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from the editor
| THIS ISSUE FEATURES "Films Every Environmental Historian Should See," thirty-seven short essays that examine a variety of feature-length films, documentaries, and television mini-series that have been produced over the past several decades. Some of the films will be familiar to most readers (Born Free, Deliverance, Jaws, March of the Penguins, A River Runs Through It, and Whale Rider, for instance), others less so (Close to Eden, Darwin's Nightmare, Petulia, and The Wilderness Idea). A few—Forest Smokechaser, A Fortune in Two Old Trunks, Landmarks, Thirteen Lakes, among them—are likely to have escaped the attention of even the most avid filmgoers. Some are classics (The Plow that Broke the Plains and Louisiana Story) while others are of recent vintage (Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control and Who Killed the Electric Car?). |
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While I would like to take credit for the idea of focusing on films, in truth Gregory Cushman gave me the idea many months ago and also agreed to write one of the first pieces. I decided to utilize the same format that Adam Rome used when he prepared the Anniversary Forum, "What Books Should Be More Widely Read in Environmental History?," in October 2006. Like Adam, I made no effort to be comprehensive—Chinatown is missing, for instance—simply because there are far too many films (just as there are too many books) of importance to environmental historians to fit the available space. I just asked a group of leading historians and film experts to choose one or more of their favorite "environmental" films, and then I made sure that their choices did not overlap too much. |
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Chance works in mysterious ways. Included here are films about sharks, wolves, grizzly bears, trees, soil erosion, lakes, rivers, rural electrification, hydroelectriticy, electric cars, firefighters, psychopathic corporations, environmental activists, pastoralists, charcoal makers, robot designers, vineyards, invasive species, war, nuclear meltdowns, the "summer of love," and chemical spills, to name but a sample of our contributors' topics. There is even a firsthand account (David Rosner's piece on Blue Vinyl) about the legal hazards that researchers face when they set out to publicize the environmental hazards that chemical companies produce. |
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As I was tracking down scholars to write these short film pieces, I learned that William Tsutsui was working on a full-length essay about "giant insect" horror films, "Looking Straight at Them! Understanding the Big Bug Movies of the 1950s," which quite naturally became the lead article in this issue. Tsutsui argues that film critics have all too often interpreted big bug movies as veiled manifestations of Cold War anxieties, but that it is perhaps more appropriate to see them as early (if crude) manifestations of public concern over the long-term implication of pesticide use, an unease that was growing long before Rachel Carson gave DDT and other "wonder" chemicals a bad name. It is surely not coincidental that the bugs got bigger (and nastier) as public anxieties rose in the 1950s, or that this film genre began to decline in the next decade as anxieties subsided. |
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By chance, I accepted Peder Anker's essay, "Graphic Language: Herbert Bayer's Environmental Design," for publication about the same time I began working on the film essays and I decided to save it for this issue because his themes dovetail so well with the others. Bayer was no film buff, but he was one of the world's most renowned graphic artists who famously introduced modernist imagery into environmental design. Born in Austro-Hungary in 1900, Bayer studied at the German Bauhaus in Weimar before emigrating to the United States, where he found a job with the Container Corporation of America. Today he is best remembered for his role in the creation of Aspen, Colorado, as a world-class ski resort; and for producing the World Geo-graphic Atlas (1953), which provided subsequent mapmakers with a ready-made set of symbols for depicting demographic, economic, and environmental transformations. |
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This issue is full of images, not least because of the magic touch of our graphics editor, Kathy Morse, who has decided to step down from that post as of July 2007. Fortunately, Neil Maher has agreed to assume the position beginning with the October issue, so we can expect the high-quality imagery that Kathy has provided to continue unabated. |
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Finally, Char Miller and I were delighted that Roderick Nash—one of the great pioneers of environmental history—agreed to do an interview for this issue. He, of course, needs no further introduction. |
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MARK CIOC
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