Action at a distance, or, props for an ecological age

‘Two very special babies were born to the American cinema in 1968: Rosemary’s and Stanley Kubrick’s. One was born in a horror film, the other in […] science fiction. One stared up from a cradle toward its earthly mother, the other down from space toward Mother Earth.’1 These lines, penned by Vivian Sobchack in 1986, open her essay ‘Bringing it all back home’, a work that affirms as much for the genres in question. No longer set in ‘far-off and imaginary spaces’, Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) signal a move to the ‘nuclear family’, the ‘domestic’ – indeed the ‘homesite’ – according to Sobchack.2 In this, we might add, they herald an ecological turn in American cinema, since eco, from oikos, means ‘house’ or ‘dwelling place’.3 Props express this turn, not because they are household items – though this is often the case – but because they embody the interaction that ecological thinking implies and the distance that expands its reach.