Humboldt USA

The originality of Humboldt USA is in the conjunction of an intuition and an idea. The intuition is the one of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who thought of nature as the interconnection of different forms of lives, so de facto founding modern ecology. The idea is the one of the filmmaker G. Anthony Svatek, who searches for the traces of Humboldt’s heritage by following the name of Humboldt in USA toponymy. In this way, he superposes some nominal connections made by human beings to the natural interconnections of the living beings. The operation is both arbitrary and pertinent, actually the occasion to raise the question: What does the USA do, today, of Humboldt’s intuition about interconnectedness?

If Humboldt’s American journey was important for the reflection on interconnectedness thanks to the discovery of the rich variety of North American geography, with our American journey through the film Humboldt USA we face a great homogeneity: wildlife as surviving in protected and ghettoized microcosmos that are managed by human beings in every detail. At the same time, we can witness to a rising level of consciousness about environmental balances and unbalances, that often expresses itself in dramatic forms of nostalgia for “nature” – where nature is just considered as “wild animals in a green environment without people”. Is there a contradiction between ecological consciousness and the preservation of wildlife? Should such consciousness favours behaviours of retreat instead of interventionist strategies? How can we overcome the didactic philosophy of the museum or the spectacular philosophy of the zoo, which are both exploitative? Is any environmentalist policy the expression of human exceptionalism? Are we necessarily condemned to be disconnected in order to observe, study, and manage natural interconnectedness?

The most serious and urgent such questions are, the most deceiving is Svatek’s film, that touches them in a very superficial way. Selecting three places out of the vast Humboldt toponymy in the USA, we focus on a natural park (the Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California), a museum (in Humboldt County, Nevada), and the project of a restoration of a green parkway (at Humboldt Parkway, Buffalo, NY). In the three case studies, the good intentions of the people committed to ecological tenets are drowned in dubious interventionist projects – always highly polluting, from the use of AI to gigantic construction sites – with the common thread of a superficial knowledge at the service of commercial exploitation – and a generous dose of vulgarity.

When watching Svatek’s film, a dilemma emerges. On one hand we can ask: is Humboldt USA a mockumentary about contradictory and pathetic forms of environmentalism that are still colonialist and extractivist? If it is the case, is such cynical gaze disrespectful of the true efforts that are actually done in science and politics in order to cope with the complex and delicate question of contemporary interconnectedness? Would ecological consciousness rather deserve to be shown in its actually existing intelligent forms? Why focus on the vulgarity of people? On the other, if Svatek is not aware that his “characters” are laughed down and really believes to have realised a funny documentary about important issues, we should assume that Humboldt USA is tragically naïve. The treatment of Alexander von Humboldt himself in the film seems to confirm such naïveté, because in its second part  the film suddenly turns the genial inventor of modern ecology, who also defended egalitarian views, into a monster just on the basis of some biographical anecdotes and without a convincing explanation. Is Humboldt USA finally letting Humboldt and Humboldtian issues slowly evaporate under the crushing weight of the USA and the temptation of voyeurism?