The Anthropocene unconscious: Climate anxieties in suburban SF

Bould, Mark

Abstract

If the Anthropocene is the unconscious of the art, literature, and media of our time, then sf films that are not overtly about climate change will nonetheless express Anthropocenic concerns. In Marjorie Prime (2017), an intense inward focus on the domestic bourgeois subject replicates the defining foundational error of what Amitav Ghosh calls the “serious literary novel,” the feature that prevents it from properly addressing climate change. It ends with all the humans gone and three AI/holograms talking to each other against a backdrop of weird weather. The Tomorrow War (2021) establishes a series of parallels between alien invaders and climate change, but nonetheless unthinkingly depicts suburban life, a key driver of fossil fuel consumption, as a utopia to be preserved. In The Purge (DeMonaco 2013), the armored suburban home, situated within the context of settler colonialism, becomes a microcosm of the nation state in the era of climate destabilization.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 20, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Oct 8, 2023
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2023
• Deposit Date: Jan 26, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 31, 2024
• Journal: Science Fiction Film and Television
• Print ISSN: 1754-3770
• Electronic ISSN: 1754-3789
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 251–275
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/sfftv.2023.15
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11628380