Bridging the Political Deficit: Loss, Morality, and Agency in Films Addressing Climate Change. (21st May 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hammond, Philip; Breton, Hugh Ortega
• Is Part Of: Communication, culture, & critique. Volume 7:Number 3(2014:Sep.)
• Page Start: 303
• Page End: 319
• Publication Date: 2014-05-21
• Subjects: Communication -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals; Criticism -- Periodicals."com; 300.5
• DOI: 10.1111/cccr.12052
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1753-9129

Abstract

Abstract: This article examines the emotional rhetorical strategies of 3 films—The Day After Tomorrow (2004), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and The Age of Stupid (2009)—that attempt to create engagements with the "postpolitical" problem of climate change. In all 3 films the experience of personal loss, the potential for future loss, and the emotions associated with loss are fundamental to affective engagement. The emotional loading of representations of environmental problems derives partly from concerns about human political agency and subjectivity. It is not so much that emotional or moral appeals are simply added on in order to bolster a political message, but rather that autobiographical narratives of loss and morality occupy the space once dominated by modernist forms of politics.