Seeing Green : The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images / Finis Dunaway.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dunaway, Finis, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Environmentalism--United States.

Environmentalism.

Visual communication--United States.

Visual communication.

Environmentalism in mass media.

Environmentalism in art.

Disasters in art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (346 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

American environmentalism is defined by its icons: the "Crying Indian," who shed a tear in response to litter and pollution; the cooling towers of Three Mile Island, site of a notorious nuclear accident; the sorrowful spectacle of oil-soaked wildlife following the ExxonValdez spill; and, more recently, Al Gore delivering his global warming slide show in An Inconvenient Truth. These images, and others like them, have helped make environmental consciousness central to American public culture. Yet most historical accounts ignore the crucial role images have played in the making of popular environmentalism, let alone the ways that they have obscured other environmental truths. Finis Dunaway closes that gap with Seeing Green. Considering a wide array of images-including pictures in popular magazines, television news, advertisements, cartoons, films, and political posters-he shows how popular environmentalism has been entwined with mass media spectacles of crisis. Beginning with radioactive fallout and pesticides during the 1960s and ending with global warming today, he focuses on key moments in which media images provoked environmental anxiety but also prescribed limited forms of action. Moreover, he shows how the media have blamed individual consumers for environmental degradation and thus deflected attention from corporate and government responsibility. Ultimately, Dunaway argues, iconic images have impeded efforts to realize-or even imagine-sustainable visions of the future. Generously illustrated, this innovative book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of environmentalism or in the power of the media to shape our politics and public life.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1. Dr. Spock, Daisy Girl, and DDT: A Prehistory of Environmental Icons

2. From Santa Barbara to Earth Day

3. Gas Masks: The Ecological Body under Assault

4. Pogo: "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us"

5. The Crying Indian

6. The Recycling Logo and the Aesthetics of Environmental Hope

7. Gas Lines and Power Struggles

8. Nuclear Meltdown I: The China Syndrome

9. Nuclear Meltdown II: Three Mile Island

10. Here Comes the Sun?

11. Carter's Crisis and the Road Not Taken

12. Environmental Spectacle in a Neoliberal Age

13. Meryl Streep, the Alar Crisis, and the Rise of Green Consumerism

14. The Sudden Violence of the Exxon Valdez

15. Global Crisis, Green Consumers: The Media Packaging of Earth Day 1990

Conclusion: The Strange Career of An Inconvenient Truth

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226597614

022659761X

9780226169934

0226169936

OCLC:

903674250