Reviews

In 2019, the film Parasite was released, making a huge splash internationally and even winning an Oscar for best picture. The title itself immediately pulled me in as I imagined the potential for hidden ecological messages in the symbolism of microscopic organisms feeding off of their host. As it turns out, Parasite is not actually about a parasite, yet my dreams of a powerful climate change narrative were nevertheless fulfilled through a powerful narrative of class discrimination, which demonstrates the “first and worst” phenomena facing us in our current struggle with climate change.

At the start of the film, we are introduced to the Kim family, an impoverished Korean family living in a semi-basement apartment. They are the underprivileged of Korea struggling just to survive, and they are strikingly juxtaposed with the Park family and their incredible house complete with personal maids, tutors and drivers. Through an impressive web of deception, the members of the Kim family all come to work for the Parks.

Ki-woo, the son of the Kim family believes this good fortune is the result of a scholar stone, also described as a landscape stone. Steeped in cultural meaning, this stone is a highly layered symbolic tool representing, among other things, the environment and the complicated relationship between modern human society and the natural world. We can see throughout the film how Ki-woo’s fascination and reliance on the stone fails him, coming to a head in the climax of the film in which he tries to commit murder using the stone as the murder weapon but ultimately failing, letting his victim use the stone against him. Through this action we can see a clear parallel to anthropogenic climate change. Just as the landscape stone is forced to turn against Ki-woo and violate his trust in the stone’s power, the effects of climate change have forced our environment to turn against us in the form of floods, fires, and violent storms across the globe.

The landscape stone is highly symbolic, but there is also quite literal imagery of climate change during a flood in which we see the Kim family and their neighborhood completely ravaged by water. The sunken basement apartments are vulnerable to the water, which we realize is not only from the rain but the overflowing sewers as well, covering the entire community in wet and filth. The Kims along with hundreds of other poor Koreans are displaced and find themselves sleeping in a gymnasium waiting for food and dry clothes.

Cut to the next morning, the Kim family is trapped in the gym while hundreds of displaced Koreans fight for resources. Meanwhile, Mrs. Park smiles at the clear blue sky, her son asleep in the sunshine, their house and livelihood completely untouched by the flooding. Moreover, she continues to call upon the Kim family to serve her completely oblivious to what has just happened to their home even going so far as to call the rain a “blessing” while Mr. Kim acts as her servant.

When we discuss climate change, we often refer to the idea of “first and worst,” which describes the phenomena in which underprivileged communities feel the first impacts of climate change and continue to be affected the worst of anyone else because of their lack of resources which leave them unable to deal with the destruction of their communities by weather events. We can clearly see this taking place as the Kims fight to survive, losing their home in the process, while the wealthy Park family fails to even notice let alone aid in their relief.

It is easy to overlook these powerful ecological messages as we focus on the drama and violence going on at the forefront of the film, but when we hone in on natural elements like water and track those motifs throughout the film, it quickly becomes clear that under the surface of this critically acclaimed thriller is a powerful message surrounding our growing struggle with climate change.

Seeing Frozen II for the first time in theaters, I was shocked to find the makings of an impressive climate change narrative in the enchanted forest and elemental spirits that form the setting for this film. I was ecstatic to see rich depictions of nature and Indigenous representation as well as a seemingly nuanced understanding of the tumultuous relationship between human civilization and effective climate change reversal and prevention measures.

Unfortunately, in the last 20 minutes of the film, this narrative fell apart as a lazy conclusion void of consequence or significant change reminded me that this film was ultimately created with the sole intention of filling seats rather than creating a story of symbolic meaning and societal commentary. Needless to say, by the end of this film, I felt deeply dissatisfied and was left with the itch to put into words why this film failed so extremely to follow through on the potential climate change message.

The climate change narrative becomes apparent early on in the film when it is explained that there once was an enchanted forest inhabited by a community of people called Northuldra. These people were not themselves magical but knew how to use the magic of the forest, representing Indigenous people and traditional knowledge. The elemental spirits protecting the forest grew angry when violence broke out between these people and invaders from the nearby kingdom of Arendelle, where Elsa and Anna live, and cover the enchanted forest in mist so that it is no longer visible to the outside world. This narrative has clear parallels to real world history, mirroring the colonial history of western society and the loss of land and culture that has come from colonial invasion.

This is a clear and potentially powerful setting for a climate change narrative and this strength carries through to the climax of the film when Anna realizes that the only way to save both her people and the forest is to destroy a dam that was wrongfully built there. The dam was built to help the people of Arendelle, but is also hurting the forest and now in order to save the forest, the dam must be destroyed, which will in turn wipe out Arendelle and force the kingdom to relocate and rebuild. This has the potential to send an incredibly strong environmental message because it shows how difficult it is to create effective policies to mitigate (let alone reverse) climate change and shows audiences that ultimately, people will have to make sacrifices and changes to their daily way of life if we ever hope to truly save Earth.

In the end, none of this actually happens. Anna realizes the dam must be destroyed even if Arendelle falls but just in the nick of time, Elsa is able to use her powers to redirect the water so that nothing is actually damaged at all and the people continue life as if nothing has changed. This completely undermines the nuanced journey that Anna makes in order to come to the conclusion to break the dam, and instead of seeing Arendelle rebuilt with the newly recovered traditional knowledge of the Northuldra people in order to live more sustainably alongside the nature spirits, they simply continue to live separately and any anger that ever existed between the elemental spirits and violent industrialized civilizations like Arendelle is completely forgotten.

This conclusion left me wondering if the creative team behind the film was even aware of the environmental motifs that shone through their enchanted forest or if the emphasis on the natural world was completely coincidental alongside our growing concerns about climate change. Whatever the case may be, Frozen II failed miserably to follow through on the powerful environmental message that the film teased in its exposition, leaving the audience instead with a confused metaphor relating colonial history to anthropogenic climate change but ultimately becoming complicit in our current societal habit of ignoring the severity and oncoming consequences should we fail to take immediate actions to stop the effects of climate change.

In 2014, Disney made an exciting new addition to the Disney cannon in the form of Moana, which I quickly realized was not only an incredible subversion of the classic Disney princess formula, as it has already been thoroughly praised, but also a moving climate change narrative, and from the Indigenous perspective no less.

Moana introduces us to a community of Pacific Islanders as their island, Motunui, is beginning to die after the heart of Te Fiti, a powerful goddess of life, is stolen by the demigod Maui. Immediately, we see how climate change denial can weave its way into a community as Moana’s father, the Chief of Motunui, refuses to change his people’s way of life in order to reverse the effects of climate change. The coconut trees on the island are diseased and fail to produce edible crops, while the fish are mysteriously disappearing, leaving the people of Motunui vulnerable without their major food sources. Moana sees that extreme and immediate actions need to be taken, but fear of the unknown stops her father from being able to take these important steps towards climate change reversal, leaving Moana to go on the journey to return Te Fiti’s heart alone.

Just within this introduction we can unpack a great deal of symbolism alluding to today’s struggle with climate change. Maui chooses to steal the heart of Te Fiti because he wants to give it as an epic gift to human society so that they can create life themselves without the help of the goddess. This shows how powerful a force humans are in changing the climate, specifically through their selfishness and desire for ultimate possession of the land. This, of course, backfires, and rather than be able to breathe life into new places, the existing islands begin to die and the Pacific Islanders become trapped on their island and must give up their tradition of voyaging, clinging to one last living island until it slowly begins to die underneath their feet.

The loss of tradition represented by the Pacific Islanders’ inability to voyage is especially interesting when we consider that this film is from an Indigenous perspective. The audience can see that the effects of climate change can aid in the erasure of cultures when considering island nations that are quickly falling victim to sea level rise and extreme coastal storms. Furthermore, it shows the incredible value of traditional knowledge as represented by the act of voyaging. Moana is helpless to stop the effects of climate change until she embraces the traditional knowledge of her people, which everyone else in her community has forgotten or otherwise tried to erase. Once she regains this knowledge, she is able to complete her journey to Te Fiti and is ultimately able to restore life to the islands and remove the inky black death which represents climate change in the film.

This film also creates a dialogue about age gaps and how climate change is treated drastically differently within different generations. Even for people like Moana’s father, who can see the effects of climate change directly impacting his community, the fear of his own inability to save himself and his loved ones leads him to inaction, symbolizing the current inability for governments around the world to take the necessary steps towards ending climate change. The message of the film is ultimately hopeful, however, as the fresh-faced Moana shows the power of younger generations to ultimately end climate change should we continue to fight passionately to have environmental issues be seen as urgent as they truly are. Moreover, Moana shows that young people not only have the power to stop climate change, but that this will never really happen unless we fight for it as rigorously and persistently as Moana does in this film, effectively showing audiences that human intervention is needed to stop and reverse the climate change that humans have caused.

In the film Moana, climate change is effectively ended and the people of Motunui are able to reclaim their culture and live harmoniously with the ocean and islands once again. It is also clear, however, that this result is only possible through the persistence of younger generations as well as their ability to open their minds once again to traditional knowledge which has largely been lost in western society. This ultimately creates not only an amazing story but also a call to action to the millions of children who have watched the film and now I can only hope we see this message turn into legitimate change as the kids who looked up to Moana in 2014 are slowly developing their own voices.