The Ecohorror Problem: Dangerous Depictions of Nature
Written by Common Ground Leader, Jordan Hunnisett
When a tribe sacrifice an actress to a gargantuan gorilla, the beast obsesses over her beauty to the displeasure of her fellow Americans. After violent encounters, her rescue, his capture, and then dramatic scenes in the streets of New York, the ape meets his fate atop a lofty hotel, supposedly not to the fault of the airplanes riddling him with bullets, but to his own passions.
Flocks of birds, for no apparent reason, turn on a village in California, attacking residents with beak and talon, breaking into homes, and claiming lives. A socialite is torn and traumatised in an attic after an encounter with the birds, but a little girl is left unscathed – escaping the village with her tame, caged, pet lovebirds in tow.
When the remains of a young woman are found on a beach in New England, a mayor fears for the local economy and hunts ensue for a man-eating great white shark. After a series of bloody deaths out at sea, a police chief, a shark fisherman, and an oceanographer band together to catch the killer. Their pursuit comes to an end on a sinking boat, and with a gory explosion.
Image credits: IMDb; Letterboxd; IMDb
When it comes to Western horror films (and literature) of the 20th century, white men are often the heroes, if not cartoonish villains. Women and minorities, however, are often depicted with stigma, prejudice, and discrimination, regardless of their part. Animals receive similar treatment, especially in the popular ecohorror film. In titles such as King Kong (1933), The Birds (1963), and Jaws (1975), fauna are horrific and to be feared. Sometimes in ecohorror the deadly animal is seeking revenge against the Human for an act of violence committed against Nature; other times, the animal is a manifestation of Human evils and brutalities, whether it is intended to be or not.
This is to say that killer animals – as well as plants, fungus, and the like – are almost never natural in ecohorror; a gorilla does not steal white women away like the problematic King Kong; the birds that partly inspired Alfred Hitchcock were not attacking Californians, but suffering from the effects of a toxic algae; a great white shark has made an error in its hunting if it finds itself chowing down on human flesh. These creatures have been written not as they exist in the natural world. Instead, they are a product of fantasy, often anthropomorphised and an unjust manipulation of truth, created for entertainment and/or as an entity that explores the human condition in relation to the natural environment. Moreover, these animals are designed to scare and therefore present the Human as fearful of Nature, but often able to escape from or overcome it.
“they are a product of fantasy, often anthropomorphised and an unjust manipulation of truth”
In recent years, ecohorror has come under scrutiny in literary and cinematic ecocriticism with the rising threats of environmental and climate crises. Traditional ecohorror narratives often fail to emphasise environmental justice, instead depicting Nature as murderous and petrifying, and thus to be fled, subdued, or destroyed. Therefore, these texts and films distract from and in turn reinforce the harm of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, which is anti-Nature as an ideology and system, and at fault for environmental degradation. In other words, traditional ecohorror narratives compound fear of the natural world, even if written in effort to criticise ways of human activity that are harmful both for human and non-human entities. This leads to conservatism and/or ecophobia.
However, ecohorror can be written with justice. The genre has potential to inspire hope in the face of environmental and climate catastrophes rather than fear, and therefore encourage positive environmental activism, and harmony with Nature.
Header image credit: Jordan Hunnisett