North Philly Notes

This week in North Philly Notes, we interview authors Avi Brisman and Nigel South, about their new book, Monstrous Nature and Representations of Environmental Harms.

Your book is about green cultural criminology. Can you explain what that is, and what prompted your interest in developing this approach?

Nigel South: A good starting question with what is, in a way, an obvious answer. Green cultural criminology is a classic case of being “what it says on the tin”—aiming to bring together criminological concerns about green or environmental issues with cultural frameworks of representation, consumption, and resistance. Once you start to think about it, it is striking how much media—e.g. art, film, literature—draws on environmental themes, and this has been so historically and globally, across cultures. Culture provides the imagery and language that we have always used to make sense of nature, and it helps us to share stories about nature that justify or criticize human use and misuse of the planet. Our original framework reflected several strands of interest, such as news media reporting—or non-reporting!—of environmental harms and crimes; the commodification of nature. The case study we focused on in early work was the marketing of water in plastic bottles in societies where safe drinking water is easily available from a tap; and recognition of various ways in which “ordinary” people and broader social movements have engaged in resistance to and protests about environmental harms.

Your book looks at how society gets its ideas of what is harmful and just from culture. These are stories of “monsters.” Can you explain how culture informs our ideas of justice regarding the environment?

Nigel South: “Absorbing” culture is one of the ways we learn about and adapt to the places we inhabit. In varying circumstances, common features of culture often include stories about nature and how we should revere or fear it. This is such a basic starting point for the ways we talk of/about and represent nature, because life is so obviously and fundamentally dependent on the health of the environment for air, food, and water. Threats to this dependence will create a sense of fear and injustice, and this theme is conveyed in religion, art, politics and so on, in ways that often demonize the origins of such threats. “Here be monsters,” as they say, but we must remember these remain stories that people want to tell themselves—so they may, for example, see explanations of climate change as agreed science or disputed fantasy. And, of course, when it comes to identifying the most monstrously destructive sources of harm and injustice, well, many—but not all—would agree that they would be the activities of humans. Although, as we argue in the book, some activities and some humans are more responsible than others…

What about the idea, depicted in films and literature you discuss, of the environment taking its revenge against people who do it harm?

Nigel South: This is a powerful image and really resonates with people because, of course, it is by no means new. The idea that “nature bites back” if it is abused or taken for granted is an ancient one, but today a standard trope in both entertainment media and in the reporting of environmental damage. This is because, without being moralistic, it is reasonable to say, “If you do this, you should not be surprised if the outcome is that.” The alteration of the atmosphere through production of “greenhouse gases” leading to global warming—or short-sighted reshaping of landscapes leading to floods—have been offered as examples. In popular media, some of the most famous plotlines—versions of Frankenstein and zombie tales or atomic-age anxieties and monstrous mutations—echo the message that human hubris can have frightening consequences.   

You write in your book’s introduction that your goal is to “expose and reveal environmental messages in popular culture . . . and to evalu­ate and critique them.” Can you describe what you look at and look for?

Avi Brisman: Many depictions of environmental disaster and apocalypse surround a single, discrete event that occurs rapidly. A good example would be The Day After Tomorrow—Roland Emmerich’s 2004 film. On the one hand, this makes sense because stories need to develop quickly on the screen. One cannot, for example, make a movie about climate change that unfolds at the rate that climate change is actually occurring (unlike, say, a murder mystery where the murder on screen may take the same amount of time—minutes, seconds—as it would off of it/in real life). 

Nigel South: Another recurrent theme in popular culture is that invasion of the “alien” “other” will destroy or mutate “our” nature. Classic examples include H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, both of which involve what initially appear to be an unusual meteor shower. But then invasion follows!

Our theme of abjection is also a powerful one in, for example, T. S. Eliot’s epic poem,
The Waste Land, in which the very title signals a dry, lifeless, desolate world. The text and its various sections can be seen as a classic exploration of the abjection of the Earth!

You also consider “what we might learn from these dark (green) visions” of apocalypse, ecocidal tendencies, and environmental disaster”. What can you say about your “fears” about the environment?

Nigel South: We are not learning and at present there seem to be relatively few causes for optimism—and worryingly, a recurrent plotline among the most popular streaming tv shows and movies is an apocalyptic event and tales of the struggles of survivors…. It is almost as if we are scripting—and enjoying watching—our “end of days.”

Avi Brisman: One of my biggest fears about the environment is, unfortunately, one that we are enacting now: the boiling frog story. We are being cooked to death—we are cooking ourselves to death—and not realizing the danger. We think we are relaxing in a hot tub when, in fact, the “creeping normality” (of climate change—or of Donald Trump’s authoritarianism) will bring about our end. To quote T.S. Eliot, again, “This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.”

You close your book with assorted solutions (or propositions) that are meant to “save” Earth. What optimism do you have given the state of the world and how it is reflected in these films and literature?

Avi Brisman: I do not have a particularly sunny disposition. I’m not a “glass half full” kind of guy. Quite the opposite: not only is the “glass half empty,” but “the levy is dry,” to quote Don McLean. By the same token, however, I feel I need to have some hope. My daughters are 13 and 17, so I believe I must demonstrate some sanguinity—some confidence in a future for them. Very few books or movies present visions of a better world. (Ostensibly utopian tales often contain dystopian elements.)  To some extent, this is to be expected because plotlines need conflict. But that does not mean that writers and directors should not try to present worlds that are aspirational—or that we (humanity as a whole) should view/treat dark (green) visions of disaster as scripts to follow.       

What do you want readers to take away from your book?

Avi Brisman: At the most basic level, I hope readers of our book will want to read more. There is so much literature—so much science fiction and horror—that we could have discussed. Such works enhance our understanding of the relationship of humans and the environment. They provide perspectives that develop our creative thinking and problem-solving abilities. So, at the very least, I hope our readers will, well, keep reading.

On another level, I hope the book reminds readers that we have agency. One of the key insights of cultural criminology is that—and I am paraphrasing here—“criminal events,” however defined, and their mediated images influence perceptions of and responses to crime. These then impact the images, creating a continuous loop. Green cultural criminology argues that a similar looping (and amplification) occurs with the environment and environmental harms. And in our book, we are arguing that we (people) need not be passive—or recipients of these cultural processes. We can intercede in and disrupt the (environmental) harms, change the representations thereof, and break the loop.

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