Film as communicational mediation of the ecological crisis: Avatar and The Road
Avatar and The Road
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- Submited: October 16, 2022
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Published: October 17, 2022
Abstract
This paper is a communication-oriented, ecological interpretation of James Cameron’s recent
film, Avatar, and of John Hillcoat’s The Road – two films that address the current global ecological
crisis very differently. By ‘ecological’ is meant that – in the case of Avatar – the film is ecologically
significant in its stressing of the vital interconnectedness of all living beings both with one another
and with their inorganic environment. The question of how this ecological stance is cinematically
articulated in Avatar, in science-fictional terms, is all important, because a communicational failure
in this regard would fall short of imparting to audiences the potential outcome of the continuing
destruction of ecosystems, comparatively speaking, on Earth. In The Road the ecological
dimension is encountered very differently, because the cinematic-communicational means
employed function in a register at odds with that utilised in Avatar. The point of this paper is to
explore the communicational differences, including the one regarding cinematic-communicational
register, between the two films, regardless of the fact that, arguably, they promote the same
ecological insights.
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