Exploring SF Ecocinema: Ideologies of Gender, Infrastructure, and US/China Dynamics in Interstellar and The Wandering Earth

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two major studio blockbusters that succeeded commercially in their respective domestic markets and garnered global screenings and attention, Interstellar (2014) directed by Christopher Nolan and The Wandering Earth (2019) directed by Frant Gwo. The analysis is divided into two sections: education, which looks at the ideological gestures and contradictions in both films’ uses of how these scenes establish the principle of young women characters; and food, which examines the ideological fabrics that inform the food systems and practices both films imagine in their ecological crisis speculations. By scrutinizing the infrastructural divergence in both films, the chapter provides an ideological and ecofeminist critic to the similarly planet-scaled eco-catastrophes and suggests a transnational and complex imagination of eco futures.