Women in the Wild: An Ecofeminist Approach to the Films of ‘Wild’, ‘Tracks’ and ‘WildLike’.

Women in Wilderness: An Ecofeminist

Approach to the films of Wild, Tracks and

WildLike

Isabel Allen 12185612

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master’s degree of Comparative Cultural Analysis

Department of Arts and Culture University of Amsterdam 2019

Supervisor: Dr. Catherine Lord Word Count: 22,417

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor and close friends for keeping me balanced during this relatively smooth thesis ride.

No one deserves more gratitude than my mum. She had the original pleasure, then the pure mundanity, of repeatedly reading my work with an editor’s eye and the resilient mind of a loving parent. Her input is always appreciated.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 2

Table of Contents 3

List of Illustrations 5

1 - Wild and Altered Perceptions: Alienation and Bodily Senses 13

Introduction 13

Alienation in Body and Mind 16

All in the Value 24

Conclusion 36

2 - Humans in the Wilderness: Hyperseparation and Influence in Tracks 38

Introduction 38

Val Plumwood and Wilderness 40

Hyperseparation and the Tourist Gaze 44

Human Influence 53

Conclusion 62

3 - Ecopsychology and WildLike 64

Introduction 64

Levels of Consciousness 69

Ecotherapy – Why Wilderness and How? 80

Conclusion 84

Conclusion 86

List of Illustrations

Introduction

I wake up daily to another notification on my phone from The Guardian with an

environmental crisis at my fingertips1_{. Climate emergency declarations are being advocated}

for left, right and centre, and rightfully so. Human existence has raised global temperatures by 1.1°C with a prediction to increase (World Meteorological Organisation)2_{. There are}

numerous physical impacts of this climate catastrophe - drought, wildfires and crop failure to name a few – and the physical transforms to societal and cultural structures. Those causing most damage to our planet are often men hidden behind protective titles of CEO or investor (or even president and prime minister), while their companies strike the

underprivileged and underappreciated3_{. Nature is being compromised by the acts of}

humanity as we turn a blind eye to the way we treat the nonhuman. This thesis aims to redirect that eye through the analysis of three films surrounding the ‘purest’ form of nature: wilderness (Plumwood, Mastery 162; Vance 62). These films are Wild (2014), Tracks (2013) and WildLike (2014). Each object holds at its centre a female protagonist therefore I

approach them through ecofeminist methodology as a theory that necessitates recovery within the ecocriticism field.

1

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment

2 _{I note this figure originally from the website of international climate movement Extinction Rebellion. The site}

gives a fully comprehensive overview of the climate emergency.

3 _{Naomi Klein best notes this idea in reference to ex-British prime minister David Cameron, who promised}

Ecofeminist philosopher Karen Warren best explains the feminist approach of tackling environmental issues that is thus becomes my analytical approach to these wilderness films. Prominent scholars alongside Warren include Greta Gaard, Susan Griffin, Carolyn Merchant, Val Plumwood, Ariel Salleh and Vandana Shiva, although they all exist across a broad spectrum within the theory. Nonetheless, Warren in particular notes how a feminist approach uses gender analysis in its groundwork, thus “gender is the lens through which the initial description and analysis occur” (Warren 2) and hence ecofeminism

transforms this approach to the understanding of women/other human interconnections with nature. The common denominator of wilderness and woman with the three

protagonists allows me to stimulate an ecofeminist methodology across this thesis.

Coined by Françoise d’Eaubonne in 1974 as ‘écoféminisme’, the term ‘ecofeminism’ has since morphed and transformed through the decades, progressing from the

environmental movements of the 1970s, to its heavy critique of reinforcing norms of the patriarchy in the 1990s, perhaps the high point of academic ecofeminist theory, to now emerging and progressing, slightly betrodden, into the 21st _{century, moving from deep}

ecology and evolving to branches of queer ecology. Further division exists within the movement. I identify my approach in this thesis with a more radical method, as opposed to cultural ecofeminism. The main distinction between these two subfields is that radical ecofeminists believe that the dominance of patriarchy levels woman and nature in order to damage both. Cultural ecofeminists encourage a connection between women and nature, suggesting that differences in reproductive roles hold them closer to the earth thus promoting environmental protection (Ling 68). I believe this viewpoint holds up the very biases that feminism and ecofeminism aim to break down, thus I contest this view and

advance with a more radical perspective. Nonetheless, I propose a brief definition of ecofeminism by one of its prominent scholars:

Ecofeminism calls for an end to all oppressions, arguing that no attempt to liberate women (or any other oppressed group) will be successful without an equal attempt to liberate nature. Its theoretical base is a sense of self most commonly expressed by women and various other nondominant groups - a self that is interconnected with all life. (Gaard, ‘Ecofeminism’ 1)

Our existence on the planet revolves around the unfair distinction of groups. Those who are different from the patriarchal self are thus subject to oppression. Ecofeminism

acknowledges the environment as one of these groups and thus notes that while any other faction is oppressed, the entire societal system remains oppressed. By acknowledging a connection outside the anthropocentric realm, a connection with “all life” as Gaard has just noted, the potential for universal liberation becomes stronger. I therefore argue for the necessitation of this connection through the lens of film and, with that, the lens of gender. Although my chosen objects are not distinctly labelled as ecofeminist, I argue that an application of the field in such contemporary case studies promotes the restoration of a theory that need no longer be neglected.

Gaard’s 2011 article provides the strongest scope for an ecofeminist decline and touches upon how its revival can contribute to current feminist thought4_{. She notes that the}

essentialist contamination of ecofeminist theory led to its dissolution (Gaard, ‘Revisited’ 26).

4 _{Entitled ‘Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-Placing Species in a Material Feminist}

Ecofeminism was disregarded because of the negative connotations of cultural

ecofeminism, the equation of woman with nature, that overshadowed the other productive and positive branches (Gaard, ‘Revisited’ 31). In application to cultural ecofeminism, an anti-essentialist stance perhaps seems fair. However, such a critique manages to exclude the relevance of gender, sexuality and other sectors of subordination from environmental politics and thought by forming a blanket rejection of the whole theory. I aim to contribute to a resurgence of ecofeminism under its original name in order to explore broader

intersections between increased environmental awareness and groups of oppression. There is a limit to my filmic scope both in number and representation – all three centre around white women and are directed by men – yet application of ecofeminist theory can only emphasise and progress from depicted oppression.

This thesis’ focus on ecofeminism follows predominantly from its filmic objects’ unique intersections of woman and wilderness. With these films gravitating towards the ecofeminist, how does such an environmental and gendered approach negotiate the audience’s relationship with the natural world around them, its social and political context, and its progressively deteriorating state? To answer such a question, I invoke a handful of concepts from ecofeminist theory that create the most productive dialogue per object. Each chapter sets out an individual question that harks back to the above statement.

Chapter One questions: how does Cheryl combat her alienation from wilderness through her immersion and altered “perceptual orienteering” and to what extent does this sensory exploration reflect onto the audience? This chapter explores the key definitions of wilderness and its entanglement with ecofeminism. It progresses in tandem with Gaard’s notion of alienation in wilderness and her concept of “perceptual orienteering”. Such concepts display the relationship of woman with nature and detail how this relationship

manifests and manipulates itself when physical immersion into the space occurs through a central analysis of Wild protagonist, Cheryl Strayed. In reference to the cinematic impact of Wild, I touch upon the work of Vivian Sobchack and her “cinesthetic subject” in order to explore how visualising and experiencing wilderness in film impacts the viewer’s connection to nature. As progression from Gaard and Sobchack, I introduce my own concept of

“cinematic orienteering”, an idea of expanding sensory wilderness experience from the screen to the viewer, thus promoting a stronger connection from the viewer with the natural environment.

Chapter Two holds Tracks as its central filmic object. It questions: how does Robyn, a character set both as nature and culture, destabilise the connotations of other? In the wilderness setting of the Australian desert the work of Plumwood, canonical Australian ecofeminist, is introduced in order to explore a number of depicted “dualisms” within the film, most notably male/female, culture/nature and civilised/primitive (Mastery 62). ‘Dualisms’ are the division of something into two separate parts, they are “an alienated form of differentiation” (Plumwood, Mastery 42). Plumwood’s dualisms claim a hierarchy within the west, perpetuating a “master identity” where those who lack the male, cultural or civilised aspects, for example, become subordinated and suffer from assimilation and oppression (Mastery 42). Paralleling this dualistic thinking is Jonas Larsen and John Urry’s “tourist gaze” where the binary of ordinary/extraordinary complements Plumwood’s branching concept of “hyperseparation”, a radical exclusion that goes beyond

differentiation and is thus a symptom of dualism (Mastery 49). In addition to dualistic concepts, I also explore ecofeminist critique of the “cultural landscape”. Such a concept allows me to assess the problems of merging nature with culture through the analysis of

Aboriginal existence within Tracks and the conflicting representations of Robyn as both nature and culture herself.

With its focus on WildLike, Chapter Three explores the psychological connection to the natural environment. It queries to what extent does Mackenzie, as a woman victim of sexual abuse, reflect psychological relationships with nature and how does she highlight the possibility of reconstructing these relationships? Through the field of ecopsychology, I propose a reading of the film that sees its characters escaping or turning to wilderness in order to cure or heal their mental health. Patric Plesa draws together the fields of

ecopsychology and ecofeminism by noting that the symbiotic relationship between human and nature in ecofeminism needs to be translated to the psychological field in order to discourage the use of nature as a means to an end (20) thus creating a dialogue between the two theories. With the theme of psychological healing being prominent in all three of my chosen films, I have selected WildLike for ecopsychological investigation because of Mackenzie’s trauma from her uncle’s abuse. The notion of ‘healing’ may be flagged as animism that is often rejected from critical theory, yet I propose its introduction in context with ecopsychologist Roszak in order to explore the mental damage that our current psychological disconnect with nature induces. This disconnect culminates in the repression of Roszak’s “ecological unconscious” (‘Awakening’). The events of Mackenzie’s sexual abuse by her uncle displayed significant repression of the ‘ecological unconscious’ and culminates in Mackenzie’s desire to seek a reawakening through a method of ecotherapy as wilderness immersion. The circumstances of Mackenzie’s immersion allow me to introduce my concept of the “ecofeminist conscious”, a notion that progresses from Roszak as an understanding that reconnection to nature must hold a different approach for oppressed groups due to the fragile relationship already held with the environment.

Together, these three filmic case studies demonstrate a productive revival of ecofeminist theory as a mode of understanding humanity’s connection to nature through observing wilderness. In combination with the mixed settings, aesthetics and narratives, the role of women in filmic wilderness explores a different perspective on one’s relationship with the natural environment. Analysing these case studies encourages the resurgence of critical ecofeminist texts that also call for merging with other scholars. For example, Gaard with Sobchack, Plumwood with Larsen and Urry or the general grounding of ecopsychology with ecofeminism. Such combinations would not exist without the confrontations of the objects that, when read through both filmic and gendered lenses, decode and challenge the narrative of white male mastery at a threatening time for female agency5_{. This decoding}

thus culminates in my social contribution.

5 _{The recently invoked anti-abortion laws in Alabama, USA, speaks volumes about the emergency of woman’s}

agency. Noted distinctly in the international newspapers: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/14/alabama-abortion-ban-white-men-republicans

1 - Wild and Altered Perceptions: Alienation and

Bodily Senses

“I’m gonna walk myself back to the woman my mother thought I was. I’m gonna put myself in the way of beauty.” Cheryl Strayed in Wild (00:40:34)

Introduction

Cheryl slams her boot down in front of the audience’s eyes. The long shot of pristine Oregon landscape drops out of focus as the worn boot takes precedent (see Figure 1)6_{. The}

wilderness is no longer untouched. The boot, the material symbol of walking and Cheryl’s physicality, displays human presence and interaction. Cheryl’s panting fills our ears and our

6 _{Throughout this thesis, my standard film analysis toolkit is retrieved from David Bordwell and Kristin}

Thompson’s Film Art: An Introduction.

Figure 1 - Wild (00:01:06) Boot in the wild.

perception of the natural realm is interrupted by her struggle. Her pain to pleasure scream attaches a sexualised context to the action that soon becomes dismantled as Cheryl throws the boot down the mountain side. Her scream transforms into a series of flashbacks, a visual montage. As her boot flies through the expansive wilderness, Cheryl visualises her past; death, drugs and divorce briefly flash upon the screen. Wilderness immersion has drawn Cheryl back to times when she became alienated from herself and her perceptions of the events are gradually altered by such a realisation.

Before observing the woman, I will address the arguments defining wilderness, frequently composed in opposition to the perspective of the often out-dated and privileged western white male gaze7_{. Such works have been advanced by (still) male scholars in the}

1990s with an ecofeminist restructuring best coming from Greta Gaard’s 1997 article aptly named ‘Ecofeminism and Wilderness’8_{. My methodological approach thus will centre}

around Gaard’s concept of ‘perceptual orienteering’ as an unravelling of the alienation and valuation of wilderness, whereby the physical body, in its cinematic visualisation and amassing of sensations, will be analysed also through the cinesthetic arguments of Vivian Sobchack in order to explore the interference of Cheryl’s experience with the film’s audience, culminating in the merging of the two concepts in my own theory, titled “cinematic orienteering”, to further the understanding of wilderness impact on the naturally-distanced audience.

7 _{Notably Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, Howard Zahniser, Aldo Leopold and John Muir, of which the}

latter two have significant areas of wilderness preserved in their names in the USA.

To summarise the definition of wilderness seems problematic, yet necessary, in the context of my thesis. The Wilderness Act of 1964 (the Act) defines such space in opposition with areas where man (not ‘human’) and his influence dominate the landscape; wilderness is “recognised as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” (2). The Act also aims to establish this pure space “for the permanent good of the whole people” (1), already revealing the biased nature of such a definition with a non-descript reference to “the whole people”, clearly acknowledging the neglect of indigenous people’s rights, when observed from our contemporary point of ecological and social oppression. The preservation of these ‘natural’ spaces under such a definition allows sacramental value (Garrard 66) whereby man often sees himself as both in control of the landscape when he works within it and also distanced from it when using it as a space of renewed reflection.

Ecofeminist Linda Vance draws upon the common conception that I too have fallen upon in my writing so far – the equation of wilderness with nature. In an attempt to

distinguish these terms, I will follow her description. Wilderness is noted as the purest form of nature and also a space wholly absent of human interaction, yet by claiming the space to be perfect and pure, one only concludes that nature is at its best when completely

separated from the human world (Vance 62), thus here nature can encompass the human, whereas wilderness strictly cannot, even though this definition is inherently flawed. These differences in definition support the dualisms that Plumwood, Vance’s influence, highlights – the western conceptual rift between culture and nature is emphasised (Mastery 62). Plumwood notes definitions of nature and wilderness in the context of culture, whereby ‘culture’ often equates to ‘human’ (‘Landscape’ 122). Nature only requires some

empty of human influence (Plumwood, ‘Landscapes’ 135), “wilderness demands an

apartness of nature to the point of insisting that there can be no human influence at all on the genuinely natural” (Plumwood, Mastery 162). It is these shared wilderness definitions from Plumwood and Vance that I use to continue my analysis.

Within this anthropocentric definition critiqued by ecofeminists Plumwood and Vance, I will progress to the critical approaches of Gaard for object exploration. Her intersection of wilderness with ecofeminism becomes my central inquiry when analysing Wild. Gaard aims to “name, restore, value and preserve what western industrialised culture has attempted to destroy” (‘Wilderness’ 7). An ecofeminist approach to wilderness aims to (re-)establish a relationship between nature and culture, wilderness and human. Such an approach can only begin with the outcome of distancing from wilderness: alienation.

Alienation in Body and Mind

Alienation is defined by Gaard in a Marxist sense and more generally as a notion of estrangement (‘Wilderness’ 7). The term’s application as a distance from wilderness is distinct to Wild’s protagonist as a reason for her re-immersion within the space. At first, she seems to be distancing herself from urban life and culture, with an emphasis on removing the presence of people from her experience. Her re-immersion in wilderness as a search for answers suggests that she has been previously pushed from it and now seeks to become reacquainted with the natural environment in order to heal within an area that she assimilates with her mother. Nonetheless, even when physically immersed in wilderness, Cheryl is still alienated from it. By spending time reflecting in the wild, Cheryl ultimately comes out ‘on top of nature’. Clarity is her outcome as wilderness becomes a resource for her happiness and Cheryl can been seen as placed outside the space. Cheryl’s story is

inspiring on the surface, yet it also subscribes to the problematic trope of the American Dream. The audience sees Cheryl’s troubled childhood and working-class upbringing, touching upon instances of abuse intertwined with the flipside of a college education. Nonetheless, Cheryl still has the privilege of being a white western woman who, although severely underprivileged in certain aspects of her life, had the ability to leave her civilised life behind and sustain herself well enough for three months in order to spend time

searching for an unknown feeling. The poignancy of Cheryl’s journey is put into question by the Hobo Times reporter who not only emphasises the power of personal trauma as a factor for her immersion into the wilderness, but who also indirectly notes the power of privilege that Cheryl holds. He is fascinated to meet a “lady hobo” and comments on how much he loves feminists after Cheryl acknowledges her privilege of being able literally to walk out of her life. She states the very facts that she experienced with her mother and the impact of her abusive father – women cannot just walk out of their lives because of familial

responsibilities to children and parents. The domestic role placed on women by the

patriarchy restricts and alienates them from the natural world as such women often cannot access spaces outside the urban realm yet are at the same time placed in the context of nature through a heavy emphasis on reproductive and maternal roles. When Cheryl often seems to be downtrodden by her life events, one must still recognise the power of her privilege as a white western woman and connect this to how she is able to experience wilderness. Her conversation with the Hobo Times reporter, incidentally also the only character of colour in the film, highlights Gaard’s conflicting identities within the concept of alienation. In postmodern society, ‘human’ alienation from ‘nature’ becomes complex as otherness becomes multi-layered (‘Wilderness’ 9). Gaard uses the example of a wealthy white heterosexual woman living in rural America, practically a 2019 description of the ‘real’

Cheryl Strayed, to describe such identity conflictions as this woman may feel both connected and alienated from wilderness as a result of classifications like race, class, sexuality and gender (‘Wilderness’ 9). This example illustrates the content of Cheryl’s conversation with the Hobo Times interviewer. As a young, white, attractive and

heterosexual woman existing through a western framework, Cheryl can be seen as both alienated from, yet also connecting with, wilderness. She has felt the call to nature and has the privilege to explore it but is also subject to much of the alienation that Gaard describes, especially in terms of gender and sexuality. Cheryl’s race, sexuality, age and often gender see her being treated well within wilderness, earning the title ‘Queen of the PCT’, yet at the same time, she is also subject to alienation from the space because of other categories of her person.

Women are more often read as being connected to nature rather than alienated from it. For example, note figures such as Gaia and Mother Nature as problematic concepts that still carry considerable weight in the present day. Ecofeminist philosopher Carolyn Merchant comments on how this perception of nature exists as a “cultural constraint

restricting the actions of human beings” (3), by humanising, or feminising, the natural world it could be thought that humans would place a higher value upon it and thus would be less likely to harm it. However, this association is clearly inefficient as one still sees the abuse of both woman (Mother) and Earth and projects a form of alienation from and for both parties. Gaard notes the common conception that women are pushed to fear wilderness due to the potential threat of rape or because of the weakness of their own survival skills (‘Wilderness’ 10). The audience often sees Cheryl struggling with her skills – the packing of her backpack known as ‘Monster’ is both entertaining and visceral. Cheryl’s poor preparations in terms of gas and boots signify multiple instances of insufficiency that are gradually overcome

throughout the film yet still support Gaard’s claim. For women who have also experienced sexual abuse, wilderness and nature become alienated spaces because of their connotations of the female body. Wilderness becomes a maternal and nurturing site, as well as holding connotations of the opposite. It is also a space whereby men wish to be comforted and possessed by the environment. Such women have already suffered domination in the cultural realm, yet the nature/culture distinction also alienates them from the natural and they find themselves othered from both spaces. Gaard suggests that sexuality and the body are seen as ‘closer to nature’, promoting an alienation from the body (‘Wilderness’ 11), as well as this connection, because it becomes a space with the availability of domination. Those who suffer from domination and discrimination in the cultural world often feel further distanced from wilderness due to the heavily emphasised perception of reduced human interference, as wilderness becomes a space “where culture’s very few restraints on hate crimes will be entirely unloosed” (Gaard, ‘Wilderness’ 11). Notably in Wild these are the scenes in which sexual predation is emphasised. Cheryl has not suffered from sexual abuse in the film but her sexually explicit behaviour following her mother’s death and the emphasis of her intravenous, and thus more visually physical, drug abuse through her heroin use both display an alienation from the female body. This drug use is displayed in a brief montage as a close up of a man injecting heroin into Cheryl’s leg in muted brown room transforms to a lush forest where a handheld pan briefly chases Bobbi, Cheryl’s mother, around a moss covered tree, depicting the association with Cheryl’s body and nature, as well as the connection between nature and her mother’s memory. Nonetheless, it seems that Cheryl does not fear the wilderness as a result of the nature-body association, but rather uses wilderness and the emphasised physicality of walking to empower her female body.

Cheryl immerses herself in wilderness as a cure for her grief - such a theme of ecopsychology and ecotherapy will be best explored in my third chapter. The assimilation of Bobbi with wilderness is what draws Cheryl to spend so much time in the space. Working from Gaard’s perception that wilderness is commonly seen as a site symbolising the body, that both alienates and connects the oppressed, one must note that it is actions from Cheryl’s body that push her to walk the PCT. Immediately after Cheryl discovers she is pregnant, she decides to purchase the PCT handbook and states “I’m gonna walk myself back to the woman my mother thought I was. I’m gonna put myself in the way of beauty” – a statement that defines her motive, incentive and perception of the natural world all in one useful declaration. The connection to the female body and maternal decisions or

consequences seems to trigger Cheryl to remove herself to the nurturing wilderness, where the memory of her nurturing mother also resides, in the hope that this removal will assist her in the grieving process. The assimilation of nature with the body, combined with the physical challenge of walking the PCT, draws Cheryl to heal her body in a space where she believes it to have greater value.

Nonetheless, wilderness assimilations with the body also hold negative

connotations. To reiterate Gaard, if wilderness is seen as a male-dominated space and also a space that equates to the othered body, subordinated groups, and notably women, feel alienated from wilderness due to the possible threat of rape (10). This possible threat is emphasised multiple times in Wild most notably when Cheryl interacts with two hunters, a scene influenced by Cheryl’s prior interaction with liquorice-loving farmer Frank. The fear of sexual assault is highlighted for Cheryl at the beginning of her hike. She assesses who to ask for her first lift at a petrol station – a stereotypically urban and industrialised space – and is met with only overtly ‘masculine’ men observing her from afar. Point of view (POV) shots

from Cheryl highlight her anxious nature from their observations and a pan across to a father-son couple confirms where her faith in safety lies. As the scenery gradually becomes ‘wilder’, Cheryl’s negative interactions with men become more prevalent. Almost half an hour into the film Cheryl meets Frank in a scene that paints him as a rural, backwards masculine type. Frank is first introduced driving a tractor through dry fields. Such landscape marks the convergence between the petrol station and the empty woods in which Cheryl meets the hunters later on - it is dark and barren, urban interference is minimal, yet human manipulation of nature is all that exists. Vallée uses medium shots of Cheryl in the truck to establish where Frank keeps his gun, in order to create tension when Frank later reaches for liquorice, diffusing the domination situation that has been built up through his suggestive dialogue – “Are you like a Jane? ... a wild woman?” – and general costume of cowboy hat and ‘wife-beater’ vest. Cheryl has not yet reached true wilderness, ‘pure’ nature, as she does when interacting with the hunters, but is still susceptible to the connotations of the alienating gender roles within nature.

Later within the film, as Cheryl becomes more comfortable and confident in the survival skills via her water purification and reduced Monster, the alienation and male-domination of wilderness is blatantly heightened by two hunters. The scene begins with a deep focus long shot, intersected by Cheryl’s figure and multiple uses of shot-reverse-shot between Cheryl and the male figures, suggesting mild panic, as she observes two men walking towards her. The men never announce themselves as hunters, yet their weaponry and camo gear leave little to the imagination (see Figure 2). They are placed within the male-dominated depiction of wilderness through their costumes – dressed head to toe in camouflage and khaki they also carry noticeably large knives and archery equipment. Vance contrasts this viewpoint on outdoor clothing as an assimilation with nature and wilderness

by stating that the more gear humans use to reduce their impact on the natural world, the more they are reminded that they are alien to the space and only through adaptation and human ingenuity can we overcome nature’s challenges (63). Nonetheless, the contrast of the men’s ‘natural’ clothing to Cheryl’s blues and whites situates them within the wilderness they prey upon. The depiction of the men and their emergence from the depths of the forest, the true unknown wilderness, suggests that they are already happy to dominate and kill the Othered nonhuman, therefore promoting the idea that they would do the same to other subordinated groups. The men’s dialogue, like the perception of Frank’s, is suggestive, but it is the distinct mention of killing time and comments on Cheryl’s figure that elevates the threat of this scene above those before it. The continued emphasis on Cheryl’s “real nice figure” and “tight little ass” highlights the assimilation of the female body with the natural, the oppressed. The more dialogue-forward hunter later returns, surprising Cheryl from close proximity suggesting that he has approached her silently as he would an animal and endorsing the idea to the audience that he watched her change her clothes. The concluding dialogue, “here’s to a young girl, alone in the woods” confirms the threat that Cheryl has rightfully feared, a threat in wilderness (“the woods”) that has altered her identity as a woman (“a young girl”) through assimilation of her body to the nonhuman and the natural – both Othered concepts that this hunter has now openly shown desire for dominance in.

Although Cheryl is visibly uncomfortable in all of these scenes, traumatising physical events actually never happen to her – Frank does not turn his gun on her, nor does the hunter assault her – she is depicted as overcoming such dominance and continues to use her body and its physicality through her trek to re-establish her identity and relationship both with the natural environment around her and with her mother. This is a promising ecofeminist perception. By showing Cheryl overcoming the traditional notions of wilderness as an androcentric space by connecting the other of nature by empowering her body and her self, she begins to alter the alienation of the western world through this strengthened relationship. However, although acknowledging and reconnecting with wilderness is positive, Gaard also emphasises building a stronger relationship with those others who are all portrayed as ‘closer to nature’ (‘Wilderness’ 12), lessening the ecofeminist impact of Vallée’s film due to its racially and sexuality-narrowed narrative.

Figure 2 – Wild (1:24:58)

All in the Value

Valuing wilderness from an ecofeminist perspective is important in order to overcome the subordination across all sectors. The value that Cheryl places in her natural world and Vallée’s cinematic depiction of the natural space emphasises why we, as the audience, should be concerned with our own interaction with wilderness. In order to reach the ecofeminist goal of liberation humans must build on relationships with the self and the other, us and wilderness. The foundation of a relationship is the definition of self and of identity (Gaard, ‘Wilderness’ 13). A new identity, noted by Gaard as the ecological ecofeminist self, must be formulated in order to value wilderness (‘Wilderness’ 13). The identity must understand that human relationships are not just shaped by other humans, but also through relationships with nature. We must make sure that the self is not lost in this new identity in the same way as the other was lost in the masculine autonomous identity (Gaard, ‘Wilderness’ 14). In order to form this new identity, strengthened

relationship and productive value of wilderness, Gaard proposes the concept of perceptual orienteering (‘Wilderness’ 17). This notion allows the relocation of the self in a relative manner to one’s environment. Humans are distinctly unaware of how western culture controls such perceptual orienteering; it is a mix of space, energy, sight, smells, sounds and our sense of time that become developed within our immediate surroundings and in turn develop our sense of self-identity (Gaard, ‘Wilderness' 17). Immersion and involvement in wilderness could positively realign such identities and thus realign our value of nature. In terms of Wild, I will emphasise the role of space and smell as concepts within the perceptual orienteering of Cheryl’s journey that contribute to the development of her renewed self-identity, which could only be achieved through wilderness immersion. In analysing Cheryl’s

perceptual orienteering, I will also introduce the work of Vivian Sobchack whose concept of the ‘cinesthetic subject’ implies the transfer of senses from within the cinematic realm to the film’s viewer. This merging of sensory concepts will lead me to explore my own concept of ‘cinematic orienteering’ whereby the audience discovers a different way of locating oneself through sensory relation to a cinematic environment. It is not only Cheryl’s identity that is manipulated by wilderness immersion, but also the audience’s as they become reacquainted with a space that has become distanced.

The ‘unaltered’ and non-industrialised space of wilderness changes the perception of everyday actions. As noted in the context of bodily alienation, Cheryl’s choice to participate in the hugely physical undertaking of a hike contributes to how she connects the female body to nature. Walking, as an everyday activity, takes on a greatly different meaning when exercised in wilderness9_{. Each step Cheryl takes towards her end goal at the Bridge of the}

Gods, she becomes empowered and alters her self-identity by reassessing her relationship with her mother, who is so often assimilated with wilderness itself. Continuous shots and sequences throughout the film depict Cheryl walking in wilderness, often struggling, but succeeding, to overcome obstacles that would not occur in the cultural realm. For example, at one point she climbs over an enormous rock where a number of low angle shots

emphasise the power of the natural structure and the following scene depicts her crossing a river via balancing on a log. In another sequence, Cheryl stumbles through the snow when trying to chase a fox. All of these scenes contain elements that would be excluded in the

9 _{Rebecca Solnit highlights the struggles of women walking in public spaces through history in her history of}

the activity (424-449) thus highlighting how transferring an often-fearsome act to wilderness proves to be a mostly positive experience for women lucky, or privileged, enough to experience it.

urban settings portrayed in Cheryl’s flashbacks. The opening of the film emphasises the struggle of walking as the audience is immediately introduced to the sounds of Cheryl’s pants of pain and exhaustion before the shot of wilderness landscape even comes into view. Such immediate emphasis on the struggle before the visuality of the wilderness draws the audience to place their attention in the physical (and emotional) experience of Cheryl, rather than her natural surroundings in the immediate sense.

Walking in the space is not just displayed through shots of the act itself. The impact of walking is also distinctly depicted on Cheryl’s body within two scenes. The first shows Cheryl post-shower at Frank’s house, following on from flashbacks of her divorce day. A medium shot sees Cheryl observing herself in the mirror, which significantly provides two reflections, thus depicting her conflicting views of self-identity, suggesting that she is

currently fragmented and confused about the outcome of her journey. A close-up pan down focuses on the sores on Cheryl’s body. These wounds are symbols both of Cheryl’s struggle and of empowerment. They show how the everyday act of walking becomes a different movement within the wilderness space. Rather than the safety of walking down an urbanised path, Cheryl’s sores focus on the challenge of her journey and her interaction with nature as a relationship that requires work, and all in all visibly connects the female body to such space. Later on, the mirror motif is repeated. In this second instance, Cheryl observes her hiker body in a singular reflection (see Figures 3 and 4) when preening herself for the Jerry Garcia concert. Medium shots now identify the healing sores, detailing the progression Cheryl has made in a number of aspects through the wilderness space. The mirror symbolism in its repetition emphasises the role of the motif. The audience is both viewing Cheryl’s changing identity but is also inclined to reflect upon their own changing

relationship throughout this poignant time progression in the narrative, whereby the film screen becomes an analogy of the mirror in which Cheryl is looking.

The effect that wilderness immersion has had on Cheryl’s body details how the space alters the perceptual orienteering explored by Gaard. In between these two mirror scenes, an hour of the film passes, and months pass within the narrative. Each time Cheryl observes her body she is removed from wilderness and placed back into the urban, societal or

cultural space. This reintegration allows Cheryl and the audience to perceive the changes that wilderness has made upon Cheryl’s self-identity through the representation of and with her female body, a site so commonly connected with the natural realm.

Figure 3 – Wild (00:31:00)

The use of space in Gaard’s altered perceptual orienteering promotes a value of wilderness through a focus on Cheryl’s body and its altered experience in the natural environment. Such a sensory exploration leads me to analyse the role and relationship of smell within wilderness in Wild. Assessing scent from a cinematic perspective aligns with our preference of vision over other senses, yet the visual representation and description of smell in the context of wilderness is a valuable approach for the ecofeminist stance of Wild. The notion of wilderness brings with it the possibility of becoming reacquainted with our bodies, physical natures and senses (Gaard, ‘Wilderness’ 20). In order to bridge the unclear connection of the perceptual orienteering of wilderness valuation, space, physicality and scent I will first associate the sense of smell with Cheryl’s body. Cheryl comments as Ed unearths deodorant from her bag at Kennedy meadows, “I stink. I stink all the time and my armpits are the least of it.” As she re-enters society and tries on lipstick later in the

narrative, the shop assistant comically notes that Cheryl’s personal hygiene needs to be a Figure 4 – Wild (1:32:18)

priority. Although the audience cannot smell Cheryl’s aroma, we can imagine it through the human consensus of scent connecting to memory. Being in the wilderness provides Cheryl with a space whereby the smell of the human body is unimportant yet unescapable (Gaard, ‘Wilderness’ 21). Cheryl’s reduced concern for societal pressures on her appearance shows how wilderness, through scent and space, positively alters the perception, expectation and freedom of women’s appearance.

The connection between smell, as an enhanced sense in wilderness, and experience or memory has been scientifically proven. Smell is the sense most readily connected with memory (Gaard, ‘Wilderness’ 20) and it is from this defining phrase that I will delve into the power of sense, particularly scent, in Wild as a visual but bodily stimulus processed through wilderness immersion. By building on this reacquaintance of wilderness with the physical and sensual within Cheryl, it is important to note the experience of the audience in their own reacquaintance of such notions as promoted through the viewing experience. The works of Vivian Sobchack and Laura Marks emphasise the senses in cinematic experience and allow productive entanglement with Gaard’s perceptual orienteering. Drawing from my previous analysis of Cheryl’s bodily experience, I introduce Sobchack here for the focus upon her neologism of the cinesthetic subject (68) as a connection between two sensory

conditions: coenaesthesia and synaesthesia, noting that the lesser known coenaesthesia focuses upon perceiving sense with the whole body. The predisposition of the audience towards such sensual aspects of film viewing creates the newly coined subject. Like the later work of Marks, Sobchack acknowledges the privilege of the visual in cinema and uses the cinesthetic subject to refer to a non-hierarchical system of senses, whereby the sense of smell is distinctly low on the list. Once one understands that vision is merely composed of information from other senses, and informs these senses in itself, the hierarchical structure

becomes dismantled. Rather than the focus I have placed on scent, Sobchack uses the sense of touch to exemplify this theory. Touch no longer becomes metaphorical in the traditional sense of being ‘touched’ by a film, instead it becomes literal, as the visual informs the sense and it becomes embodied, a physical sensation for the cinesthetic subject. The perception of touch, as a sensory example, becomes ‘fleshed out’ in the spectator’s lived body, who transforms the gap from the figural world onscreen to the literal sense in the act of

observing the film (82). Cheryl’s figural world of wilderness thus becomes transposed onto the viewer, they experience her sensory experiences, thus the relationship with nature can be altered for both parties through the involvement with Wild and the manipulated

perceptual orienteering that Cheryl experiences. Sobchack refers to this notion as sensual catachresis - a translation of the filmic to the physical. All our senses are coordinated in the act of viewing (or perhaps ‘sensing’) a film and thus the customary hierarchy of sight and sound become contributions, and stand-alones, to transforming the other senses from the figural to the literal. Sobchack claims that the body has become objectified in film through this previously hierarchical thinking, noting that it is more conclusive to promote the experience of embodiment through using all senses. She defines the body as greater than a material object, but instead a material subject that feels its own subjectivity that is able to empathise with another material subject’s sensations by “virtue of his or her own identical capacity” (13). As we, the audience and cinesthetic subject, view the senses depicted in Cheryl’s wilderness they become akin to our own body and its senses. The relationship that Sobchack marks between audience and film connotes the relationship that Gaard aims to explore with the ecological ecofeminist self. Both see an engagement with a space and experience outside the self, which is then embodied and transformed into a beneficial connection.

Through the visual centrality of cinema, that Sobchack tries to oppose, and the manipulation of senses in wilderness in Gaard’s perceptual orienteering, I propose the concept of cinematic orienteering. I offer this concept as a transferred wilderness experience for the film’s audience. By viewing and feeling the manipulation of Cheryl’s senses in her perceptual orienteering, I suggest that the viewer - the cinesthetic subject - also has an altered and immersed experience of wilderness. By connecting to Cheryl’s bodily experience in their own form, the audience too connects with the natural environment that they are physically distant from. In this sense, not only does direct involvement and

immersion in wilderness alter our self-identity but so does this ‘secondary’ experience of sensory cinema. In observing Cheryl’s perceptual orienteering, the audience’s bodily

experience transforms their identity and furthers the understanding of both the character’s and their own perception of wilderness.

This experience of cinematic orienteering heightens the power of Cheryl’s experience through shared senses. For Wild, the perceptual orienteering of smell is heightened in wilderness and highlighted by Vallée as a sense that triggers a number of memories for Cheryl. Marks notes that taste and smell are the least intellectual and most bodily of the senses (119). This repeated bodily assimilation leads me to return to a connection proposed by Gaard and other ecofeminists on the link between body and nature. If these senses are so much more physical than the optical, it seems purely symbolic that Vallée uses the visual depiction of them most to draw Cheryl and the audience back to thoughts of her mother, Bobbi, as inherently natural. The cinematic depiction of smell specifically in Wild is perceived through dialogue and repeated motifs and is a tough sense to translate to the audience. Nonetheless, such emphasis on scent within a film that contains so much natural imagery means that the connection cannot be ignored. As one of

the most ancient sensory stimuli (Gaard, ‘Wilderness’ 20), a prominence of the sense of smell that occurs only within wilderness displays how the space allows us not only to

reconnect with our self and our memories, notably Cheryl’s memory of her mother, but also with our physicality and bodily roles that have been lost in industrialised living.

Throughout the film, the visceral act of Cheryl and her mother rubbing herbs

between their hands and then inhaling the aroma is a repeated motif. This act first appears at the beginning of Cheryl’s hike (see Figure 5). Cheryl picks herbs from the PCT path, rubs them between her hands and inhales the aroma released, then turns to look toward the intense sun, clearly contemplating the rest of her journey via the consistent use of close-ups. I mention this opening sequence in order to compare it to the later one (see Figure 6). In this second sequence, Cheryl, on the brink of dehydration and in an illusionary state, repeats the herb ritual. Instead of turning towards the sunlight, however, her thoughts (and the audience’s viewing) turn to a mimicked sequence of her mother smelling herbs, seen through plants herself, as if from the point of view of Cheryl’s mind. I highlight this herb motif owing to the natural and sensory connotations it draws upon and its partial repetition again when Cheryl eats a blackberry, mirroring another POV shot and flashback of Bobbi through foliage, and when she consumes her mother’s ashes.

The triggering of natural and wild aspects of Cheryl’s journey linking to flashbacks of what brought her to the PCT is a repeated technique in Wild yet the sensory aspect of the herbs adds a visceral element to how the audience perceives the relationship between Cheryl, her mother and the natural world, as well as the audience’s own relationship with the environment – you can almost smell the scent. As with other sequences of natural emphasis, the herb motif scenes arise at points of clarification for Cheryl. The first sees her beginning her hike and the last sees her becoming so disillusioned by her immersion into

wilderness that she reaches further clarity and increased communication with her passed mother. Cheryl communicates with the natural environment when she is alone, notably whispering “I miss you” to the forest/her mother, as a culmination of all the nature motifs that Vallée has placed throughout the film. By creating such connection, the film insists on the assimilation of Bobbi with the wild, the natural realm, and Cheryl’s intense immersion in this space helps her to heal and grieve for Bobbi without having to fully let go of her until she returns to civilisation at the Bridge of the Gods.

Figure 5 – Wild (00:14:08-00:14:10)

Figure 6 – Wild (1:22:57-1:22:59)

In tandem with these sensory - or scentsory - herb scenes, one cannot ignore Cheryl’s consumption of Bobbi’s ashes as further evidence of her connection to Bobbi’s memory as an aspect of wilderness. The scene occurs only minutes prior to the second herb sequence in terms of the film’s temporality. Shot again with intense close ups, the audience notes Cheryl describing her mother’s ashes as more earthly than divine, “gritty grey gravel” rather than “soft and silky” ashes from a flame. Cheryl proceeds to consume this earthly embodiment of her mother, gaining a sort of emotional sustenance through the physical action. When paralleling this scene with that of the herbs, one can note similar shots and gestures that draw them together, further connecting Bobbi to the portrayed greater being of the natural world and the wilderness that Cheryl engrosses herself in. Although this scene no longer refers to smell, it relates to taste and texture, associating the equation of Cheryl’s mother as wilderness to a refiguring of sensory experience in nature. By inhaling and

consuming her mother through herbs and ashes, Cheryl embodies Bobbi totally, physically and emotionally. It seems that only through this sensory and seemingly natural connection with the ‘basic’ sense of taste can she begin to heal from her mother’s death. She alters a natural cycle whereby instead of allowing nature to fully expend her mother in the traditional burial sense, Cheryl allows Bobbi to remain living with her.

Such re-aligning of perceptual orienteering such as space, physicality and sense through wilderness immersion depicted in Wild complements Gaard’s theory that

wilderness allows us to reacquaint ourselves with experiences that have been lost and thus can reshape our self-identity and our relationship with the natural surroundings. This reconceptualising of self and other begins to bridge the gap of the nature/culture dualism and instead promotes an empathetic relationship between the two whereby the aim of liberation seems graspable. The interconnection of enhanced wilderness senses with

Sobchack’s cinesthetic subject promotes a more felt connection between nature and the audience through my coined cinematic orienteering. By transposing bodily senses from the cinematic to the physical, the audience perceives a greater understanding of the connection between Cheryl and wilderness, as well as a greater understanding of their own connection and relationship.

Conclusion

I began this chapter by defining wilderness as a problematic space of untouched nature that thus deserves a reconstruction through ecofeminist approaches. I then progressed to explore the notion of alienation in order to understand the experience of Cheryl within the wilderness space. Gaard notes that alienation allows categories of a person’s identity to be both assimilated with and/or distanced from wilderness. Cheryl’s privilege and race allows her to experience ‘pure’ nature, yet her gender sees her being subjugated to the negative connotations of western male domination through her interaction with men, specifically the hunters. The assimilation with and distancing of Cheryl’s body with the wilderness space, and women’s bodies in general, leads to the discussion of valuing wilderness through Gaard’s concept of perceptual orienteering and the manipulation of one’s senses. From an ecofeminist stance, wilderness must be valued in a different manner in order to overcome its subordination. We must heal the relationship of self and other in order to achieve this. Gaard’s concept of perceptual orienteering suggests the positive re-aligning of certain senses through wilderness immersion that in turn alter our perceived self-identity. The re-aligning of Cheryl’s senses, especially smell, allows her to reconnect with her passed mother through visually paralleled experiences. In observing such sensory re-alignment through smell, taste and sense of space, I have turned to my own concept of cinematic orienteering

as a culmination of Gaard and Sobchack’s thoughts. I have argued that just as wilderness immersion has altered Cheryl’s perceptions, the ‘second-hand’ wilderness immersion one gains from being the film’s audience alters our own perceptions and aids the valuing of wilderness that Gaard promises to be so corrective. Wild explores so much more than my focused analysis of the senses and the body, yet I perceive these notions of enquiry as particularly helpful for understanding and rebuilding the relationship humans have with nature and wilderness through an ecofeminist stance.

2 - Humans in the Wilderness: Hyperseparation and

Influence in Tracks

“Some nomads are at home everywhere. Others are at home nowhere and I was one of those.” (Davidson 5, abridged for Tracks).

Introduction

Before the expansive bird’s eye view shots of the pristine Indian Ocean, John Curran’s Tracks (2013) opens with Robyn Davidson’s words on her nomadic tendencies: “others are at home nowhere and I was one of those” (emphasis my own). Fast forward an hour into the film and we are presented with a close up of Robyn’s sunburnt back as she walks in slow motion through the dry Australian bush. Her dry and damaged skin envisages the orange desert she has travelled through, her body now carries the landscape upon its shoulders Figure 7 – Tracks (1:20:42)

(see Figure 7) and the use of maps becomes obsolete as the “nowhere” of wilderness becomes transposed upon Robyn, she feels it to be part of her.

Robyn is depicted in the film roaming the Western Australian desert, the Australian wilderness, on a 1700-mile journey from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean for supposedly no other reason than her claim in the opening dialogue to be drawn to the desert’s purity and its wide, open spaces. I immediately associate this ‘purity’ with the US definition of

wilderness that I have highlighted in the previous chapter. The absence of human agency in wilderness distinguishes it from the concept of nature. I feel the need to reiterate only certain aspects of the definition, this centrality of complete human absence being one of them. I am able to travel with the concept of wilderness from the cinematic imaginations of America to Australia through the mutual connection of European colonialism. Another key reason for the transposition, noted by literary and cultural scholar Kylie Crane, is the recognition of sparse population densities (21) and large expanses of space within which there is little infrastructure. Nonetheless, this is not an intercultural study of American and Australian wilderness, I merely highlight the concept’s integration within both of the films’ contexts in order to provide appropriate analysis of the spaces.

Wilderness and the natural environment in Wild were read through a manipulation of senses in Gaard’s portrayal of perceptual orienteering and her focus upon the alienation of the other from wilderness. By analysing Tracks post-Wild, I am able to observe evident differences that further ecofeminist understanding. For example, the inquisition of race. I will use two concepts from Plumwood’s oeuvre to assess how Tracks tackles and represents the human-nature relationship. I will first discuss Plumwood’s ‘hyperseparation’ in order to explore another ecofeminist approach to wilderness in which Robyn’s physicality as woman and varying representation of nature and/or culture become intertwined with Larsen and

Urry’s concept of the ‘tourist gaze’. I will also analyse Tracks’ centrality of Aboriginal figures as providing an opening for Plumwood’s critical response to the anti-colonial solution of labelling spaces with indigenous influence as “cultural landscapes”. The combination of these concepts is being used in analysis of Tracks in order to exemplify how Robyn, as a woman in the wilderness, represents and interacts with the space that in turn reflects a relationship with nature as a whole.

Val Plumwood and Wilderness

While Gaard’s work in Chapter 1 resonates effectively with a bodily and sensory experience of the wilderness space, here I am drawing upon Plumwood’s opus in order to better explore her dualisms by reading such binary oppositions in Robyn and the other characters of Tracks.

My reliance on Plumwood aids the analysis of Australian-based Tracks as Plumwood wrote extensively on Aboriginality in her ecofeminist texts, often from her perspective as an Australian10_{. With the inherent connotations that fall into nationality, Plumwood notes a}

broader understanding of Aboriginal culture through her societal immersion that would be less accessible to someone who does not interact with indigenous people on a daily basis. She weaves this understanding throughout her theory, assisting my analysis of dualistic portrayals in Tracks through such clear definitions of oppositions. In what follows, I shall set

10 _{Plumwood (1939-2008) was a born and bred Australian whose theory and identity is engrained and}

appreciated in Australian culture to the extent that the canoe from her infamous and inspirational crocodile attack in 1985 is now displayed in the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. The 2006 article I often refer to, ‘The Concept of a Cultural Landscape: Nature, Culture and Agency in the Land’, highlights indigenous agency.

out Plumwood’s quandaries with wilderness definition as wholly human absent that thus leads on to the examination of defining agencies within land, from indigenous to

nonhuman. Such agencies come into conflict in the concept of ‘cultural landscapes’, a point at which I will delve into analysis of Tracks in order to expand upon Plumwood’s exploration of wilderness.

Plumwood comments that feminist theory has noted masculine bias in the concept of reason, the power of the mind, which is often opposed to the concept of nature (Mastery 5). This difference has in turn formed a masculine identity as dominant in western society. However, this conceived identity is more complex according to Plumwood who instead calls for a master identity definition that arises from the context of race, class, species and gender domination (Mastery 5). The master identity goes hand in hand with the

understanding of dualisms, “the construction of a devalued and sharply demarcated sphere of otherness” (Plumwood, Mastery 41). Plumwood provides an incomplete list of explicit dualisms from which I highlight a number with reference to Tracks. For example;

culture/nature, male/female, human/nature (nonhuman), civilised/primitive and self/other (Plumwood, Mastery 43). This brief understanding of such an identity and of dualisms aids my analysis of wilderness as existing as an othered space, absent of human input, thus adverse to the master identity.

Plumwood defines wilderness in terms of its otherness. The representation of wilderness is a “reservoir of otherness” (Mastery 161) that upholds dualist tendencies in two interpretations of the concept: (1) there are those who understand the space as a continuity of the human and thus ignore the feature of complete human absence in wilderness definition; (2) there are those who stress the independence of wilderness, defining the space as wholly separate and thus disregarding the connotations of alienation

that this provides (Plumwood, Mastery 161). In the first argument, one can critically note that the continuity with the human removes agency from the nonhuman that holds

influence in the wilderness space without human interference. Criticism within the second argument reverses the first. By denying a form of continuity through alienation one revokes any possibility of interaction and reconciliation with any other in the wilderness. There needs to be a balance between the two.

Plumwood summarises the traditional notion of wilderness in reference to the heavily Australianised concept of terra nullius, ‘nobody’s land’ (‘Landscape’ 133). At the time of European settlement in 1788, Australia was considered to fall under this concept, even though it had been inhabited for thousands of years by Aboriginal people thus beginning the connection of indigenous people with nature in opposition to this European settler culture. By referencing this concept, Plumwood notes a number of marginalised groups who have now become problematically assimilated with the wilderness space, terra nullius:

’Wilderness’, traditionally the territory excluded as the underside of the contrasts of reason and civilisation, is also traditionally a wasteland empty of culture and inviting colonisation. It is named as terra nullius, the alien, fearful and disordered domain of animals, women and savages and the underside of the human psyche. (Plumwood, Mastery 163)

Wilderness, in its colonial meaning, is a polarised dualistic category that makes a claim to total human exclusion, while ‘nature’ as a category only makes claim to a measure of independence of the human. (Plumwood, ‘Landscape’ 135)

Such quotations clarify Plumwood’s definition of wilderness as an inherently colonial space. Those who do not subscribe to the master identity of the white western male are left to exist in a space wholly opposite from the ‘norm’. Aboriginal people already influenced the Australian land prior to 1788 yet do not subscribe to the definition of ‘human’ that the colonial statement of wilderness confirms and thus their agency is cruelly eliminated. In referencing this (western) human exclusion as a key component of wilderness, Plumwood also defines ‘nature’. It is only a difference of human involvement that divides a space from being considered ‘wilderness’ or ‘nature’: plainly, ’wilderness’ “requires complete

independence, while nature only requires some independence” (Plumwood, ‘Landscape’ 135). Plumwood’s terra nullius interjection and emphasis on indigeneity as heavily

intertwined with wilderness opens up the framework for the reading of her critique to the response of the concept of a cultural landscape – a proposed solution to the defining human absence quality of wilderness. Plumwood attempts to suggest alternate accounts of nature which begin from our ecological perspective rather than the anthropocentric view. Concepts of nature “need not involve the denial of indigenous presence in land” and we can “reject nature/culture dualism without rejecting difference and its limits” (‘Landscape’ 146).

However, as I will explore, the amalgamation of nature and culture as concepts is still not an appropriate response to cultural landscapes nor the nature/culture dualism.

In texts on wilderness and on cultural landscapes, Plumwood harks back to her concept of hyperseparation, the radical exclusion of the inferior binaries highlighted in her list of dualisms (Mastery 43). A short scene in which Uluru (also known as Ayers Rock) is visually central also spurred me to analyse Plumwood’s hyperseparation in tandem with Larsen and Urry’s concept of the tourist gaze. Through the emphasis on white settler tourists throughout the narrative, I will also analyse the representation of Robyn, Mr Eddie,

wilderness and nature through the concept of tourist gaze as another theory which reinforces dualistic tendencies. The concept of hyperseparation, explored further through the tourist gaze, illustrates a reassessment in our consideration of otherness and its implications, whether this exists in a racial, gendered or species format, to name a few.

Hyperseparation and the Tourist Gaze

I will first address Plumwood’s hyperseparation in order to explore the dualisms portrayed within Tracks, noted as the opposition and interaction between Robyn, the Aboriginal people and the Australian wilderness, and how these depictions are often reinforced by the dualisms of culture and nature, man and woman. Hyperseparation, also noted as radical exclusion, greatly indicates dualisms and depicts how the other is not just different from the master but also inferior (Plumwood, Mastery 49). Hyperseparated understandings of

wilderness provide the problematic notions of nature and wilderness as such

understandings insist on an apartness of nature to the point that there can be “no human influence at all of the genuinely natural” (Plumwood, Mastery 162). This defining factor of wilderness, the ‘purity’ that draws Robyn in, is problematic in not only its distancing of culture from nature but thus the opposition of nature from culture. Humans who are not seen as part of the master western culture, notably the Aboriginal people in Tracks, therefore become integrated into pure nature. They are then subject to ‘interrupting’ the apartness of human from nature, the polarising definition of wilderness (Plumwood,

Mastery 215). Such distinct separation harms these indigenous people who care for the land and are in turn sustained by it as their homes become ‘pure nature’, open to colonisation (Plumwood, Mastery 163). The dualistic conceptual structures support western and anthropocentric erasures of agency which also emphasise the hyperseparation of the

superior coloniser and the inferior colonised (‘Landscape’ 128). It is the depictions of such dualisms that I aim to analyse in Tracks. Identities of the One in these structures constructs the Other – civilised vs. primitive, human vs. nonhuman – whereby the Other has to be subdued and distanced (‘Landscape’ 128). Hyperseparation therefore systematically sees humans as being ‘outside nature’ and therefore leads them to ignore reliance on such structures (‘Landscape’ 128). In order to counter this hyperseparation we must recognise “continuity and hybridity between the human and the natural, and also dependency of humans on nature” (‘Landscape’ 128).

As the protagonist of Tracks, Robyn both subscribes to and diverts from notions of Plumwood’s hyperseparation. She subscribes to Plumwood’s dualist notion of nature immediately in her being of ‘female’ as when male is assimilated with culture, female thus takes on the connotations of nature - male/female, culture/nature (Plumwood, Mastery 43). As described in my opening statements on Robyn’s body as her wilderness landscape, Robyn is often assimilated with nature by her gender. For example, later naked shots of Robyn involve a close up of her legs where a line of menstrual blood drips down her thigh in the foreground of the empty wilderness (see Figure 8). She is both liberated by wilderness - with the ability to free bleed outside of society’s judgements - and constructed within its

problematic association with the female body. The connection of nature to menstruation, as part of the cycle of procreation only made possible through the site of the body, is what Sherry Ortner claims as a focal aspect to founding the subordination of women (13). Ortner’s argument predates the dualism work of Plumwood yet clearly distinguishes a founding for such theoretical frameworks. However, Ortner’s theory can often be disputed, even by the author herself who notes that sometimes women become the bearers of culture, yet still suffer from the assimilation with and the subordinate consequences of