Matthew I. Thompson: On Life Support

What can science fiction film tell us about the course of the modern ecological movement? On Life Support traces how the environmental concerns of the 1970s were embedded in the eco-dystopian cinema of the era—and considers its implications for ecological thought and activism today.

Illuminating the patterns that shape our thinking about nonhuman nature, Matthew I. Thompson pairs iconic films such as Soylent Green and Silent Running with the transformational environmentalist texts that inspired them and kick-started the modern environmental movement, including Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Thompson examines this confluence of literature and cinema to show how, as they translated environmentalism for Hollywood’s audiences, these movies distilled the movement’s concepts into a form that revealed their inherent contradictions.