Don’t Look Askance

The paper is a discussion of film expressions of environmental emotions, in particular of eco-anger. It discusses several distinctions within the notion of anger (in particular that of honour-related vs. justice-related anger) and argues that eco-anger can take accordingly varied forms. As an expression of honour-related eco-anger, the film Don’t Look Up and its cinematic tools are analysed. This film is contrasted with justice-related forms of eco-anger (as embodied in the movement of Fridays for Future), and, further, with Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. While Melancholia has (probably) no authorial environmentalist intention, its plot (strongly reminiscent of that of Don’t Look Up) invites environmentalist readings: as a lucidly pessimist film, fully free of any condescension or a tendency to take artistic vengeance on the deniers of the upcoming catastrophe

Aesthetics · Anger · Art · Economic Justice · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Honour · Melancholia · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology