THE PLANET AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Abstract

This paper proposes a new way of understanding the first ultra‐high FX ‘eco‐blockbuster’ Hollywood movie in relation to environmental debates around the representability of ‘climate change’. Cinema, especially, but not exclusively, high‐budget Hollywood cinema, with its several ‘delays’, including expensive FX and franchise structuring, is probably the media form least often discussed in relation to such debates. Other, less ‘delayed’ and ‘factual’ media most often mediate them. This paper argues the usefulness of a new term, ‘issue event blockbuster’ for exploring The Day After Tomorrow (USA 2004). It is an attempt to indicate the mixed ground, at both pre‐ and post‐production levels, which this film occupied within Hollywood's commercial aesthetic. Understandings of the possibilities and limits of such a film might enrich academic and also eco‐activist approaches to the representability of climate change politics.

Notes

1. Murray Bookchin's Our Synthetic Environment preceded Rachel Carson's Silent Spring by six months in 1962. He argues for a distinction between ecology, which seeks to transform society, and environmentalism, which wants to ameliorate the worst aspects of capitalist economy.

2. March of the Penguins (2006) was the second highest grossing documentary in the USA in 2006, with $77,437,223 gross, way ahead of the third, An Inconvenient Truth at $23,693,339 (www.boxofficemojo.com).

3. See Schlor (2006) and the website of The Centre for a New American Dream, http://www.newdream.org/

4. See Spike Lee's magnificent documentary account When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (USA 2006).

5. Brereton (2004) surveys some key Hollywood films for their ‘eco‐politics’, though his eclectic approach via ‘nature’ and space in films is not one I am taking (see review by Harri Kilpi [2006] in online journal Scope Issue 6). Ingram's sophisticated survey of a range of topics and films is useful, though less interested in political economy than this paper (Ingram 2000).

6. See Buckland (2006) for an account of recent histories.

7. See, for example, the career of Lisa Gerrard.

8. With the exception of the Weather Channel, the news channels shown in DAT are owned by News Corporation (which owns Twentieth Century Fox, the distributor).

9. Armageddon (USA 1998) and Deep Impact (USA 1998) had earlier taken a topical ‘issue’—the danger of an asteroid or comet hitting the Earth. But the topic is much more remote than that of DAT, very much more NASA‐friendly, and the modality is more resolutely action‐adventure and fantasy SF.

10. Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth UK wrote: This is a dramatisation, not a documentary and is above all a Hollywood movie. Although the depiction of the science is exaggerated and at times misleading, the scale of threat and the underlying politics are all too true … Science alone has failed to convince politicians and international corporations with power and influence to make a difference. DaT will reach entirely new audiences who may not have heard about global warming. We hope it will help create a much needed sense of urgency to fight climate change in real world, especially in the US. (Emphasis added) See also the accompanying feature ‘Force of Destiny’, also involving eminent scientists and activists, on the DVD version.

11. http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2004/06/03/griscom‐NOAA (accessed 18 February 2007).

12. The Matt Drudge website reported that NASA officials had been told not to comment on the film. See Matt Drudge, ‘Ice Age Outrage: Fox's Climate‐Change Movie Irks Bush Admin’, The Drudge Report: www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2004/04/24/20040424_155005_flash3.htm This is part of the contrast between the sympathetic access to NASA visible in Armageddon and the attitude of the G. W. Bush administration to DAT. See also NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) website www.GetTheRealScoop.org; the Environmental Literacy Council website at www.enviroliteracy.org; the Union of Concerned Scientists and others.

13. Quotes from grist website above (note 11).

14. See www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/AtMovieDayAfterTom.htm for a critique of the science in the film.

15. ‘Emmerich paid personally to offset around 10,000 tons of CO₂ that the … production generated.’ http://www.conservation.org/xp/frontlines (accessed 20 August 2006).

16. See Haraway (2004, p. 96) and Franklin et al. (2000, p. 28) for interesting discussions of the original NASA image.