How Does Hollywood (Not) Tackle Climate Change?
Kentaro Shintaku
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At the beginning of the 21st century, several Hollywood movies played a very innovative and important role in raising awareness about environmental issues. While these films did not fundamentally change the lives of their viewers, they did raise people’s awareness of what was happening to nature and the threat of climate change. There were various notable examples films that managed to trigger the viewer's emotions of fear while allowing people to have motivation and hope in the end. Through the depiction of environmental crisis, they also contributed to making people aware of their identity as part of a larger global community. We will look at the strengths and some limitations of these films.
As the 21st century dawned, humanity was facing a variety of problems. In the U.S., terrorism and nuclear weapons were in the news every day. Under such circumstances, it is said that people's awareness of environmental issues was not as high as it should have been. However, with the release of several Hollywood movies, a movement that changed all this began. The main ones are "Day After Tomorrow" in 2004 and "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006. The former is a fictional story set in the U.S. It tells the story of a family trying to overcome the crisis of extreme weather caused by climate change that threatens the lives of people in the U.S. and around the world. The latter is a documentary film about Al Gore, the former Vice President of the United States, who transferred his fight to somehow raise awareness of the climate change crisis in society and promote necessary measures before it is too late. Let's take a look at how Hollywood films like these have impacted the society as the 21st century has just begun.
Climate change crisis films such as "Day After Tomorrow" and "An Inconvenient Truth" played an important and necessary role in their time. Day After Tomorrow" shocked many people and changed their views on environmental issues. Although it has been pointed out that it did not change the culture of the society, it did make an important contribution to the subsequent development of awareness of global warming issues. According to Rust (2013), “The Day After Tomorrow may not have produced a significant shift in the cultural logic of ecology, but its impact did set the stage for this shift, most prominently by inspiring the production of An Inconvenient Truth.” The film "An Inconvenient Truth" similarly did not create a very rapid change, but it did make people question whether we can really live with the current situation in the face of climate change. According to one survey, more than 60% of the viewers changed their minds after watching the movie.
One way that climate change films like the two mentioned above so often use to have a greater impact on viewers is to stimulate feelings of fear. While this can be very effective in highlighting the effects of climate change that are hard to see and therefore hard to understand, it is often not enough to evoke fear alone, and other elements are also important. It has been pointed out that "Day After Tomorrow" may not have been very successful because it was perceived as mere entertainment and did not offer any solutions to climate change. As for the "An Inconvenient Truth" movie, it includes concrete suggestions on how individuals can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and movies like it are highly praised for making viewers feel like they are part of the solution. Similarly, it has been shown that even fear-mongering films are more effective when they contain positive messages and hopeful visions of solutions and the like. According to one study, after watching such films, people often begin to feel and sense that they are part of a larger global community and are moved to act more effectively to combat climate change.
Toward the start of the 21st century, a few Hollywood movies assumed a very creative and significant part in bringing issues to light about ecological issues. They raised individuals' consciousness of what was befalling nature and the danger of environmental change. There were different remarkable models films that figured out how to control the watcher's feelings of fear while permitting individuals to have inspiration and hope in the future.
References
Rust, S. (2013). Hollywood & climate change. Ecocinema theory and practice
Crespo, I., & Pereira, Â. (2013). “Climate Change Films: Fear and Agency Appeals.” Transnational Ecocinema
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