Spectacular environmentalisms: Celebrity and the mediation of environmental change

这一网络是在过去一系列资金不足的会议上产生的，事实证明，这些会议具有挑战性和成果。这次竞标的目标是发展这个萌芽中的网络，并利用这项研究，通过艺术家和非政府组织媒体从业人员的参与，为公众辩论做出贡献。我们正在探索的现象，哈里森·福特的胸膛是最好的总结。这位美国演员和著名的环保主义者发布了一段视频，视频中他自己接受了残酷的胸蜡，以唤起人们对砍伐森林对气候变化的威胁的关注。他的行为体现了媒体和名人在环境事务中日益突出的地位，以及特别引人注目的环境媒体的发展。因此，大卫·阿滕伯勒被选为英国最值得信赖的名人；Global Cool和Ecorazzi.com等组织招募了名人支持者；史蒂夫·欧文的去世成为2006年谷歌最受欢迎的新闻搜索量。学术工作开始研究名人和环境之间日益强大的联系：报纸上将名人和气候变化联系在一起的文章在2005-2006年间大幅增加，仅比前一年就增加了500%。名人和环境之间的互动并不新鲜。亚当森夫妇因与狮子的关系以及20世纪60年代在东非倡导保护环境而声名鹊起。《灰色猫头鹰》在20世纪30年代的英国和加拿大吸引了大批观众。20世纪初，约翰·缪尔因在美国自然资源保护中的作用和前往梭罗坟墓的朝圣而受到尊敬。在欧文与鳄鱼摔跤之前，弗兰克·巴克在20世纪30年代对着镜头跳到一只(死的)老虎上。几十年来，野生动物电影一直在培养名人保护者(例如艾登堡、库斯托、古道尔、杜雷尔)。然而，这种互动的持久性使最近的发展变得更加有趣，因为这意味着我们能够更好地理解它们的不同之处。例如，我们可以看到名人参与气候变化问题(如迪卡普里奥、麦当娜)如何重塑以前与环境的互动，环保非政府组织如何(重新)制定他们与名人的互动，野生动物电影如何为当代观众重组，名人本身如何在其渠道扩大，尤其是其影响力/影响力。将分析镜头转向今天名人和环保主义之间的关系，使我们能够探索媒体活动的文化和政治经济/生态，以及政客、非政府组织和“绿色”企业资本的工作。这个由来自不同学科的学者与环境媒体/传播从业人员组成的拟议网络与探索这些现象及其影响密切相关。该网络的研究兴趣包括野生动物电影的历史、保护非政府组织的活动、气候变化行业、野生动物保护的政治经济学、名人激进主义、可持续消费以及对电影和文本中环境话语的解读。从业者包括非政府组织的成员，这些非政府组织致力于名人宣传活动、其他“引人注目的”媒体/营销形式，以及致力于代表环境问题和更广泛的“环境”的电影标记。他们的观点非常宝贵，能够使参与这些陈述的人相互交流见解，这些陈述对公众对环境问题的看法和我们的政治反应有很大影响。我们认为，只有像这里建议的那样一个跨学科的小组--来自英语、文化/媒体研究、地理学、社会学和发展研究的学者--与从事环境媒体传播和营销的学者相结合，才能揭开名人、环保主义和媒体权力之间日益增长的相互影响的复杂性。

This network has emerged out of a series of past unfunded meetings which have proven challenging and fruitful. The goal of this bid is to develop this embryonic network and to use this research to contribute to public debate through the involvement of artists and NGO media practitioners.The phenomenon we are exploring is best summed up by Harrison Ford's chest. This US actor and prominent environmentalist released a video of himself receiving a brutal chest wax to draw attention to the threat of deforestation to climate change on behalf of the NGO 'Conservation International'. His actions epitomise a growing prominence of media and celebrity in environmental affairs and the growth of particularly 'spectacular' environmental media. Thus, David Attenborough has been voted Britain's most trusted celebrity; organisations like Global Cool and Ecorazzi.com enlist celebrity supporters; and Steve Irwin's death was the most searched for news in Google in 2006. Academic work is beginning to investigate the increasingly powerful connections between celebrity and environment: newspaper articles linking celebrities and climate change have increased substantially with the period of 2005-2006 showing a 500% increase from the previous year alone.The interaction of celebrity and the environment is not new. The Adamsons won fame for their relationship with lions and advocacy for conservation in East Africa in the 1960s. 'Grey Owl' spoke to packed audiences in the 1930s in the UK and Canada. John Muir was revered the early 1900s for his role in US conservation and his pilgrimage to Thoreau's grave. Before Irwin was wrestling crocodiles, Frank Buck jumped on a (dead) tiger for the cameras in the 1930s. Wildlife film has been producing celebrity conservationists for decades (e.g. Attenborough, Cousteau, Goodall, Durrell). Yet, the longevity of the interactions makes recent developments all the more interesting, for it means we are better able to understand what is different about them. For example, we can see how celebrity involvement in climate change issues (e.g. DiCaprio, Madonna) reshapes previous interactions with the environment, how conservation NGOs have (re)formulate their interactions with celebrity, how wildlife film has restructured for contemporary audiences and how celebrity itself has expanded in its outlets and, especially, its power/impacts. Turning analytical lenses to today's relations between celebrity and environmentalism allows us to explore the cultural and political economies/ecologies of media events alongside the work of politicians, NGOs and 'green' corporate capital. This proposed network of scholars from a variety of disciplines-in combination with environmental media/communications practitioners-is tied to the exploration of these phenomena and their implications. The research interests of this proposed network include the history of wildlife film, the activities of conservation NGOs, the climate change 'industry', the political economy of wildlife conservation, celebrity activism, sustainable consumption and interpretations of environmental discourse in film and text. Practitioners include members of NGOs working with celebrity-fronted campaigns, other 'spectacular' media/marketing forms and film-markers devoted to representing environmental concerns and the 'environment' more broadly. Their perspective is invaluable to enable the transference of insights to and from those engaged in the creation of these representations which have great impact on public perceptions of environmental issues and our political responses. We contend that only a cross- and inter-disciplinary grouping as proposed here-scholars from English, cultural/media studies, geography, sociology and development studies-in combination with those engaged in the dissemination of environmental media and marketing, will be able to prise open the complexities of the growing imbrications among celebrities, environmentalism and media power.