Towards Ecological Thinking Through Modal Changes: Weird Media Transformation in Lars von Trier’s Film Melancholia
Towards Ecological Thinking Through Modal Changes: Weird Media Transformation in Lars von Trier’s Film Melancholia

Summary/Abstract: Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is at once a film about an apocalyptic destruction of Earth and a highly intermedial work. It largely draws inspiration from the medium of painting, imitating painterly effects as well as transforming well-recognized artworks. This article focuses on the transformation of Pieter Bruegel’s landscape painting The Hunters in the Snow, considering its significance in regard to the ecological message of the film. My analysis is, on the one hand, informed by Lars Elleström’s concepts of media transformation and media modalities, and on the other, it is illuminated by new materialist thought and Timothy Morton’s understanding of ecological thinking. Ecological thinking, or what Morton calls “ecological awareness,” implies thinking of the material world at multiple scales—including unfamiliar more-than-human scales. This article shows that the transfer of Bruegel’s landscape painting to vonTrier’s film brings a macroworld picture into the narrative, provoking the viewer to switch between the human scale of everyday embodied experience and the more-than-human scale of ecological processes. Furthermore, I explore how the strange transformation of the picture serves to confront the viewer with the dark-uncanny awareness of environmental ruination. Most importantly, the transfer of Bruegel’s The Huntersin the Snow to von Trier’s film involves modal changes. Especially remarkable is the alteration of the material modality, which is supported by digital technology. Digital effects play a crucial role in reinforcing the effect of scale-switching as well as foregrounding the weirdness of material phenomena. The alteration of the material-technological modality is also entangled with the changes in the sensorial and spatio-temporal modalities, which work together to decenter the human, cultivating a sense of enmeshment in the large-scale dynamics of the material world. Thus, I argue that the media transformation in von Trier’s Melancholia enables ecological thinking.

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