TIME magazine reporter Lily Rothman on CLI-FI in Hollywood
http://time.com/92065/godzilla
EXCERPT
A literary activist named Dan Bloom is the idea’s biggest proponent. In fact, he’s credited by some with coining the phrase cli-fi in 2011. Bloom believes such stories can succeed in forcing audiences to confront environmental issues, much the way Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach dramatized the horror of nuclear war. “There’s going to be a new Nevil Shute, and he or she is going to wake people up,” Bloom says. “Movies have more power than books now. It’s time for Hollywood to go to cli-fi.”
The term has gained traction over the past few years, showing up in news reports and classrooms, where courses like Stephanie LeMenager’s graduate seminar ''The Cultures of Climate Change,'' at the University of Oregon, explored what’s behind the intuition that stories can make a difference. There’s no shortage of nonfiction media on the topic–see the Showtime docuseries ''Years of Living Dangerously''–but LeMenager says fiction has an advantage: hope. “Literature always imagines a world elsewhere, even when it’s imagining this one. It’s a stimulant to a sense of possibility that is very hard to maintain given the facts of climate change,” she says. “In the world of fiction, no future is inevitable.”
The hope in question is that the stories never stop being just that. The hope is that Godzilla, even as he may crush fake humans underfoot, can help real ones stay alive. Even a monster, says Godzilla’s director Edwards, can make a difference.'
“I think that films like Godzilla are like the fantasy punishment for what we’ve done. The real punishment will happen if we keep going this route,” he says. “Films like this help remind us not to get too complacent–and that we should really try and fix some of these things that we’ve done before it’s too late.”
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