In May 1936, Representative Maury Maverick, a Democrat from Texas, stood on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to rave about The Plow That Broke the Plains, a documentary film he had recently seen. Directed by Pare Lorentz and sponsored by the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration, The Plow explained the causes of the dust storms that were darkening the skies of the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl—the name given to describe both the disaster and the region where it struck—was already a focus of national concern. But Maverick believed there was something different, perhaps even momentous, about The Plow: “While criticisms may be made of the Resettlement film because it shows the horrible waste of our natural resources, I think that films of that character must by all means be shown to awaken our citizens to the necessity for immediate steps in conservation.” Excited by Lorentz’s film, Maverick imagined a whole series of movies about the American earth, “a picturization of our forests, lands, waters—everything we have which is natural.” In his call for more films like The Plow, Maverick suggested that the New Deal should present new stories about the landscape—narratives that would reveal the significance of nature to American history and portray conservation as a way to regenerate the nation. With its visual power, film seemed the ideal medium for telling these stories.
Many commentators joined Maverick in claiming that the crisis of the Dust Bowl generated a crisis of storytelling. The clouds of dust, the abandoned fields, the desolate earth: these looked like signs of the end, the culmination of a tragic story that began in a pure wilderness, an untouched land of abundance. “North America before the coming of the white man was rich with growing things,” Stuart Chase wrote in Harper’s magazine, “incredibly beautiful to look upon . . . and perhaps the most bountifully endowed by nature of all the world’s continents. Today, after three centuries of occupation, . . . the old grass lands have almost completely disappeared. . . . A dust desert is forming . . . on the Great Plains where firm grass once stood.” From this perfect world of beauty and promise, the story of America was the story of decline, of ruining the land and falling into the darkness of the Dust Bowl.
Beyond the Great Plains, other ecological disasters beset the American landscape during the 1930s. In many places, nature appeared to rebel: floods raged in the Mississippi Valley and soil erosion sapped the vitality of farms throughout the nation. Each catastrophe contributed a fear that America was headed toward its end. “Nature has again been good enough to warn us,” the ecologist Paul Sears explained, “by a perfectly synchronized drama of dust-storms in the West and disastrous floods in the East, of the wrath that is brewing against our western civilization unless we mend our ways.”
For many New Dealers, conservation became a moral crusade, an attempt to reform the basic values and assumptions of American culture. Through the creation of several agencies—including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Soil Conservation Service, and the Tennessee Valley Authority—the federal government sought to reconcile technology with the environment, to achieve a balance between soil and society. What lay behind the particular pieces of legislation was a drive to create new stories of the American encounter with nature. As Representative Maverick suggested, environmental storytelling would find its fullest, most dramatic expression in documentary films sponsored by government agricultural agencies. Three films in particular—The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937), both made by Pare Lorentz, and The Land (1942), made Robert Flaherty—powerfully conveyed the political imagination and ecological aesthetics of the New Deal.
The sermonizing, Social Gospel impulse of the New Deal became particularly apparent among a group of agricultural reformers who sought to attach public values to private lands. This group of intellectuals—which included Hugh Hammond Bennett of the Soil Conservation Service, Rexford Tugwell of the Resettlement Administration, and Russell Lord, an adviser to several agricultural agencies—rejected the frontier legacy of individualism, hoping to replace the wasteful practices of the pioneer with the scientific knowledge of ecology. Although Progressive-era conservationists emphasized the need to protect and manage the nation’s public lands, New Deal agricultural reformers concentrated on the problems associated with privately owned lands. Despite this difference, New Dealers continued the Progressive tradition of delivering sermons about the nation’s corrupt relationship with the natural world. From the Dust Bowl to the crises of floods and soil erosion, they castigated Americans for their mismanagement of resources and called for the moral uplift of the nation’s farmers and the ecological improvement of the nation’s soil. These reformers framed practical matters, such as farming techniques and flood control, within a religious narrative of decline and redemption, revealing the spiritual fervor that enlivened New Deal conservation.
Through the medium of documentary film, the concerns of agricultural reformers reached a wide audience. Like Herbert Gleason before them, the filmmakers Pare Lorentz and Robert Flaherty placed their faith in the camera, fusing words and images to shape public attitudes and to bring aesthetics and spirituality into politics. In movie theaters around the nation, the New Deal used the technology of motion pictures and recorded sound to preach environmental sermons to the American people.
These documentaries found their aesthetic perspective in the science of ecology. During the Great Depression, leading ecologists developed a broad vision of nature that emphasized the interrelationships among different organisms. Pointing to the links between soil and society, they attributed the Dust Bowl to the reckless behavior of farmers who destroyed the delicate web of life on the Great Plains. Likewise, New Deal filmmakers wanted Americans to gain a comprehensive view of the land, one that incorporated people into the biotic community. By using a wide-angle lens, Lorentz and Flaherty encouraged spectators to consider not just the isolated parts of a landscape but its entire ecological fabric.
Their panoramic perspective created a new aesthetic for environmental reform, an ecological vision that stressed the interdependence of people and nature.
While Gleason had emphasized the sublimity of mountains and forests, Lorentz and Flaherty offered ecological catastrophe as a new expression of the sublime. To be sure, natural disasters had traditionally been associated with sublime experience. Floods, hurricanes, and volcanoes revealed nature's force and power, its ability to overwhelm, threaten, and disorient human observers. For this reason, simulated disasters had become part of American mass culture, particularly at the amusement parks of Coney Island, where visitors could witness such events as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the Galveston flood of 1900. Safe from any actual danger, audiences delighted in these experiences, finding "a kind of transcendent meaning" in the scenes of destruction. New Deal filmmakers reworked this tradition to introduce the concept of an ecological catastrophe into American culture. Rather than presenting the Dust Bowl and other calamities as natural disasters, Lorentz and Flaherty portrayed these events as human-created tragedies. Like the displays at Coney Island, the films provided Americans with both entertainment and transcendence, except now the images suggested a sublime of their own making.
★
In March 1936, the film debuted at the White House, where President Roosevelt offered his praise and congratulations to Lorentz. The official premier followed in May, when a "tail-coated and formally gowned audience," including Representative Maury Maverick of Texas, filed into the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. "Before the final fadeout," one journalist observed, "[The Plow] had diplomats, congressmen and New Dealers holding to the edge of their gilt chairs." After the film ended, according to the same report, the audience gathered around Rexford Tugwell, who said, "There's nothing more to tell . . . The film has told it all."
Finis Dunaway, 'The Nature of the New Deal'
Many commentators joined Maverick in claiming that the crisis of the Dust Bowl generated a crisis of storytelling. The clouds of dust, the abandoned fields, the desolate earth: these looked like signs of the end, the culmination of a tragic story that began in a pure wilderness, an untouched land of abundance. “North America before the coming of the white man was rich with growing things,” Stuart Chase wrote in Harper’s magazine, “incredibly beautiful to look upon . . . and perhaps the most bountifully endowed by nature of all the world’s continents. Today, after three centuries of occupation, . . . the old grass lands have almost completely disappeared. . . . A dust desert is forming . . . on the Great Plains where firm grass once stood.” From this perfect world of beauty and promise, the story of America was the story of decline, of ruining the land and falling into the darkness of the Dust Bowl.
Beyond the Great Plains, other ecological disasters beset the American landscape during the 1930s. In many places, nature appeared to rebel: floods raged in the Mississippi Valley and soil erosion sapped the vitality of farms throughout the nation. Each catastrophe contributed a fear that America was headed toward its end. “Nature has again been good enough to warn us,” the ecologist Paul Sears explained, “by a perfectly synchronized drama of dust-storms in the West and disastrous floods in the East, of the wrath that is brewing against our western civilization unless we mend our ways.”
For many New Dealers, conservation became a moral crusade, an attempt to reform the basic values and assumptions of American culture. Through the creation of several agencies—including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Soil Conservation Service, and the Tennessee Valley Authority—the federal government sought to reconcile technology with the environment, to achieve a balance between soil and society. What lay behind the particular pieces of legislation was a drive to create new stories of the American encounter with nature. As Representative Maverick suggested, environmental storytelling would find its fullest, most dramatic expression in documentary films sponsored by government agricultural agencies. Three films in particular—The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937), both made by Pare Lorentz, and The Land (1942), made Robert Flaherty—powerfully conveyed the political imagination and ecological aesthetics of the New Deal.
The sermonizing, Social Gospel impulse of the New Deal became particularly apparent among a group of agricultural reformers who sought to attach public values to private lands. This group of intellectuals—which included Hugh Hammond Bennett of the Soil Conservation Service, Rexford Tugwell of the Resettlement Administration, and Russell Lord, an adviser to several agricultural agencies—rejected the frontier legacy of individualism, hoping to replace the wasteful practices of the pioneer with the scientific knowledge of ecology. Although Progressive-era conservationists emphasized the need to protect and manage the nation’s public lands, New Deal agricultural reformers concentrated on the problems associated with privately owned lands. Despite this difference, New Dealers continued the Progressive tradition of delivering sermons about the nation’s corrupt relationship with the natural world. From the Dust Bowl to the crises of floods and soil erosion, they castigated Americans for their mismanagement of resources and called for the moral uplift of the nation’s farmers and the ecological improvement of the nation’s soil. These reformers framed practical matters, such as farming techniques and flood control, within a religious narrative of decline and redemption, revealing the spiritual fervor that enlivened New Deal conservation.
Through the medium of documentary film, the concerns of agricultural reformers reached a wide audience. Like Herbert Gleason before them, the filmmakers Pare Lorentz and Robert Flaherty placed their faith in the camera, fusing words and images to shape public attitudes and to bring aesthetics and spirituality into politics. In movie theaters around the nation, the New Deal used the technology of motion pictures and recorded sound to preach environmental sermons to the American people.
These documentaries found their aesthetic perspective in the science of ecology. During the Great Depression, leading ecologists developed a broad vision of nature that emphasized the interrelationships among different organisms. Pointing to the links between soil and society, they attributed the Dust Bowl to the reckless behavior of farmers who destroyed the delicate web of life on the Great Plains. Likewise, New Deal filmmakers wanted Americans to gain a comprehensive view of the land, one that incorporated people into the biotic community. By using a wide-angle lens, Lorentz and Flaherty encouraged spectators to consider not just the isolated parts of a landscape but its entire ecological fabric.
Their panoramic perspective created a new aesthetic for environmental reform, an ecological vision that stressed the interdependence of people and nature.
While Gleason had emphasized the sublimity of mountains and forests, Lorentz and Flaherty offered ecological catastrophe as a new expression of the sublime. To be sure, natural disasters had traditionally been associated with sublime experience. Floods, hurricanes, and volcanoes revealed nature's force and power, its ability to overwhelm, threaten, and disorient human observers. For this reason, simulated disasters had become part of American mass culture, particularly at the amusement parks of Coney Island, where visitors could witness such events as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the Galveston flood of 1900. Safe from any actual danger, audiences delighted in these experiences, finding "a kind of transcendent meaning" in the scenes of destruction. New Deal filmmakers reworked this tradition to introduce the concept of an ecological catastrophe into American culture. Rather than presenting the Dust Bowl and other calamities as natural disasters, Lorentz and Flaherty portrayed these events as human-created tragedies. Like the displays at Coney Island, the films provided Americans with both entertainment and transcendence, except now the images suggested a sublime of their own making.
In March 1936, the film debuted at the White House, where President Roosevelt offered his praise and congratulations to Lorentz. The official premier followed in May, when a "tail-coated and formally gowned audience," including Representative Maury Maverick of Texas, filed into the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. "Before the final fadeout," one journalist observed, "[The Plow] had diplomats, congressmen and New Dealers holding to the edge of their gilt chairs." After the film ended, according to the same report, the audience gathered around Rexford Tugwell, who said, "There's nothing more to tell . . . The film has told it all."
Finis Dunaway, 'The Nature of the New Deal'
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