Long Weekend, 1978

A woman has an abortion. A mother duck is shot in the head while her babies swim away. A tattered barbie doll washes up on the beach. An eagle's egg gets smashed against a tree. A controlling husband forces his wife to go camping. Trash is thrown in the face of mother earth. Colin Eggleston's film Long Weekend is an eco-horror film that showcases a close relationship between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature.

Starring John Hargeaves as Peter and Briony Behets as his wife Marcia, Long Weekend was written in just ten days by first-time feature script writer Everett De Roche, inspired by a trip he took to a beach in New South Wales (Graham, 2012). Little did De Roche know, the break from his normal job of writing Australian cop shows would produce the poster child for the eco-horror subgenre. A remake of the film, also written by De Roche, was made in 2008. The plot is simple: a couple go on a weekend camping trip to an isolated beach where they disrespect nature in countless ways and nature gets her revenge.

Some people call Long Weekend a relationship drama and an eco-horror hybrid (Buckmaster, 2014), but the two don't need to be interpreted separately. Eco-horror, just as ecological advocacy in general, can expand its scope of environmental issues to include women's issues and highlight the relationship between the two. In fact, eco-feminism as a concept started catching fire just a few years before the film was first released (Merchant, 2005). Eco-feminism can be defined a few ways, but broadly speaking "Ecofeminism is a movement that sees a connection between the exploitation and degradation of the natural world and the subordination and oppression of women" (Mellor, 1997).

In Long Weekend, we see Peter consistently using violence and abuse to control and objectify his wife Marcia and to dominate mother nature. In one of the more horrific moments of the film, Peter shoots and kills a mother sea cow who is swimming near the beach. The couple then hears loud cries coming from the ocean, and Peter identifies this sound as the baby sea cow who misses its mother. Toward the end of the film, this crime against nature is mirrored by Peter shooting Marcia in the neck with a harpoon. This incident reminds me of Joaquin Phoenix's 2020 Oscars speech in which about dairy cows he said, "We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable" (The Guardian, 2020). I challenge anyone who supports feminist ideals to see how such acts are anti-feminist in their maltreatment of female animals.

Don't be a Peter! Instead, be a supporter of equality in gender and in species.

References

Buckmaster, Luke. “Long Weekend Rewatched – Mother Nature Toys with Her Callous Human Prey.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 11 Dec. 2014, www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/12/long-weekend-rewatched-mother-nature-toys-with-her-callous-human-prey.

Graham, Aaron. “AN INTERVIEW WITH EVERETT DE ROCHE " Spectacular Optical.” Spectacular Optical RSS, 2012, www.spectacularoptical.ca/2012/06/an-interview-with-everett-de-roche/.

The Guardian. “Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars Speech in Full: 'We Feel Entitled to Artificially Inseminate a Cow and Steal Her Baby'.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 10 Feb. 2020, www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full.

Mellor, Mary. Feminism & Ecology. New York Univ. Press, 1997.

Merchant, Carolyn. Radical Ecology the Search for a Livable World. Routledge, 2005.