If Dante had filmed the Inferno on his iPhone, it
would look like this
Francine
Prose
If the Evia fire ferry video seems extraordinary, it’s
not only because of what it shows but because of how it shows it
Tue 10 Aug
2021 13.22 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/10/greece-fires-evia-ferry-video-climate
To have
lived through the last few decades is to have, in our minds, an all too
accessible video library of historic nightmares. The assassinations of JFK,
MLK, RFK. The collapse of the twin towers. Derek Chauvin’s knee on George
Floyd’s neck. The 6 January insurrectionists swarming the Capitol building. We
can call up these scenes whenever we choose. They haunt us, uninvited.
The latest
grim addition to that ineradicable collection is a video that surfaced, days
ago, of a tourist ferry sailing across the water from the raging fire
incinerating the Greek island of Evia.
The second
largest island in Greece, not far from Athens, Evia has (as I write this) been
on fire for a week. It is – or was – a natural paradise of forests, mountains
and clear streams, popular with the tourists who prop up the country’s shaky
economy.
This summer,
fires have broken out in an Athens suburb, in the Peloponnese, in Turkey,
southern Italy, Montenegro and Siberia. Some say that arson has been involved.
In north Macedonia, there were arrests. But the most skillful arsonists
couldn’t arrange the long drought and extreme heat that have fueled the
ferocity and speed of the devastation. However these fires started, the climate
crisis has been the accelerant.
Unless our
own homes are in danger, we may become overwhelmed, even numbed, by the sheer
number of droughts and blazes currently scorching the Earth. Every news program
features an orange sky, the charred toppling trees, homes reduced to smoldering
charcoal, tearful survivors consoling themselves: at least they’re still alive.
Every evening we watch someone’s house – a Belgian’s, a Nebraskan’s, a
Mexican’s – bobbing down a churning river.
This is
what climate apocalypse looks like from the deck of a tourist boat
Sadly, it
takes something special, something unusual, to stand out from the nonstop
evidence of the damage done by global heating. If the Evia fire ferry video
seems extraordinary, it’s not only because of what it shows, but because of how
it shows it – because of its strangeness.
At first
the video is simply disorienting. It takes a while – it took me a while – to
figure out what I was seeing.
In the
video, it’s night-time. The open space beneath the roof of the deck, through
which we and the passengers can see beyond the ferry to the burning shore, is
rectangular. It frames the disaster. It’s like a drive-in movie screen. We are
watching a real catastrophe over the heads of an audience.
The clip
has been viewed almost 2m times, and the phrase “disaster film” keeps recurring
in people’s descriptions. That may be the first thing you think of: real death
and destruction are being framed by the night sky and the design of the boat to
look like a big-budget Hollywood production, like one of those catastrophe
films of the 80s and 90s.
The crowd
is hard to read. Perhaps some passengers are suffering, perhaps some have lost
their homes, but most seem like vacationers who’ve had their holiday
interrupted. Not happy, but making the best of it, milling about and chatting.
What adds
to the senses of unreality are the passengers filming the burning island on
their phones. It’s like seeing the fire in a hall of mirrors, the large screen
reflected in dozens of little screens, up in the air, like antennae. I used to
find it annoying when people felt compelled to record every experience, but
courageous Darnella Frazier’s film of George Floyd’s murder has convinced us:
certain things need to be documented.
The video
of the ferry off Evia almost seems like art: a surrealist mini-film of a dream
being enacted. Oddly theatrical, it recalls the staged photographs of Gregory
Crewdson, the vistas of Thomas Struth, the landscapes of Anselm Kiefer,
Bruegel’s Mad Meg charging through a flaming world.
But if it’s
art, it’s found art. It is not imaginary, it’s real. The fires in California
and the American west are burning as I write this.
As
disturbing as it is, the video of the ferry is something I want people to see:
the most viral video ever. I want it to keep interrupting the everyday pleasures
and distractions that we (understandably) keep desiring.
Except for
researchers and scientists, humans can only think about the climate crisis for
part of the day, though surely it’s more present for the victims of disaster.
Still, most of us sense that something isn’t right. The stifling nights, the
tornadoes, the struggling farms, the rising price of food, the surging and
ebbing pandemic.
Perhaps
what makes the film clip so scary is also a matter of timing. The Greek fire
video surfaced around the time of the release of a new report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That document states definitively:
We are on the brink of too late. Unless we dramatically reduce our emissions
and our dependence on fossil fuel, our world will soon become “a hell”.
The ferry
video is a vision of hell. It’s as if Dante filmed the Inferno on his iPhone.
This is
what climate apocalypse looks like from the deck of a tourist boat. It’s a
vision we need to see, a reminder that the hard work of keeping our planet from
becoming hell can’t be put off any longer. We have run out of time. We need to
wake up. We need to say it till somebody listens: something has to be done.
Francine
Prose is a novelist. Her latest book, The Vixen, was published this June
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