Disaster Films and the Zeitgeist

While the representation of disaster is not entirely new to cinema and other forms of popular culture, there has been, in the years following the 20th century, an increase in its ubiquity. Speaking generally, it would be unwise to discount the ability of popular culture’s potential to draw attention, or at the very least publicity, by way of sensationalism and drama to the increasing alarm raised by the scientific community about imminent threats to human existence on our planet. Still, these realistic portrayals of disaster have also disconnected our sensitivity and ability to realistically perceive such situations.Such a thesis is not entirely novel and without precedent.

Media activist Kalle Lasn (12-23) reports that an increasing amount of research findings present correlations between apathy and awareness of current events. Reportage of ethnic violence in the Middle East, civil rights violations in Southeast Asia and starvation in Africa have, over the decades, desensitized us collectively to the human tragedies of the world. Similarly, depictions of environmental catastrophe, whether or not they involve dramatic loss of human life, erode our sensitivity towards the potentiality of real life catastrophes.It is only when real life catastrophes hit us personally that our sensitivities are rekindled. This is not a point to take comfort in, for the sentiment that we need to develop is not sensitivity in the aftermath of disaster but rather, sensitivity which permits us to take steps towards the prevention of disaster.

Shockers like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina gave us insights into the heroic possibilities of the human race, but at the same time, these came at the cost of human life. Even then, these shockers had little effect on those who were not personally impacted by them or experienced it remotely through media.Therefore, even without making light of disasters and attempting to take them very seriously in the form of a dramatic narrative, disaster films are inadvertently trivializing their implications. Ray Hammond summarizes the gravity of imminent global threats in the 21st century: “Only one quarter into the 21st century and our planet is displaying disturbing symptoms: storms, floods, mud-slides, tornadoes and blizzards afflict the globes surface, while heat waves, droughts and deep-freeze are regular occurrences. Not to mention volcanoes and earthquakes.Many believe that mankinds consuming lust for economic growth is fast wrecking the world, while others insist these changes are all part of the planets natural cycle.

Whatever the truth, the most alarming factor is that the Earth is beginning to tilt on its axis ... and worldwide panic is looming.

As governments, experts, corporations and disruptive forces squabble to be heard, it is up to individuals to seek a solution to the most horrifying geophysical scenario we have ever faced. ”But what Hammond fails to mention is that ignorance and negligence can be just as dangerous as these ‘disturbing symptoms. By dulling our wits through repetitive dramatizations of disaster, we as a society have been collectively inured. This may in part, have something to do with the notion that environmental concerns are not perceived to carry any personal relevance, being frequently framed as a moral imperative to save the planet.

However, Jamais Cascio charges that this is a ‘grand myth’: “The grand myth of environmentalism is that it's all about saving the Earth. It's not. The Earth will be just fine. Environmentalism is all about saving ourselves.

” As such, the problem with this myth is that it creates a fundamental disconnect that is problematic at best.For example, the made for TV film Category 6: Day of Destruction and its sequel Category 7: The End of the World, frame much of environmental catastrophe as an apocalyptic tale in which nature exacts punitive justice upon negligent humans while the ‘little people’ suffer. However, they’re little better than parables framed around a morality of saving the planet, completely presuming that human civilization’s impacts on the planet are a manifestation of sinful transgressions, rather than acknowledging that we are foolhardy and negligent.By desensitizing us to catastrophe and admonishing us for our collectively sinful nature, disaster films have become counterproductive in garnering the political momentum and the will of the imagination to muster solutions to the problems we need to address in staving off those disasters in the first place. In effect, they breed cynicism and despair rather than encouraging us to imagine a better world where we are able to transcend such problems through creative engagement and an ability to pioneer solutions.

This is where films such as former U. S. Vice President Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (somewhat) succeeds: By refusing to frame environmental catastrophe as a moral issue or a political one, and recognizing it as a question on whether human civilization is capable of taking the smart steps to ensure its own survival, he promotes an understanding that its ability to endure despite its fragility (when compared to the planet’s own ability to survive millennia of asteroid impacts, Ice Ages and other large-scale environmentally transformative events) that forces us to consider action.Alex Steffen charges that by allowing ourselves to view disasters as a kind of millenarianist fantasy of apocalypse, we frame them as being inevitable rather than preventable thereby undercutting the ability to remediate their causes, moderate their impacts and develop strategies of resilience. History has shown that surviving a disaster does not come from heroic meteorologists and newscasters like in Category 6, but rather survival happens among communities with an ability to cooperate and govern themselves efficiently.

It is an ability to maintain foresight and develop proper strategies through broad cooperation that brings societies on top, not just in terms of environmental catastrophe but in terms of political regimes, crime waves and war. For just as dangerous as disaster is our failure to achieve the will to imagine optimistically the possibility of no disaster at all. Optimism is a revolutionary act, opines Steffen: Optimism […] can be revolutionary. Where no one believes in a better future, despair is a logical choice, and people in despair almost never change anything. Where no one believes a better solution is possible, those benefiting from the continuation of a problem are safe. Where no one believes in the possibility of action, apathy becomes an insurmountable obstacle to reform.

”If anything, the notion of the inevitability of disaster is rooted in a belief that human interests are irreconcilable with planetary welfare, that sinning against nature is an essentialist aspect of humanity. It is only by recognizing the reconcilability of human civilization with planetary welfare that we can begin to take steps towards fighting a disaster, and realizing that, contrary to what Category 7’s subtitle proclaims there is no end of the world, but only the end of humanity.