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Menacing Environments
Ecohorror in Contemporary Nordic Cinema
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Book Presentation:
Analyzes a film genre's confrontation of a regional identity
Known for their progressive environmental policies and nature-loving citizens, Nordic countries also produce what may seem a counterintuitive film genre: ecohorror, where distinctions between humans and nature are blurred in unsettling ways. From slashers to arthouse thrillers, transnational Nordic ecohorror films such as Antichrist (dir. Lars von Trier, 2009) and Midsommar (dir. Ari Aster, 2019) have garnered commercial and critical attention, revealing an undercurrent of ecophobia in Nordic culture that belies the region's reputation for environmental friendliness.
In Menacing Environments, Benjamin Bigelow examines how ecohorror rings some of the same alarm bells that climate activists have sounded, suggesting that the proper response to the ongoing climate catastrophe is not optimism and a market-friendly focus on sustainable development, but rather fear and dread. Bigelow argues that ecohorror destabilizes the two pillars of Nordic society―the autonomous individual and the sovereign state. He illustrates how doing away with any clean separation of the domains of human culture from a wild, untamed realm of nature reminds viewers of the complex and often threatening material entanglements between humans and their environments.
Through Bigelow's analysis, ecohorror proves to be a potent vehicle not only for generating a strong affective response in audiences but also for taking on the revered institutions, unquestioned ideological orthodoxies, and claims of cultural exceptionalism in contemporary Nordic societies.
Menacing Environments is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University of Minnesota.
DOI 10.6069/9780295751658
About the Author:
Benjamin Bigelow is assistant professor of Scandinavian studies at the University of Minnesota.
Press Reviews:
"Addresses a set of films from a context that hasn't gotten much attention in larger conversations about ecohorror. The writing is extraordinarily clear and interesting."―Christy Tidwell, coeditor of Fear and Nature: Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene
"An important study of not only Nordic ecocinema but Nordic environmental culture, genre film, the Anthropocene, and horror in general."―Pietari Kääpä, coauthor of The Politics of Nordsploitation: History, Industry, Audiences
"The book particularly excels in its attention to the scope of horror and ecohorror subgenres. With attention to both 'high' and 'low' horror, Bigelow analyzes popular genres such as the slasher and pandemic film as well as less common, yet just as familiar, telekinetic, and folk horror subgenres. Bigelow's writing is also delightfully engaging and easy to follow. . . [H]is descriptions of the films [are] especially helpful, thorough, and captivating. Readers who are both new to and familiar with the horror genre alike will thus find something 'thrilling' within the pages of Bigelow's Menacing Environments."―ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
"A well-researched and well-written contribution to academic views on horror film. It deals with a myriad of potent topics against a multifaceted theoretical backdrop through which the importance of drawing connections between media and social/cultural/political sides of our respective realities is emphasized―films are not born in a vacuum."―H-Environment
"Bigelow's discussion of unsettling horror films is a caustic and timely comment on all the popular idealizations of life and politics in the Nordic region."―Scandinavian Studies
See the publisher website: University of Washington Press
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