“Nature is Speaking”: Analyzing Discourses about Nature in “Julia Roberts Is Mother Nature”
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Abstract
This research article in environmental literary criticism studies a short video produced for Conservation International’s (CI) “Nature is Speaking” film series (2014-2016). Part of an environmental campaign with narratives claimed to be spoken by nature, “Julia Roberts Is Mother Nature” (2014) has been the most popular video-clip in the series, with over eleven million views on YouTube.com. The research method comprises an analysis of discourses concerning nature and the environment, and close-reading.
As for the result, it was found that the producer employed mixed discourses, including the wilderness and apocalypse, and evaded the pitfall of the implausibility of “nature” speaking by incorporating indisputable facts and relying on the public’s commonly held beliefs about nature. Despite its popularity, the video emphasized the dualistic opposition between nature and culture, and focused on the essence and ultimacy of nature, both of which are problematic. In addition, its catastrophic imagining of the complete transformation of the physical world may arouse undue fear and despair among viewers to elicit donations — a solution which is related to the type of producer and its hidden agenda in environmental communication.
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