Be proper again, I’m off to search out some overalls and my gardening gloves.
Walt Disney Studios
Welcome to The Queue — your every day distraction of curated video content material sourced from throughout the net. Right this moment, we’re watching a video essay that appears at Disney’s 2022 animated movie ‘Unusual World,’ and its incorporation of the futuristic ecology-minded up-and-coming style referred to as “Solarpunk.”
Science fiction’s imaginative and prescient of the longer term is, on the entire, fairly bleak. Sand dunes that was oceans. Rotting skylines, affixed with salvaged neon billboards promoting delicate drinks. Underground bunkers swiftly constructed to protect humanity from a poisonous ambiance. We’ve seen it earlier than. We’ll most likely see it once more.
Certainly, the picture of a deteriorating company dystopia has virtually grow to be extraordinary. Which, consequently, defangs any purported “scare ’em straight” messaging. If the polluted worlds of Mad Max or The Matrix have been highly effective sufficient to immediate change, we wouldn’t be experiencing the most well liked summer season on document … each summer season.
Solarpunk gives another method. Not fairly a style in its personal proper, however shortly making a reputation for itself throughout a wide range of mediums, Solarpunk is an optimistic response to extra cynical readings of the longer term. Perhaps there’s a future the place we are able to discover a technique to make sustainable city residing a risk. Perhaps the extra radical factor is to check a future the place we aren’t residing on a deteriorating planet.
Launched in 2022, Unusual World is thematically aligned with Solarpunk values. And whereas its Disney origins do have a sure greenwashing aftertaste, its eager curiosity in systemic change (fairly than particular person motion) and its acknowledgment of Solarpunk’s debt to indigenous and afro- future-proofing is noteworthy.
Is Unusual World an on-the-nose allegory? Yeah. However there’s additionally an argument to be made that its Solarpunk message has extra chunk than what the remainder of local weather has been slinging for many years.
Watch “In Protection of Disney’s Unusual Solarpunk World”
Who made this?
This video essay on why solarpunk vibes make Disney’s Unusual World value defending is by Pop Tradition Detective, a YouTuber who makes essays that discover the intersections of politics, masculinity, and leisure. The channel is hosted by Jonathan McIntosh, and you’ll subscribe to it right here. They’re additionally on TikTok!
Extra movies like this
There’s a companion “audio episode”/undoubtedly not a podcast that goes together with the above video. Have a hear right here.
Pop Tradition Detective ceaselessly investigates gendered tropes in movie and tv. This video essay, on the “born attractive yesterday” gambit is a rock-solid watch. Likewise, this two-part essay on cases in movie the place sexual assault towards masculine people is performed for laughs can be tremendous informative and properly well worth the watch if you happen to’re up for it.
We’ve shared this essay 5 years in the past again in 2018 (it’s been that lengthy people!). But it surely’s value sharing once more. Right here’s why 2016’s Passengers — and different movies that move abduction off as romantic — are tremendous tousled.
Associated Subjects: Animation, Disney, The Queue
Meg has been writing professionally about all issues film-related since 2016. She is a Senior Contributor at Movie Faculty Rejects in addition to a Curator for One Excellent Shot. She has attended worldwide movie festivals reminiscent of TIFF, Sizzling Docs, and the Nitrate Image Present as a member of the press. In her day job as an archivist and data supervisor, she commonly works with bodily media and is dedicated to making sure ongoing bodily media accessibility within the digital age. Yow will discover extra of Meg’s work at Cinema Scope, Useless Central, and Nonfics. She has additionally appeared on quite a few film-related podcasts, together with All of the President’s Minutes, Zodiac: Chronicle, Cannes I Kick It?, and Junk Filter. Her work has been shared on NPR’s Pop Tradition Glad Hour, Enterprise Insider, and CherryPicks. Meg has a B.A. from the College of King’s Faculty and a Grasp of Info diploma from the College of Toronto.
