By Peter Blanchard, Jeffrey Wong
Vy Duong, and James Wilson
Are humans and nature separate or is there a complex relationship between the two? Can we continue to regard nature as outside of civilization given new science and ecological concepts that illustrate the interconnectedness of life? Ideas about the relationship between humans and nature have influenced how societies and cultures view nature. The media and its visualizations of nature have played a significant part in how nature has been constructed. This anthology contributes to the discussion of humans and nature through four essays that explore how various forms of media have influenced people’s perception of nature. Specifically, these essays explore Chinese depictions of the environment, Ansel Adams’ photography in Yosemite, corporate advertisements, and the Swamp Thing comic books.
Before delving into the specific frameworks of nature that these essays analyze, it is important to examine previous dominant discourses on nature. Western views of nature have concentrated on a man versus nature dichotomy, where it is emphasized that humanity and nature are separate. Nature has been viewed as a place to utilize resources for the good of humanity. Even reaching back to the Bible, Genesis indicates that people saw the Earth and its resources as God-given. As God said to man “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” This statement, written millennia ago, is one of the first known sources of this ideology; that mankind and nature are two separate entities and that man is greater than nature. This distinction of the human versus nonhuman emerges today through dominant, conventional perceptions of man and “nature.”
When the New World was colonized, this Western view of nature was thrown into action on a new landscape. Forests were cleared for settlements, war was fought with the native inhabitants, and a new nation founded on ideals of democracy and freedom sprung on to the global scene. Westward expansion and manifest destiny was glorified as the great mission of the United States. Indeed, Americans, to use the language of Genesis, sought to “subdue” the Earth. This idea is echoed in the Walt Whitman poem “Pioneers! O Pioneer!” when it is stated “we primeval forests felling, / We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within; / We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, / Pioneers! O pioneers!” Here the pioneers, the people marching across the North American continent, are exalted for their efforts to “civilize” nature. It is through these examples that illuminate the ideology of man dominating nature. Mankind and nature’s qualities are differentiated extensively to the point that they can be considered opposites. “Man” conjures up the ideals of order, domination, rules, and structure. Nature alludes to notions of wildness, savagery, and chaos; all characteristics that pit nature against humankind as a sort of rival.
However, this simple dichotomy of man and nature is complicated in the realms of academia. A catalytic event that sparked a reexamination of the human-nature relationship was Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species, which claimed, through empirical evidence, that nature shaped and influenced the present forms of animals, including humans. Thus, a tenuous link between man and nature was established through the natural process of evolution. By connecting man and nature, Charles Darwin’s theory critiqued the assumption that man transcended nature, showing that man is a product of the wilderness and chaos he so despised. The implications of Charles Darwin’s work transformed the scientific field and also opened the doors for further inquiry into the human-nature relationship. For example, as Raymond Williams, distinguished British literary critic, stated, “The idea of nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount a human history,” often imposing more human than nonhuman components. Socio-historically, ideologies of “nature” in popular American culture have come to encompass, exclude, and alter the preconceptions of the “natural” and “unnatural” with changing times and cultures. In this anthology, media is brought into the discourse which complicates these ideologies of man and nature.
The media is both the affected and affecter of the dominant view on nature; it can both perpetuate and change these perspectives on the environment. As a reflection of social ideology, it portrays a specific view of the environment that follows the popular thinking of the time. Working in this manner, the portrayals of the environment are particularly narrow, displaying the superficial aspects without taking a critical examination into the human-nature relationship. This, for example, can be seen in the giant landscape paintings that were popular in colonial America, painted by such artists as Albert Bierstadt. These paintings were usually painted on a large canvas, showing vast scenes with no humans, only the available untamed beauty. These illustrations romanticized the idea of Western wilderness, a pristine environment rich with natural resources. Besides mirroring popular conceptions, the media also has the power of affecting the popular ideology as well. For example, in the realm of architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright built the house “Falling Water”, where architecture and nature were juxtaposed together. This juxtaposition became hailed as a great achievement, for a man-made object and nature were viewed as complimenting each other rather than in conflict with one another. This helped change the popular ideology, for architects then began taking into consideration the surrounding environments of the building sites to incorporate into their structures. Thus, man and nature were seen to be able to co-exist.
In this anthology, we hope to further investigate the role of the media and its visualizations of the environment in influencing our perception of nature through specific case studies. The essays in this anthology explore perceptions of the environment shaped by images, videos, paintings, or comic books. The first essay authored by Peter Blanchard seeks to explore how people’s views of Yosemite have been influence by the photography of Ansel Adams. His images of dramatic landscape scenes evoke a wilderness ideal, that is, land uninhabited by humans. The second essay by Jeffrey Wong examines images of the Chinese environment, looking at how alternate ideas of nature are reflected in these images. From there, the essay will explore the cross-cultural interactions of different interpretations of the environment and how they inform the current generation on their approach to the environment. In the third essay by Vy Duong, advertisements from such companies as Chevron, Vitamin Water, and Green Peace are analyzed, where motives to appeal to the viewing masses clash or correlate with pre-existing “ideal” or “preferable” molds of “nature.” Finally, James Wilson’s essay comprises the fourth piece which analyzes the work author Alan Moore did on the comic book Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing was used as a tool to promote environmental awareness and to dispel myths about the aesthetics of nature.
The specifics of media play a vital role in this anthology. Each media in turn specifies its audience or viewer as well. Blanchard’s and Wong’s essays both deal with photography, and how it is presented. Though both deal with photos, how they are displayed are very different. Blanchard uses the images of Ansel Adams in his essay, which was displayed in a gallery setting, and later on magazine and book covers. This audience was generally people who already had an interest in nature. Several of Wong’s photos were used in newspapers, which were available to everyone. The purpose of these pictures was to report, vastly different than a purpose of aesthetics. In Duong’s paper, she emphasizes commercials that are seen on television, broadcasted to the vast American public. Lastly, Wilson’s article deals with a comic book, which is generally viewed as literature for children. Moore’s run on Swamp Thing changed this, however, marking it as the first mainstream comic for adults. It is important to consider these audiences when reading this anthology. Think about who is receiving these perceptions of nature. What is nature? How does the environment and humankind work together and how do they continue to keep a separation? How does the media, in its different forms, help propagate popular ideologies of nature, and how do they work against them? These are all questions we aim to explore and the answers, we hope, will come naturally.
Ansel Adams and the Wilderness Myth
By Peter Blanchard
When one thinks of Ansel Adams’s images of the American West magnificent waterfalls, granite domes, vast mountain ranges, dramatic deserts, and fascinating cloud formations immediately come into one’s mind. What one does not think of is a landscape that has been inhabited and shaped by humans for thousands of years. In other words, the images of Ansel Adams that made him famous evoke an ideal of wilderness that has no place for compelling human interactions with the landscape. Yosemite Valley, where Adams took his most famous photographs, was largely a human modified landscape and Ahwahneechee villages were destroyed before the creation of a National Park. This paper will analyze how certain photographs that Adams created and how they were exposed to the American public have promoted a wilderness ideal that does not represent an accurate view of reality. I hope to show that how we view nature has an incredible influence on how we treat nature and that an accurate view of nature should encompass not only biological and geological factors but also a multiplicity of human history.
To understand the significance of Ansel Adams’s work, the historical context of landscape photography and its affect on views of nature should be explored. At the beginning of her essay, Deborah Bright poses the question “do cultural elites, including artists, reinforce dominant myths about the relations between ‘humans’ and ‘nature,’ or work against them?” (60). Upon reading the essay, I found it easy to come to the conclusion that as time has progressed more and more photographers tend to “work against” dominant myths. This essay seeks to determine where Ansel Adams fits in this complicated timeline of photographic representations of the environment. In the late 19th century, when railroads were popping up all across the West, photography became a means of advertising the West, and more Americans found themselves visiting places they had already seen (Bright 61). The same industrial machine that was laying rails on the landscape, “commodified, packaged, and sold to a mass public” the views of the landscape (61). Before long, people like John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt realized the negative effects of industry on nature and jumpstarted the preservation movement.
In the early 20th century, Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand ushered in an era of pure photography where photography is “an act of personal, spiritual revelation” (Bright 62). At this time, Ansel Adams and Edward Weston sprung onto the photographic scene, promoting photography as “highly abstracted, an intellectual project” and they became “interpreters of a distinctively American natural, national landscape” (62). By the 1970s, partly due to new ecological science, movements emerged in photography where complicated human relationships with the environment were depicted, challenging the romantic view of Adams and Weston (65). Also around this time, eco-feminist photography questioned the male dominated view of nature. Despite these movements, an interesting point that Bright makes is that “in the mainstream art-photography world, works have tended to remain indebted to the past rather than pointing the way toward any significant new expressive vision of human and environmental relations” (68). Perhaps the incredible influence of Ansel Adams’s vision of a pristine virgin wilderness has something to do with this.
Before we examine photographs of Ansel Adams, we must delve into the notion of wilderness. The idea of wilderness in America originated with how Europeans viewed the New World, which they ironically saw as a seemingly uninhabited expanse of land in order to justify dispossession. Wilderness came to be seen as a place where humans did not exist and this ideal has guided conservation and preservation efforts throughout the 20th century. As a result, “some of our most fervent endeavors to preserve wilderness have ended up thwarting indigenous efforts to maintain their subsistence and enhance empowerment” (Faulstich 162). The goal has been to preserve a non-human landscape and consequently “wilderness is patronized as an otherness and is effectively cordoned off from human cultures” (167). The truth that we must accept is that there is virtually no landscape on Earth that has not been touched or influenced in some way by man. The preservation of wilderness is sort of paradoxical anyway because recreation is almost always allowed. This use may be more spiritual than exploitive but it is nevertheless a human use of the land. Who are we to set aside millions of acres of land for the spiritual use of middle to upper class Americans when Native Americans, due to centuries of genocide and failed Indian policies, live in poverty? One must remember, however, that the purpose of preservation is to protect beautiful and biologically significant land from commercial exploitation. This goal has certainly been accomplished unfortunately at the expense of many innocent people and under the banner of a false view of nature.
Even the language of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which set aside millions of acres as “wilderness areas,” reflects an idea of humans and nature as separate. The act proclaims that “a wilderness... is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”[1] This federal definition of wilderness, no doubt influenced by hundreds of years of Western views of nature, precludes the possibility of human interactions with nature. What if Native Americans use the resources of a proposed wilderness area? These are the sorts of complexities with land policy that we will see are not a part of Ansel Adams’s photography. Indeed, this context of wilderness as a place where humans do not belong is the context in which Ansel Adams produced stunning representations in the name of wilderness, an ideal not aligned with actuality.
The images that I would like to examine in relation to the wilderness ideal are those Adams took in Yosemite, the place that initially inspired him as a young boy, particularly “Cathedral Rocks,” “Clearing Winter Storm,” and “Moon and Half Dome.” “Cathedral Rocks” is a dramatic image of granite rock formations that are barely illuminated by a setting sun. “Clearing Winter Storm” provides us with a grand view of a tree packed Yosemite Valley that has just experienced a storm. “Moon and Half Dome,” perhaps one of Adams most famous photographs, presents majestic Half Dome complemented by the moon. These three images, among hundreds of others, have appeared in such things as coffee table books, gallery exhibits, pamphlets, and advertisements.
Clearing Winter Storm, 1944
Cathedral Rocks, c. 1949
Moon and Half Dome, 1960
Images from http://www.anseladams.com
In these photographs, we see Adams’s masterful use of light, contrasting bright sunlight with shadows. One interesting aspect of Adams’s career that should be pointed out is the observation that Adams moved “from the microcosm to the macrocosm, from the smallest detail of nature to her Grand Design” (Westerbeck 11). In these three images we are clearly seeing Adams depicting nature’s “Grand Design,” as emphasis is focused on the massive rock formations and the enormity of Yosemite Valley. Later, we will see that this move towards depicting grand panoramic views devoid of humans corresponds with Adams involvement in the preservation movement. Interestingly, Westerbeck notes that as Adams moves towards the bigger picture, so too does his language in his writings on nature, which usually accompany his photographs in books (12). A sort of nineteenth century Romantic and Transcendental view of nature emerges along with Adams’s photographs. Overall, these images exemplify Adams’s intent to capture the beauty of nature, promoting a wilderness ideal, and to stay away from the current events of his time.
David Peeler points out that throughout his life Adams felt he was disengaged from social and political happenings believing that “the artist should remain beyond the turmoil and confusion of current events, and instead focus upon the more enduring and transcendent qualities of nature” (Peeler 309). Carrying on the tradition of Stieglitz, Adams photography would be “an emotional and spiritual enterprise” that would “soar above ideology and politics” (314). We see however that an ideology of wilderness is very much present in his images and this ideology has significant political implications, which will be elaborated on later. Furthermore, Adams life was not as disengaged as he may have wanted to believe it was. Peeler notes Adams’s involvement in WWII training combat photographers and his environmentalism.
In 1934, Adams became a board member of John Muir’s Sierra Club, later becoming director, and was among a group of people who ushered in a new era of Sierra Club policy where focus shifted from recreation, to the preservation of wilderness (Haip 76). Adams’s “nostalgia for a (lost) organic society, in which cultures were imagined to have lived in perfect equilibrium with natural resources, found a new resonance among environmental activists” (Bright 64). To promote the purpose of their organizations the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society used Adams’s images of wilderness in books and pamphlets. It seems an environmental ethic was being formed around a series of images and ideologies as opposed to environmental practices.
The American Wilderness, This is the American Earth, and Celebrating the American Earth: A Tribute to Ansel Adams are but a few of the many books and portfolios by Ansel Adams and preservation societies that make reference to an “American” nature or wilderness ideal. But what exactly are the “American Wilderness” and “American Earth” and what does this say about Adams and these organization’s view of nature? The term “American Earth” seems to suggest that America is in ownership of the entire planet Earth. The last book, however, is not about American domination but instead is a tribute to Ansel Adams by the Wilderness Society, given out as a gift for joining the organization. The use of the term wilderness in these books leads one to believe that the images contained within represent some virgin primeval landscape, when in fact Native Americans have been modifying the land for thousands of years.
This is the American Earth was the first of an exhibit format series of books that the Sierra Club published. It featured Ansel Adams’s photographs, as well as other artists, paired with the writing of Nancy Newhall. The goal of the book was essentially to capture the philosophy of the Sierra Club in images and words. One of the chapters of this book, entitled “New World,” “illustrated the ‘Eden’ [the Europeans] found with Adams’s vision of a primordial North America” (Spaulding(a) 311). The text lying alongside his images in this chapter showed how “new ideas of democracy and freedom were born out of the frontier experience” (311). This Turnerian view of the frontier completely ignores complexities associated with race, gender, and class struggles. The myth of an open expanse of land where frontiersmen lived in the wilderness is clearly being promoted. Adams and Newhall do however strive to promote a new view of the frontier, one where “progress is not defined as the conquest of wilderness but as benign coexistence with it” (314). Although this is a better view than Turner’s, it still fails to recognize human interactions with the environment. The idea of civilization here and wilderness somewhere else remains. It is interesting to note that some of the younger environmentalists at the time criticized the nationalistic title of the book.
The financial gain that Ansel Adams acquired through the publication of these books and their subsequent success raises a contradiction. Though Adams was a staunch preservationist, his photographs and how they were distributed drew people to visit Yosemite and other national parks because the wilderness ideal that was promoted in his photography was very appealing to the public. Even before these books appeared, in the 1920s and 1930s Adams worked in Yosemite for the Curry Company, taking pictures that they would use for advertising their resort operation (Spaulding(b) 619). During the Depression, this job was an important source of income for Adams. Although his images evoke an ideal of wilderness, the reality is that Yosemite was a tourist crowded destination where Adams made a living off park concessionaires and idealized landscapes. Later, however, Adams grew increasingly aware of his role in increasing tourism and the misuse of his photographs in advertising. Nevertheless, he continued to provide his images to such companies as Kodak and Standard Oil (629, 632).
Even after his death, his images were used in advertisements. “Clearing Winter Storm” was used in an advertisement for tactical weapons systems proclaiming that these weapons and Yosemite National Park are both important national resources (Haip 80). What is striking is the resemblance of how popularized Adams’s images became to the late 19th century images that the railroads distributed to advertize the West. Indeed, “Ansel Adams’s words and images, as well as the ‘wilderness idea’ have become a commodity” (80). Is Ansel Adams simply a 20th century version of Western advertisement to increase tourism, or is there something more complex about his attitude towards advertising that must be explored? How can we make sense of his radical views about preservation and portrayals of wilderness ideals paired with his financial situation as well as the political reality of the time?
The conflict between tourism, in other words making the National Parks accessible to millions of Americans, and the preservation of these same places has been a significant issue since the parks were founded. John Muir believed that people had to visit parks in order to want to preserve them and Adams took on a similar viewpoint (Spaulding(b) 630). In regard to his images used for advertizing he hoped “that his commercial images might occasionally convey, in addition to their specific corporate purpose, a sense of the beauty of the world” (629). Furthermore, “he saw his participation [in increased tourism] as, at least in part, an effort at revolution from within—to redirect the tourist mind through images, to clarify the true purpose of the national park and wilderness areas” (633). If this was indeed the case, then Adams sought to promote the true purpose of the National Parks through depicting landscapes that evoke a wilderness ideal.
It is no surprise then that when Mission 66, a project to improve the infrastructure of National Parks, came along in the late 1950s, Adams spoke out strongly against it (Spauling(b) 635). His view of nature and wilderness was at stake because roads would be put where man does not belong and therefore where roads should not be. Later, however, Adams came to relative agreement with the Park Service, where projects tended to reduce unnecessary structures in Yosemite (638). In regard to tourism, we cannot simply conclude that his financial interests guided his decisions on how to use his photography because he genuinely cared about nature. Even when he needed tourist money, he spoke out against Mission 66 (639). Though he genuinely cared about nature and used his photographs to promote his views, these photographs gave people a false sense of what Yosemite is and was.
The images “Cathedral Rocks,” “Clearing Winter Storm,” and “Moon and Half Dome” magnificently capture points in time when nature was being exceptionally beautiful. Viewing these images, one feels as if they are right there in Yosemite Valley in a great wilderness of granite rock devoid of humans. Ansel Adams is incredibly successful at capturing the timelessness of nature and one imagines that Yosemite has always looked the way it appears in his images. Upon closer examination, however, one learns that Yosemite Valley is not simply a cathedral of rock as John Muir put it, but a place that has supported humans for hundreds of years and “when Adams took his most famous photographs, Indians still lived in Yosemite” (Spence 58). Before the land was set aside by Lincoln as a state park in 1864, the Mariposa Battalion ruthlessly destroyed Indian villages during a military campaign. Later, when Yosemite was a well-known destination, it began to suffer from the affects of over-use. In 1890, an Indian petition claimed “this valley was taken away from [them] [for] a pleasure ground… Yosemite is no longer a National Park, but merely a hay-farm and cattle range” (Keller and Turek 22). The petition was ignored and the Indians were ignored, even in the park museums where “early curators interpreted Indians as relics or not at all” (22). Furthermore, Indians managed the land in a way, usually through frequent low-intensity burning, that promoted oak and shrub growth as opposed to the tree packed valley floor we see in “Clearing Winter Storm” that resulted from new management.
Despite the early violence in Yosemite, Indians were able to live there for quite a long time compared to other Parks (Spence 27). With tourism, Indians were able to find jobs while also continuing traditional life (32). The Indians also became part of the attraction of Yosemite as many believed they “somehow complemented or completed a wilderness scene” (35). This is fascinating because here the wilderness ideal clearly includes humans even though Indians were vanishing from the landscape. In my mind, this ideal is clearly an extension of early European views on the New World of a vast land whose inhabitants were primitive and needed civilization. Through military regulations on traditional hunting practices and later Park Service policies that controlled village life, Indian presence gradually declined in Yosemite and officials finally created the “wilderness” image that they wanted. Indeed, “what Adams’s photographs obscure, and what tourists, government officials and environmentalists fail to remember, is that the uninhabited wilderness had to be created” (58). So even though Adams’s images point us towards the belief that humans and nature should be separate, the so-called “wilderness” he is saying we should preserve is in fact human created and controlled.
Another aspect of Adams’s images that I would like to examine is the notion of beauty. When one looks as “Clearing Winter Storm,” “Moon and Half Dome,” or “Cathedral Rocks,” one cannot help but be mesmerized by the incredible beauty of what they depict. But is nature always beautiful? Is a burnt over forest any less natural then a pristine intact forest? Why are Adams’s images of Yosemite only of “perfect” nature, in other words, aesthetically pleasing images? Perhaps this can be explained by the observation that “photography in the art world relies for its effect on established conventions of beauty or unbeauty, because beauty (or harmony, or sublimity) is the tradition of landscape in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art” (Bright 68). When beauty is the focus of art, the realities behind the art are obscured and we are left with an inaccurate view of reality. We do not get a sense of the sorts of complex nature-human interactions that are going on in Yosemite from Adams’s images.
There exists a sort of paradox in regard to nature-human interactions that warrants attention. In a sense, Adams’s images advocate a sort of worship of nature, a celebration of the incredible beauty of the natural world. But humans celebrating their environment is precisely what we do not see in his images of Yosemite. What better way to do this than to actually photograph humans interacting with their environment? In some parts of Adams career we do see images of humans interacting with nature but when we examine his career outside of Yosemite, we nevertheless still see his desire to photograph the beauty of nature.
Though Adams is most well known for his images of Yosemite, his career extended well beyond the Valley that inspired his interest in photography. At the beginning of WWII, he was hired by the Department of the Interior to photograph land under their jurisdiction to show the importance of the department’s duties. During this project, Adams did photograph human interactions with the environment including Boulder Dam and Native Americans. These images, however, have not until recently been made available for viewing by the public. He also photographed Manzanar War Relocation Center, documenting the lives of the Japanese Internees resulting in the book Born Free and Equal. Though he seemed legitimately concerned with the situation of the Japanese, his images “are not psychologically penetrating, and resemble, in a curious way, propaganda” (Phillips 58). Dorothea Lange, a famous photographer of social issues, claimed that Adams “‘isn’t acutely aware of social change’” (58). Furthermore, he seemed to believe that the landscape surrounding the camp at Manzanar influenced the perceived “positive attitude” he felt the Japanese had. Interestingly, the famous landscape photograph of Mount Williamson was taken at Manzanar. It seems that Adams’s “art” photographs were strictly limited to dramatic depictions of nature, where humans are absent, and wilderness is the ideal.
Navajo Girl, Canyon De Chelly, c. 1942
Boulder Dam, 1942
The logical question that this discussion of Ansel Adams leads to is how can photography be free of ideology and worldviews? How does one go about depicting nature as accurately as possible to include spatial and temporal realities in representations? I think the key to this process is recognizing that short timescales are just as significant as long timescales in shaping landscapes. The timelessness of Ansel Adams’s photographs leads us to ignore the ecological processes at work in the short term. Part of the reason for this is because Adams believed “the artist’s life was to be devoted to the serene and the stable, never stooping to the contentiousness and the impermanence of daily life” (Peeler 334). This view definitely manifests itself in his photography, clearly ignoring an important part of life and nature. It is true that it has taken physical processes millions of years to form the fascinating shape of Half Dome, but what about the human populations living underneath Half Dome that actively interact with their environment? Modern ecological science has pointed towards the conclusion that the environment changes on long and short timescales. Having understood this, we realize that “wilderness” is really a pointless term. What we might think are “wilderness conditions” in a landscape that have existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, are actually the result of recent environmental and social changes.
Nature is something that we view through a lens of experience and culture. Dominant American culture has viewed wilderness as land where humans and “awesome nature” are separate. We see this view of nature in image-form very clearly in Ansel Adams’s works of Yosemite and other National Parks. This view of nature, however, has resulted in “ecological colonialism,” where wilderness preservation becomes another form of exploitive use (Faulstich 170). Furthermore, the experiences and traditional knowledge of Native Americans are ignored. Ansel Adams stressed the universe’s “enduring and comely qualities at the expense of its temporal and ugly ones” (Peeler 333). As a result, fascinating processes that occur on short timescales are left out of his view of nature. We are left with a body of work, particularly of Yosemite, that evokes a wilderness that has existed throughout time, an ideal that is not representative of the actual natural environment. With this wilderness ideal in mind, people have managed nature reserves by excluding locals in the United States and in developing countries influenced by American conservation. What we need is a view of nature that recognizes human interactions with the environment so that we are better able to solve the many conservation issues we face today. Given photography’s enormous contribution to how our culture views nature, photography will no doubt be an important tool for reevaluating our view of nature and solving environmental problems.
Works Cited
Bright, Deborah. “The Machine in the Garden Revisited: American Environmentalism and Photographic Aesthetics.” Art Journal, Vol. 51, No. 2, Art and Ecology (Summer, 1992), pp. 60-71.
Faulstich, Paul. “The Cultured Wild and the Limits of Wilderness.” Place of the Wild. Ed. David Clarke Burks. Washington, D.C: Island Press, 1994.
Haip, Renée. “Ansel Adams: Forging the Wilderness Idea.” Ansel Adams: Essays on His Legacy and Legend. San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, 1993.
Keller, R., & Turek, M. American indians & national parks. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998.
Peeler, David P. “The Art of Disengagement: Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.” Journal of American Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3, American Art and Music (Dec., 1993), pp. 309-334.
Phillips, Sandra S. “Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange: A Friendship of Differences.” Ansel Adams: Essays on His Legacy and Legend. San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, 1993.
Spaulding, Jonathan. (a). Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: a biography. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995.
Spaulding, Jonathan. (b). Yosemite and Ansel Adams: Art, Commerce, and Western Tourism. The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 65, No. 4, Tourism and the American West (Nov., 1996), pp. 615-639. University of California Press.
Spence, Mark. “Dispossessing the Wilderness: Yosemite Indians and the National Park Ideal, 1864-1930.” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 27-59.
Westerbeck, Colin. “Ansel Adams: The Man and the Myth.” Ansel Adams: Essays on His Legacy and Legend. San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, 1993.
China’s Place in Nature: A Question of Cultural Heritage
When people hear the words “China” and “environment” in the same sentence, a variety of environmental degradation images are conjured, including scenes of deforestation, air and water pollution, and desertification. In popular media discourse, most of the blame for China’s environmental problems targets the booming economy and a preoccupation of obtaining the quickest profits in the cheapest possible way. However, I do not believe that China’s economy is entirely at fault. Rather, another influential factor that deserves additional attention is Chinese culture. Culture, as it pertains to China’s relationship with the environment, is an important topic to consider because it shapes people’s views and determines their behavior. In this essay, the evolution of the environment in Chinese culture will be traced in a photographic timeline. The three time periods examined are: one, ancient China which will be loosely defined as China under dynastic rule; two, China under Mao Zedong with an emphasis during the Great Leap Forward; and three, contemporary China, post-Mao and into the 21st century. Through a close reading of these snapshots of the Chinese environment, I will explore the origins and interactions of elements within Chinese culture and how they have formulated the Chinese perception of the environment.
The first object to be examined is a traditional Chinese landscape painting titled “Summer Mountains” (Fig. A). “Summer Mountains” is a work done in the shan shui (山水) style attributed to Qu Ding, a painter during the Song dynasty. This term “shan shui” literally means “mountain water” and describes paintings that prominently feature the natural world. Indeed, the giant mountain range dominates the frame of the painting while the water and tree grove is shown below.
Yet, unlike the Western tradition, Chinese landscapes do not exclusively depict the environment. A closer look at the base of the mountains reveals two clusters of Chinese pagoda-styled buildings. The inclusion of buildings in a landscape painting shows a Chinese recognition that humans are connected to the environment; the environment is not an “other” outside of the human realm. As such, ancient Chinese thought emphasized the importance of harmony with nature, as demonstrated from the teachings of Buddhism and Daoism. According to Buddhism, all life is interconnected and so a minimal impact on other lifeforms is most desired. In Daoism, followers are beseeched to live “with the flow of the Dao” or, in other words, with the progression of nature. Both philosophies stress that humans should be respectful and adaptive towards nature, underlying our interconnectedness with the environment. In the painting, “Summer Mountains,” this idea of a peaceful coexistence of human and nature is manifested in the spatial orientation of the buildings. The buildings’ seamless integration to the natural surroundings almost makes them seem to be a kind of organic offshoot. Yet, the form of the buildings does not seek to emulate nature. Rather, the buildings still retain architectural features that mark it as distinctly human-made. Here, a contradiction seems to appear: the human as a component of nature but at the same time apart from it. However, the “natural” and “artificial” elements of the buildings highlight an important aspect of harmony, specifically the difference between harmony and balance. To use music as an analogy, harmony refers to heterogeneous objects complementing each other to form a unified whole, just as two melodic lines combine to form one sound. Balance, on the other hand, allows for the possibility of the two objects to remain distinct and separate but act in concert, just as a violin and a piano have separate tones but together can create symphonic music. In other words, harmony erases the individual and implies a collective identity whereas balance preserves the individual throughout the process of combination. Given this difference between harmony and balance, perhaps it is possible to reconcile the contradiction of the Chinese human-nature relationship with a corrected description as a balance with a harmonizing effect. But, as seen with Buddhism and Daoism, each philosophy stresses man’s oneness with nature. So where does this idea of man outside of nature originate? One has to look no further than at the famous Chinese philosopher, Confucius.
In Confucianism, the human-nature relationship is figured as a heaven-earth dynamic. Heaven describes nature and other greater powers while the earth accounts for the humans. For Confucius, who grew up in a time of social unrest, the negotiation of heaven and earth constituted the foundation of stability and order. If heaven (or nature) is benevolent, then the earth (or human) is doing good. If the earth (or human) is benevolent, then heaven (or nature) will be good. The reciprocal relationship of heaven and earth underscores the interconnection between human and nature. Yet, in contrast with Buddhism and Daoism, Confucianism does not promote a hands-off approach to nature. In fact, as long as humans are treating nature “sustainably,” then humans are free to use the environment as they see fit. In short, Confucius teachings framed nature in a utilitarian context, its value determined by its ability to fulfill human needs. For example, in Figure B, the image showcases one of the most prominent ways humans benefit from nature: agriculture. Titled, “Painting of Tilling and Weaving: Seeding Rice in Flooded Paddies,” the illustration depicts farmers planting rice for the next growing season. The cultivation of rice (or any other crop) involves substantial human transformation and management of nature. First, grasses must be cleared and the ground excavated to form the paddies. Then, water must be added and maintained at a constant level through the use of irrigation ditches. Yet, despite the high level of human manipulation, the farmers can be considered “in harmony” with nature because their actions are not exceeding nature’s regenerative capacities. Thus, human well-being is placed above the “rights of nature,” a departure from Buddhist/Daoist thought that treated nature as an entity with equal or higher moral standing. Besides illustrating another version of Chinese environmental ethics, another aspect worth exploring of the “Painting of Tilling and Weaving” is the artist, Jiao Bingzhen (焦秉貞). Jiao Bingzhen was an imperial court painter under the Kangxi Emperor during the Qing Dynasty. In addition to painting, Jiao Bingzhen was also involved with the Imperial Board of Astronomy, where he came into contact with Jesuit missionaries from the West. These Jesuit missionaries introduced Jiao Bingzhen to the European style of painting and their influence is apparent in his artwork. For instance, in “Painting of Tilling and Weaving,” the landscape is drawn using perspective techniques developed by Renaissance painters. Moreover, Jiao Bingzhen adopts the use of shadows as evident in the creases of the farmers’ clothing. However, perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of Jiao Binzhen’s fusion of Chinese and Western traditions is the presence of the human figure. Unlike the landscape painting, “Summer Mountains” (Fig. A), Jiao Bingzhen’s painting prominently features the human farmer at the forefront of the piece. Due to the principles of perspective, the human farmers at the forefront are depicted larger while nature is relegated to the background and drawn in a smaller scale. As a result, a metaphorical interpretation of Jiao Bingzhen’s “Painting of Tilling and Weaving” can conclude that man is superior to nature, a notion strongly rooted in Western European culture and in direct contrast to Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. Thus, Jiao Bingzhen demonstrates that the imitation of a cultural product also carries with it the values and ideas of the borrowed culture. These values and ideas, in turn, can be incorporated in the borrowing culture, transforming preexisting perceptions and attitudes. In fact, Jiao Bingzhen and his Euro-Chinese paintings only marked the beginning of appropriations of Western thought. Other Chinese in later generations also found interest in the works of their European counterparts, perhaps most infamously manifested in Mao’s infatuation with Marxism.
Mao’s interest in Marxism stemmed from his desire to create a utopian society free of strife and injustice. For Mao, socialism provided the best route to achieve this goal with its proclaimed emphasis on equality and the “rule of the masses”. However, in order for Mao to test these ideas, he first had to establish mastery over the reins of government. After years of warfare with the Guomintang (the oppositional Nationalist party), Mao and the Chinese Communist Party managed to secure mainland China under their control and begin their socialist experiment. Proclaiming the success of the “proletariat revolution,” Mao subsequently sought to prove the viability of a socialist society through the Great Leap Forward, a program of heavy industrialization. Yet, the accelerated industrialization Mao promoted came with enormous environmental consequences, such as deforestation, soil erosion, polluted air, and toxic water. How could the Chinese agree to abide by such catastrophic changes to the environment when for centuries, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism advocated harmony between nature and man? Some Chinese intellectuals did not but these dissidents to Mao’s modernization plans were silenced through political suppression. However, historical antecedent from the rural countryside does suggest some justification for Chinese consent to greater control over the environment. For the millions of Chinese peasants living along the Yellow River, the Yellow River was a force to contend with. Every year, during the flooding season, the Yellow River swept across the fields and paddies and destroyed almost everything in its path, demolishing buildings and killing thousands of people. The tragedy inflicted by the Yellow River earned the river’s nickname as “China’s Sorrow” and sowed a deep-seated wish amongst Chinese peasants to halt the Yellow River’s annual floods and end the enormous loss of life and land. Thus, when Mao called for the construction of numerous dams during the Great Leap Forward, many Chinese peasants must have rejoiced and responded willingly to his demands. To build the dams as quickly as possible, thousands of people were mobilized in these engineering projects as pictured in Figure C. Figure C is a photograph from 1958 that shows the early stages of constructing the Ming Tombs Dam near Beijing. The swarm of workers covering the hillside resembles an army of ants scurrying back and forth, a reminder of the human element, the biological component, in the making of the artificial dam. The daunting presence of humanity also presents a powerful statement asserting the superior position of man over nature. The sheer number of people seems to overwhelm the dimensions of the photo frame, reducing the grandness of nature. Yet, the rhetoric of the environment under Mao did not stop there. Not only was the environment figured as inferior to man but also as man’s enemy. Slogans such as “man must conquer nature” (人定勝天) and language describing “victories” against the floods by the “labor armies” portrayed humans in conflict with nature, almost as if humans and nature were engaged in military confrontations. In fact, Mao Zedong in one of his writings explicitly declared, “The class struggle is done, we are [now] declaring war on nature.” By situating humans and nature at war, Mao recontextualized the environment in a different frame. Rather than posing the environment as a sociopolitical model to achieve peace and harmony, Mao employed nature as an economic resource to fit his goal of rapid modernization. To do this, Mao believed that nature must first be mastered before it could be bent towards human will as if nature was a wild beast that had to be tamed before it could be trained. This change in perspective further divided humans from nature to the point where nature became an “other,” an object detached from human experience. No longer was nature considered to have an impact on human well-being. Thus, Mao’s “nature” became the antithesis of the Buddhist/Daoist/Confucist view of nature which recognized the interdependence of man and nature. The consequences of this new “environment” can be seen in another “campaign” of the “war on nature,” the Four Pest Campaign.
The Four Pest Campaign was launched against four animals, fleas, mosquitoes, rats, and sparrows, for their role in spreading illnesses and destroying crops. The thinking of the time was that through elimination of these harmful creatures, humans would no longer suffer from insect-spread diseases or low crop yields. Thus, in contrast with the river and dam scenario, nature was figured as an obstacle to economic development. The twin roles of nature as enabler and disabler of economic progress underscores the broader assumption that one can “improve” nature. But what does that even mean? How does one “improve” nature? To use the word “improve” implies a power differential between two parties; in this case, between man and nature. For man to be able to “improve” nature, man must have greater authority over nature, greater knowledge and understanding of how nature operates and how to tweak it for the benefit of both parties. The equal distribution of benefits to both parties is key because any lopsidedness turns “improvement” into “subjugation,” the benefit of one party at the expense of the other. Unfortunately, despite the prolific discourse on “improving” nature, Mao’s environmental policies leaned considerably towards the subjugation and exploitation of nature. The narrow-minded focus on dam-building as good and the four pests as bad failed to account for the complex relationships in ecological systems. Simply changing one component in the ecosystem can cascade to unforeseeable consequences. For example, while dams may grant greater control over the river flow, these structures also inhibit the movement of sediment down the river and interrupt the migration of local marine life. Similarly, despite its consumption of grain seeds, sparrows also hunt locusts that feed on the grain crops. As a result, the subsequent extermination of sparrows allowed the locusts to run rampant in the Chinese countryside, causing widespread famine and near ecological collapse. Yet, most of the damage caused by the tampering of nature could have been avoided if the Buddhist/Daoist/Confucist conception of human-nature harmony was adopted. Would the Chinese learn from their mistakes and take a page from their rich archive of ancient wisdom? Would modern China be any different from its past?
A brief glance at Figure D would seem to suggest, “no;” China is continuing the same practices initiated under the Mao regime. In Figure D, the image depicts the controversial Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest civil engineering project seeking to extract economic value from one of China’s most famous rivers, the Yangtze River. Unlike the picture of the Ming Tombs Dam, this image of the Three Gorges Dam is devoid of human figures. In place of the human, mechanical cranes dot the frame of the dam. The absence of humans makes the dam appear even more artificial, a building without any natural or biological source. However, that is not necessarily true; the human can be found behind the controls of the cranes. Still, the machine serves as an impersonal interface between the human, dam, and nature. Thus, through the use of his mechanized tools, the human becomes further abstracted from the environment. Not only does man become more distant from nature but also the purposes of the dam. For China, in addition to regulating the Yangtze River, the Three Gorges Dam also represents an incredible source of hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power is an important energy resource to fuel China’s industries and supply domestic electrical energy. Yet, energy by itself is an intangible object with no immediate benefit. Rather, energy must first be put into a productive function whereby the energy committed is transformed into a useful product. The intermediates involved in the energy process highlight the increased degree to which the modern dam promotes discontinuities. It is these gaps in relationality that, again, permit the devaluation of the environmental costs associated with constructing dams. In fact, proponents of the dam argue that, despite the large swaths of land that are submerged to form the reservoirs, the Three Gorges Dam actually helps contribute to environmental protection through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Note, however, that this argument relies on an indirect phenomenon of carbon dioxide and methane interacting with the atmosphere to produce climate change. Greenhouse gases alone are not harmful to human health; in fact, carbon dioxide and methane occur naturally. Yet, unlike previous framings of the disconnect between man and nature, the greenhouse gas argument returns to the human, showing how man’s indirect impact on nature comes back to affect human livelihood. Thus, the Three Gorges Dam illustrates that while man is separated from nature, the disjunction can be bridged when deterioration of the environment crosses over to the human realm.
Perhaps the most visible sign of the mutual human-nature destruction is pollution. Due to toxins and other hazardous chemicals, pollution damages both environmental and human health. Nevertheless, pollution in China has largely remained unchecked due to higher priority given to economic development. In other words, China’s pollution policy (or lack thereof) embodies Mao’s legacy of dominating nature to achieve economic gain, regardless of the environmental sacrifices. However, China’s view of the environment is not completely one-sided. As demonstrated through Figures E and F, a close reading of these images exposes existing tensions in the Chinese conception of nature. In Figure E, the image shows a public service worker collecting garbage tossed into one of the canals that run through Beijing. The trash present is decidedly modern, consisting mainly of plastic and styrofoam. The worker’s uniform is also typical of clothing styles today. Yet, the boat on which the worker is standing seems slightly out of place. Made with exclusively wood (and not some polysynthetic material), the boat has two paddles for propulsion rather than a gasoline turbine. The historical qualities of the boat, in contrast with the “modern” garbage, illustrate a conflation between past and present. The boat symbolizes a sustainable approach to nature, a philosophy dating back to Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, while the garbage represents the forces of blind-eye industrialization, a process associated with the emergence of Mao in the 1950’s. In addition to the conflict of ancient and modern ideologies, another struggle exists in Chinese society over the definition of natural and unnatural, a question illustrated in Figure F. In Figure F, the picture depicts Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on a day of exceptionally poor air quality. The infamous smog of Beijing was so thick that the iconic landmark was almost obscured in a wall of gray. Already, the issue of smog brings up the debate between natural and unnatural. Smog forms from sunlight reacting with industrial emissions to create a product with clearly artificial origins. Yet, the formation of smog occurs in a “natural” process and for many Beijing residents, smog is a fact of life. The presence of smog is so common that smoggy air is considered the norm, a deviation from the “natural” clear, blue skies as the standard. Thus, an understanding of natural versus unnatural depends on context, on one’s own personal experience. The boundary between natural and unnatural is further confused when considering the kite flier on the right hand side of Figure F. The kite flown in the picture resembles a stylized version of a bird, a natural being transformed into an artificial object. Furthermore, not only is the kite an unnatural substitute but also the conditions in which it is flown. While the kite is supposed to imitate a “natural” bird in flight, no real bird in nature would ever experience the polluted air of Beijing. Thus, the kite can be thought of as twice removed from the “natural;” once when the kite takes the appearance of a bird and twice when the kite soars through the smog. These complications that arise from trying to isolate the natural and unnatural, as well as to judge competing environmental discourses, continue to be pressing issues in modern China today. How Chinese citizens respond to this challenge will determine the course of China’s environment.
Today, in China, a growing environmentalist movement is protesting against environmental degradation that disrupts local wildlife and harms human health. These green-conscious Chinese civilians are making a statement against the dominant culture that preaches the rapid accumulation of wealth and prosperity. As shown in Figure G, some Chinese environmentalists have joined forces with reputable international organizations such as Greenpeace to bring added clout to their cause. Likewise, Greenpeace and other similar organizations are more than happy to help the local Chinese combat environmental problems in one of the world’s most polluted countries. Yet, the incorporation of international organizations in the Chinese environmentalist movement also brings with it a cultural conception of the human-nature relationship. The Western environmentalist idea of man’s role in nature figures man as the protector of the environment. According to the official Greenpeace website, Greenpeace continues to fight to “save the planet” from deforestation, global warming, deterioration of the oceans, and nuclear disaster. This perception that man must preserve the environment implies that man and nature are not equal; that man has more power than nature in a situation analogous to the strong defending the weak. Of course, as mentioned previously, the power differential in the Western human-nature relationship runs counter to the Buddhist/Daoist/Confucist envisioning of man and nature as equals. Though both philosophies ultimately advocate a more careful approach to nature, the Chinese who support Greenpeace implicitly adopt the Western environmentalist view over the traditional Buddhist/Daoist/Confucist one, a move eerily similar to the exploitative frame that places man above nature. Yet, not all Chinese citizens concerned about the environment join an activist campaign. Some eco-conscious civilians participate in local protests to voice their grievances like those in Figure H. The protesters in Figure H are Beijing residents who are complaining about poor air quality and pushing for the closure of a nearby garbage incinerator. The sight of many people with face masks raising their fists and waving banners is enough to strike fear in the Chinese government, a political body noted for its authoritarianism. In fact, environmental degradation has been linked to national security concerns because the detrimental impact of an abused environment affects a large population and galvanizes them to act out. Organized around a single issue, this assembly of concerned individuals can coalesce into a political movement in direct confrontation with the government. The notion that a government should be held accountable by its people is characteristic of a Western democracy, where the power of government rests with the people. This is not the case for China, a single-party government that rules from the top-down and elects officials without the people’s consent. Therefore, the Chinese protesters who gather together and decry the state of the environment are employing democratic principles that originate outside of China’s political ideology, a political appropriation so to speak. This borrowing of Western political culture in Figure G mirrors the adaptation of Western environmentalism in Figure H, demonstrating how Western culture influences the views and perspectives of the Chinese people.
But what about the Chinese government? What is their response to the demands of the Chinese people? What is the official line on the human-nature relationship? In regards to the government stance on the environment, the Chinese Communist Party has taken maneuvers to tighten environmental regulation and promote a healthier ecosphere for the sake of the welfare of the people and also to sustain the economic growth of China’s GDP. On the webpage for China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, a photo gallery is provided to showcase China’s green agenda. From that photo gallery, the image featured in Figure I was chosen. The first quality that marks this landscape is the picturesque mountains and water scenery. In fact, this picture can be interpreted as a sly allusion to the historical Chinese landscapes because these paintings were called shan shui (山水) or “mountain water.” But, perhaps the most fascinating part of this image is its categorization in the official photo gallery under “Man and Nature” (人與自然). As evident from the picture, there are no humans in the frame. The closest connection to a human is the one who digitally enhanced the image. So how does this paradoxical scenario make any sense? A closer reading into the irony suggests that the Chinese government conception of the human-nature relationship is one of division and separation. Since only nature is shown under “Man and Nature,” man must not fall under nature but is rather distinct from nature, a view predominant in Western thinking. However, the government seems to contradict itself when looking at Figure J, the environmental symbol of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. In this image, both the human and nature (as represented by the green swirls) are present together in one piece. In fact, the description of the symbol reads, “This image represents harmony and unity between human beings and nature [emphasis added],” a perspective originating from Buddhist/Daoist/Confucist thought. Thus, Beijing appears to be sending mixed messages on their version of the human-nature relationship, symptomatic of two cultural ideas clashing together. Besides the reference to the traditional Chinese view of nature, another curious segment of the description states that the symbol “embodies the sustainable development of nature.” The word, “sustainable development,” is most striking because it is usually applied to human structures that work in harmony with nature. Sustainable development imitates nature to achieve the balance found in natural systems. Nature, on the other hand, engages in “sustainable development” by default because all organisms are tailored to fit a niche in the complex fabric of the ecosystem. As a result, the odd pairing of “sustainable development” and “nature” creates a provocative juxtaposition between natural and unnatural where nature seems to be “denaturalized” while sustainable development becomes more “naturalized.”
The mobilization of nature as a theoretical concept in Chinese environmental discourse can be seen through a close reading of images of the Chinese environment, whether considering the human-nature relationship or qualifying the limits of the natural. Yet, analyzing the Chinese word for “nature” itself may provide some final clues into the Chinese mindset. The word for nature in Chinese is zi ran (自然). However, if the meaning of each character was isolated and then combined together, zi ran actually means to know oneself, as in nature as the essence or spirit of a being. The dual referents of zi ran from the literal sum of its parts and its socially-accepted definition illustrate a historic tension within Chinese society over determining a word for nature that encapsulates their view of the environment. The use of zi ran as nature became popularized in modern Chinese due to Japanese dictionaries on the Chinese language. In other words, “nature” in Chinese was the product of external forces that shaped and redefined the culture. Interestingly though, before the standardization of zi ran meaning nature, another phrase for nature, tian di (天地), was commonly used in Chinese script and literature. Tian di means “heaven earth” and is an obvious reference to the Buddhist/Daoist/Confucist visualization of the environment of man and nature in harmony. Thus, even in the word for nature, China has struggled to reconcile the influences of East and West between the traditional, natural viewpoint and the adopted, artificial perspective. The negotiation of these two cultural legacies will bode of significant importance to the future of the Chinese environment.
1. Becker, Jasper. Dragon Rising: An Inside Look At China Today. Washington, D.C: National Geographic Society, 2006. 194-223. Print.
2. Bol, Peter, and Weller, Robert P. “From Heaven-And-Earth to Nature: Chinese Concepts of the Environment and Their Influence on Policy Implementation.” Energizing China: Reconciling Environmental Protection and Economic Growth. Ed. Michael B. McElroy, Chris P. Nielsen, and Peter Lydon. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998. 473-496. Print.
3. Cook, Ian G and Murray, Geoffrey. Green China: Seeking Ecological Alternatives. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. 24-34, 39-47, 98-101. Print.
4. Economy, Elizabeth. “China’s Environmental Challenge.” China: Contemporary Political, Economic, and International Affairs. Ed. David B.H Denoon. New York: New York University Press, 2007. 204-215. Print.
5. Kau, Michael Y.M. and Leung, John K, eds. The Writings of Mao Zedong: 1949-1976 Volume Two. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc, 1992. 511. Pring.
6. Shapiro, Judith. Mao’s War Against Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print.
7. Smil, Vaclav. China’s Past, China’s Future: Energy, Food, Environment. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. Print.
8. Weller, Robert P. Discovering Nature: Globalization and Environmental Culture in China and Taiwan. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.
Appendix:
1) Figure A
2) Figure B
3) Figure C
4) Figure D
5) Figure E
6) Figure F
7) Figure G
8) Figure H
9) Figure I
10) Figure J
Marketing Nature
By Vy Duong
With a press of the television remote button, ‘Mother Nature,’ the CEO of WATER Incorporated, emerges from her office announcing to her employees, a rabbit, a bear, and some unnoticeable human office workers, that she’s cancelling vacation. Vitamin Water has just released a 10-calorie, “naturally-sweetened” drink, agitating Mother Nature who complains, “natural’s our thing”. Ending with their slogan, “its one-upped nature,” the commercial leaves you perplexed as the purported simulation of the “natural or environmental” consists of: a talking raccoon, deer, grizzly bear, and rabbit, along with their employer, a human African American woman (a.k.a. Mother Nature). So, what is “natural” and how do we include and exclude certain factors when contemplating elements of the “environment?”
Since the “environment,” functions questionably within society, the Vitamin Water commercial embodies the irony of how we often define the “environment” by jokingly purporting its mysterious sweetener as more “natural” than water, a substance we as humans define “nature’s” element. If we consider the entire drink as a whole, Vitamin Water is composed mostly of water, yet the advertisement emphasizes a boundary between the two “competitors,” despite the undeniable commonalities. Manifesting within the “relation” of the human to “nature,” this selective bias of the “environment” and its components is also explored within Jennifer Price’s, Looking for Nature at the Mall, as she argues that the Nature Company, a “nature-oriented” store that sells products such as a detailed, inflatable penguin, chooses its products “not so much by what nature is as what nature means to us” (Price 189). “Nature,” “the environment,” whichever label, is sometimes constructed, as if distinct from mankind. This is but one “meaning” of countless that you and I can impose upon the “environment,” of which I will further examine later on in two other commercials from Chevron and Greenpeace. The reiteration and placement of the “environment” from a set of visuals and sounds by these commercials does not completely remove what nature is from the observer’s viewpoint, but skews the dynamics of “nature” and its reception.
Other “natural agents” of the Vitamin Water commercial, the “creature’s of the forest,” consisting of a rabbit situated within his cubicle, a bear holding his paper documents, a raccoon with an Australian accent, and a deer scanning his rear end on a copier, can instantly draw the viewer into the commercial. Far from reality, the sheer human characterizations of the rabbit, raccoon, bear, and deer ironically create a distinct recognition of the visible, vocal, and behavioral differences between the human and the animal. Jennifer Price touches upon this as she argues, “among the set of meanings we’ve attached to the natural world, perhaps the most overarching and powerful is that nature is not a shifting set of human meanings,” that the human exists separately from the “environment” (Price 191). This division between the human, the “civilized,” and the animal, “primitive,” in “nature” manifests within the ironic humor aimed towards the audience. Situated within the “supposed” dichotomy we tend to construct of “nature,” these often imposed boundaries are reflected and perpetuated by such constructions−like the Vitamin Water commercial.
It is true, that one can “assume” such bipolar categorizations of “nature”−through this commercial for instance−but further interpretation can give rise to other complications. Not entirely devoid of a role, the human also simultaneously occupies the prominent image of Mother Nature and four silent background characters within the Vitamin Water commercial. This leads us to question, why characterize her as a human rather than an animal? Is it presumptuous of me to suggest her superior role above these animals as a reflection of “mankind’s ‘triumph’ and ‘utilization’ of the ‘environment’?” Possibly. Not bound to this single reading, the exact opposite may also apply as the viewer can interpret animals and humans as fellow cohabitants, or in this context, coworkers of Water Incorporated, the epitome of nature. Critiquing these similar perceptions of human and nonhuman interactions, Anne Whiston Spirn, author of Constructing Nature, explores the assumptions of “nature” through Olmsted’s landscape architectural works and how imposing some “landscapes ‘natural’ and other ‘artificial’ or ‘cultural’ ignores the fact that landscapes are never wholly one or the other” (Whiston 111). Resembling Olmsted’s landscape architectural works, a combination of the “natural” and “human,” the viewer can interpret a mutual coexistence amongst human and “nature” as they work together. Towards the viewing masses, this may suggest a cooperative of not exclusively just human or nonhuman, but both.
Although the animal to human ratio, five to five within the commercial suggests an equal standing among nonhuman and human representations, emphasis on visual objects ranging from the setting to characters above others can alter initial readings of the commercial. Constructed for the purposes of appealing to the masses, potentially subjective of the themes it incorporates, why does Vitamin Water highlight these wildlife characters to the extent of potentially overshadowing secondary human characters, silently invisible within the background? Vitamin Water continues this charade as these animals converse to the extent that the rabbit complains about the cancelled vacation in a southern accent, “but Charlene’s havin a baby this year.” Contrasting dramatically to the human actress playing Mother Nature, the attention garnered by this southern-born rabbit again highlights the stark “otherness” of nonhuman entities. Blatantly unrealistic, these computer-generated animals speak and move as humans so as to generate laughter, capture the audience with their irony. As Anne Whiston Spirn argues, “failure to appreciate the dynamic, autonomous role of nonhuman features and phenomena promotes the illusion that humans can construct and control everything” (Spirn 112). Transposed onto the screen through an office space analogy, nature’s inhabitants minimize to humans and popular forest wildlife characters. By injecting human characteristics within nonhuman forest creatures, this advertisement merely regurgitates common previous themes utilized in cartoons (Looney Tunes), toys, and other media we recognize from childhood memories to today. Distorting the reality of these creatures for comedic effect, Vitamin Water can potentially downplay realistic qualities of rabbits, grizzly bears, and actual wildlife.
Speaking of realism, why has “nature” been unusually characterized as “Mother Nature?” From the socio-historical perspective, Carolyn Merchant, author of Reinventing Eden: Western Culture as a Recovery Narrative, depicts the Western inclusion of the female through “The narrative of frontier expansion…a story of male energy subduing female nature , taming the wild, plowing the land, re-creating the garden lost by Eve” (Merchant 146). Subjected to male-domination during the age of Manifest Destiny, the role of women as inferior to men corresponds with the similar sentiment to conquer “nature.” Seemingly more empowered than subdued in her role as the CEO of Water Incorporated, Mother Nature still signifies the incorporation of the human female within the definitions we construct of the “environment.” Retaining the “female” aspect, “nature’s” portrayal, from Western Expansion to modern day, morphs into a less oppressed depiction. Rendered as an African American CEO, the viewer then beings to question why is she African American? Why not Asian American, Latino, Caucasian, and so on? How ethnicity is deployed within commercials and other media is heavily reviewed so as to not border discrimination and potential underrepresentation. Unable to assume Vitamin Waters intention to cast an African American Mother Nature, the choice may simply be a reflection of increasing sensitivity towards ethnic minority groups within the media, having historically been underexposed. Gender, ethnicity, and a variety of cultural trends are reflected within Mother Nature’s characterization, revealing how entangled qualities designated toward the human and “nature” truly are.
Within Chevron’s Renewable Energy commercial, clips cut through an array of visual imagery accompanying the narration and it is from observing “what” visuals are chosen, “how” the narration is framed and directed while coordinating with “what” visuals, that I plan to examine the “environment’s” portrayal. Beginning with an angled view of the Earth, the words “What about today?” materialize before the viewer in the black emptiness of space. Unsurprisingly, Chevron’s main purpose in releasing this commercial is to inform the masses, that they are “the world’s largest producer of geothermal energy...it’s clean, renewable…and have been producing it for fort years…today…generating enough geothermal energy to power 7 million homes”. There is no product being sold, yet the commercial repeatedly reinforces an “energy-efficiency” focus in their “What about today?” question prompting immediate “solutions” to meet mankind’s energy needs. The concept of “energy” seems almost exclusively within the domain of humans, an artificial production of mankind, despite its “raw, natural origin.” For Jennifer Price: “When I ‘consume’ an inflatable penguin, I’m literally consuming natural resources like oil, wood, minerals, and energy” (Price 199). Diverting from the typical route of overlooking the resources we consume, Chevron deliberately outlines the source of geothermal energy through this simple equation, “earth’s heat = magma”. A diagram demonstrates the production process unrealistically as a tunnel connects magma to a machine and then two wires connect that to an entire city. Since the commercial focuses almost entirely on geothermal renewable energy, the effort advertisers devote to this one moment is all the more obvious since it answers the dilemma posed since the beginning of the commercial, “What about today?”−“imagine that, an oil company as the solution”. Prior to this “wondrous” geothermal energy solution in the commercial, Chevron alleges “people talk of solutions, wind, solar, hydrogen, but they talk of the future,” as if purporting geothermal as the “best” solution. Ironically ending with a Chevron logo flashing, “oil, geothermal, natural gas, hydrogen, conservation,” you wonder why they would undermine one of their own resources, hydrogen, purported as a futuristic and undeveloped. At the end of this stream of words, “conservation,” in particular, is emphasized by its mere existence as an action, not an energy resource like the other four listed. The ending itself seemed to suggest an attempt to overturn negative reputations resulting from incidents of past oil spills and other forms of pollution, rather than promoting the use of environmentally-friendly, renewable energy. In 2009, Chevron’s reputation descends further as the documentary Crude records the class action lawsuit against Chevron by 30,000 Ecuadorians in response to oil pollution. Since the purpose of advertising is to appeal to the viewer, the inherent eco-friendly geothermal theme of the commercial seems to suggest a preconception of the audience, that viewers, also consumers, will hold a more friendly outlook towards this oil company if it demonstrated a concern for the “environment.” Going to such lengths as to propagate this “environmentally-friendly” innovation, does this point to a potential change in how we view the environment in recent years? From a broader perspective, this commercial most likely reflects the recent emphasis of environmentalism incorporated within the media, possibly compelling Chevron to do the same so as to attract their customers.
Although perpetuating these “environmental” concerns, instances of “nature” vs. human seem to also manifest within certain slots when the narration directly mentions “the environment,” displaying a clip of an ocean wave crashing upon itself and an aerial view of grassy hills. As William Cronon, author of In Search of Nature, demonstrates, “Many popular ideas about the environment are premised on the conviction that nature is stable, holistic, homeostatic community,” disturbed with the human presence, and simplistically marketed as such (Cronon 24). Both landscapes are completely devoid of human life, seemingly promoting its “serene, wondrous beauty.” With the absence of mankind in those specific clips, we come to the portion when the anonymous narrator speaks of the “future,” accompanied by clips of a baby, a Caucasian girl glancing out her car window, and a family dining with their newborn baby. Here, the selectivity of children and the family overshadows “nature’s” place within the “future,” suggesting Chevron “can provide” the energy innovations to preserve “our” way of life. Placed within a level of prioritization, human and “nature,” as intertwined as they are, minimize into the singular assumptions that I have critiqued throughout this paper. Despite these insinuations at specific points in the commercial, instances such as the angled view of the globe in the beginning “seem” to provide a sense of unity between the human and the “environment.” Yet, how the human is situated within “nature” ends on an unclear, somewhat ironic message, “This is the power of Human Energy.” Of course each resource, oil, wind, magma, and so on must undergo some sort of transformation by humans, such emphasis of the production process potentially overshadows nature’s role as the source. Excluding the instability of tectonic faults and the difficulty of successfully harnessing geothermal energy, Chevron by advertising themselves as the solution, seems simply to be aiming to highlight their role as energy providers. Realistically speaking, humans are dependent on both, nature’s raw elements and our own innovations. Motivated possibly by their business oriented goals, Chevron’s Renewable Energy commercial does allocate some importance of “nature-themed” objects, such as landscapes and so on, but again stratifies these “nature” and the human through typical lens of “beauty,” coating the complex relationship simplistically.
Rhythmically invading the viewer’s senses with guitar chords, the Greenpeace commercial commences with “a film about Palm Oil…Onslaughter” and an Indonesian girl, staring down the onlooker from across the television. You wonder who is this girl and what does she have to do with palm oil? The vibrato of a woman echoes, gradually accelerating and building with guitar and drum beats as she begins to sing, “There they go…There they go.” Immediately, as the lyrics transition, “There they go your trees are gone today,” instantaneous clips and images of vibrant flowers, colorful birds of paradise, and orangutans flood the viewer’s gaze. Motivated to conserve this form of “nature,” the selection of each parrot, orangutan, and other rainforest sceneries is not simply thrown before the viewer without a purpose. Assuming this Greenpeace commercial exists to appeal to the audience, mostly stereotypical images of the rainforest seem to be included within this commercial, lending itself to this ”exotic” preconception of this diverse community. Although impossible to represent the rainforest in its entirety, Greenpeace could televise revolting insects in the place of a colorful parrot, but as a commercial, the aesthetics chosen suggest a beauty ideal reflective of the audience’s pre-existing assumptions. “We graft meanings onto nature…and then define ourselves by what we think nature means…simplicity, reality, uniqueness, purity, health, beauty, the primitive, the autochthonous, adventure, the exotic” (Price 191). If members of the audience were to harbor any of these simplifications when questioned of the definition of “nature” rainforests, it merely demonstrates the possible unconscious meanings we have imposed as humans.
“Standardized” on these common “pristine” molds, the commercial effectively establishes these “wondrous” life forms dependent on this ecosystem. The beauty of these organisms and landscapes then establishes a contrast with the next set of images. Waves of trees crash downward from the chainsaws of loggers as variations of this same action are shown one after the other, in conjunction with the lyrics, “All that beauty hacked away.” The anonymous singer directly calls to the viewer, “So use your mind. Use your voice to make them stay. It’s not a price you’ll have to pay,” as the barrage of falling trees continue, as if implicating the viewer’s responsibility of the facilitation of such destruction if action is not taken. Directing the commercial through musical aesthetics from the beginning, the lyrics, “your trees..so use your mind,” accompanied by these visuals implies these forms of “nature” almost as possessions of mankind. Objects constantly within the human’s grasp, controllable, and malleable to our content, this commercial, whether intentional, can induce such interpretations that reaffirm the common assumption of man’s “dominion over” “nature.” Camouflaged as “natural,” human-altered landscapes, from Yosemite to Niagara, exist as paradoxical conflictions of this “human-nature” relationship. Ironically pictured as absent of human interference despite the management invested in maintaining its “wilderness” appeal, Anne Whiston Spirn remarks that by “seeing humans, ourselves, as solely or mainly a contaminating influence prevents us from appreciating the potential beneficial effects we might have and limits what we can imagine possible” (Spirn 111). Defining ourselves from a single context, as destructors in the case of this commercial, possibly diminishes the multiplicity of the human-nature relationship. Armed with chainsaws, bulldozers, and so on, humans seem nothing more than an abomination incapable of coexisting with surrounding environments and creatures. Although intentionally targeting this unknown corporation for destroying habitats vital to endangered species, this “majestic” Amazonian-like wilderness seems “better off” without any human touch, as if compromised by our presence sometimes potentially beneficial.
Transitioning and corresponding with the beat of the music, the sounds also undergo a selection process. The sound of chainsaws demolishing trees enter in conjunction with certain musical notes, as well as bulldozers, and tree trunks. With the inclusion of industrial mechanisms of destruction and the exclusion or lack of emphasis of sounds of this forest, you wonder what this suggests of Greenpeace? The rumbling noise of destruction acts in unison with the visuals, highlighting the chaos so as to impact the viewer to the highest extent. If capable of stirring discontent or opposition against the unknown corporation in some viewers, this commercial can also distance the viewer’s perception of themselves as humans in relation to nature, the object of destruction within the commercial. The artificial clatter of machinery mixed with the occasional chirping of birds again creates this drastic contrast of the human and nonhuman.
Paced quickly, the camera work throughout most of the commercial interacts with the viewer by magnifying these short video clips and imagery, and transitioning after magnification, creating a literal “falling” motion for the viewer, as if they are moving through a tunnel of these visuals. Such an approach with these camera angles seems to operate so as to potentially provoke a realization for the viewer, of the increasing rate of deforestation of these lowland forests. Conveying this animation built from images and clips pieced together, N. Katherine Hayles, author of Simulated Nature and Natural Simulations, remarks how “’nature’ becomes an object for visual consumption, to be appreciated by the connoisseur’s eye sweeping over an expanse of landscape, there is a good chance it has already left the realm of firsthand experience and entered the category of constructed experience” (Hayles 411). Resulting in an incomplete image from this interaction, the act of watching advertisements, even with altruistic motives, remain biased, influenced and perpetuating pre-existing notions of “nature.” As this entire ecosystem is marketed as a victim of humanity, of which is a possibility, bipolar generalizations reaffirm the classic “inability of humans to coexist with nature.”
Clips of palm oil production, the source of this deforestation, enter the video as the lyrics, “They cannot hide,” correspond with fast speed trucks, transporting dead trees, and an entire aerial view of the rainforest becomes fragmented into roads in between palm oil plantations. The chorus from before, “There they go your trees are gone today, all that beauty hacked away” repeats with more sound emphasis, yet with a new set of images more stark compared to the first. Trees lit on fire, dead groves, and rotting corpses of orangutans seize the viewers’ attention, as those seemingly burnt landscapes are instantly demolished for palm oil plantations. Hands holding orange palm tree fruits magnify into the next set of slides finally revealing to the viewer the human source of this chaos. The singer begins to say, “Just to soap your hide,” and Dove soap bottles instantaneously stack the shelves and hands fill shopping baskets with Dove soap. The Indonesian girl stands before you the last time, with dead burnt acres of forestry behind her with font appearing, “98% of Indonesia’s lowland forest will be gone by the time Azizah is 25…most is used to make palm oil, which is used in Dove products.” Azizah walks away, the screen darkens to an altered Dove logo, with an animated actual dove flying from a tree being chopped by the letter “e” shaped as a chainsaw. The message and purpose of this commercial straightforwardly implicates the reader as a consumer, capable of putting a stop to such devastation or continuing it. Contemplating of Azizah, you wonder what purpose she serves within this Greenpeace commercial. There are two facts the can be determined, her name and location as an Indonesian local. Framing the human as anything besides a destructive force of some kind, Azizah seems to be merely shown so as to convey the imminent destruction of this “beauty” by her future age of 25. Unable to show mankind’s potential positive contribution to “nature,” the motives of this commercial, although altruistic, indirectly excludes mankind’s potential positive impact.
By extracting and identifying the instances when these commercials perpetuate common popular assumptions of “nature” and “man,” this categorization of the two still presents the question, “What is nature and how do we as humans position ourselves in relation to it?” As we label sceneries, animals, and wildlife within the domain of “nature,” and manmade constructions as “artificial,” are these classifications a product of social and cultural influences? By identifying the human, the objects relegated to “nature” simultaneously come into being during this thought process as one defines the “other.” Contradicted when objects such as Olmsted’s landscapes appear, the assumed boundaries we place in between the human and “nature” blur as a result of this confusion. As Anne Whiston Spirn demonstrates, “There is always a tension in landscape between the reality and autonomy of the nonhuman and its cultural construction, between the human impulse to wonder at the wild and the compulsion to use, manage, and control” (Spirn 113). Compressed into “primitive, raw” forms, this underrepresented tension minimizes into the simplistic landscapes, animals, and other “natural” figures televised by these advertisements. Although our perceptions are largely constructed, “rain, rivers, mountains, trees, and birds are not just figments of human imagination; they exist,” and are situated somehow within our reception of reality (Spirn 112). As biased as they may be when selecting representations of Indonesia’s lowland forests, Greenpeace successfully exposes the nonhuman aspect of this ecosystem, thus revealing its limitations and threats−deforestation. Managed politically, outlined by meticulous documentation, nonhuman characters ranging from Yosemite to “creatures of the forest” are “not infinitely malleable; nature may be constructed, but it is not only a construction,” to which humans have supreme command (Spirn 113). Often distorted into distinct categories within the media and popular culture, “nature” and the human intricately coincide within a fusion whose complexity usually remains unacknowledged within advertising.
Bibliography:
“Cancelled Vacation.” Vitamin Water. Web. 23 Apr 2010.
Cronon, William. “Introduction: In Search of Nature.” Uncommon Ground. (1996): 23-25
“Dove Onslaught(er).” Greenpeace. Web. 23 Apr 2010.
Merchant, Carolyn. “Reinventing Eden: Western Culture as a Recovery.” Uncommon Ground. (1996): 146
Price, Jennifer. “Looking for Nature at the Mall.” Uncommon Ground. (1996): 186-203.
“Renewable Energy.” Chevron. Web. 23 Apr 2010.
Whist, Anne Spirn. “Constructing Nature.” Uncommon Ground. (1996): 91-113
Appendix A
Office space of Water Incorporated (Vitamin Water 10 commercial)
Appendix B
Mother Nature
Appendix C
Family with baby eating dinner (Chevron commercial)
Appendix D
Aerial landscape (Chevron commerical)
Appendix E
Geothermal energy
Appendix E
Parrot (Dove Onslaughter commercial by Greenpeace)
Appendix F
Tree falling downward from logger
Appendix G
Dead orangutan as a result of deforestation
Appendix H
Azizah at the end of the commercial
Vitamin Water http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMg8ldDmHQ
Chevron http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L61V2-N-u0g
Dove Onslaught(er) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odI7pQFyjso
SWAMPED WITH ENVIRONMENTALISM By James Wilson
Discourse concerning environmental policies and reformation has permeated every outlet of the media. Books, movies, television programs, and advertising have all mentioned and portrayed the environment and mankind's treatment of it along with the consequences. Comic books, as well, have long discussed the dichotomy of modern civilization and technology versus nature. Our modern civilization is often portrayed as the norm, and the wilderness and the natural environment and ecology of the earth is seen as “the other.” While comics have a long tradition of relaying social concerns, especially mankind's tampering with nature, it is not until 1984 that environmentalism in comic books gets its strongest figure; Alan Moore. Alan Moore took on the low selling comic book series Swamp Thing at issue 20, and completely revolutionized the comic medium. The purpose Moore had in mind was to create awareness over several environmental issues that were crucial for the time. Dumping waste into rivers, swamps, and oceans was prevalent, and Swamp thing was the perfect forum to make a statement. Another issue Moore delves into is the relationship humans have with the environment. If Moore could stress the inter-dependency between nature and humans, this may make humans question their own treatment of the environment. What is the environment, and how is our perceptions of nature shaped, are two questions that Moore set out to explore and complicate. Beginning with the intent of offering his own political opinions on the environment, Moore changed the format of a comic book to better deliver these messages. Technical issues including both narrative and artwork were modified for this delivery, and were so accepted by the public that writers and artists afterward began to emulate Moore's techniques which continues to the present day. The structure of the comic book was completely changed to fit Moore's own views, which in turn allowed his writing to cover more mature subjects. Moore changed the demographics of readers, to make a statement about the seriousness of his work and messages. It is through these methods that Moore's work stands as ground breaking in both content and artwork, affording a new precedence.
Comic books, as mentioned earlier, have a history of commenting on present ideologies and social concerns. Superman, Wonder Woman, and several other DC Publishing characters were created in the late 30's and early 40's as a tool of World War II propaganda. These were ultimate examples of American heroes, and were meant to motivate young men into joining the armed forces. As time progressed and war sentiment changed, so did the superhero. Stan Lee created the Marvel universe in 1961 with characters such as the Fantastic Four, Spider-man, and the Incredible Hulk. All these characters were derived from a Cold War mentality. No longer were characters outsiders, so to speak. Superman and Wonder Woman, for example, were from other planets or mythological realms. Stan Lee's inventions were based in present day New York City, and were ordinary people. Similarly, these characters' powers were not based on myth. The Fantastic Four obtained their powers from a blast of cosmic rays in a space flight mishap; Spider-man from a radioactive spider bite; and the Incredible Hulk from a gamma ray bomb mishap. All of these mirror the cold war concern that was prominent in the U.S. at the time. People were genuinely frightened by the amount of radioactive weapons that were being developed. “Like other forms of popular entertainment, comic books tend to be very receptive to cultural trends, to reflect them, comment on them, and sometimes inaugurate them”(Costello, 1). It was with this mentality that Swamp Thing was first invented.
Swamp Thing's character was originally created by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson in 1971 for House of Secrets magazine, a horror genre comic. The premise was that Alec Holland is working on solving world famine and is situated in his laboratory and surrounded by lots of chemicals. Some generic “bad guys”, typical for the medium, decide this wouldn't be in their interest and blow up the lab, which sinks into the swamp it is built on. The chemical reaction causes Alec Holland to arise as the Swamp Thing, protector of the environment(Parkin, 46). Each issue would involve Swamp Thing stopping environmental terrorists. When Moore takes over the character in 84, he makes some major changes to the Swamp Thing.
It is learned in issue 21, that Alec Holland was not transformed into the Swamp Thing, rather the plants in the swamp were transformed into thing they were a human. This change may seem minor, but it is significant when dealing with Moore's intentions. Moore wanted this series to convey a message on environmental change, not on cold war terror. Swamp Thing's character no longer fit the standard equation of how a super-hero got their powers, and therefore broke from that tradition. The idea of plant life being affected is similarly important. The earth is shown to be harmed by human actions which causes a reaction from the earth. Swamp Thing became not just a figure that fought environmental terrorism, but an end result of it as well. “Swamp Thing is thus endowed with a proper 'pantheistic consciousness'...that urges it to fight against the threats of growing industrialization and uncontrolled urban expansion”(Liddo, 51). The topics of the series begin to get more specific and complex. Rather than simply defeat a mad scientist bent on world domination every month, Swamp Thing went up against humans who dumped waste into nearby rivers, ponds, and swamps, for example. By changing the format of the narrative, Moore not only refreshes the current social concerns, but raises new ones as well. Moore's intent is to create awareness, which cannot be accomplished by reusing old concerns that the public is already fully aware of. His goal is not to simply let his work be affected by the environment, in its portrayal and narrative, but to make work that will hopefully affect the environment. If readers are affected by the Swamp Thing's messages, then they will change their own treatment of the environment.
A way that Moore conveyed the importance of his political message was through the content of the stories themselves. Comic books, though they have always relayed social concerns, also unfortunately have long had a stigma of being a children's literature. This stigma was not always the case, however. In the 1950's there was a genre of comics, mostly published by EC Comics, that catered to adults. These comics were generally horror comics, and included gratuitous violence, nudity, and language. A popular one of the time that still lives on in many people's memories was the series Tales From the Crypt. It was not until 1955 that the tradition of such comics would be obliterated and the stigma of comics being strictly for kids would start. In 1955 a man named Fredric Wertham published a book titled The Seduction of the Innocent. This book was presented as a scientific finding, though no actual science was involved in its creation. The book claimed that comic books were basically rotting children's minds with overt and subliminal messages. Horror comics were targeted in specific, warning parents to not allow their children to read such filth. Wertham went so far as to, in a McArthar-esque fashion, begin accusing certain superheroes of being homosexuals and suggest that if children continue reading these materials that they too will end up homosexual(Wertham, 63). The result was the introduction of the Comic Code Authority. This was a rating system that was imposed on comics. If a comic was deemed too violent, sexual, or offensive in speech, it would not get the Comic Code seal of approval and would not be published by Marvel or DC, the two major comic publishers. This censored many artists, and what they wanted to express was stifled. Moore changed all of this with his work on Swamp Thing, however.
From issue 20 on, Moore tested the limits of what he was allowed to get published. In the first few issues he writes, Moore introduces magic into Swamp Thing's story lines. Rather than present the magic with an element of fantasy, standard in comic books, Moore brought realistic elements of the occult into the story. Actual practices and beliefs used in the Wica religion were introduced to Swamp Thing. This added to the suspense of the book, for viewers were far more intrigued and frightened knowing that what they read had some merit to it. Moore also included side shots of nudity in his stories, without fully exposing any genitalia. As each issue progressed, Moore pushed the line further and further, until finally in issue 29 the Comic Code Authority refused to stamp their seal of approval on the series any longer. DC had to decide whether to fire Moore or publish the comic without the Comic Code seal. Sales of the series had gone up 500%, so to DC, the choice was obvious; they began publishing the series without the seal of approval. This revolutionized the medium, for comics were once again meant for adults. The message Moore delivered by including gore, nudity, and language was equally important. Moore used Swamp Thing as a forum to deliver environmental concerns; a rather weighty issue. The issues were complex and sophisticated, and Moore reflected this through the content of his work. In the same way that Swamp Thing was no longer a book for kids to consume and regurgitate, the messages were not as well. These concerns that Moore points out need mature answers, so the messages should be directed to mature readers.
Important to Moore's writing is the significance a story has on the present. One way that Moore accomplishes this is through intertextuality, or working off of previous texts with great significance. “If the script has no relevance to the current cultural context of the society where it is produced, there is no way to make the comic book more interesting or effective, no matter how sophisticated its visual qualities can be; but one of the basic tools for the writer to attain current relevance is actually turning to the past for knowledge and inspiration-hence the importance of tradition”(Liddo, 29). Moore uses intertextual elements in many of his comic books. An example of this is his series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in which the main characters are all taken from classic British novels written in the late nineteenth century. The cast of characters that make up this ensemble include Bram Stoker's “Mina Murray” from Dracula, H. Rider Haggard's “Alan Quatermain”, Jules Verne's “Captain Nemo”, H.G. Wells' “Invisible Man”, and R.L. Stevenson's “Henry Jekyll”. The goal of this series is to pinpoint a British identity, and there is no better place to investigate this than through the classics that contributed to the formation of this identity. All these characters epitomize, in one way or another, what an ideal British citizen is supposed to act like. In this series, Moore uses quotations from the original books, but in a different context to generate different meanings. Moore uses these intertextual techniques in Swamp Thing as well to further his environmental messages.
One of Moore's most memorable issues is issue 32(Image B), where Swamp Thing hosts a small group of aliens who land in the swamp. These characters introduced in this issue are based directly off of Walt Kelly's characters from the fifties who appeared in the comic strip Pogo. Pogo was a popular syndicated strip that appeared in newspapers across the United States every day, which appealed to a more sophisticated audience. “Pogo is certainly the darling of the intellectuals, their La Fontaine of the comic strip. [Kelly's] readers appear to be the kind of people who take a positive enjoyment in being able to read and interpret an “animal” comic that even their own sophisticated children cannot always understand”(Denney, 24). The premise for Kelly's strip involved a group of animals who lived in a swamp and got themselves into misadventures. In these misadventures, Kelly would address environmental concerns. In fact, it was Kelly, who in his Pogo comic strip, coined the phrase “We have met the enemy and he is us”, which has appeared in many Earth Day posters since its conception. This statement does not pinpoint any social class, race, or group to the polluting of the earth, rather it suggests “that pollution resulted not from the nefarious actions of a single individual but rather from the accumulation of choices made by an entire nation of consumers: the enemy is us”(Dunaway). This statement implies the multitude of problems facing the environment today, and puts the responsibility for change on society as a whole. This is the message that Moore also delivers in issue 32.
In this issue a group of extra terrestrials drop down into the swamp. These creatures are blatantly taken from Kelly's strip Pogo. The title of the issue is “Pog” and the creatures have the same shapes and wide eyes as the characters from Kelly's strip. In the issue, they come to earth in search of a new home. They explain that their old home has been taken over by humanoid creatures that do not respect the life sustaining properties of their world. These usurping creatures are carnivorous, and polluted the aliens' planet to the point of that it became uninhabitable. They have been traveling from planet to planet searching for a world that has the life sustaining properties for survival. At the end of the issue Swamp Thing shows one of them a fast food stand outside of Baton Rouge, where the creature observes humans gorging on animal bi-products. The creatures decide that Earth is not a suitable planet to reside, so they depart to continue their search. By featuring the characters of Pogo in this issue, Moore is not only paying homage to Walt Kelly, but including Kelly's environmental messages as well. Issue 32 clearly highlights “the issue of man's relationship to the ecosystems of the earth, for Kelly's environmentalist stance was quite evident”(Liddo, 53). Kelly made his environmental stance quite clear in the introduction of a collection of Pogo that was published in 1972. He states, “The big polluter did not start out with smokestacks. He didn't start pumping gunk into the waters of our world when he was six years old. He started small. Throwing papers underfoot in the streets, having old bottles into vacant lots...Just like the rest of us...Man has turned out to be his worst enemy”(Liddo, 54). By making intertextual relations to Walt Kelly's Pogo, Moore is extending Kelly's arguments to a new audience.
Though D.C. hired Moore on to be Swamp Thing's writer, Moore was extremely significant in the production of the art work as well. While most comic writers would only write the dialogue and suggestions on angles or positions, Moore took it on himself to do much more than that. His attention to detail covered every aspect of the art work. “The author also enters historical notes, commentaries, and descriptions of the possible sounds and smells one might have found on the scene...He describes what nuances colors might have, even if the work is to be printed in black and white”(Liddo, 32). With this much detail, Moore's writing could be viewed as pictorial by itself. The artists were imposed with Moore's ideas, and the comic art could be equally credited to Moore. One change Moore made was he rid his books of sound effects and the use of stressed words. This allowed the reader more of a rhizomatic approach to the comic. The noises, emphases, smells, and textures in the story were all let to the viewer's imagination. Swamp Thing's art work, even separate from the narrative, speaks volumes to the shift in the genre and the environmental messages integrated into it.
One element of the artwork that Moore in specifically wanted to change was the environment of the swamp itself. In a letter to Stephen Bissette, the artist of Swamp Thing, Moore explains, “I'd like to make the swamp almost as important a character as Swamp Thing himself, giving the reader a real feeling of the teeming, mindless life that's slugging it out to the death in every square centimeter of Swampland, every second”(Bissette, 220). Alan decided to engulf the reader in the swamp; put them into the environment. One way Moore accomplishes this is through close up panels of the swamp and the Swamp Thing, showing the multitude of life that is present. In issue 22, Swamp Thing retires to the swamp, and allows the earth to overtake him, even to the point of losing his consciousness of his own existence. We see throughout the issue close ups of this process; the swamp and Swamp Thing becoming one. In these close ups a multitude of greens, textures, and shapes are all displayed, often within a very close area. On page 2, for example, the process is shown for the first time. Swamp Thing's body is unrecognizable, and looks more like the surrounding swamp. Within an area of what looks to be around four feet, ferns, moss, grass, pools of water, vines, algae, and other plant life are all illuminated. This begs the question as to why Moore chose a swamp as his forum for environmentalism.
Nature and the environment are not usually depicted as moppy swamp lands. When one thinks of nature, images of giant waterfalls and majestic mountains are generally conjured up. Moore knew this, and just as well could have made his symbol of nature a handsome, humanistic, superhero who live in a forest. Moore chose Swamp thing, rather, on purpose. The general perceptions of nature needed to be changed. Swamp land is a vital part of the world's eco-system, and needed to be presented as such. More life live in the swamp lands than in the forest, yet it is often overlooked. The point that Moore made by choosing to use a swamp as the environment of his forum was that humans needed to care for the unsightly areas of nature just as much as the aesthetically pleasing areas. By adding so much detail to the artwork, Moore emphasized exactly how much was at stake with the endangerment of the swamp lands, filled with a multitude of life. Through the artwork, Alan Moore completely changes the look and feel of the entire medium.
The first issue Moore writes for Swamp Thing demonstrates this change in the medium from page 1(Image A). Before this issue, comics always contained the pictures and stories combined to one page. In this way, the comic read like a book, one page at a time. All pictures were confined to their frames and the reader would follow the story from the top of the page to the bottom. In issue 20, the story starts out with a two page spread. Moore has you follow the character from the top left of the first page to the top right of the second, then flow back to the bottom of the first page. Moore makes two statements by changing the format in this manner. First, Moore is making a statement about the genre itself. Comic books are not novels, and should not be read as such. There is a pictorial element that one cannot find in other forms of literature, and comics should utilize this element. By recognizing the individuality of the comic book, Moore is elevating the status of the medium to something with its own attributes and ways to convey meaning. The comic was no longer to be compared to children's books(also filled with text and picture). Unlike a children's book, which is still read like a book, reading a comic book was an experience all its own. Secondly, as in introductory element to the series, one should expect the content and story lines to be larger, more involved, and overall different than what has been written before. This message Moore delivers about the medium and the future of the series compliments his messages on environmentalism. In order to understand the messages Moore intends in Swamp Thing, the reader must broaden their range of mental intake. The face of the comic may seem like an ordinary superhero book, but there are underlying messages throughout the series. The two page spread alerts readers to a new way of presenting, along with the necessity of a new way of reading.
Another aspect of this issue is in the way Moore directs the coloring. Comics generally have two artists work on them; a penciller and an inker. Moore adds a third artist to work on the colors; a colorist. Swamp Thing's artwork is more vibrant than other work that comes out during this time. By adding a second colorist, Moore gives the swamp more variation in the colors, ultimately giving the character and environment more of an organic feel. This move was rather risky, for “Different artists can be confusing and lead to inconsistencies. It makes it difficult to build momentum and the 'look' of a comic is very important in attracting new readers”(Parkin, 48). This risk paid off, however. The two colorists' colors would run together, something new on newsprint, which added to the character of the swamp. Moore juxtaposes this style when rendering scenes in urban life. In issue 21, the plot takes place in a city; a sky scraper in particular. On page 20, both the Swamp Thing and the urban area around him are shown, with striking differences. The top panel is the only one that show any part of the Swamp Thing, and it is only his feet that are revealed. Yet this small area holds a large contrast to the rest of the page. The Swamp Thing's feet are colored in various shades of green, allowing the two colorists contrasts to play with one another. The urban setting, however, is much duller. Each portrayal of an object made by humans is shown in a single color. The wall, for example, is one long stretch of blue. The floor, covered in a monotonous orange. The only bit of variation given to any urban object is done through the line work. The line work is strictly to capture the outline of a figure, however, and does not add any variation. This is Moore's way of contrasting environments. The organic figures appear more natural, while the objects constructed by man appear artificial, and blatantly so.
Alan Moore recognized a medium that was ideal for delivering his messages on environmentalism. By taking on a pre-existing character, Moore was able to change the specifics of the character and make the changes themselves a message. Rather than simply be a character modeled on Cold War sentiment, Swamp Thing became a symbol of environment reform and a victim of environmental mismanagement all at once. Moore explores intertextuality in his work, and borrows the characters of Walt Kelly in issue 32, Moore brings the environmental messages of Kelly to a new group of readers. Swamp Thing's fan base changes drastically as well during Moore's run on the series. By continuously pushing the line in regards to adult content, Moore lost the approval of the Comic Code Authority but gained a more mature audience, which adds to the mature messages conveyed in his writing. Through taking a more active role in the construction of the artwork, Moore ensured a new dimension was added to the medium. The comic book was now read differently, and the work invites the reader to open their mind to new ways of viewing and thinking. The addition of two inkers caused the work to have more variety of color, which gives it more of an organic feel and adds to the environmental message of the book. In these ways Moore voices his environmental opinions and revolutionizes the medium.
Bissette, Stephen, R. “Mr. Moore and Me”. Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman. Abiogenesis Press. 2003
Costello, Matthew J. Secret Identity Crisis: Comic Books & the Unmasking of Cold War America. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, 2009
Denny, Reuel. “Pogo's Polity, Kelly's 'Genre'”. Chicago Review. Vol. 8, No. 3. 1954
Dunaway, Finis. “Gas Masks, Pogo, and the Ecological Indian: Earth Day and the Visual Politics of American Environmentalism”. American Quarterly Vol. 60. American Studies Association, 2008
Liddo, Annalisa De. Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009
Parkin, Lance. The Essential Guide to the Creator of Watchmen, From Hell and V for Vendetta: Alan Moore. England: Pocket Essentials, 2001
Wertham, F. Seduction of the Innocent. Rinehart and Winston. New York. 1954
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Conclusion
The essays in this anthology have far reaching implications for how we understand the media’s role in influencing views of the environment. Given the environmental crises we face today, it is important we realize that images may shape our opinions on how society goes about addressing environmental problems. These essays all address specific cases where nature is perceived in a certain way and how the media helps to convey these perceptions.
In Yosemite, the photography of Ansel Adams promoted a wilderness ideal and obscured complex human history. With dramatic photographs of waterfalls, granite domes, and valley scenes, a false view of the environment is conveyed. As a result, these images evoke this idea of an untamed virgin wilderness that needs to be preserved. What these photographs ignore however is that Yosemite and indeed most protected areas around the world have been inhabited or used by indigenous people for thousands of years. Consequently, reserve regulations make it difficult for these people to continue with their traditional subsistence lifestyles. With increased preservation and conservation projects being implemented throughout the world we must avoid, viewing landscapes as wildernesses or damaged landscapes as former-wildernesses. These conservation efforts must recognize complicated human history and indigenous resource use so that we are better able to solve environmental problems.
Besides human history, cultural history must also be taken into account when considering environmental issues. The way people react to the environment depends, to a large extent, on their cultural perception of the environment. In China, two competing ideologies dominate the environmental discourse, one from the Buddhist/Daoist/Confucist tradition and the other from Western European culture. The Buddhist/Daoist/Confucist view frames the human-nature relationship as a mutual interconnection that enforces a harmonious attitude towards nature. On the other hand, the Western European perspective characterizes the human-nature relationship with man superior to nature. This anthropocentric notion places an ethical concern on man as the determiner of the human-nature relationship. In one scenario, man can be figured as protector of the environment such that man uses his dominance to shelter the “weaker” environment. Yet, man can also abuse his superior position and exploit nature for his own benefit. This conflicted approach to nature from Western European culture was then exported to China, which readily consumed it in their quest for modernization. Based on the confusions inherent in Western environmental discourse, no wonder that China remains ambivalent on its environmental policy. Therefore, if true environmental change is desired, an adjustment in cultural values must be considered due to its impact on influencing human attitudes and actions.
Taking up the question of the human-nature relationship, the boundaries we often impose upon “nature” through our attempts to define, depict, and materialize this phenomenon in relation to ourselves becomes further blurred within advertising. Masters, manipulators, and so on, how do we perceive ourselves within nature? With the apparent increase in “green,” “natural,” and other eco-friendly advertising, this signals a possible change within the trends of society, potentially influenced historically as well. Having an incomplete, partial influence on the masses, advertisements from Chevron to Greenpeace can pervade the human psyche/memory to some extent, of course varying considerably, and can potentially reinforce, introduce, and change individual perceptions of man and the “environment.” Commonly assumed as majestic, static, and so on, human involvement within the categorizations of “wildlife,” landscapes, and other labels are dynamic conceptions we as humans impose. “Natural” versus “manmade,” the distinctions often interchange as manmade constructions may seem to be product of nature just as “nature” is a product of human influences.
Most of the time the media will present nature and the environment through the lens of popular perceptions. Landscape photographs, paintings, television, and novels will portray a picture of nature that is comfortable and recognizable to the consumers. For example, in Vy’s Vitamin Water commercial, “nature” is depicted via the anthropomorphized animals such as the deer, raccoon, and rabbit. Deers, raccoons, and rabbits all share the quality of being “urbanized” animals; these creatures can be found living in close proximity to humans, even ending up in human dwellings. Yet, what about plants? Is not plant life also present in human settings such as the bouquet of flowers or the manicured lawn? Noticeably, in the Vitamin Water commercial, no plants were seen talking in the video even though plant life is as much a part of nature as the animal. The exclusion of plants demonstrates the human bias towards favoring the Animalia perspective over the Plantae in its conception of nature. This, however, is not always the case. In the work of Alan Moore, the environment is portrayed in a way not many would recognize immediately. Instead of an animal-based hero, Alan Moore chose to create a plant-derived character as the protagonist of his comics. Already challenging the fauna-emphasized conception of nature, Alan Moore goes one step further in his depiction of the flora-centered world. Rather than showcase a beautiful forest as the embodiment of nature, Moore chose to use a swamp. This new aesthetic was used to force people to reconsider their view of and relationship to the environment. In the case of Moore’s work on Swamp Thing, the media does not mirror the environmental perceptions of the majority. Rather, it propagates a new one. The goal of Moore’s work is to create awareness of the environmental concerns of the day; a goal which Moore accomplishes through changing the format of comic books in order to relay deeper messages. Comic books are an important and often undervalued medium of influence because it targets teenagers who can be inspired to effect change and adults who may be in positions of power to make a difference. Thus, as shown through the Swamp Thing in contrast with Vitamin Water, the media does not always copy a former conception of nature but can create a new perception that influences the population to modify their own views.
The aesthetics of nature in each of the mediums discussed in this anthology also point to various interpretations of man’s place in nature. Jeffrey Wong uses an example of an ancient Chinese painting to show the Eastern relationship between humans and nature. In the painting of a traditional landscape, the presence of the human is made visible within the natural scenery. The houses shown seem to blend in with the background, making it a part of the landscape and in turn a part of nature. The aesthetics of Peter Blanchard’s subject, photographs of Yosemite by Ansel Adams, display a completely different view. Nature is sublime, desolate, and majestic. These photographs seem to suggest that it is that lack of human interaction with the environment that produces this beauty. These two opposite ideas of man in nature are demonstrated in the aesthetics of advertisements noted in Vy Duong’s essay, particularly in the Chevron commercial. The flashes of ocean waves and grassy hillsides in the Chevron ad at first seem to follow a similar theme as the Ansel Adams photographs in relation to their view of nature. The video starts out with a picture of the earth from outer space; majestic and grand. However, scenes of humans are flashed in as well, as a sort of juxtaposition to the first image. From there, images of humans and nature are further combined until finally, Chevron ends its commercial with the slogan, “human energy.” The term, “human energy” represents an interesting conflation of human and nature where energy, a power source that fuels civilization, stems from human ingenuity. However, the relationship between human and nature in “human energy” is not the same as the one depicted in the Chinese shan shui painting. Instead of the human occupying space in nature as in the Chinese landscapes, the human in “human energy” maintains a nonphysical connection to the environment; the human presence is demarked by the tools he uses to extract energy. Thus, “human energy” represents a curious internal paradox where humanity’s link to nature is real yet artificial. Lastly, in another demonstration of media challenging dominant discourse, the aesthetics of Moore’s Swamp Thing offer an alternative idea of beauty in nature. The Swamp Thing is an ugly creature that is seen as an abomination of nature, yet literally embodies nature itself. The dynamics of beauty in nature illustrate a human appreciation of nature that only focuses on the positive qualities, the attributes that are pleasing and beneficial. The negative side of nature, destruction and death, are regarded as demons to be eradicated. The lack of wholesome appreciation for all that nature encompasses reveals an ethic that prioritizes man above nature. Nature is only valued when it serves the needs of man. Thus, humans tend to romanticize nature to gloss over its “wild side” as Adams performed with his sublime photos. In contrast to Adams, Moore’s grotesque creature reminds us that nature, like humans, has both positive and negative characteristics and extorts the viewer to confront his preconceptions of nature.
In all, we hope in this anthology to stimulate the reader’s intellectual curiosity in the questions about media and the environment posed throughout the essays. The media’s relationship to the environment deserves critical attention because the media, whether it be paintings, advertisements, or comic books, remains the primary source of distribution, production, and consumption of environmental discourse. As indicated in each of the essays, the media’s portrayal of the environment impacts our perception, beliefs, and values about nature. Yet, although none of these essays offer a comprehensive look into media’s interaction with the environment, we believe that these essays provide a venue for further academic research, a foundation that establishes some key questions concerning the media’s role in the rhetoric of the environment.
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