Reposted from the SCMS Bulletin Board:
For this panel I would like to gather papers that have a critical take on ecocinema. I am not interested in readings of films from an “environmentalist” or “progressive and eco-friendly perspective”; I am not interested in papers that talk about the “positive” images and narratives about nature and the environment one finds in various films. Instead, I am looking for papers that critically explore the very idea of eco-cinema, that expose the unexamined presuppositions with which much eco-cinema can be seen to function: naive views of “nature” and what constitutes “the natural”; uncritical assumptions about the capacity of cinema or video or media to adequately represent nature; unexamined conceptions of what constitutes “progressive” or “environmentally friendly”; etc. I am also interested in papers that explore films that do self-consciously explore these issues and attempt to rethink both the project of environmental cinema/video/media and the environmental politics in which that cinema participates.
Please send proposals of about 300 words, as well as a brief bio, to me at cpavsek@sfu.ca by July 31.
Thanks,
Christopher Pavsek
Associate Professor of Film
Simon Fraser University
A a childhood fan of the Superman films, I finally gave in to the temptation this weekend to go see Man of Steel while it is still in theaters. I recall that in Superman III (1983) there is a scene in which Superman cleans up an oil spill and in the film that brought the original film franchise to a screeching halt, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), the man of steel rounds up all of the earth’s nuclear weapons and throws them into the sun. In Man of Steel, the original narrative regarding the planet Krypton is altered to reflect our own world’s struggle to come to terms with and address global environmental concerns like climate change. In the original narrative, Krypton is destroyed when its radioactive core becomes unstable. However, in Man of Steel we learn that the Krypton’s planetary instability is due to the fact that its people have exhausted their natural resources and begun digging too deeply into the core for energy and fuel.
With this in mind I was searching the internet to see if others had picked up on this and stumbled onto a blog run by the software copy PrintEco. The company designs software that, when installed, works with applications like Word and Excel to adjust documents to minimize the amount of extra space wasted in the printing process, thus claiming to reduce paper consumption by 24%. Curiously, PrintEco hosts its own Green-themed blog. The blog is a mix of advertising for the companies software and an open space for what I assume are employees to post on green issues in media and culture. In a blog entry titled, “How to Save the Planet Like Superman,” author Michael Ponte discusses his experience seeing the film and how he too noticed the subtle environmental themes that were less obvious than in the earlier Christopher Reeve films. What I appreciated about the post, in addition to its content, was that there were no hidden plugs for the company’s products.
I’d love to hear what others think and if there are examples of other companies out there who encourage their employees to blog on green issues without having to use those blog entries as greenwashing. Can companies sincerely and ethically promote green products w/out greenwashing and allow employees the freedom to share their observations without having to always be on the pitch?
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We are soliciting presentations for SCMS 2014, to be held in Seattle, WA from March 19-23, 2014.
This panel investigates the aesthetic, thematic, and industrial dimensions of Pacific Northwest film and media. We welcome paper proposals on any aspect of media produced in and/or about the Pacific Northwest, by which we broadly mean Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia. Possible questions to be addressed include (but are not limited to):
♦ How have Pacific NW media producers carved out a unique cultural / industrial niche?
♦ How have Hollywood films represented Pacific NW locations and culture?
♦ How has Hollywood impacted and benefited from local communities?
♦ Is there a Pacific NW visual aesthetic?
♦ How have the rise of Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver in the broader cultural imagination been represented visually?
♦ How are Pacific NW animators, video game designers, and visual media artists reaching global audiences?
♦ How have local and regional film festivals and film programs supported the work of regional independent media producers?
♦ Additional topics may include: Grunge / slacker culture, Laika Animation Studios, Gus Van Sant, Kelly Reichardt, Portlandia, Grey’s Anatomy, Twin Peaks and The Killing and “Northwest noir”
Please submit proposals to Carter Soles <csoles@brockport.edu> and Steve Rust <srust@uoregon.edu> by August 1, 2013. We will notify you as to whether your submission has been accepted or rejected by August 15, 2013.
Dear All,
Taylor and Francis is providing free access to a select number of ecomedia articles published through their various journals on the page Environment through the Lens. Worth a look see.
Subject: Call for Papers for 2014 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference
In the two decades bracketing the turn of the millennium, large-scale weather disasters have been inevitably constructed as media events. As such, they challenge the meaning of concepts such as identity and citizenship for both locally affected populations and widespread spectator communities. Mediathons of weather coverage justify an ongoing state of heightened security and our avid interest in them betrays the fact that so many of our own economic and social systems don’t make sense to us anymore and are now conceptually akin to “mysterious†(and at times dangerous) nature. In this context it is crucial to examine how “extreme” weather events illuminate the affective and ideological positions that media (in particular television) both foster and reflect. Any such studies must also account for increasing intermediality and the ways in which television paradigms continue to shift and influence the distribution and consumption of extreme weather. Seeking to better understand the political implications embedded within public affective responses as well as official narratives, this panel will consider weather media (particularly as an under-studied mode of television output) as part of a representational matrix through which audiences re-assess the security of late capitalism and social democratic logics.
Please send 300 word abstract and short bio by July 15 to Diane Negra (diane.negra@ucd.ie) and Julia Leyda (j-leyda@sophia.ac.jp).
Energy is one of the key issues of our time: where we get it, how we consume it, and the effects of our dependence on it. This panel seeks papers analyzing energy resources –– from fossil to nuclear to renewable –– in narrative feature films, documentaries, animation, videos, television shows, or any other visual media form.
Suggested topics include but are not limited to:
• Modern industrial infrastructures (e.g. the built environment in Red Desert)
• Coal and class on the British screen (e.g. blue-color workers in Billy Elliot, Steptoe and Son, Young Adam)
• Transnational flows (e.g. circulating oil, water, and human labor in The Black Sea Files)
• Visions of the apocalypse (e.g. blazing Kuwaiti wells in Lessons of Darkness, Waterworld, Mad Max)
• Fuel in the James Bond franchise (e.g. Quantum of Solace, The World Is Not Enough, Never Say Never Again)
• “Clean†power (e.g. Gattaca, Wall-E, Monsters, Inc., Carbon Nation, Windfall)
• Gender relations against an atomic backdrop (e.g. Kiss Me Deadly, Silkwood, The China Syndrome)
Paper proposals should include a 250-word abstract and the name, affiliation, and contact email of the presenter. Please send all materials to Ila Tyagi at ilatyagi87@gmail.com by JULY 15, 2013.
You are cordially invited to join our new Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecomediagroup/
Thanks to Nicole Seymour for getting this page set up!