Disaster Movies and the ‘Peak Oil’ Movement

Does Popular Culture Encourage Eco-Apocalyptic Beliefs in the United States

Bibliographic Data

ID12901171
AuthorsMatthew Schneider-Mayerson (0000-0002-7848-0759, Rice University, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume7
Issue3
Pages289-314
Publication date2013-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1749-4907 • E-ISSN: 1749-4915
PublisherEquinox Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1558/jsrnc.v7i3.289
OpenAlexW2054856445
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited15

Using two large-scale surveys, I argue that the prevalence of apocalyptic popular culture influences apocalyptic beliefs in the United States. I focus especially on Hollywood disaster movies of the 1990s and 2000s, most of which deal with environmental themes, and participants in the ‘peak oil’ movement, a quasi-religious American apocalyptic social movement organized around a vision of energy depletion and social collapse. In these surveys, ‘peakists’ reflect on their relationship with fictional narratives of disaster and destruction. I contend that disaster films influenced major aspects of the ‘peak oil’ ideology, such as the hope for regeneration (or even a better world) as a result of environmental crisis and social collapse; the tendency towards fatalism; and the imagination of social and environmental change as immediate and explosive instead of gradual. This cultural influence is situated in the context of contemporary responses to other environmental issues, such as climate change

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Climate change · Context (archaeology · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Fatalism · Hollywood · Ideology · Literature · Narrative · Peak oil · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Situated · Sociology · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Global Energy and Sustainability Research · History