Abstract

Todd Haynes’s 1995 film Safe, starring Julianne Moore as the victim of an illness that no one can seem to understand, is eerily prophetic on two levels: the film speaks to both the effects of climate change on the human mind and body, and a woman’s right to have control over her own medical decisions. With the advent of COVID and monkey pox, along with the overturning of Roe vs. Wade and the recent closed door talks between Democrats to create a bill to help clean up the environment, a film like Safe shows viewers that there were warning signs almost thirty years ago that trouble was on the hazy horizon. My essay will be a textual analysis of Haynes’s film, how Safe was a cultural representation of the political climate during the 1990s, and how the film’s message is just as relevant now as it was during the Clinton Administration.