Impossible’ and ‘Nyad’ pass climate reality check: NPR

Although it certainly sends a strong feminist message, no one would describe Barbie as a film about the impacts of human-caused climate change.

However, the topic creeps in.

“You are killing the planet with your glorification of rampant consumerism!” says Sasha, the teenage character played by Ariana Greenblatt, in her rant about the many ways Barbie is bad.

It is along these lines that the rosiest and most cheerful of the summer blockbusters spent the new Climate reality check. This is a new test, aimed at writers, producers and other creatives in the entertainment industry, which aims to measure the presence of climate change on the screen by evaluating all 31 feature films nominated for any Academy Award this year. Documentaries or short films were not considered.

This new and simple test was inspired by the famous Bechdel test invented by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in the mid-1980s to measure the presence of women in films and other forms of fiction. It was created by climate change storytelling consultancy. Good energy in collaboration with the Buck Laboratory for Climate and Environment at Colby College in Maine.

“The test is: does climate change exist in your story world? And if so, does any character know about it?” said Good Energy CEO and Founder Anna Jane Joyner.

A film must also meet two additional criteria to be eligible for the Climate Reality Check:

“Which is set on this Earth,” Joyner said. “And whether it takes place now or in the future.”

Many Oscar-nominated films disqualified

Climate Reality Check rules disqualify many of this year’s nominated feature films, including stories set in the past like Flower Moon Killers – even though one of the main themes of that film is the dangers of fossil fuels.

Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, an associate professor of English and environmental studies at Colby College and Good Energy’s lead contributor to Climate Reality Check, admitted that the new test has some blind spots, such as excluding movies that might not directly mention climate change but rather point out reach it through allegories (as sometimes happens with science fiction, fantasy and historical films) or by modeling sustainable behaviors.

“Some films may include positive climate actions, for example people installing renewable energy in their homes or deciding to become vegetarian,” Schneider-Mayerson said. “This test doesn’t necessarily detect those actions unless they are more or less explicitly related to climate change.”

Schneider-Mayerson said the new test is not intended to be exhaustive, although her team has been working on a much larger study, due to be published in April, applying the Climate Reality Check to 250 of the most popular movies of the last decade. .

“You’re not going to be able to capture all the different nuances of representing an issue as complicated as climate change,” Schneider-Mayerson said. “But we hope it’s a good start and something people can apply.”

The movies that happened

Of the 13 Oscar-nominated films set on Earth in the present or future, only two also Barbie passed the Climate Reality Check: Tom Cruise’s latest action epic Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (“It’s going to be a ballistic war for a rapidly shrinking ecosystem. It’s going to be a war for the last of our dwindling energy, for clean water and breathable air,” warns CIA Director Eugene Kittridge. played by Henry Czerny); and the biopic nyadabout extreme athlete Diane Nyad’s attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida in dangerous conditions caused by rising sea temperatures (“So the people at UMiami think the jellyfish emerged from the shallow reef when we left Cuba. Warming up global,” says Nyad’s coach Bonnie Stoll, played by Jodi Foster).

nyad, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Barbie It passed the test because of the lines of dialogue. But the Climate Reality Check also considers visual representations of the issue; For example, a character can be seen silently reacting to a media article with a headline related to climate change.

The fact that only three films have passed the test doesn’t seem like much. However, Good Energy’s Joyner noted that this represents almost a quarter of the 13 films eligible to be tested and said she is satisfied with the Climate Reality Check’s baseline results.

“It just gives us another example of how these stories can be very commercially successful,” Joyner said, adding that he hopes to see 50% of contemporary films and television shows acknowledge climate change by 2027.

The full Climate Check Reality report can be downloaded here.

This story was produced for air by Isabella Gomez Sarmientoand edited by Jennifer Vanasco for digital and air.