Rendering Climate Comedy in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 1 (2009) and 2 (2013)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Sony Pictures Animation franchise Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 1 and 2 (2009, 2013) in terms of its affective engagement with climate issues. Throughout the two films, the trope of constantly changing food weather is the subject of analysis and representation both diegetically by the films’ characters and extradiegetically by the films’ technical directors. Rendering the climate in an appealing way becomes paramount on the level of narrative and production. The treatment of food weather in the Cloudy films demonstrates the ways in which environmental animation mediates between, in the terms of C. P. Snow, the two cultures of the arts and the sciences. The Cloudy films, like many other examples of environmental animation, respond to Snow’s call by deploying imaginative, often comic approaches to topics that in the mainstream media are treated logically and seriously, but with little impact on policy. In the case of the Cloudy films, that comic approach to environmentalism is tempered by the films’ cooptation into a corporate responsibility campaign against food insecurity and by the fact that comedy is part and parcel of the business model of industrialized animation. Still, the technical challenges of animating and rendering food weather demanded that animators imaginatively experiment with actual food in a way that went over and above corporate policy. The arresting beauty and sensory engagement of the resulting animated food appeals to characters and viewers alike. Therefore, animated food—mediating nourishment and communication, science and art—may provide a productive inroad to exploring environmental issues.