ABSTRACT
The coherence and usefulness of the aesthetic category of the "sublime"—to label a certain kind of mixed, painful and pleasurable response to nature and art—has come under attack in Anglo-American aesthetics. This chapter asserts the basic argument for the relevance of the accounts of the environmental sublime in the twenty-first century, but to make an important concession to critics of this aesthetic category. It describes the concept of "the sublime" has various origins and histories intertwined with the self-understanding of human beings especially as concerns their relationship with nature. The chapter investigates two prominent examples of environmental sublime response as provoked and captured by two recent films Gravity and The Martian. These films show that sublime responses to natural environments—albeit reconstructed and mediated by works of cinematic art—are important in the twenty-first century. These films reveal manifold ways in which human beings feel not really at home in the world, despite having largely domesticated the Earth.
