The latest issue of the New Zealand Journal of Media Studies (12:1) is devoted to examining environmental media. Most of the articles examine news media coverage of environmental debates and political issues such as climate change and genetic engineering. There is also Leon Gurevitch’s “100% Pure Imperial Ecology: Marketing the Environment in Antipodean Film and Advertising” that examines the eco-tourism of popular film franchises. As the title suggests the paper looks critically at the ways both nature and culture(s) are marketed. This paper is a valuable addition to scholarship on media and environmental racism. In all, the issue provides some excellent analysis on different environmental media issues not only in New Zealand but in the wider Australasian region.
Copies of all papers can be downloaded from the journal’s website.
A recent New York Times op-ed highlighting a map from 1860 caught my eye. It is apparently the last census map that visually mapped slavery in terms of spatial concentration. While the article itself says little about environment or ecology, as many have argued (see, for example,Carolyn Merchant’s The Columbia Guide to Environmental History (2002) Ch3 “The Tobacco and Cotton South”; 39-57) American slavery was very much an outcome of cultural and natural factors.
In fact, the map can serve as a nice visual supplement to show how slavery’s concentrations were in areas of prime agrarian promise. For example, strong concentrations of slaves (indicated by darker shades) along the Mississippi river highlight the fertile floodplains of the river and their potential of continued cultivation. The pop-up windows can also serve as a useful tool to get students conversing about how demographics might have shifted as intense cultivation depleted soil and plantations moved westwards.
Reposted from Ecorazzi.com
December 7th 2010 by Erin La Rosa @ 5:10 pm
When you think of production studios and filming you think Hollywood, right? That may be the standard but Broadway Stages in Brooklyn, New York, is giving Tinseltown a run for its money, as it makes a name for itself as the first solar-powered sound stage facility in the world. Awesome!
Broadway Stages has worked with top artists like Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Kings of Leon to produce their music, along with top films like, “The Good Shepherd†and “Duplicity,†and TV shows “The Good Wife†and “Third Watch.â€
Tony Argento, owner of the film and television studio said, “The solar panel installation is our contribution to improve our neighborhood and help offset our carbon footprint.â€
The facilities rooftop solar panels cut energy bills by more than $70,000 yearly, and create enough power to prevent the burning of 75,000 gallons of diesel fuel. The change has also created local work and jobs.
City Councilman Jim Gennaro, Chairman of the Council’s Environmental Committee, recently toured the facilities and commented, “I applaud Broadway Stages for becoming the first solar powered sound stage in the world, in turn, creating 10 full-time jobs and more than 50 part-time jobs for New Yorkers.†He added, “Their initiative is a shining example of renewable energy investment and its various benefits – including the creation of green-collar jobs and growth of the local green-economy.â€
Here’s hoping Hollywood calls and picks up on this exciting way to go green!
I’ve just heard that I’ll be teaching a 400 level course next summer for the Women and Gender Studies Department at my university. The catch is that I have 24 hours to come up with a more appealing title than “Cinema/Gender/Environment” in order to appeal to students. It’s a 4-week course offered during the second summer session so it’s got to have a fabulous title if it’s going to appeal to students as a fun class. I’d love to hear ideas.
Here’s the current course description:
This course examines the intersection of gender and environment articulated in popular Hollywood cinema and is intended to introduce upper-division students to the theoretical, historical, and aesthetic applications of ecofeminist media studies. Ecocriticism brings to feminist media studies a particular interest in asking questions about how audio-visual media construct and deconstruct patriarchy’s historical influence over our perceptions women and the Earth. To explore how “gender†and “nature†operate as social constructs we will begin with key readings in the development of eco-feminist media studies before delving into the insights of theorist Donna Haraway and film historian Pat Brereton. Coursework includes lively discussion, weekly reading summaries, a group presentation, a critical essay, and short in-class midterm and final exams. We will screen eight films: Duel in the Sun, Deliverance, Metropolis, Gorillas in the Mist, Thelma & Louise, Logan’s Run, Aliens, and Best in Show.
Required Texts:
Donna Haraway, The Donna Haraway Reader and Pat Brereton, Hollywood Utopia
3D trees in "San Francisco, California"
Interesting move by Google posted in their official blog today: Google Earth v. 6 will now include a large library that facilitates the planting of virtual trees in their parallel metaverse. The blog says this has been underway for some time, actually, but there just haven’t been that many good sources of tree models. Google now claims to have “planted” over 80 million trees in G-Earth and is partnering with several environmental NGOs to help spread the word about threatened rainforests.
I haven’t had a chance to download Google Earth 6 to take a close look at these rendered plants. I’d like to compare them with the systems used to depict plants in Second Life, which come in several flavors–chiefly the three intersecting planes model introduced by Eric Call (from pioneering work by Honjo, Lim & Neruta), and a more recent “true” three-dimensional kind using sculpted prims. SL’s developers recognized early on the importance of plant life to making virtual scenes look and feel naturalistic, and in the broader arena of landscape planning there has been a continual development of virtual vegetation that balances rendering speed with both aesthetic appeal and biological accuracy.
So what I’m curious about is how plants are being used in Google Earth and what the new v6 libraries will do to virtual landscaping. Will the trees promote environmental learning, or just serve as decor? Will they be used in culture-jamming ways, perhaps by adding a layer that shows what might have happened if that shopping mall or amusement park was never built? Will they be employed to make places look more “treeful” than they are in real life? Should be an interesting exploration.
Actor/Producer Leonard
o DiCaprio sat down with Russian Prime Minister   Vladimir Putin this week at the Tiger Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. Tigers are  threatened with extinction in 13 nations, all of which sent representatives to the meeting. DiCaprio personally pledged $1 million to the effort to protect the world’s largest cat.
The AP and Christian Science Monitor covering the story and Andy Revkin at DotEarth has pondered whether Apple should donate to the effort as well because it names operating systems after big cats. Wondering at a sudden uptick in his own Twitter account, Revkin realized that his tweet on the Apple/Tiger connection issue had been re-tweeted by DiCaprio. “What do you think Steve Jobs? Imagine what you can do to #SaveTheTigers with @Revkin’s idea” (DiCaprio, 4:10 PM Nov 17, 2010).
After all the talk about the impact of Steven Spielberg’s JAWS (1975) on perceptions of sharks and the related decline of shark populations around the world, there’s talk of a new shark movie slated for theaters in order to exploit the 3D technology.
VARIETY reports:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118027934
Relativity Media acquires ‘3D Shark Thriller’
Sierra Pictures film was formerly titled ‘Shark Night 3D’
Relativity Media has snapped up domestic rights to “The Untitled David R. Ellis 3D Shark Thriller” from Sierra Pictures and partner Incentive Filmed Entertainment.
Relativity announced Tuesday that it will release the shark pic next year and will announce a new title and a specific release date shortly. Project was formerly titled “Shark Night 3D.”
Pic stars Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Katharine McPhee, Chris Carmack, Alyssa Diaz, Joel David Moore, Donal Logue, Sinqua Walls and Chris Zylka. Story, penned by Jesse Studenberg and Will Hayes, surrounds a group of college friends spending a weekend at a house on the lake, only to find a shark lurking.
Ellis, whose credit include “Cellular” and the first two “Final Destination” titles, helmed. Chris Briggs and Mike Fleiss produced through their NextFilms shingle and Lynette Howell via the Silverwood Films banner.
Sierra sold rights to film in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Benelux, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, CIS and the Baltics.
Relativity now has its own distrib arm after acquiring the marketing and distribution operations of Overture Films earlier this year.
Sierra is a film finance, production and foreign sales company launched by Nick Meyer and Marc Schaberg in June 2009. The shark pic is the first feature produced by Sierra to get domestic distribution.
Incentive is a two-year-old production-financing company launched by Screen Capital International, Aramid Entertainment Fund and WMA with current projects including “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits” at IFC, “Blue Valentine” at TWC and “Area 51” at Paramount.
Thanks to Netflix Instant Viewing, I am streaming the BBC series Chased by Dinosaurs to my television through my Nintendo Wii. I’m probably the rare media scholar who does not have cable television installed in my home, but I find there’s so much to watch online and now through Netflix that I’ve never missed commercial tv. Tangents aside Chased by Dinosaurs, the 2003 follow-up to Walking with Dinosaurs stars veteran BBC documentarian and naturalist Nigel Marvin, who plays a host who travels back in time to introduce viewer to the world of dinosaurs. Marvin’s interaction with digitally animated creatures is stunningly realistic and usefully illustrates how wildlife films construct nature. I am particularly interested in the episodes on underwater creatures thats combine live-action footage of the cast swimming with animated dinosharks.
A bit of research turned up some reading that offers keen insights into reading Chased by Dinosaurs, for example, Karen D. Scott and Anne M. White’s “Unnatural History? Deconstructing the Walking with Dinosaurs Phenomenon” appeared in MEDIA CULTURE SOCIETY, May 2003 vol. 25 no. 3 315-332. Marvin’s character recalls Steve Irwin, who is discussed at length by Mark Berrettini in his essay Danger! Danger! Danger!’ or When Animals Might Attack: Adventure Activism and Wildlife Film and Television” in SCOPE, vol. 1 (2004).