4:15 p.m. | Updated
Hey, in an entertainment universe where a blood-soaked psychopath can be a hero and flesh-munching zombies can be hilarious (to me, too), what’s a few exploding schoolchildren?
Late last week, a British climate group released “No Pressure,” a mini-film aimed at rounding up new recruits to its “10:10″ movement, in which people, schools, companies and other participants pledge to cut their greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent in a year.
On paper, the project had everything going for it — the screenwriter of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” music by Radiohead, on-screen talent including Gillian Anderson, a partnership with The Guardian newspaper, which got the exclusive, unveiling the video with a gushy blog post that called it “attention grabbing” and “pretty edgy.”
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Attention grabbing and “pretty edgy,” indeed. The opening scene shows a school teacher cheerily tallying hands of those in her class agreeing to cut their carbon, then pushing a red button, bursting
two naysayers like balloons filled with fruit punch. Other scenes repeat the spattery process in an office and on a soccer field. The video makes last year’s “polar bears falling from the sky”
film clip fighting frequent flying look like Teletubbies.
If the goal had been to convince people that environmental campaigners have lost their minds and to provide red meat (literally) to shock radio hosts and pundits fighting curbs on greenhouse gases, it worked like a charm. Of course the goal might have been buzz more than efficacy. Too often these days, that’s the online norm. They succeeded on that front. I, among many others, am forced to write about it. Congratulations.
Then again, it could be a conspiracy. Perhaps the filmmakers were simply highly-paid double agents for big oil and big coal trying to undercut the global effort of the similarly named 10-10-10 campaign kicking off on Oct. 10 (the 10:10 group is one of thousands of participants in the international climate “work party”).
If so, they certainly provided a body blow, as the lead organizer, Bill McKibben, noted on many green blogs over the weekend.
In the end, the 10:10 organizers posted an unbelievably flimsy apology, expressly allowing folks to copy and distribute the film on YouTube even as they (meaninglessly) pulled it from their home page. They closed with this inexcusably flacid “wink, wink” line:
At 10:10 we’re all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn. Onwards and upwards….
The only amusing thing about this followup statement is how closely it resembles the semi-non-apology Rush Limbaugh offered his listeners last year a week after he proposed that I kill myself if I really think human population growth is bad for the planet. He actually went further, saying:
Uh, I, er, Mr. Revkin, for crying out loud. I’m making a point. I’m not advocating death. I do not advocate death on this program. I do not advocate control over anybody else’s life.”
I e-mailed a query about the film over the weekend to Franny Armstrong, one of the founders of the 10:10 effort and the director of the biting 2008 climate film “The Age of Stupid.” When I hear back, you’ll get an update.
Blood spatter aside, “No Pressure” proves, beyond a doubt, that we really are living in the age of stupid.
I’d like to see the group’s sponsors, including Sony, figure out an upside to this effort. They should either state why they continue to provide support or pull out.
[4:15 p.m. | Updated The group’s director issued a real apology on Monday.]
I’ve rounded up some other
reactions (including a defense) from a few folks involved in film and/or environmental communication work or analysis. You can read them below.
Personally, I’ve got to agree with a critique offered by a YouTube account holder who was one of many who took up the 10:10 invitation to download and repost the video — in this case with the environmental group’s “apology” superimposed on the imagery:
If the same kind of video had been made about blowing up atheists, agnostics, christians, jews, muslims, whites, blacks, asians, homosexuals, left-wingers or right-wingers, it would have been met with understandable disgust; this video is a shameful display of DOUBLE STANDARDS.
Here’s the input from others:
Maria Luskay, a media and communications professor at my new home base, Pace University, sees a generational divide over violent imagery:
Our youth are growing up in a generation of Quentin Tarantino “in your face” types of films. This is not alarming at all to them. They are used to seeing this on screen. The same rule applies for graphic video games.
No pressure – this is nothing new.
I believe it will be more of a shock to adults, like myself, who believe that it is too edgy and violent and don’t want to see blood and guts splattered on our TV’s. But isn’t that the objective of the campaign – to leave an impression?
Randy Olson, the creator of the “Sizzle” climate mock documentary and author of “Don’t Be Such a Scientist,” sent this riff:
I think the film was horribly offensive. I also think Stephen Colbert should be boycotted for making a mockery of the U.S. Congress, Jon Stewart should be punished for his unwillingness to treat serious American politics seriously, and South Park should be banned altogether. Given the desperate state of today’s world — more violent and filled with hatred, pain and suffering than any time in history — there is simply no place for this stuff. It’s time for humor to be added to the list, alongside polio and tuberculosis, as things to eradicate in our lifetime.
Marshall Herskovitz, a past president of the Producers Guild of America and producer of films and TV shows including Blood Diamond and thirtysomething, is working on a campaign he describes as trying to “change the conversation regarding climate change and renewable energy.” Here’s his view of the video:
The sad spectacle of the 10:10 video is a perfect illustration of worldwide failure over the issue of climate change (not to mention the pornographication of violence which has overtaken world media in recent years). The irony of course is that the video looks like it was made by climate change deniers -– not believers -– as an attack on the supposed “fascism” of those who would mobilize society to reduce greenhouse gases. The truth is that those of us who believe we are in a planetary emergency are indeed desperate and frustrated and angry -– but we’re not in charge, we’re not blowing up people, and in fact we are leaderless and ineffective.
The video reflects that lack of leadership, reflects a movement — if you can even call it that — that cannot even articulate its own desperation. Every great movement –- anti-slavery, women’s suffrage, civil rights –- succeeded finally because passionate people went out in public and articulated and demonstrated that passion, at risk of life and limb, over and over again. Because human beings are moved by passion, and very often persuaded by it.
The deniers will deny until the moment they either stop making money from it, or they truly understand that they are dooming their children. In the meantime, the rest of us can only declare passionately what we believe, and work as hard as we can for the changes we believe are necessary. And so far we have failed at both, with the fact that someone well-meaning could have made this video as proof of that failure.
I envy the deniers, really, for they are not yet compelled to see the terrible truth: That there is no time left for us to fail.
Edward Maibach, the director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University:
I’ll admit that I find it funny, but then again, I’m a sucker for British humor. Regardless, I think they used bad judgment in producing it (unless it was completely pro bono) and in posting it. Even if all of their intended audience members and other important stakeholders found it to be funny (which, apparently, they didn’t), what was the point of the spot? That nearly everyone is participating in 10:10 (i.e., saving energy is a new social norm)? Surely there are better ways to make that worthy point.
Tom Bowman, a consultant in climate communication:
I confess that I find it funny also. It makes its point about normative behavior in a way that we used to see on Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Saturday Night Live. In the absence of message testing on this spot, perhaps the seriousness of the climate threat and ideological opposition to science findings lead us to be a little to serious about climate messaging. There is room for many voices, even for dark humor. But I do think the spot was weak in the same way so many messages are: it fails to demonstrate how absurdly easy cutting emissions by 10% really is. Plugging electronics into power strips that get turned off can probably do it. Changing all of one’s light bulbs to CFLs would almost certainly do it. In other words, the relative simplicity of achieving the 10% goal really does make non-compliance look silly.
There’s much more reaction out there on this film, with rare alignments of people including Roger Pielke, Jr., and Joe Romm. The Guardian has rounded up apologies from backers of the effort, but hasn’t apologized itself yet (unless I missed it).