Blade Runner Contagion The Fog L.A.

Confidential Smog has been used to highlight multiple emotions, but definitely, is connected with different types of anxiety.

In the New American Experience documentary, Clearing the Air The War on Smog.

We're transported back to a hazy Los Angeles, confronting air pollution for the first time.

And some of the images look like they're straight out of a horror movie.

So it's no wonder that this real life threat crept into Hollywood films.

We asked Robin Murray and Joseph authors of Monstrous Nature: Environment and Horror on the Big Screen, to walk us through the smog filled scenes where environmental anxiety took a terrifying turn.

We might recommend that they start with Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049.

Endless smog filled streets and skies.

Rains that will never stop and not cut the smog away.

Those kinds of films are, really emblematic of what people think Los Angeles will look like in the future.

There's actually a film called Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster that really, explicitly makes that connection between, our polluting of the land, of the air and making of monsters.

Feeding.

Growing evermore deadly on smog.

Only one force dares stand up to its overpowering evil.

Smog is so nebulous.

I mean, it's not like Godzilla.

A big monster that we kind of think we know how to attack.

When you have something that's like smog, like a virus too, like in Contagion.

The horror, the danger, is happening so slowly.

Some other films that deal with this issue of slow moving horror would be films like The Fog.

You're living in a small town near the ocean and suddenly you're engulfed in something that you can't understand.

It's almost impossible to describe, but there it is.

It's clearly an environmental and horrific disaster.

The Fog What you cant see wont hurt you.

It will kill you.

One of the things that really stood out for me in relation to the 1940s and smog, because theyre so connected with WWII.

Are the Los Angeles based film noir.

I really like the powerful scenes in Double Indemnity, for example, where you have Fred Macmurray's character, Walter Neff coming out of the smog on his crutches.

You know, these shadowy figures coming out of the smog then so the smog itself becomes emblematic of the corruption, the the danger.

But for LA, if you watch L.A.

Confidential, The Long Goodbye or To Live and Die In L.A. All the neo-noir.

They're on the highways.

They're above in the hills or looking down at the city.

The city is smog infested.

and you see it in these films as backgrounds.

And and when you finally get to films, about lower income areas in Los Angeles, like Killer of Sheep and, Boyz n the Hood It's just ever present.

There's no escape.

The idea is that because of, your lack of income, you don't have an ability, to get beyond the area in which you live.

It's not just income, it's race.

The polluted areas in the marginalized parts of big cities like Los Angeles and And in a film like Killer of Sheep, it's very matter of factly revealing what the world looks like in that part of the world, which is essentially Watts in the 1970s.

In the 1970s, there actually were environmental disaster films that were eco horror.

Like Soylent Green, for example, or Omega Man.

So you're looking at the city, as exploitative and definitely a product of our horrific behaviors of whatever kind.

There's endless details, in relationship to environmental issues around the world that we've been able to look at by using films, because filmmakers around the world are confronting these issues on a daily basis.

To learn more about L.A'.s decades long battle clean air, watch Clearing the Air: The War on Smog, from American Experience.