Illuminating the impacts of environmental disasters and climate crises globally, this book examines the experiences of teens grappling with eco-disasters and issues in films of the twenty-first century.
With an emphasis on teen activism, international settings and filmmakers, and marginalized perspectives, this book showcases teens on film that are struggling with present and future everyday eco-disasters amplified by climate change. By highlighting and interrogating diverse genres of teen films in which young adults encounter, address, and battle environmental issues and calamities while also struggling with adolescent development, this book acknowledges the young adult point of view missing from most critical ecocinema research and underlines connections between the more complex ‘coming-of-age’ themes found in teen films with ecocinema themes and approaches. The films examined navigate increasingly realistic conditions, even in fantastical settings, as they showcase teens’ relationships with and responses to environmental issues and eco-disasters. Emphasizing teen activism and under-represented intersectional perspectives outside Hollywood, it establishes the eco-teen film as a notable subgenre.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars of film studies, ecocriticism, and environmental studies, especially those with a particular interest in ecocinema and/or ecocritical readings of films.
Introduction: An Eco-Teen Film? Part I Teen Bodies, Eco-Trauma, and Eco-Activism 1. “Why Should I Study for a Future I Won’t Have?”: Activism and Eco-Trauma in Teen Climate Change Films 2. Turning Teens into Advocates: Crip Camp and the Real Meaning of Sustainability Part II Coming of Age in Post-Colonial Environments: Young Adult Eco-Struggles for Hope 3. Young Adult Postcolonial Ecologies in Zombi Child and Atlantics 4. “You Don’t F**k with the Girls from Pang”: Indigenous Science Fiction Meets YA Eco-Woman Power Part III Post-Colonial Teen War Films 5. When Teen Soldiers Tell their Own Environmental Narratives: The Case of War Witch and Beasts of No Nation 6. War as a Window into Nature in Monos Part IV Teens, Tweens, Viruses, and Spores: Finding Hope in/with the More-than-Human 7. Pangolin Love: South Park’s Covid-19 Specials and the Power of Satire 8. Teen Identity Formation, Interdependence, and the Vegetal: Turning Monstrous Plants into Hope Conclusion: Climate Justice Film on the Front Lines
Robin L. Murray is Professor Emeritus of English (Eastern Illinois University, United States) and continues to teach film courses. Joseph K. Heumann is Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies (Eastern Illinois University, United States) and continues to teach film courses.
