FILM PRODUCTION AS A MEANS OF IMAGINING THE ENDS OF THE WORLD: science fiction and climate change

Abstract

This article is derived from an excerpt of a previous study that aims to analyze how the series "Extrapolations” (2023) mobilizes environmental discourse to discuss climate change, raising questions in its eight episodes about the consequences of human actions in the face of extreme weather events. In this work, the analysis focuses on the first episode of the series, entitled "2037: The Story of the Raven," considered fundamental for presenting the fabulation that circumscribes the entire work, in order to understand how it engages with scientific data in the construction of its narrative. From a selection of scenes and dialogues centered on the consequences of climate change and possible responses to this scenario were selected, with the intention of exploring how the series constructs its fabulatory narrative and its relationship with abstract environmental discourse. In this context, the connections established between fictional elements and scientific data become evident, highlighting how these elements are mobilized and extrapolated. This is because the transmission of information and the act of narrating different stories are traversed by aesthetic and political choices that shape specific ways of perceiving and reacting to climate change. It is concluded that the series employs ambiguous critiques to reflect the place of human's and non humans in the process of creating possible worlds, by positioning technology as the central axis in the construction of possibilities, presented as the best and most effective alternative, ignoring and silencing the dimensions of inequality, the struggle for intellectual monopoly, and the concentration of power and exploitation.