Film and politics merged in Capen Hall on Tuesday, going beyond statistics, to explore the cultural impact of oil.
Professor Imre Szeman from McMaster University in Canada discussed the ways film can be used to change the public's perceptions of the global conflicts over oil.
"Over the past two years, I've received news feeds from the New York Times alerting me to articles about oil," Szeman said.
Szeman would often find 50 or more articles from one paper each week about the topic.
"Many of these articles were, predictably enough, about the rising oil prices," he said.
Szeman's presentation pointed to another problem with oil that has largely been overlooked by the public: the cultural impact of fossil fuel.
According to Szeman, there are different ways of looking at the oil crisis. One involves what Szeman called strategic realism; looking at the ways governments, for example, continue to try to obtain oil despite a diminishing supply. The techno-utopian approach points out the fact that the world's energy use will need to increase to keep technology progressing at the current rate.
Szeman focused on a third way, an eco-apocalyptic view.
"[It] focuses on the need to fundamentally shape [the public's view]. They are aware of the real nature of oil," Szeman said.
Szeman, whose research has been concerned with globalization and cultural theory, and has written numerous books on the subjects, used the 1992 film Lessons of Darkness and the 2005 film Black Sea Files to illustrate this.
Both films present images of land affected by oil. In Lessons of Darkness, oil spreads across the land like water. Files follows the impact of a pipeline constructed near Turkey.
"[The pipeline] shows a new geopolitical space subject to no national laws," Szeman said. "[The film] exhibits ethnic tensions...embodied in the path followed by the pipeline."
The movie shows how farmers have been displaced by the construction of the pipeline.
"These innovative, edgy ways of talking about the issue...[is a] step in a different direction that might lead to change," said Melissa Schindler, a Ph.D. English student.
According to Szeman, the current oil crisis has not sunk into the public consciousness the way it has in the past.
"In 1973, the oil crisis produced many more cultural artifacts," Szeman said.
In the 1970s, the oil crisis inspired board games like "Black Gold" and "Pipeline," in which players needed to obtain as much oil as they could before it was gone. President Jimmy Carter encouraged the nation to cut back on its fuel consumption.
"We have barely even a glimmer of this earlier crisis moment," Szeman said. "Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House that Carter had installed."
Szeman stated the films did not point out particular political leaders as responsible for the oil conflicts.
"Both [movies] forced us to rethink our own relationship to oil," said David Squires, a Ph.D. student in the Department of English. "It doesn't necessarily matter who is at the head of government. We have a larger problem to think through."
Szeman explained that in many films about oil, it is both central to the plot but also just an accessory.
"Oil seems like the most basic of substances," Szeman said. "If I've treated oil as something strange it is because in a very real way, it is absent from social life."
According to Szeman, nature plays an important role in society's view of the oil crisis.
"Nature is treated as the ultimate form of order," Szeman said, explaining that nature is often viewed as something separate from oil.
"What oil draws to our attention are the limits in our comprehension of nature," Szeman said. "To alien eyes, oil is nature here."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
