Exposing Nature: XXX

Although Bart H. Welling did not coin the term 'ecoporn' his text, Ecoporn, was my first encounter with such a topic. In fact the first man to employ the term was Jerry Mander in his 1972 work, Ecopornography. To Mander, the word can be defined similarly to the OED definition of 'green wash'- disinformation disseminated by an organization, etc., so as to present an environmentally responsible public image (Welling 54). Some great examples of this have happened recently since the BP oil spill across the Gulf. BP has generated commercials showing flourishing lands unaffected by the colossal oil spill; the company is attempting to trick the public into thinking that thanks to BP the Gulf area is back to its clean environmentally thriving self, pre-spill. Of course these images are deceiving and have been furthered labeled as 'ecoporn' since they are  counterproductive and instead of educating the public about ecostemic abuses, they anesthetize viewers by constructing an illusion of pure, safe, nature (55).

According to Welling, ecoporn goes beyond landscape nature and also anthropomorphizes non-human animals. This brings up an interesting point that since we (humans) see elements of ourselves in the ecopornographic images of nature and animals, are we therefore inclined to sympathize with the images or be disgusted by the misrepresentation? Due to the inherent qualities of ecoporn, the images are only meant to derive instant visual pleasure, like pornography of humans. It is not meant to upset humans to the point of actually making a difference.