Hollywood's Dirtiest Secret
The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Columbia University Press
Published:22nd Mar '19
Should be back in stock very soon
In an era when many businesses have come under scrutiny for their environmental impact, the film industry has for the most part escaped criticism and regulation. Its practices are more diffuse; its final product, less tangible; and Hollywood has adopted public-relations strategies that portray it as environmentally conscious. In Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret, Hunter Vaughan offers a new history of the movies from an environmental perspective, arguing that how we make and consume films has serious ecological consequences.
Bringing together environmental humanities, science communication, and social ethics, Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret is a pathbreaking consideration of the film industry’s environmental impact that examines how our cultural prioritization of spectacle has distracted us from its material consequences and natural-resource use. Vaughan examines the environmental effects of filmmaking from Hollywood classics to the digital era, considering how popular screen media shapes and reflects our understanding of the natural world. He recounts the production histories of major blockbusters—Gone with the Wind, Singin’ in the Rain, Twister, and Avatar—situating them in the contexts of the development of the film industry, popular environmentalism, and the proliferation of digital technologies. Emphasizing the materiality of media, Vaughan interweaves details of the hidden environmental consequences of specific filmmaking practices, from water use to server farms, within a larger critical portrait of social perceptions and valuations of the natural world.
Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret injects the field of environmental media studies (and just plain media studies) with an exciting toolkit and a renewed sense of energy. -- Joshua Schulze, Dept of Film, Television, and Media, University of Michigan * New Review of Film and Television Studies *
In Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (2019), Hunter Vaughan takes a vibrant and interdisciplinary look into the environmental impact of producing, advertising, watching, distributing, and buying films. -- Cassice Last, University of St Andrews * Frames Cinema Journal *
Showcase[s] an important issue with writing that is accessible and engaging. * ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment *
Written with passion and commitment, [this book] holds a mirror to the society in redefining the boundaries of entertainment, as if the environment matters. -- Sudhirendar Sharma * Outlook: The Fully Loaded Magazine *
Hunter Vaughan's forensic accounting uncovers Hollywood's secretly unpaid debts to the environment, demonstrating ecocriticism's power to connect political economy to movies' themes and styles, for analysis and for future makers. More than compelling: entertaining and inspiring. -- Sean Cubitt, author of Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies
Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret is an important new book that exposes the hidden environmental costs of how we make, watch, and dispose of movies. Well-researched and written in an accessible style, it is a thought-provoking alternative history of Hollywood, delving into the disconnect between our enjoyment of screen culture and concern for its environmental impact. It will be of interest to scholars and students in a range of fields including cultural studies, communication, social science, and environmental studies. -- Alison Anderson, author of Media, Environment and the Network Society
In Vaughan’s deft readings of multiple films and their production apparatuses, film theory and analysis also become “updated” into a cutting-edge discipline. Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret is an essential book in ecocinema and ecomedia studies and an important contribution to ecomaterialism within cultural studies more broadly. -- Adrian Ivakhiv, author of Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature
ISBN: 9780231182416
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
256 pages