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The Soundtrack of the Climate Crisis – or: „Where are all the Climate Songs?“

logo music and climate crisis

by Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

Extreme weather events and forest fires have recently pushed the climate crisis up on the news agenda – still, going to the cinema or listening to the radio rarely gets us in contact with the topic. Where are the songs dealing with the climate crisis?

In two previous posts, we have written about climate change in pop songs and climate change in alternative and indie music (all posts of our series on “Climate Change in Pop Culture” can be found here). Now there is even a database for songs dealing with the climate crisis and mass extinction: Continue reading The Soundtrack of the Climate Crisis – or: „Where are all the Climate Songs?“

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Eine Allegorie an den Klimawandel: Filmkritik „Don´t Look Up“ (2021)

Von Lea Sommer

Don’t Look Up film’s poster (2021). Image Source: Impawards, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Netflix appelliert mit der Veröffentlichung von „Don´t Look Up“ am 24. Dezember 2021 daran, die Wissenschaft ernst zu nehmen. Die Anspielung auf die Klimakrise und dessen Leugnung sind nicht zu übersehen. Dabei verfehlt er die Darstellung der gesellschaftlichen Lage und Handlungsfähigkeit. Wahrscheinlich, weil er diese nicht anerkennt.

 

Continue reading Eine Allegorie an den Klimawandel: Filmkritik „Don´t Look Up“ (2021)

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Climate Change in Pop Culture Part 3: alternative and independent music

by Christopher Pavenstädt

Following up on our series about climate change in pop culture (read part 1 about young adult novels and part 2 about pop songs), here are some more examples of songs dealing with the topic of climate change. This time, we focused on independent and alternative music.

Climatization in pop culture

Through climatization, a process of re-framing several societal issues in light of the climate crisis, we can also expect the music industry to be affected by its rise in salience. The environment has already been a topic in pop music for a long time, mostly as a lyrical theme – many may know songs like Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song”, Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” or Midnight Oils “Beds Are Burning”. Continue reading Climate Change in Pop Culture Part 3: alternative and independent music

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Climate Change in Pop Culture – Part 2: Pop Songs

by Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

Following up on our series about climate change in pop culture (read part 1 about young adult novels here), we would like to present you some examples of pop songs from different musical genres dealing with the topic of climate change. There are many reasons for science to take popular culture seriously – one of them being that pop culture can be seen as a “battlefield” where scientific knowledge and attitudes are presented and disputed. If science disregards this field, it is left for pseudo-scientific actors, fundamentalists and figures with vested interests who use pop culture as a way to spread their view on scientific topics such as climate change (see also Allgaier 2017). Continue reading Climate Change in Pop Culture – Part 2: Pop Songs

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New Post series: “Climate Change in Pop Culture” – Part 1: YA Novels

by Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

As climate change has become a topic intersecting many domains of our lives, it is hardly surprising that it has also made its way into pop culture. In a series of short posts, we are going to present examples of novels, songs and films dealing with the topic of climate change.

Part 1: Young adult novels

reading girl

Young adult (YA) novels are a special genre of fiction, written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age, but also read by many adults (as this article describes, half of the readers are adults). Continue reading New Post series: “Climate Change in Pop Culture” – Part 1: YA Novels