Pollution Ecohorror: An Overview
Pollution-based ecohorror explores the direct connection between mankind’s harmful actions towards the environment brought about by our arrogance and neglect, and their potentially disastrous consequences. This subgenre depicting “nature fighting back” often personifies the polluted environment as vindictive monsters, spirits, or even extraterrestrials. The characters in these stories struggle to survive the result of their carelessness and can only accept that they will need to either succumb or change. After being the offender for so long, mankind struggles as the victim. 

Our exhibit shows various portrayals of pollution in theatrical and literary forms, with each text emphasizing a different aspect of pollution in the overall context of an ecohorror piece. Some pieces use pollution in creative ways, fashioning scarcely believable horrors born from waste and smog. Others show a more realistic setting, where the effects of environmental abuse infect society, rather than appearing as a sudden monster. In either circumstance, the true perpetrator always circles back to a look in the mirror — our own actions reflected back from a destroyed landscape.
 

The Broader Context
The effects of pollution directly translate from these media back into real life — showcasing a prevalent and increasingly pressing issue we still face today.  Whether by chemicals dumped into rivers, industrial smog released into the sky, or plastic garbage littered in forests, there are countless ways we have shown our environmental callousness and ignored its imminent ramifications on the planet we call home. As seen in our movies, our books, and our video games, we as a species are well aware of this but choose not to act upon it. 

Both the act and the consequences of pollution only grow more serious as time goes on. What little clean land, sea, or sky we have left on the planet is in danger of human contamination, especially as large companies and nations continue to seek more resources for expansion and humanity industrializes at an ever-exponential rate. We have been callous and taken Earth’s good bounty for granted in the past, and it has become soberingly clear that if we do not act in conservation now, our planet will continue to deteriorate at a rate faster than we can hope to counter. 

Pollution, both large-scale and everyday, stems from ignorance and willful inaction. What should it matter if one person littered? What should it matter if one factory releases some smog? What should it matter if one oil pipeline burst underneath the sea? It is terrifyingly easy to ignore our individual actions and their impact, for one person in a billion may seem insignificant, but for every single one of those billion people to think the same way — it starts to add up. The issue is how to make people understand that they are a part of the fight against pollution and its consequences, that they have sway over the state of our Earth simply by living their lives.

This is the goal of many pollution ecohorror creators, and we see in their texts the fears of a poisoned world we cannot save, made only more frustrating due to it being a destruction of our own making. Each one of these texts is wrapped not just in the intention to entertain, but also to warn —  for behind every horror story is a cautionary tale. 

Media is a vehicle for change, consumed by people of all demographics and influencing the masses with whatever messages it chooses to advocate. One expository novel detailing the revolting meat-packing practices of the 1910s made the nation recoil from their grocery stores, and one blockbuster film starring a massive man-eating shark influenced millions of Americans to fear the oceans. Authors of pollution ecohorror hope to inspire the same sort of influence, using smog monsters, angry nature gods, and nuclear waste-induced behemoths to give their viewers a look into what the world could be if the Earth were able to show us the full force of its wrath.

And just maybe, the efforts of both these creators and enviornmental conservationists will make people take pollution more seriously. To not just recognize it as the global crisis it is, but to — most importantly— know it is an improvable one. 

Our Exhibit Media
Throughout our exhibit, we explore and analyze pollution ecohorror media created across the decades, from the early signs of pollution damage to the ongoing crisis we experience today. Godzilla vs Hedorah, Princess Mononoke, The Color Out of Space, The Sheep Look Up, and The Host are the texts we will be exploring further — each work using contamination as a medium through which to comment on other issues, such as social class differences, government intervention, and an intrinsic fear of the unknown, among others.

Below, you can find links to explore the rest of our exhibit.