Nicole Starosielski's reading, "Movements that are drawn," triggered my interest because as a child, I remember being so enthralled by movies and literature with environmental undertones such as, Fern Gully, The Lion King, Rescuers Down Under, A Bug's Life, and Dr. Seuss's original book, The Lorax (2011). Although I really didn't understand the environmental concepts being presented to me at the time, these movies remain, to this day, some of my favourite and most memorable. Starosielski talks about animation being a venue for "environmental representation," one where we can begin to capture the hearts of children while presenting environmental issues. She defines environmental animation as "a genre of environmental media that uses animated form to deliberately construct knowledge about the social and ecological processes that affect us..." such as that presented in The Lorax, a rather unrealistic view of the world with very current and real environmental problems. She goes on to argue that environmental animation places viewers in "imperceptible environments," which is true of the upcoming 2013 movie, "Epic." I've included the trailer, which gives viewers a look into the only imagined world, with an obvious focus on the environment.
Watching the trailer almost takes me back to being a child, being wondrous and compelled by the simple things nature has to offer. These films have the potential to raise environmental awareness on global scales. Fern Gully, for example, made its mark on environmental history during its 1992 Earth Day release at the United Nations General Assembly Hall, gaining "a central place in the iconography of global, mainstream environmentalism," according to Starosielski. More recently, Avatar attracted massive environmental attention, being both praised and criticized for its depiction of corporate illegitimacy. I agree with Starosielski when she states, "...this article argues that the potential of these texts for both viewers and filmmakers lies in their creation of imperceptible and imagined worlds. Environmental animation should not be considered secondary to indexical forms, but instead as providing views difficult to achieve with indexical mediation," implying that environmental animation should be taken seriously and is a platform that can carry the message to an array of audiences, highly educated in environmentalism, or not.
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