Abstract:

Depictions of New York buried under snow (The Day after Tomorrow) or incinerated by a solar flare (Knowing), Los Angeles toppling into the Pacific and floodwaters rampaging through the Himalayas (2012) have attracted cinemagoers amidst a growing awareness of a climate change crisis. Consuming such mediated images of nature’s destructive power unleashed with apocalyptic furor on a helpless and environmentally irresponsible humanity has perhaps led to a paralysis of constructive action in response to ecological concerns. Somehow a remnant in these narratives always survives, if not the earth itself, resulting also in complacency and an illusion of hope about the current predicament. In this paper I will build on existing ecocritical engagements with these and other pertinent movies by bringing them into dialogue with insights gleaned from analyses of “the child” in film. I will expose and critique the passive and tokenistic roles that young characters play within the adultcentric heroism and rescue fantasies that permeate these stories. As the inevitable inheritors of contemporary decisions about this planet’s climate, children ought to have a voice and more central role in the narratives that help shape public opinion and the possibility of positive change.