Homing Ecophobia

Introduction

Ecophobia, as proposed by Simon C. Estok, is ‘contempt for the natural world’ (2011). If ‘contempt’ here means ‘a strong feeling of combined dislike and lack of respect’ (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2005), ‘phobia’, ‘an extreme fear of a particular thing or situation, especially one that cannot be reasonably explained’ (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2005), is the cause of the contempt. Eugene P. Odum defines ecology as ‘the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their environment’ (1971). ‘Relationship’ is a key word that distinguishes the term ‘ecology’ from the anthropocentric term ‘environment’. Any use of the word ecology, or the prefix ‘eco-’, demands the consideration of this key word ‘relationship’. Phobia relating to ecology or ecological phobia in disaster-texts would be the fear of the human being’s relationship with the natural world. In other words, the contempt for the natural world is a result of the fear of the relationship of human beings with other organisms and of human beings with the environment. Tracing the etymology of ‘ecology’ to the Greek word ‘oikos’, Odum defines the term as ‘the study of organisms “at home”’ (1971). It is natural that a word with the prefix ‘eco-’ should be understood without ignoring the dimensions of home. ‘Home’ (usually seen as a synonym for ‘house’) is understood as a controlled space which extends from the intimate relationship between siblings to the intense relationship with the natural, cultural and supernatural elements in a place (Selvamony 2001).

Objectives and Conceptual Framework

This article is an attempt at contextualizing ecophobia in a disaster-text—a YouTube clip on the tsunami that hit the coast of Tamil Nadu (along with Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other places in southern and south-eastern Asia) in December 2004. The article is divided into two parts. The first part examines the element of fear exhibited by people in the clip and the spontaneous video techniques that document this fear. In the second part, the responses of some students to the video are analyzed to understand the manifestation of ecophobia. A single framework—the symbolism of space—is used in the analysis of the clip and the literature on the clip. This symbolism manifests as a conflict between open and closed spaces. The result of the conflicting spaces, that is, the fear, is manifested in one form in the clip and is transferred to the viewers in another form.

The ‘disaster-text’, for the purposes of this article, is a YouTube clip which deals with a natural disaster. On a general note, a disaster-text may report, predict or fictionalize a disaster.

The video clip, titled clip of tsunami channai vision (Mayurlodaya 2009), is an appropriate selection for the present analysis. There are four reasons for choosing this from the hundreds of video clips on tsunami archived in YouTube: spontaneity, the proximity of the videographer to the sea, the length of the clip and location of the documentation. The clip is marked by its amateur videography and minimal video and sound editing, offering a greater touch of authenticity. The clip was also produced on a mobile-phone camera, with the videographer just a few metres from the sea. The 5 minute 21 seconds clip is long enough to portray the context, location, people, animals, birds and vegetation of the place.

First, a note on clips and YouTube. While the reliability of YouTube clips is constantly being questioned, their relevance and popularity remain unchallenged. What Moises Naim calls ‘The You Tube Effect’ (2007) is the political and economic repercussions that YouTube has on transnational governments and its citizens. The effect, Naim notes, is a combined effort created by citizens, media companies and other governmental and non-governmental agencies (2007). This is to say that the character of a video in YouTube is a multidimensional one with not only the production and act of uploading the clip but also its constant review by such agencies, and its ‘forwarding’ which disseminates it onward. A clip could be an edited/unedited video which is shorter than 12 minutes but is complete. The clip-culture of YouTube has revolutionized media into an individual platform. On closer scrutiny, one might identify a ‘metaphorical I’ or a ‘virtual individualistic self’ that YouTube creates in its very existence as a popular medium. The ‘metaphorical I’ or the ‘virtual individualistic self’ is an identity possessed by a user in the virtual world, which probably is a shadow of his/her projected identity. The identity of the ‘virtual individualistic self’ is either known to himself/herself alone or an identity that he/she shares with persons of similar virtual identities. This ‘virtual individualistic self’ belongs to the viewer and the account-holder who are anonymous. The ‘I’ is unreal and thus attains a metaphorical quality hidden in anonymity. The quality of this anonymity is manifested as rootlessness in the message (videos and audios) communicated. A video that is uploaded could be rootless (not claimed to be rooted in a place or culture), with no proper documentation details such as location and context of documentation, cameras used, description of the content, acknowledgement of persons involved in production or persons interviewed. The characteristic of the ‘virtual individualistic self’ is highly individualistic and does not form part of a collective self (the self of a group or a community) and ecophobia also seems to manifest itself in an individualistic platform thereby increasing the probability of the fear element in the context of this virtuality.

Discussion

Clip of tsunami channai vision is a popular clip with 120,478 hits from the day it was uploaded on 25 January 2009. The identity of the account-holder who has uploaded this video is ‘mayur lodaya from jalgaon’. The ‘metaphorical I’ manifests in the preferred identity of the account-holder, not revealing his/her identification details, such as, age, gender, location and actual name. Though the possibility of the ‘user id’ being the actual name of the user cannot be overlooked, it cannot be relied upon because there is no evidence for it. Thus, the represented self is a metaphorical self and not the actual one. This ‘metaphorical I’ is represented in the clip as well. The video-narration is in the form of the videographer’s perspective. The only information about the clip is that it is a personal documentation of tsunami in Chennai (misspelt as ‘channai’) as seen in the title of the clip. I use the first person, ‘I’, to stress the individualistic impact of the self in YouTube. The ‘I’ represents the self and this ‘I’ of the self shifts from the videographer, account-holder to the user/viewer. It is as though every person watching this clip gets transformed to this individualistic ‘I’. In other words, the ‘metaphorical I’ is transported from the videographer to every single viewer. The platform that the YouTube provides individualizes the effect of the video on the viewer. Like the clip that exists in the individual platform, the effect of the video on the viewer is based on his/her personal experience with the dominant images in the clip and the viewer’s emotional standpoint while watching the clip. This argument is elaborated in the latter part of the article.

The Experience of Fear

The clip begins with a stage programme which runs for three seconds and a cut to the seascape, probably in front of the stage. The following zoom-in, zoom-out and panoramic shots show the rushing of waves into the land, revealing the landscape with coconut trees standing in a row and decorative plants in a line as if they demarcate a territory or separate a safe zone from a dangerous one. This shot runs for 33 seconds. The cut from the stage programme to the rushing-in waves is a digression from the documentation of the programme. The steady shot of the stage programme is contrasted with the hasty zoom-in and zoom-out shots of the sea waves. This contrast or the change in style of the video works to evoke fear by contrast: the choreographed stage programme and the unruly waves rushing in. The stage programme seems to have come to an abrupt halt with people running helter-skelter to escape the raging seawater. The next shot which zooms-in to the waves, zooms-out as the wave rushes past the plants and enters the open ground hitting the stage. As the waves hit the stage, the camera shakes in tandem with the running footsteps of the videographer. The camera is switched on as the videographer runs and finds a safe place behind two pillars. The right and left panoramic movements of the camera corresponds to the vigorous movements of the waves. The camera zooms-in and zooms-out of the debris of furniture in the open space and the water-filled woods beside the stage. This long shot which begins at the 54th second runs for more than a minute ending at 02.09 minutes in the timeline. The next shot which runs for 11 seconds zooms-in and zooms-out of the water-filled woods, repeating the previous shot. The camera then quickly moves to the right focusing on the waves rushing to the open space past the row of coconut trees. There are people standing on the other side of the open space, confused at the unusual tides. Strikingly, the camera zooms into a seemingly abandoned house standing on concrete pillars which is filled with water. There are heavy speakers, a table and a blue moulded chair that are abandoned on the stage. The rest of the film is shot at a different time when the tsunami waves have receded and the sand appears to be dry. The dramatic movement of a crab clinging on to the glass pane of a window is zoomedin while another crab walks on the dry grassy sand. There is no water gushing into the open space. Two persons walk along the line of coconut trees. The debris of tsunami are seen on the dry ground—broken chairs, broken pipelines, uprooted plants and dry coconut fronds. The steadiness of the camera that is seen in the initial and the final parts of the clip contrasts sharply with the early shaky shots of the clip.

Analyzing the clip in terms of ecophobia, it can be said that the video reveals two conflicting spaces—open and closed. The video does not use any non-diegetic sounds (Alex 2012), such as, a voice-over to explain the feelings of the videographer; the conflicting spaces mentioned are purely interpretative. The videographer is stationed within a closed space of a building, while videographing an open space. The closed space is a safe zone and is not as threatened as the open one. If the closed space has a structure that is controlled, limited, inhabited and territorialized, the open space, here the sea, in contrast, is vast, uncontrollable and unbounded. This is not merely an anthropic (relating to human beings) phenomenon. The first crab in the clip runs in search of its home. Another crab, unable to find its home, takes refuge on a window pane. In the beginning of the clip, the crows fly towards their shelter on tree tops, which are their homes. For the videographer and others in the video, the closed space might not be home but it serves the purpose of home—providing a constructed security and protection. The fear of the waves comes across clearly when the videographer runs in hurry with his camera switched on. The videographer, we perceive, finds refuge behind the pillars of the stage. It is just the structure of the building and the faint familiarity that creates the feeling of protection. The steadiness of the camera that is seen when the sea has receded and the panic of the videographer when the sea waves enter the closed space clearly indicate the conflict between open and closed spaces. This conflict reaches its zenith when the videographer and other people run for their life, away from the sea’s waters. Ecophobia comes into play for the videographer in such open spaces partly due to the unfamiliarity of the place and partly due to the uncontrollability of the situation.

There are three kinds of shots in the clip: zoom, panoramic and still. The panoramic shots give an overview of the tsunami affected place. The shots are effective in portraying the large area of land being hit by tsunami. By showing such panoramic shots the videographer, consciously or unconsciously, territorializes the closed space with the open space. The open space which is in turmoil, though it has the repercussions and the turbulence of the tsunami, is a safer place for the videographer. The territorialization that the videographer does is a technique for his very existence or survival. Edward T. Hall defines territoriality as ‘a behaviour by which an organism characteristically lays claim to an area and defends it against members of its own species’ (1982). Territoriality, as Hall explains, has functions like ‘developing reflex responses’ and providing ‘proper spacing, which protects against over-exploitation of that part of the environment’, depending on the species of animals considered (1982). Thus, it is necessary for an animal to have a territory, ‘without which survival is impossible’ (1982). The demarcation of the territory by the videographer using the technique of panoramic shots is by separating the undulating open space from the closed space. The open space on all the three sides of the stage is surrounded by the sea water. The stage is the closed space that is territorialized and it provides protection to the videographer. The zoom-in and zoom-out shots represent the enormously disastrous activity in the open space and the distance between the closed and the open space. The videographer, stationed at a place, zooms-in to the waves that advance the speed–velocity with which the waves move. As the waves advance closer than expected and the camera was unable to zoom-out further, the videographer moves out of the position, foreshadowing the conflicting spaces. It is an implication that the waves can destroy the closed space and can disturb the safety provided by it. This is yet another representation of the conflicting spaces. Still-shots are steady shots without any movement of the videographer or the camera. Such shots do not represent the conflicting spaces. Rather, one could see that the narrative perspective shifts from the videographer to the object in action. Unfortunately, there are only two such shots in the video and both do not have the image of sea in them. However, the still-shots do not show the conflicting spaces. The panoramic, zoom-in and zoom-out shots are perhaps a symbolic representation of the conflict between the open and closed spaces that the videographer confronts.

The conflict between open and closed spaces illustrated earlier, incidentally, has parallels in the ecocritical theory of tinai (Venkatachalapathy 2010)—akam and puram. A.R. Venkatachalapathy in the ‘Introduction’ to Love Stands Alone: Selections from Tamil Sangam Poetry writes:

Tholkappiyam divides the content and subject matter of all literature into two complementary and overarching categories: akam and puram…. The authoritative Tamil Lexicon defines akam as inside, interior, heart, mind, breast, sexual pleasure, house, agricultural tract, the theme of love, subject, etc. Puram is defined as the ‘other’ of akam: outside, exterior, heroism, bravery, side, back, gossip and backbiting, partiality, place, tax-free land, wild tract, etc. (Venkatachalapathy 2010)

The definition of akam as ‘interior’ and ‘inside’ refers to the part of home which is a closed space—one’s own house in tinai poetry—where peace and love are ensured. Puram is the ‘other’—that which is unfamiliar, unknown and unpredictable and that which is an open space and which does not belong to one’s home. It could be war, pollution or any disaster for that matter.

Though the earth is abundant, it is ‘impermanent’. Abundance of the earth signifies permanence. Thus, the relation between ‘abundance’ and ‘impermanence’ seems antithetical. Though the ‘bountiful earth’ signifies permanence in puram, it cannot be permanent because of the uncertainty of the open space. The reason for the attributed transiency is that ‘seven men rise and fall in a single day’ and that connotes death and disaster. Ultimately the poem is set in the ‘other of akam’, puram, which explains the impermanency in life. The impermanency of puram, as in an open space, is in contrast to the permanency of akam.

Yet another conflict between akam and puram is obvious in this Avvaiyar-poem. This is a case where akam transforms to puram. The home ‘unhomes’, in a sense, and the inhabitants are forced to flee their homes. The peaceful environment of the home becomes hostile and the home is displaced. In this context, what is the reason for the unhoming of home? The poem does not give any evidence of the destruction of the home. And thus it is not the destruction of the home that has led to unhoming, instead it is the fear of imminent unhoming. This is in itself another form of disaster—the fear of disaster. Here, the fear of physical disaster leads to emotional disaster.

Although the video is documented in a grave situation and the open space is evidently damaged, the videographer is aware that the closed space is protected and will not be part of the disaster. It seems the videographer experiences the uncertainty of life as the sea gets closer to him/her. The possibility of any kind of relationship with the furious sea is out of question because the situation in the clip is one of life or death.

Having mentioned fear, we will now analyze the dominant image in the video—the sea—the sea that terrifies, separates and invokes sadness in people with close proximity to it. Artists and critics all over the world and at all ages have been trying to understand what ‘sea’/‘ocean’ meant to people.

In the Tamil context, one of the five landscapes of tinai represents the seacoast—neytal. In Kurunthokai ‘97’, the girl, complaining of her lover’s nonchalance, tells her confidante thus: ‘I am here:/my loveliness/eaten away by pallor/is lost in the woods by the sea./My lover is comfortable in his hometown’ (Thangappa 2010). Sea becomes the witness and the context of the separation of the lovers in the poem. In Kurunthokai 195 the wife, sitting beside the sea longing for her husband, says to herself:

Where is he now?

Busy in the work he has taken up?

Doesn’t it occur to him

that I’d be pining for his company?

Oh, he does not know how

the cool breeze fanning me aggravates my pain. (Thangappa 2010)

The long waiting of the wife has caused her pain. She longs for her companion. Her pain aggravates as the breeze from the sea fans her. The sea and its breeze heighten the pain of separation. It is not only the woman separated from her lover who cries for him, Nattrinai ‘319’ describes a man also pining for his beloved in the neytal landscape.

The man longs for her love. But the roar of the ocean and the breeze that originates from it cause unrest and he is unable to sleep. The sleeplessness is because of his separation from her and the sea forms the context for this emotional state. Separation is a common theme in the neytal poems. Separation gives one a melancholic experience for the reason that it invokes fear—the fear of losing a loved one. Both the pining lovers in the foregoing poems fear that their lovers will not return and that separation will be final. But, interestingly how does ‘sea’ or ‘ocean’ become the context of separation? Again, the reason can be said to be the conflicting open and closed spaces. Face to face, the unsure, unfamiliar open space causes fear. It is, in the symbolism of the poem, the uncertainty of the love in separation that connects the lover to the uncertainty of the open space. This status of connection between the lover-in-separation and the seascape is a self-constructed one. I describe this as self-constructed because, in reality, in future, the lovers might not get separated. The constructed identity of the lover-in-separation is similar to the ‘metaphorical I’ or the virtuality of the ‘individual self’. Both the lovers in the neytal poems choose to be on the seashore while suffering separation.

Similar to the pining lovers in separation, sea becomes the context of fear for the videographer in the clip. As mentioned elsewhere in the article, fear is an evident element which is caused by the conflicting spaces. Towards the end of the video, after the seawater has receded and calmness and peace restored, why is the videographer unwilling to get down on the beach? The probable reason could be that he/she still considers the sea as an agent which could cause death and calamity. The videographer finds refuge behind the pillars and the giant elephant-models to keep him/her safe as if he/she was consciously unwilling to relate to the sea. The fear of the sea is manifested as the fear to relate to the sea.

The tsunami documented in the clip hit Chennai on 26 December 2004. A report on the disaster is given below:

The tsunami battered Marina Beach, and giant waves swept across the beach and the wide Kamarajar Salai road and entered into these buildings…. The waves caught many morning walkers on Marina Beach unawares. Approximately 160 people died on the beach… The hamlet adjacent to the beach consisted of thatch shanties less than 50 m from the sea… The fishing port of Chennai suffered significant damage, and approximately 150 fishermen were reported dead… The mooring line of one of the ships, the Keshava, broke off and collided with two other ships, causing localized damage to the ships. (Sheth et al. 2006)

The ‘giant waves’ which originate in an unknown open space enter the familiar but open space through ‘the wide Kamarajar Salai road’ and hit the closed but familiar space of the buildings on the other side of the road. Though the excerpt begins with the conflict between the open and the closed spaces, it describes the hazards of the disaster in the open space. The hazards of the open space traumatize the people in the closed space. Another report on tsunami at Tamil Nadu provides shocking figures of traumatized people:

Tsunami—Virtual loss (Intangible loss)

1. Psychologically depressed people – >3 Lakh

2. Water phobia affected people & children – >1.2 Lakh

…

6. Mentally depressed and stressed people – 12,000

7. Emotional, anxiety, anguish, pathos affected people – > 1 lakh. (Jayashree n.d.)

The depression, stress, anxiety, anguish and pathos evoked are probably immediate responses of the people directly involved in the disaster. The clip documenting the threat of disaster, perhaps capturing the videographer’s fear as well since he/she experiences the tsunami first-hand, is carried-over in another form to the viewers of the video. The next part of the article deals with the analysis of this transferred fear.

Transferring Fear

In this context, to analyze this transferred fear, the clip was screened to a group of 20 students belonging to MA English Studies Programme at the Central University of Tamil Nadu and their responses were recorded. The students were of the age group of 20–23 years. The clip was screened twice and the students were asked to write their responses to a few questions on a sheet of paper. Here are some interesting and thought-provoking responses.

When relating to the sea, fear is visible in the verbal expressions of Parvathy J., Rohini Vijayan and Tina Thomas. Tina Thomas witnessed the horrendous sight of dead bodies piled up after tsunami hit Kerala. The terrifying image of the heap of dead bodies has created a traumatizing effect on Tina metaphorizing sea with dead bodies. The image has caused a permanent fear of death in her. The sea is thus a symbol of disaster which curbs any possibility of physical interaction with it. Rohini Vijayan has a general aversion towards any waterscape. Watching her friend die in a nearby river, Rohini has developed a fear towards water bodies and the sea heightens this feeling. Contrary to Rohini’s and Tina’s experience, Parvathy’s experience is a slightly different one. She has a second-hand experience that has evoked fear in her and this fear is not about tsunamis alone but about the sea in general. In the three cases mentioned here, the fear of the natural agent (sea waves/water) which causes disaster (tsunami) is transformed into the fear of relationship with the natural element (the seascape).

Analyzing Parvathy’s comment, if one were to offer a one-to-one correspondence of emotion and space in connection with closed/open space and disaster, one could say that the familiarity and security of the closed space is expressed as happiness at home. When Tina fears any possibility of relating to the sea, she actually fears the sea as an open space which symbolizes insecurity and death, whereas Rohini fears all open spaces connected with water. Kanchana B., though she declares that the clip did not evoke fear in her, would like to confront the sea in the situation of a natural disaster. The comment seems to suggest an anxiety to experience the confrontation between closed and open spaces. Mohammed Yazar Arafath claims that fear is evoked only when there is a physical involvement of the person with the natural entity and that is where the person confronts the open space. It should be noted that these comments are themselves made in a closed space, in a classroom, where the students do not confront the open space of the sea.

However, two comments are unique and they attract my attention. Zainul Abid T. and Hashif K. comment that the clip was beautiful though it showed the violent nature of the sea. They seem to believe that disaster-texts, like the YouTube clip, have a certain beauty in them. It is interesting that one could appreciate the beauty of disaster in a text or the disaster-text itself. Are the writers actually appreciating the beauty of disaster? When Hashif says that sea has always fascinated him, he looks at the sea not as the cause of the disaster but just as the sea. And it is the pleasant experience of sea that is there in his memory as an entity that causes pleasure. By the use of the word ‘anyone’, he also generalizes his perspective of the sea. In the guise of reference to the clip, Hashif refers to the sea as a beautiful entity and ignores the waves of the sea as destructive or as an agent causing disaster. The analogy of the clip to a musical concert is the extension of the same argument. The identification that the ‘sea has two faces—one calm and the other violent’ at the onset seems to be contrary to Hashif’s ‘beauty of the sea’. Whatever the sea is—calm or violent—Zainul does not speak of the sea as a cause of the disaster. However, the basis of both the comments is the same since they consider sea as a universal image and do not merely contextualize the clip. Instead the clip is a piece of art to them. Art, though it visualizes disaster, in itself is not a disaster; thus it can be aesthetically appreciated. Art cannot cause physical disaster though the sea can because art is usually created and enjoyed in a closed space.

The comments of the students are based on their personal experience or inexperience with the symbol of disaster, the sea. These personalized experiences possess the ‘virtual individualistic self’. Sea as a symbol of death or separation is conceptualized metaphorically. Direct or indirect, the personal experience is based on the universal metaphor of sea. On the contrary, tsunami caused by the sea might be explained scientifically, which might be an impersonalized explanation. But here the ‘virtual individualistic self’ plays a prominent role in the construction of this symbol.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Characteristics of Open and Closed Spaces Analyzed in the Clip and the Literature on the Clip

Sl. No.	Open space	Closed space
1.	Space that is open (vast expanse)	Space that is closed (building)
2.	Threatened (disastrous, traumatizing)	Safe
3.	Uncontrollable (unpredictable)	Controlled (predictable)
4.	Not territorialized (hostility, terror)	Territorialized (serves the purpose of home, peaceful)
5.	Uninhabited (unprotected)	Inhabited (protected)
6.	Unfamiliar (unknown)	Familiar (known)
7.	Impermanence (transience)	Permanence
8.	Separation	Union

The transportation of the ‘metaphorical I’ or the ‘individualistic self’, mentioned elsewhere in the article, contributes to the conflict between the closed and open spaces and is seen in the video where the videographer confronts the sea to the platform where the video is uploaded and to the viewers. The context of tsunami in the clip and the subsequent death and disaster caused by the sea to many are seen here from an individualistic perspective.

However, the fear that is transferred individually has another dimension that is collective in nature. Though individually, fear is expressed in different ways, it exists in all the responses of the student-viewers. Unlike YouTube clip that is usually watched individually in a personal computer, the present clip was watched in a classroom—in a public space. The dynamics of such an environment offer a collective perspective to the viewers. The verbal and gestural interaction between the students in the classroom would have created preconceived notions of the clip and the fear evoked by the clip before they began penning their responses on paper. Questions by the students while writing their responses, such as, ‘Can we write anything we feel?’ and ‘Can we use additional sheets to write our responses?’, actually ruptured the hierarchy of the teacher–student relationship in the classroom. It was also surprising to witness the disapproval/surprise of using a YouTube video clip as a text for analysis. The collective consciousness of the transferred ‘virtual individualistic self’ and the conditions that favour this transference cannot be undermined; it is another dimension of the experiment which is beyond the scope of the article.

The summary in Table 1 will help us understand the conflicting spaces better.

The characteristics of closed space are similar to the features of home proposed by S. Susan Deborah. Some of them are ‘permanence’, ‘domesticity’, ‘belongingness’, ‘nurture’, ‘centre of affections’ and ‘refuge’ (Deborah 2011). The characteristics of open and closed spaces are so contrastive that they displace the person experiencing the conflict—like a person displaced from his/her home. This causes fear.

Conclusion

In the YouTube clip discussed, fear or phobia of the sea is caused by the videographer’s conflicting open and closed spaces. Closed space that is equated to home/house (though not always applicable) is not merely getting closer to it but is the better understanding of it. This better understanding expands the scope of the present study to a bioregional perspective. It is this deliberate understanding that I call, ‘homing’. The verb ‘homing’ refers to an activity—the activity of learning the landscape, seascape, plants, animals, birds of the home-place—leading to the unhoming of ecophobia.