Film, Environment, Comedy: Eco-Comedies on the Big Screen

This book explores the transformative power of comedy to help connect a wider audience to films that explore environmental concerns and issues.

This book offers a space in which to explore the complex ways environmental comedies present their eco-arguments. With an organizational structure that reveals the evolution of both eco-comedy films and theoretical approaches, this book project aims to fill a gap in ecocinema scholarship. It does so by exploring three sections arranged to highlight the breadth of eco-comedy: I. Comic Genres and the Green World: Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, and Post-Pastoral Visions; II. Laughter, Eco-Heroes, and Evolutionary Narratives of Consumption; and III. Environmental Nostalgia, Fuel, and the Carnivalesque. Examining everything from Hollywood classics, Oscar winners, and animation to independent and international films, Murray and Heumann exemplify how the use of comedy can expose and amplify environmental issues to a wider audience than more traditional ecocinema genres and can help provide a path towards positive action and change.

Ideal for students and scholars of film studies, ecocriticism, and environmental studies, especially those with a particular interest in ecocinema and/or ecocritical readings of popular films.

Robin L. Murray is Professor Emeritus of English (Eastern Illinois University) and continues to teach film courses.

Joseph K. Heumann is Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies (Eastern Illinois University) and continues to teach film courses.