Recent documentaries and feature films explore and argue against everyday eco-disasters. With explorations of films as diverse as Dead Ahead, a 1992 HBO dramatization of the Exxon Valdez disaster, Total Recall (1990), a science fiction feature film highlighting oxygen as a commodity, The Devil Wears Prada (2006), a comment on the fashion industry, and Food, Inc. (2009), a documentary interrogation of the food industry, our projects explore documentaries and feature films as film art to determine how successfully they fulfill their goals.
We assert that whether or not the films we explore succeed as arguments against everyday eco-disasters and the negative environmental externalities they produce depend not only on the message the filmmakers convey but also, and most importantly, on the rhetorical strategies they employ.
Happy Feet Two is a case in point. Even though most reviews of Happy Feet Two claim the film has subsumed the original film’s environmental critique of overfishing with an entertaining story of species interdependence, we see the film as a powerful critique of humans’ toxic contributions to climate change and water pollution in order to fulfill basic needs without the restraint necessary for sustainable development.
Lisa Schwarzbaum’s Entertainment Weekly review of the film argues, for example, that “Earnest messages about bad climate change and good parenting skills have been replaced by a we-all-share-a-planet sense of fun that's more Finding Nemo than National Geographic.” Manohla Dargis of The New York Times goes further, asserting that the film is merely “an amiable sequel with not much on its mind other than funny and creaky jokes, and waves of understated beauty.”
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