OCT27
Horror and the Thriller Roundtable
Join us for a roundtable discussion about the multiple roads to horror and thrills. For my portion of the roundtable, I will be exploring our festival films through ecocinema and ecofeminist lenses.
Roundtable 2017
Perhaps
the most iconic movie monster from the 1950s forward is Godzilla, a giant
reptile who stars in dozens of movies from Toho Studios in Japan. As a creature
of its age, beginning with its 1954 debut, Godzilla springs to life from the radiation
left by nuclear testing and functions as a condemnation of the U.S. atomic
attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. As Kyohei Yamane-hakase (Takashi
Shimura) warns in the original film, “if we continue conducting nuclear tests,
it's possible that another Godzilla might appear somewhere in the world again.”
As a monstrous result of humanity’s destruction of the environment, Godzilla
serves as a mixture of Maurice Yacowar’s disaster categories, embodying a
traditional natural monster, but also illustrating Yacowar’s natural attack
sub-genre. Godzilla also presents a cautionary symbol of the dangerous
consequences of mistreating the natural world—monstrous nature on the attack.
Gareth Edwards’ remake of Godzilla (2014)
take this theme further, since Godzilla returns from the ocean bottom to
destroy the MUTOs and restore the balance of nature, according to Dr. Ichiro
Serizawa (Ken Watanabe). As Serizawa declares, instead of attempting to destroy
both Godzilla and the MUTOs, the Navy should “Let them fight.” For Serizawa,
“The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in their control and not the other
way around.”
Readings
of the horror film showcase the roots of such a monster: human and nonhuman
nature. Such environmental approaches draw on class struggles, evolution, human
ecology, and gendered bodies. What connects these seemingly divergent
approaches?: a human cause and a biotic solution. Humanity may contribute to
the malevolent elements of nature on the big screen. But these films also
suggest that embracing interdependent relationships with nonhuman nature may
save us all.
I read the films we’re watching this week through a variety of monstrous
nature lenses. The Brain Eaters is
obviously parasite horror, but it also draws on a (tragic) evolutionary
narratives. This evolutionary view is most evident in films highlighting
humanity’s creation of deadly natural monsters like the parasite. While
biologists would agree that parasites are a necessary part of our biosphere,
the general public tends to view parasites as complicated, dangerous, and
deadly. The Brain Eaters lines up with
films like The Thaw, which connects
the horror genre with possible consequences of climate change and human
exploitation of the environment in the Anthropocene Age. In the film, parasites
have reawakened only because human activity has warmed the earth and melted the
ice, so the film’s irresponsible scientist Dr. Kruipen (Val Kilmer) decides to
unleash them on populations in the United States, infecting enough humans to “make
a real difference.” Through biological eco-terrorism, Kruipen hopes to change
the minds of climate change cynics, even if it means he and many others may
die.
Sita Sings the Blues and The
Exorcist, on the other hand, call for an ecofeminist reading that sees
women’s bodies as “frontiers” or the woman (especially the adolescent woman) as
monster. Such an approach amplifies the relationship between consuming,
exploiting, and raping the body and consuming the land by drawing on what
Annette Kolodny calls “America’s oldest and most cherished fantasy” grounded in
“an experience of the land as feminine…enclosing the individual in an
environment of receptivity, repose, and painless integral satisfaction” (The Lay of the Land 4). This feminization of nature draws on gender
stereotypes. For Kolodny, “men sought
sexual and filial gratification from the land, while women sought there the
gratifications of home and family relations” (The Land Before Her 12). As ecofeminist Jytte Nhanenge argues,
“there is an interconnection between the domination of women and poor people,
and the domination of nature” (xxvii). All of the films viewed this week
demonstrate ways monster and nature can merge.
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