May 12, 2004
Eco Disaster Porn: Let's Go!
Although I enjoy the curmudgeonly rants of environmentalists like Bill McKibben, I'm still pleased with the green crowd's creative response to The Day After Tomorrow.
In case you're not caught up on the pop culture media press, TDAT is an upcoming disaster film. Rapid climate change, indeed! In TDAT, during a few short epic Hollywood weeks, tornados destroy Los Angeles (the Hollywood sign is turned into toothpicks, natch), a tidal wave engulfs New York, the temperature drops, and then a hell of a lot of snow falls, leading to scenes like this one:
Our heros exploring what I presume to be the 42nd Street Library, which is done up like the dacha in Dr. Zhivago.
I was resistant at first. I had to set aside my irritation at New York getting destroyed, AGAIN, in the movies. This is a Roland Emmerich film, and he took entirely too much glee in populating New York City with nebbishy stereotypes in Independence Day, and then let aliens destroy The Big Apple.
I got over it. New York City always gets it in the movies. And, despite 9/11, we almost never get it in real life, compared to London, Baghdad, Sarjevo, Moscow, or Dublin.
The destruction of New York City is THE universal cinema cliche for "death of The Cosmopolis by mega-event." May the Statue of Liberty live on for decades more as our time's Ozymandian symbol of the folly of human endeavor.
Then, a few folks, such as my Worldchanging editor Alex Steffen, raised a call to actively use the film to raise consciousness about climate change.
I was skeptical at first. Not because of the bad science, but because it's a Roland Emmerich film. The guy made bombastic hash of one of the best all time science fiction novels, and classic sf films, War of the Worlds.
However, finally, I come down on the side of TDAT. Why?
Because it is tiring to be so earnest that one can't simply enjoy pop culture. Roland Emmerich hacked H.G. Wells to pieces artistically, and all I got was this aesthetic headache.
While I worked at Greenpeace in DC, in '89-90, The Hunt For Red October came out. Most of the office went to see it opening night, organized by the Nuclear Free Seas campaign staff. Why? Because it was FUN. We laughed, a few of us groaned over Sean Connery's Scottish Russian accent, we had drinks afterwards.
One of our more wonky campaign issues made it to the big screen, in a completely glossy, over-the-top, Hollywood extravaganza, with handsome actors and high technology. Life was good.
So, now, activists have the same opportunity to see themselves moved from the fringe to the center on a complex issue, thanks to American big-budget movie excess. In their dead serious ways, NRDC gets it, Rainforest Action Network gets it, Worldwatch gets it.
Greenpeace, unsurprisingly, takes an especially media-rich approach.
And in delicious irony, this movie is financed by Fox, the Official Vertically Integrated Transnational Media Empire of the Bush Administration. Apparently Fox was not prepared for the uses that enviros would make of this movie in the face of Bush's stolid, anti-science, ideologically-driven refusal to act on climate change.
It comes out May 28. Let's go to the movies!
Posted by Emily at May 12, 2004 06:21 PM