The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies
(28 January 2022, 3.30pm CET)

Online presentation by Hunter Vaughan (University of Cambridge)

In an era when many businesses have come under scrutiny for their environmental impact, the film industry has for the most part escaped criticism and regulation. Its practices are more diffuse, its final product less tangible, and Hollywood has adopted public-relations strategies that portray it as environmentally conscious. In his presentation Hunter Vaughan offers an environmental counter-narrative to the history of mainstream film culture. Bringing together environmental humanities, science communication, and social ethics he argues that how we make and consume films has serious ecological consequences, and examines how our cultural prioritization of spectacle has distracted us from its material consequences and natural-resource use.

Hunter Vaughan is an environmental media scholar and cultural historian focusing on the relationship between screen media technologies, social justice, and the environment. He is a Research Associate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy (Cambridge University), the founding editor of the Journal of Environmental Media and author of Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: the Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (Columbia University Press, 2019).

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