” (quoted in Haver 303). The New York Times asserts that “the siege of Atlanta was splendid and the fire that followed magnificently pyrotechnic” (quoted in Haver 305). The destruction was massive, with the burning of the Atlanta Depot standing out as the most integral and damaging scene in the film. This was the first scene to be shot, a scene in which scores of old sets on the studio backlot were burned, including the “Great Gate” from King Kong(1933). For this scene, 113 minutes of footage were shot, with costs of less than $25,000 accumulated, “just $323 more than the allotted budget” according to David Selznick’s Hollywood (Haver 258).  During filming of the scene, all seven of the Technicolor cameras in Hollywood were used to capture flames that shot up 500 feet from a set that covered forty acres. To protect the studio and its stars, production manager Raymond Klune made sure the area was ringed with fire trucks from both the Culver City Fire Department and the Los Angeles Fire Department (Haver 254).

Yet, according to Haver, the fire was seen as a real eco-disaster by the residents in the area: “As the inferno raged, the low-hanging clouds spread the reflection of the flames over most of Culver City, and for the hour and a half that the fire continued, the phone lines in Los Angeles were jammed with anxious callers, all of whom seemed convinced that MGM was on fire” (258). To one witness, “it was just suddenly the holocaust…it scared all of us…it was like a whole town suddenly going up in flames…. Just as this ferocious thing happened, up comes Myron with these two people… all three seemed to be a few sheets to the wind and Myron said something to Mr. Selznick but he just shook him off, he was so engrossed in the fire” (257-8). Such destruction was meant to heighten audience interest, but its potential for damage to the film’s stars meant that stunt men and women doubled for the stars. Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) was doubled by Aileen Goodwin, Dorothy Fargo, and Lila Finn, and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) was doubled by Yakima Canutt (arguably the greatest stuntman that ever lived) and Jay Wilsey. Canutt (one of Butler’s doubles) led the wagon carrying Dorothy Fargo (one of O’Hara’s doubles) through the fire, for example. Construction and destruction of both the stunt men and women, who serve as “doubles” to the star, and of the environment provide spectacle on the screen and in the tabloids of the time.

Such construction and destruction also highlights how Hollywood represents stunt artists and ecology as expendable, an attitude most evident in films like Hooper (1978). In Hooper,the impact of stunts on the stunt artists who perform them is both made transparent and critiqued. The film also shows us the environmental impact of the special effects that accompany each of those stunts, occasionally commenting on their negative effects on ecology. Hooper interrogates the consequences of attitudes that construct human life and the environment as expendable, even as it climaxes with a spectacular and awe-inspiring scene meant to capture audiences: a representation of the destruction of Los Angeles that is parallel to the Atlanta fire scene and residents’ reactions to it in the production of Gone With the Wind. With this special effects-driven scene and others, Hoopershows us how complicated critiques of film production practices become in an industry where entertainment is the goal. Yet, in spite of this conflict between spectacle and critique, Hooperstands out as a film that exposes how dangerous film productions can be to both stunt artists and the environment.

Hooper highlights the impact stunt work has on the stunt men’s bodies while foregrounding the insensitivity of directors willing to sacrifice human lives for spectacular effects in most of the “gags” on display in the film. But the last “gag” in Hooper (and “The Spy Who Laughed at Danger”) most powerfully illustrates how both human lives and ecology are seen as expendable in this filmic world, as long as movies make enough money. Ski’s ideas have inspired the director, according to the film’s producer, Max Burns (John Marley), so he rewrites the script’s ending and adds lots of stunts culminating in the destruction of L.A. on screen. The stunts Roger constructs to end the film seem outlandishly impossible in a 1978 film without access to computer-generated graphics. When Roger explains the new ending to Hooper and Ski, it sounds like a nightmare on screen. According to Roger, Hooper and Ski will drive through “the biggest earthquake ever,” but a bridge will blow up, so Hooper and Ski will need to rappel down the mountain to escape—and Roger will capture this stunt in one shot. The ending stunt sounds spectacular enough, but Ski, the young “immortal,” wants more and suggests, “Why not jump a car across the gorge.” After speculating about the distance a rocket car might jump, even Max thinks this stunt is too risky. But Hooper sees the stunt as a way out of the stunt business: They can do this last stunt for $50,000 each, and then quit.

The big stunt goes as planned: Roger watches from a helicopter and yells, “Action.” Then we hear and see an explosion, and a building collapses. Crashing cars are everywhere. Hooper and Ski keep driving past exploding gas stations and a series of explosions on the road. Cars overturn and collide with one another. Then another series of explosions pours out spectacular fumes of fire and smoke. A tanker goes through a building and another set of explosions cracks open the other side of the road. Hooper and Ski continue driving their rocket car, now racing through a line of collapsing smokestacks that nearly hit their car. They’re almost to the bridge and watch as a truck full of explosives blows it “to shit.” The pressure in their nitrous-powered rocket car seems too low for the jump, but Hooper demands they continue, and they fly across the ravine, landing safely on the other side. This spectacular filmic event destroys the set and looks like it destroys the city of Los Angeles. It nearly kills two stunt men, who barely make it across a ravine in a car built to fly half the distance across. Max fires Tony, the assistant. And Ski and Hooper look at the fallen bridge at the bottom of the ravine in awe. Yet Roger, the director, merely exclaims, “Spectacular, wonderful. I knew you could do it!” As Roger sees it, they have captured a “tiny piece of time” on film, so the stunt, no matter how dangerous or destructive, was worth that strip of film.

Hooper at least marginally critiques the exploitation of human flesh for effect, since it shows us the injuries and chronic physical damage Hooper and Jocko endure after performing risky stunt work. The film’s narrative sets up Roger as a villain willing to sacrifice stunt men for a good show and the film industry as an economy where greed runs rampant. The film gives a nod to both nonhuman nature (a dog with a Humane Society advocate is saved by Hooper) and to the environment (Tony mentions pollution and smog in L.A. as a reason to quickly extinguish a fire). But ultimately, the stunts themselves capture our attention, just as Roger suggests when ruminating on the power of film as a medium that can capture time. In the context of the film, the last, most dangerous, and (consequently) most spectacular stunt also “saves” Hooper, since it provides him with the funds he needs to buy his ranch. The effects in Hooper are not only critiqued in the film’s construction of “The Spy Who Laughed at Danger” but also valorized in their own right. Hooper was nominated for an Academy Award in the sound category. Walter Frith calls the movie “action on laughing gas.” In “Excessive Disclosure in Burt Reynolds’ Star Image,” Jacob Smith sees drunk scenes as “prolonged excuse[s]” for laughter (29). Smith highlights the promotional image for Hooper, an “iconic cowboy with mustache, squinting eyes, and cowboy hat, but with mouth obscured by a pink balloon of bubble gum,” (30) to support his claims about Reynolds’ image as an actor seeking fun, not work, in both film and life.

But the image also showcases the stunt man’s roots in Western lore—cowboys willing to take risks and live isolated lives on the range just like stunt artists sacrificing themselves for spectacular effects on the screen. The film seems to validate that individualist image rather than a communal one connecting humans and nature. Smith asserts that Hooper “ridicules environmental activist and humane society representatives,” those advocates working for nonhuman nature. The film praises the work of individual stunt men willing to take risks, overcome obstacles, and provide awe-inspiring spectacle on the screen. Hooper critiques “the conceited dramatic actor and pretentious director,” according to Smith. It does not seem to critique the work of stunt men. Instead, it valorizes the spectacular results of their stunts. Still Hooper examines the filmmaking process in a unique way, since it highlights stunt men and their work, showing us a behind-the-scenes view of the effects these stunts have on both the stunt artists and the environment. By making the consequences of stunt “gags” transparent, Hooperprovides a critical reading of the filmmaking process and its negative effects on its stunt men and the environment their stunts destroy. Even though the critique is couched in the film’s own rhetoric about the entertainment value of spectacle, it provides a space in which we can begin to discuss the impact of filmmaking on both human and nonhuman nature. 

Anthony Mann, Delmer Daves, Sam Peckinpah, and Ecology

Although mainly exploring ecology as a peripheral issues, some Classic full-length Western mining films address environmental issues stylistically as well as through their narratives. In Anthony Mann’s The Far Country(1955), the landscape is both personified and vilified as an ominous opponent that deserves the destruction caused by miners in the Rockies during the Gold Rush. Jeff Webster (James Stewart) leads a cattle drive to Seattle where he is accused of murdering two of his men. He takes a boat to Skagway, Alaska, where he is arrested for breaking up a hanging and loses his cattle to the sheriff (John McIntire) but is hired by Ronda Castle (Ruth Roman) to serve as point man for her and others heading to Canada for gold and a new dance hall saloon.

Webster steals back his cattle and leaves Ronda and her followers until an avalanche hits them. His only friend, Ben (Walter Brennan), convinces Webster to help them, if only half-heartedly. But after Ben is killed, Webster seeks revenge and battles nature and the corrupt sheriff, who does what he can to steal the miners’ claims. According to Lucia Bozzola, “the film intersperses backdrops and rear projection with location shots, emphasizing the disjunction between Stewart and his surroundings, as he lives by his constant urge to move on rather than integrate himself.”   Nature, then, is constructed as an antagonist, but also as Webster’s foil, since he blends in with his surroundings more than he does with a community, even one led by Ronda, his love interest.

The Badlanders (1958), a remake of The Asphalt Jungle (1950), replays the revenge plot in a Western setting, highlighting violence to both human and nonhuman nature. It is 1898 when Peter Van Hook (Alan Ladd) and John McBain (Ernest Borgnine) are released from the Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma, where they had both been imprisoned because of Cyril Lounsberry’s (Kent Smith) falsified testimony. Although McBain wants a crime-free life as cattle rancher, Van Hook, the Dutchman, brings him and a dynamite expert, Vincente (Nehemiah Persoff) in on a gold heist with Lounsberry as victim. After a series of mishaps, McBain gets that vengeance, and Van Hook escapes with his girl and fellow conspirator, Anita (Katy Jurado). Within this typical revenge plot, however, is a fully timbered underground mine from which Van Hook and his gang plan their heist. With Vincente’s expertise, they plan to get the ore out of the mine by setting their dynamite to explode at the same time that Lounsberry’s miners blow up their tunnel. A deputy stops their plan, but shots of the inner tunnels and exploding dynamite bring home the ecological devastation necessary to bring out the gold.

On the other hand, Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (1961) establishes a bifurcation between nature and culture that laments the loss of both the wilderness and the values embodied by a wild west. The plot centers on two aging Westerners, Steve Judd (Joel McCrea), an ex-lawman and Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott), a wild west performer riding to escort a gold shipment from a mining town, the town of Coarse Gold, which looks as coarse as its name. Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) comments ironically on its repulsively polluted appearance as soon as they enter the town: “Lovely place. A beauty spot of nature -- a garden of Eden for the sore in heart and short of cash,” he exclaims. Steve Judd (Joel McCrea), his partner, replies only that “We didn't come here to admire the scenery.”

The scenery in the lifeless gold camp contrasts dramatically with the aging but still virile and untamed high country landscape.  Both Judd and Gil seem connected with this untamed West, and like the high country, they too are waning. Judd’s death at the end of the film parallels the death of the landscape, but Gil carries on the wild western values Judd embodies. The film seems to suggest that even though the wild west is dying, its ideals will live on, at least for a little while. The film, though, makes a powerful environmental statement about humans’ impact on the natural world with the contrasts it emphasizes between the mountains and the town that destroys them—visually and through the brief dialogue between Gil and Judd.