J. P. Telotte is a professor of film and media studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of "Science Fiction TV."

The 1930s saw numerous science fiction films centered around apocalyptic, sometimes climatic, destruction: “La Fin du Monde” (France, 1931) predicted a comet’s collision with the Earth; “Deluge” (United States, 1933) was the story of a giant tsunami resulting in a worldwide flood; “Things to Come” (England, 1936) predicted world war and a civilization-destroying plague; “S.O.S. Tidal Wave” (United States, 1939) showed the destruction of America’s East Coast by massive tidal wave.

All these films were not as much forward-looking predictions of real apocalypse as they were metaphorical responses to the widespread economic and political crises of the day. Floods and plagues became stand-ins for contemporary upheaval, in this case a way to address the anxieties that attended the Great Depression and post-World War I shock.

Science fiction does not detail the realities of specific problems so that we might avoid them, but rather represent our most pressing cultural fears.

This is what our genre films tend to do best — not detail the realities of specific problems so that we might avoid them, but rather represent our most pressing cultural anxieties. If a solution is presented by a science fiction film, it is seldom workable, immediately possible, or even logical in real-world application.

And as elements of narrative entertainment, that really isn’t their function. While science fiction films and novels often, and quite naturally, raise awareness of — or stimulate discussion about — scientific and technological issues including climate change, they seldom function as primers for the solutions we need for these very knotty problems. More often, they make us feel better about our ability to survive them.

As some of the more recent apocalyptic climate films filter into college curriculums — works like “Waterworld” (1995), “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004) or the more recent “Snowpiercer” (2014) — they are not typically included in the conventional study of film or science fiction.

More commonly, they are being appropriated by scientists or climatologists as lures — attractive, non-textbook ways of introducing students to issues that can be terribly resistant to narrativization. These professors are prodding students to see the films as more than just exciting stories in order to start hopefully profitable discussions of what sort of responses might or might not be appropriate for addressing global warming.

And such an outcome, a start of discussion rather than a solution to the problem, is probably the best we can expect.



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