This article argues that formal and thematic elements of magical realism can bridge reality and fantasy in particularly productive ways when dealing with the imaginative challenges of representing climate change and environmental injustice. My analysis of Benh Zeiltin’s film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, situates magical realism in the emerging environmental discourse about climate change and focuses on the techniques used to make slow violence visible, including the monstrous symbols in the form of beasts that embody climate change and reflect the social anxieties associated with an uncertain planetary future. Magical realism engages with the temporal and spatial scales necessary for depicting the state of risk and crisis associated with anthropogenic climate change, and it produces narratives that include marginalized voices, which are indicators of contemporary environmental ethics in the U.S. that mobilize discourses of race, gender, and class. Finally, the article explores how the film represents the material consequences and cultural anxieties surrounding climate displacement and concludes that stories about climate change refuse narrative closure. The realities of climate change necessitate a shift in the ways we understand humans’ relationship to the material world and the narratives we use to represent it.

中文翻译：

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表象的怪物：南方野兽的气候变化和魔幻现实主义

本文认为，在应对代表气候变化和环境不公正的富有想象力的挑战时，魔幻现实主义的形式和主题元素可以以特别富有成效的方式弥合现实和幻想。我对 Benh Zeiltin 的电影《南方荒野的野兽》的分析将魔幻现实主义置于新兴的关于气候变化的环境话语中，并侧重于使缓慢暴力可见的技术，包括体现气候变化和反映与不确定的地球未来相关的社会焦虑。魔幻现实主义涉及描绘与人为气候变化相关的风险和危机状态所必需的时间和空间尺度，它产生的叙事包括边缘化的声音，这是美国当代环境伦理的指标，可以动员种族、性别和阶级的话语。最后，文章探讨了这部电影如何表现围绕气候流离失所的物质后果和文化焦虑，并得出结论，关于气候变化的故事拒绝叙事结束。气候变化的现实需要改变我们理解人类与物质世界关系的方式以及我们用来表示它的叙述方式。