Irony and Catastrophe: Environmental Crisis in Jan Svěrák’s Oil Globbers
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The case study analyses the representation of ecological problems and prediction of today’s environmental crisis in Jan Svěrák’s fictional documentary Oil Globbers. Made at a time when the communist regime in Czechoslovakia was on the verge of collapse, and the dominant discourse eroded both on a political and ecological level, Svěrák’s Oscar-winning film builds its narrative on mystification and irony. Using the effects of classical animation, it presents a fictional species that inhabits a landscape destroyed by mining, feeds on plastic, breathes toxic fumes, and drinks petrol. The film factually reflects on the impacts of mineral extraction on a global scale; however, it chooses an ironic perspective on the related extinction topic. The oil globbers’ hope for survival lies in further environmental degradation. The film raises many issues, including the question of adaptation, i.e., the process of change and survival in new conditions. While animals adapt to their environment, people choose their future: in this case, they choose the path of oil globbers. The depleted environment, however, is reflected in humans, inscribed in them, and changing them. The paper aims to show, firstly, how environmental threats and responses to them are represented in the film and, secondly, from what (media and cultural) sources this “adaptation” is based. |
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