The (un)sustainable ecologies of self-reflexivity in Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point

This article brings theories of eco-cinema to bear on the filmic text and production history of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) to demonstrate that the film foregrounds the often-disregarded connection between cultural experiences and their environmental costs. On the one hand, popular visual culture mostly conceals this connection behind narratives grounded in conceptions of human subjects as detached from the environment-object at their disposal. On the other hand, I argue that Zabriskie Point simultaneously emphasizes the ethical significance of cultural experiences by envisioning an environmental ethics that questions subject–object dichotomies while also problematizing this significance by self-reflexively foregrounding the unsustainability of its own production, the film industry and, more broadly, consumer society. Zabriskie Point therefore historically responds to coeval environmental concerns, but it also delivers a compelling reflection that speaks to current shifts towards sustainability-driven economies and lifestyles.