Ecological Citizens with a Movie Camera: Communitarian and Agonistic Environmental Documentaries

Hedemann Hedemann

doi:10.3390/socsci8110307

Abstract

Environmental documentaries attained wider public and academic attention, especially in the aftermath of Al Gore’s prominent documentary on climate change An Inconvenient Truth. Making environmental documentaries is a cinematic form of political advocacy. However, there is a lack of research on the broad range of such films from Germany. While earlier works tended to an accusatory style, newer environmental documentary seems to be more constructive and aiming at spreading information about feasible alternatives. This article pursues three objectives: first, to gain a deeper understanding of the shift from accusatory to constructive documentaries; second, to connect film studies to the political change-making role and therefore to theories of ecological citizenship; and third, to explore the question of what citizenship with a movie camera means. The accusatory and constructive style are associated with agonistic and communitarian ecological citizenship. A sample of two films from the German context, namely Leben ausser Kontrolle produced by Bertram Verhaag in 2004 and Voices of Transition produced by Nils Aguilar in 2012, is analyzed comparatively. The interpretive research method combines methods of studying audio-visual rhetoric with the framing approach from social movement studies.

Highlights

If it is taken into account that most people learn about ecological problems from the media, the rising importance of environmental documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim 2006)in the last years cannot be neglected
Two films were chosen for an in depth analysis: Leben ausser Kontrolle (English: Life Running out of Control, 2004) directed by Bertram Verhaag and Voices of Transition (2012) directed by Nils Aguilar
Leben ausser Kontrolle was selected as a potential case of agonistic ecological citizenship whereas Voices of Transition was included since it seemed to argue for a communitarian type of ecological citizenship

Summary

Introduction

If it is taken into account that most people learn about ecological problems from the media, the rising importance of environmental documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim 2006)in the last years cannot be neglected. There seems to be a remarkable shift from accusatory, sometimes apocalyptic sorts of films towards more constructive documentaries which present sustainable alternatives and which are more hopeful in tone (Hughes 2014; Duvall 2017). This article addresses the question which political role both the accusatory and constructive environmental documentaries play. For this purpose, the starting point for my analysis will be the basic distinction between agonistic and communitarian forms of citizenship (Mouffe 1992). Agonistic ecological citizenship refers to implacable protest activism that opposes existing power structures in discourses and actions, while its communitarian counterpart practices and spreads the word about attractive alternative modes of living, consumption and production

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