Category: Dust Bowl

As was once said by Robert Swan “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it”, and this message prominently appears in the plot of the 2014 feature film Interstellar. This film is set approximately 60-70 years in the future from the year it was produced, and portrays the earth as going through environmental crisis with a global crop blight and frequently occurring dust storms, which can be apprehended as a warning or an insight to what our planet may become if the environment continues to deteriorate due to our actions. In an attempt to save the human race, a NASA physicist called Professor Brand develops a plan to transport the Earth’s population to another planet in a galaxy that can be reached through a wormhole. Professor Brand sends former NASA pilot, Joseph A. Cooper, into the wormhole and across a faraway galaxy to investigate which planets are the most suitable for human life. Cooper’s decision to leave results in Murph, his daughter, developing a sense of condemnation towards him, but their close relationship is what eventually results in mankind receiving redemption for the consequences of their actions. The director of the film Interstellar, Christopher Nolan, has incorporated allusions to historical events, a range of sound effects and the use of various colour palettes to present an environmentalist’s perspective that the world will experience catastrophic events in the future.

Allusions to the historic 1930s Dust Bowl and Irish Potato Famine promote the perspective that continuous fallacious decisions by humans will lead to further ecological destruction. One of the fundamental plots of this film is the global disease ‘blight’ plaguing the major crops on Earth, resulting in the extinction of common feedstocks and other organisms. This phenomenon acts as the antagonist of the film resulting in humanity being forced to find another planet to habitat. The concept of ‘blight’ acts as an allusion to the Irish Potato Famine, which was a prolonged period of mass starvation in Ireland occurring from 1845-1849 due to late blight, a disease that destroys crops. The Irish Potato Famine is directly referenced through dialogue when Coop and Murph discover the hidden NASA headquarters and are introduced to the underground greenhouse facilities. Professor Brand gestures to the plantations and remarks “Blight. Wheat several years ago, okra this year. Now there’s just corn”, Coop replies that they’re ‘growing more corn than ever’ but in Professor Brand’s words,

“Like the potatoes in Ireland…the corn will die. Soon.” At the end of this particular scene, Brand tells Cooper that “the last people will be the first to suffocate” and refers to his daughter’s generation being the last to survive on Earth. This reiterates the seriousness of the disease because after corn, there will be no other food source remaining, and our own atmosphere’s air will be the cause of our suffocation and downfall. The second notable allusion mentioned several times is the 1930s Dust Bowl. The dust bowl was a period of severe dust storms and droughts that occurred in the US that resulted in serious damage of agriculture and ecology and was caused by the poor agricultural techniques of farmers in the early 20th century. In the start of the production, video clips and dialogue are played on old-fashioned televisions and were extracted from the documentary miniseries, The Dust Bowl produced by Ken Burns in 2012. The older citizens being interviewed are survivors of The Dust Bowl and are reminiscing about the conditions they lived through, and the descriptions of those conditions are referenced in multiple scenes through character action and the visuals of the movie, such as the reoccurring dust storms, which gradually worsens as the film proceeds. The Dust Bowl is also directly referenced in the dialogue during the scene where Professor Brand is touring Coop around the NASA facility when he said: “Like the potatoes in Ireland, like the wheat in the dust bowl”. As the potato plants died out in the famine, the wheat also died out for a long period during the dust bowl, signifying that the world of Interstellar is facing these historical events once again but at a global scale. These allusions present the environmentalist perspective on the disasters that result as bi-products of our actions and portrays that the world facing crop failures at a global level and reminiscent of past events that cast shadows over human history.

The addition of non-diegetic sound effects in the form of music has been combined to present a tone of haste throughout the Endurance mission and the scenes on Earth. When the team of astronauts reach the planets they were set out to investigate, there is a dramatic change in the tone of the music. As Dr Brand, Doyle and Cooper reach Dr Miller’s world there is silence to describe their isolation, but as the moment of realization that Dr Miller’s planet is completely water and a vicious tidal wave is about to envelop them, there is a pulsing sound introduced to signify that time is running out. The music continues to quicken in pace as the wave gets closer to Dr Brand, and percussion music is added. When Murph returns to her childhood home many years later while a fire is spreading towards her house, the same succession of musical sounds repeats to signify that Murph needs to hurry, with an organ melody increasing in pitch as she realizes how to solve the equation for gravity, ultimately ‘saving the world’. Particular non-diegetic sounds have been incorporated in moments of escalated tension and stressful situations to invoke a sense of urgency to save mankind before it’s too late.

Through the use of contrasting colour palettes, the film Interstellar depicts humanity’s gradual regression. Symbolic codes in visual narratives, in particular, the colours used, can change the tone of particular scenes. A majority of the scenes on Earth involve a muted colour scheme, as in the opening shot of the film, the crops are a healthy green and the sky is a pale blue colour. In the baseball match, the colour of the pitch is subdued and the sky appears bright blue in the beginning, but as the dust storm emerges the scene becomes dark and the preceding scenes on Earth stay in that dull colour tone. As the years pass by in this feature film and Murph ages, the dust storms get worse, the crops gain a yellow hue and the sky is constantly grey. It seems as though a shadow had been cast upon our planet symbolizing that the Earth will forever be tainted by our actions. The dreary scheme of hues projects the environmental collapse being implemented upon our world.

In Christopher Nolan’s production Interstellar, the visual narrative convention of colour, various sequences of non-diegetic sounds and allusions to significant environmental phenomena have been integrated into the dialogue and plot events of the film. These forms of film language unite to present the possibility of our Earth regressing to the same conditions of the world inside the film if we continue to abuse the planet we habitat. The allusion to specific events that have occurred in the past provides a reference for the conditions humanity will face, and the non-diegetic sounds included amplify the urgency to save humankind which is similar to the perspective of an environmentalist’s need to contribute in protecting the environment. The colours used in the production also set the tone and develop a mood for particular scenes and sometimes foreshadow the events to come later on in the film, while also promoting the foremost perspective of a climate activist. Although science fiction texts provide several stories and theories, in the end, all we can do it wonder what will become humanity in the future.

The end of World War 1 brought the United States a time of much political, economic, social changes, and had the U.S. emerge from the war as a powerful military leader. Factories and industries throughout the country had become significantly more efficient with the rise of Ford’s assembly line and allowed for regular citizens to gain access to items much cheaper. Along with this economic prosperity, women gained the ability to vote in 1919, changing the look of women from frail, helpless civilians to powerful, independent citizens. However this period of time lasted very briefly, as an unprecedented economic depression loomed over the horizon.

Black Tuesday, the worst day in Wall Street’s history, was the major event to truly kick off the American Great Depression. Black Tuesday was the day that the New York Stock Exchange went to hell due to thousands of stock being traded immensely dropping dropping in price rapidly. A reason that the crash happened was due to the stock market reaching its peak and slowly declining, but on October 29, 1929 mass panic broke out. Over 16 million shares we traded in one day, with billions of dollars lost and thousands of investors were left penniless. This event alone was enough to bring the entire economy to its knees, making the American people who believed that the stock market was the economy, no longer confident in its own countries economy. Consequently, the American people began rushing to banks to withdraw as much money as possible, leading to banks running out of money extremely quickly. To compensate for this they began giving out gold in place of money as the United States was using the gold standard, honoring each dollar with its value in gold. However soon after the banks also ran out of gold, but the Federal Reserve attempted to expel the fire by amping up the value of the American Dollar. But this also lead to increased interest rates and led to businesses having less money to give to their employees, forcing them to lay off many workers to stay afloat. This spiral of unemployment and rise of value of the dollar caused hundreds of bankruptcies, tariffs at the time did nothing to help the American peoples time of crisis.

American tariff policies that overall hurt the economy first began with the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, passed on August 19, 1922. The rising prices caused by the tariffs led to European countries unwilling to trade with the United States and consequently, impeded their ability to pay off any war debts owed to the U.S. While this event started years before the Great Depression itself began, it would directly affect it in a future tariff. President Hoover passed the Smoot-Harley Tariff Act on June 17, 1930, which had the intentions of protecting American businesses and farmers but damaged the already weakened economy more. Just as the Fordney-McCumber Tariff before it, this bill also sought to raise the tariffs on goods to a similar degree. However it initially was received poorly until the stock market crash, soon after it was passed by a very slim degree in the Senate, but was loved in the House of Representatives. The reaction the raised tariffs was not received lightly, many foreign governments was angered by the increased prices and began a trade war with the U.S. Sadly this trade war brought nothing but despair, as many banks from those nations began failing alongside American ones. In the short time span between 1929 and 1932, imports from the U.S. and exports to European Nations fell by nearly 66%. However this did not just only affect American and European governments, but rather global trade as a whole was damaged as a result of these poorly thought of tariffs. While the tariffs hurt American farmers it was not the only event to hurt American agricultural economy.

A series of severe droughts to hit the midwest during the 1930’s became a time known as the American Dust Bowl, lasting from 1931 to 1939. Killing thousands of crops during its time. During the start of the droughts in 1931 they prevented many plants from growing as no rain came to water them, but the name Dust Bowl came from the product of this drought. Massive dust storms began creeping across the Midwest beginning in 1931, gaining the name of “black blizzard”. By May of 1934 it quickly became the worst drought ever recorded in U.S. history, drastically affecting 27 states. Economically, the Dust Bowl was even worse. Many farmers were forced to stop farming and move out of the affected states. Crop prices inflated heavily and even the price of pork shot up due to farmers offing their fauna to artificially reduce supply and force prices to boom. By 1937 the amount of money spent by the government to assist farmers and citizens living in the areas affected was estimated to be around 1 billion dollars, with over 60% being farmers alone. During the time of the Dust Bowl it only worsened the effects of the ongoing economic depression.

The 1930’s was a time of sorrow, hunger, and depression. Unemployment rates were at an all-time high and many people lived on the streets as hobos. The stock market crash led to the people’s disappointment in the American economy and caused hundreds of banks across the nation to shut down or run out of money. Tariffs at the time only worsened the effects of the crash, leading to even global trading to be hurt. Crops and livestock prices skyrocketed with the Dust Bowl in the Midwest. All of these factors combined to form the lowest point in American economic history, the Great Depression.