Larger than Life: Endangered Species across Media in Louis Psihoyos’s Racing Extinction Cover Image

Larger than Life: Endangered Species across Media in Louis Psihoyos’s Racing Extinction
Larger than Life: Endangered Species across Media in Louis Psihoyos’s Racing Extinction

Author(s): Alexa Weik von Mossner
Subject(s): Media studies, Theory of Communication, Political Ecology, Sociology of Culture, Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai, Facultatea de Teatru si Televiziune
Keywords: extinction; narrative; documentary film; endangered species; intermediality;

Summary/Abstract: The article investigates Racing Extinction as an argumentative eco-documentary that deliberately embraces intermediality as a visual and narrative strategy to draw attention to a pressing environmental issue: anthropogenic species extinction. Scholars, activists, and artists alike have made the argument that storytelling is an important tool in communicating the threat of large-scale biodiversity loss. The article argues that Racing Extinction’s intermedial strategies turn endangered animals into a cross-media spectacle that is highly entertaining but not without some conceptual and political problems. In this context, it also aims to demonstrate that intermedial ecocriticism can be complemented and enriched in meaningful ways by cognitive approaches in the exploration of mixed ecomedia.

  • Issue Year: 24/2020
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 19-35
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: English