Part 5: Genres
Part 5
a. What kind of fiction for which sort of mind?
Is there a genre favoured by people who care about these issues? And conversely, what genre will particularly resonate with people who couldn’t care less about the environment – the ‘disengaged’ who wish to avoid these topics?
A particularly useful study maps out which viewer profiles gravitate towards which genres of fiction. The full text of this fascinating Yale study can be found here: “Climate Change in the American Mind”
Genre preferences across the Six Americas
War
Horror
Wildlife
Animation
Historical / Period
Romantic
Documentary
True Crime
Suspense
Drama
Action
Comedy
Science Fiction
Fantasy
Alarmed (about climate change)
Concerned
Cautious
Disengaged
Doubtful
Dismissive
Difference from item mean
0.8
0.4
0.0
-0.4
The group we’re most interested in here is the disengaged audience, i.e. viewers who actively avoid environmental topics.
What characterises them:
Above-average levels of anxiety.
Lower-than-average purchasing power…
…which leads to a sense of structural powerlessness.
This demographic will instinctively turn their backs on certain genres that reinforce this feeling: dystopias, disaster stories, horror and science fiction. Instead, they turn to three genres that are also the most popular: comedy, crime fiction and romance.
Yet each of these genres has its own specific pitfalls.
b. The investigative narrative and conspiracy theories
Why are conspiracy-themed stories so popular in fiction? Because they are particularly satisfying on a cognitive level.
Did you know?
ANAGNORISIS
Theorised by Aristotle, anagnorisis is a particularly powerful cognitive device in narratives: the hero’s revelation of a truth known to others or hidden from everyone. It is the fundamental driving force behind dramatic recognition.
As mentioned above, a hero holding a minority or contrarian belief will elicit greater support than a hero who shares the common view.
Moving from a character who shares common beliefs to one who uncovers a hidden truth accessible to few others is therefore doubly satisfying on a cognitive level.
Add to this our need for cognitive satisfaction – otherwise known as the need for closure – and it is easy to see why crime thrillers are such a hit… And this is also why conspiracy theories are so successful.
However, climate scepticism can be coupled with a form of conspiracy theory.
But how does one go about producing not a conspiracy narrative, but an anti-conspiracy narrative – for example, to highlight a scientific truth?
Fictionally speaking, moving from a minority view (‘global warming doesn’t exist’, ‘it isn’t caused by humans’) to a widely accepted—and, moreover, anxiety-inducing—truth is therefore not cognitively satisfying. The narrative moves in the wrong direction: from the hidden to the already known. Telling the story of a climate skeptic who ‘simply understands the truth’ will therefore have no dramatic impact.
The cognitive lever to activate: who benefits from the belief?
The most powerful cognitive lever for changing someone’s mind is to make them understand who benefits from their belief. This can be observed in people who leave a cult: they stop believing the guru not because they start to rationalise, but because they see the concrete benefits that their belief in him brings (wealth, power, abuse).
One approach to an anti-conspiracy narrative would therefore be to move from one conspiracy…
to another ‘conspiracy’.
By shifting the foreshadowing, the structure of the anagnorisis is preserved: this is what makes the plot twist cognitively satisfying.
Warning, cliché:
The need for closure
You don’t necessarily have to provide an answer to everything. The need for closure (cognitive satisfaction) is real, but open-ended and ambivalent narratives are also appealing, albeit to a lesser extent.
In practical terms, to make a narrative satisfying where a climate-skeptic character changes their mind, you can have them discover another hidden truth: one that reveals who benefits from their beliefs.
Here are a few ideas for profiteering antagonists to embody and anchor in well-developed characters, in no particular order: illiberals, Big Tech, major industrial groups, pro-business lobbies, and the heirs to fossil fuel industries.
Conversely, a character may not change their opinion but may change in the eyes of the audience, coming across as a loser. What matters above all is the transformation of the audience.
Resource:
To find out more, explore Sebastian Dieguez’s research on conspiracy theories, such as his book Total Bullshit.
Practical leads
A few tips for creating a conspiracy theorist character
c. Comedy: Who are we laughing at?
Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, 2001
In the 1970s, on TV and in cinema, people laughed at women and racial or gender minorities. Today, we laugh ‘at the expense of’ the environment. The comic effect often relies on the dissonance between the intentions of eco-conscious characters and the reality of their behaviour. The first thing to do is to avoid the easy route of ‘laughing at’ environmentalists and not to base your comic devices on stereotypical differences.
⚠ Warning:
Be careful not to lump everyone together: if, through humour, you criticise ‘bobo’ environmentalists, and then three scenes later criticise far-right extremists in the same way, you’re putting everything on the same level, which implies that everyone is the same.
Types of humor
Black humor
Patrick Moran and Bernard Gendrel explain that 'black humour is anti-social humour, humour directed against society'. Black humor can therefore easily be used to criticise a society that is productivity-driven, capitalist and anti-ecological.
In black humour, despair reaches its peak; the characters fail in the face of catastrophe, and it is this negative outcome that serves as a critique. 'Don't Look Up' criticises the authorities' inaction, the media's denial and humanity's indifference in the face of an incoming meteorite, which symbolises the ongoing ecological catastrophe.
⚠ Warning:
Black humour should be used with caution as it may be off-putting to some viewers. Studies show that *Don’t Look Up* elicited very different reactions depending on the audience. A survey of American viewers showed that progressives and moderates became more supportive of climate action after watching the film, whilst some conservatives exhibited a backlash, with a decline in stated support for certain climate policies. However, communication studies do not generally prove a conclusive effect. They observe correlations or effects measured under specific conditions. Showing a negative reaction or rejection of the message does not automatically imply a loss of behavioural engagement.
Irony
Irony plays on an apparent detachment in the face of something bad.
The comedy of absurd
Its unrealistic nature is offset by its ability to prompt the viewer to reflect (like black humour and irony) and to portray human folly. In their film En même temps, Benoit Delépine and Gustave Kervern pit two characters against each other (an uninhibited right-wing mayor and an environmentalist colleague) by 'sticking' them together — quite litterally — with glue!
d. A genre to handle with care: Anticipation
We must be wary of the future as an escape route: Futuristic narratives, whether utopian or dystopian, can have a perverse effect: they shift responsibilty away from the present. Three biases lie in wait for us:
The catastrophist bias depicts what could go (very) wrong if we do nothing. This is found in disaster films as well as dystopias.
The romantic fatalism bias: the notion that it is 'too late' to bring about change or prevent species extinction.
The systemic powerlessness bias: 'there's nothing we can do'.
Elysium, 2013
Where does the right balance lie?
Did you know?
A new word to know: AMBITOPIA
This term, coined by Malecki, refers to fiction that is neither a utopia nor a dystopia. Ambivalent visions of the future that do not take a clear stance and which give food for thought. The ending remains open, the cost of choices is clear, but a path forward remains viable.
Example: Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Utopia:
"We'll pul through anyway."
It removed responsibility > disengagement, but at least it has the merit of imagining solutions.
Did you know?
Solarpunk
Unlike cyberpunk, imagines a future where nature coexists in harmony with the ecosystem.
Jacky au royaume des filles, 2014
Ecofascism
In several dystopias, the theme of ecofascism is explored (e.g. *The Handmaid’s Tale*). This movement, which currently represents a very small minority, could well gain momentum in the coming years and therefore deserves our attention.
Did you know?
Eco-fascism
Eco-fascism is environmentalism with a reactionary and conservative twist. Preserving the planet becomes a pretext for regulating population and immigration.
For more information, read Pierre Madelin’s fascinating book La tentation écofasciste.
e. New Romance and Petro-virilism
New Romance is THE trendy new genre of fiction, which is a huge hit with young adults and reaches millions of them. It even has the merit of getting Gen Z to read – that says it all.
Summary of 98.8 per cent of new romance pitches: a young woman from a modest background meets a rich, powerful and dominant young man, with the face of a Greek god, extremely muscular, and often driving a very, very big car.
Did you know?
Petrovirilism
‘Petrovirility’, a concept theorised by researcher Cara New Daggett, is the cultural association between masculinity and the consumption of fossil fuels or meat. A character’s virility is measured by the engine size of their vehicle or the amount of red meat they consume. Conversely, a more moderate lifestyle (cycling, eating a vegetarian diet) is coded as a sign of fragility, feminisation or submission, and is associated with characters who are not portrayed as attractive. A roaring engine, a rare steak and a self-proclaimed air of indifference are enough to signify masculinity, and any deviation from these markers is perceived as a form of symbolic castration.
We therefore believe it is both necessary and urgent to engage with the new romance genre.
However, the idea is neither to abandon all stereotypes at once nor to overturn all the genre’s conventions. Switching to a skinny, eco-conscious, anti-growth advocating love interest covered in pimples would provoke instant rejection and would not shift the status quo: we must respect the ‘prediction gap’ by shifting one or two conventions, to remain acceptable whilst gradually changing attitudes.
Here, once again, we find our Overton window.
So our hero can remain rich and well-built, whilst spending his money on setting up animal sanctuaries and driving a big car… but an electric one.
Because a sexy character is, first and foremost, a character who is confident, who is at peace with themselves, who isn’t stressed. Confidence leads to popularity, the ultimate social marker (far more so than money).
Did you know?
The alpha male and stress
Fun fact: animals that live in groups avoid their stressed-out counterparts. So you can’t be a leader if you’re stressed… Yet alpha males are always the most stressed in the group (because of the beta who’s threatening to take their place). The result: the females, who are less stressed, are the leaders.
So, creating a stressed-out, macho human character means making sure they’ve got plenty of sexy traits. We’re just flagging that.
Source:
Life at the Top: Rank and Stress in Wild Male Baboons
Laurence R. Gesquiere, Niki H. Learn, M. Carolina M. Simao, Patrick O. Onyango, Susan C.Alberts, and Jeanne Altmann
Practical leads
Always compensate for a code you abandon
Compensate for abandoning one code with another
Example: Some men do not feel masculine if they do not eat meat. To make a male character’s vegetarianism credible, it is necessary to compensate – for example, by showing someone who is extremely successful in their career – to counterbalance the abandoned code.
Compensate for abandoning a code with fun
Fun, partying, laughter, a sense of belonging…
Compensating for the abandonment of a code through glamour and aesthetics Because the younger generations are particularly sensitive to what is beautiful… and also to what is healthy. Glamourising healthy living through natural sporting activities — as opposed to the eco-destructive behaviours often associated with comfort — is a good way of making it seem old-fashioned, as well as excessive consumption
For example, you could show a character eating red meat in a disgusting way, or mock a character who takes a car to travel 15 metres by portraying them as weak and lazy.
Do you find that diabolical? It is. This particularly powerful technique is called ‘Sludge’. We’ll come back to it in detail in the next chapter.
Resource:
A few random notes on Gen Z and Generation Alpha (Cristina Loi, 2026)
The most powerful values among Gen Z: self-care and adaptability.
Self-care is linked to a return to simplicity.
What’s cool = what’s aesthetically pleasing. Roof gardening, for example, can come across as particularly cool.
The absolute antithesis: toxic positivity, the absence of ambivalence, which is perceived as hypocritical. You should be able to show a total idiot on a bike. We need to change what is conventional.