Lorenz

Just watched Pare Lorenz The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937). Two pieces of compelling New Deal (Farm Security Administration) propaganda – beautifully photographed, with poetic expository narration and wonderful music scores (Virgil Thomson). I am particularly interested in the way in which the land is positioned as the central character in these films – the Great Plains with their winds and relentless sun and the Mississippi with its inexorable flow down the Gulf. The films acknowledge how human interaction has affected these natural agents, how it has accentuated their destructive potential and undone any sense of natural equilibrium. Both films appear as early public examples of work that acknowledges human complicity in environmental devastation. Alongside the tales of loss, however, the films – particularly The River – suggest that a new relationship to the land can be established, demanding not a withdrawal of the human altogether but instead enlightened intervention (efforts of custodial remediation). All of this has clear contemporary relevance – and certainly makes climate change skepticism (especially when administratively approved) seem even more absurd.