An ecocritical look at the representation of human-nature relationship in Hollywood animation cinema: The role of consumption culture and human sovereignty in films

Since the beginning of the 1900s, the environmental problems arising from the dominance of man over nature have continued to increase continuously, resulting in various ecological and environmentalist understandings. Air, sea and land pollution, global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, forest fires, unplanned and irregular urbanization, the danger of extinction of some animal species, the decline in the quality of agricultural products day by day, the narrowing of the habitats of wild animals, the danger of thirst at the doorstep are the main environmental problems. As the situation got serious and people's sensitivity increased, environmental problems began to find a place in literary works and media products. Animation cinema, which is one of the tools of effective storytelling today, as in other genres of cinema, is one of the ideological influence tools in which environmental problems are shown from time to time and various solutions are presented to the audience for the solution of these problems. With this research, four different American-made animated films about human-nature and animal relations included in the sample are analyzed from a discursive point of view, and its relations with ideologies were revealed from an ecocritical point of view. Ecocriticism is a method examining cultural texts critically and centering on the human-nature relationship. The aim of the research is to reveal the embedded discourse behind what is seen and heard, in the most general terms, in movies with the theme of human-nature relationship. The importance of research is the conduct of the research on four different sample films. In this way, the approach of four different production companies in the American film industry to the human-nature relationship was seen in comparison with each other. In the research, discourse analysis method was used with an ecocritical approach. The general conclusion reached by the research, in Hollywood animated films with the theme of human-nature relationship, is that there are films that are based on shallow ecology in a discursive sense and can not go beyond anthropocentrism.