Ecopiety
Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
Tackles a human problem we all share―the fate of the earth and our role in its future
Confident that your personal good deeds of environmental virtue will save the earth? The stories we encounter about the environment in popular culture too often promote an imagined moral economy, assuring us that tiny acts of voluntary personal piety, such as recycling a coffee cup, or purchasing green consumer items, can offset our destructive habits. No need to make any fundamental structural changes. The trick is simply for the consumer to buy the right things and shop our way to a greener future.
It’s time for a reality check. Ecopiety offers an absorbing examination of the intersections of environmental sensibilities, contemporary expressions of piety and devotion, and American popular culture. Ranging from portrayals of environmental sin and virtue such as the eco-pious depiction of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, to the green capitalism found in the world of mobile-device “carbon sin-tracking” software applications, to the socially conscious vegetarian vampires in True Blood, the volume illuminates the work pop culture performs as both a mirror and an engine for the greening of American spiritual and ethical commitments.
Taylor makes the case that it is not through a framework of grim duty or obligation, but through one of play and delight, that we may move environmental ideals into substantive action.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Taylor (Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology), a Northwestern religious studies professor, examines, in sometimes granular detail, how popular culture tells stories about environmental issues. In so doing, Taylor casts light on "ecopiety," which she uses to encompass "contemporary practices of environmental... virtue, through daily, voluntary works of duty and obligation," such as buying green products or taking shorter showers. She looks at how ecopiety can provide a false sense of achievement to consumers or even lead to counterproductive results, as, for example, when airlines advertise their commitment to offsetting carbon emissions, thus potentially encouraging consumers to book even more flights. While those insights will be familiar to some, Taylor's deep dive into the environmental messages encoded into media is eye-opening. The 50 Shades of Grey series, she notes, signals billionaire antihero Christian Grey is redeemable by showing his environmentally sound handling of his businesses. Elsewhere, she explores how "a number of environmentalists... have invoked vegetarian vampires" the Twilight series' undead heroes, who find ethical alternatives to human blood "as models of moral restraint" for human consumers. By showing the deeper-than-acknowledged impact of pop culture on people's beliefs about environmental issues, Taylor's thoughtful treatise offers hope that effective storytelling can play a role in meaningfully addressing catastrophic climate change.
