Movies as Catalysts for Positive Change

[Suture Self]

If you compare these small and unfortunately brief "positives" to the overwhelming negative backlash and the subsequent political kerfuffle it spawned, it's hard to make the case the documentary was significant enough to be called a catalyst for positive change. Like I've already mentioned, it galvanized opposition against it and remains an incredibly divisive and contentious documentary. Its fatal flaw was making fucking AL GORE the face of global warming.

By George, I think you have a point. As has been pointed out, people initially reacted in congress with Gore's crisis stirring film. But then they started realizing the science was fucked (shrinking glaciers don't calve icebergs they recede; the polar bears are doing just fine thank you; his global warming scare was so weak it had to be changed to "climate change" in the face of a (continuing) lack of any warming at all; his personal lear-jet liberal habits and carbon credit schemes all sort of ganged up on the poor guy when they came crashing down on him in Copenhagen. I try to feel sorry for him but.....well.....rotfl.

If you want an example of a work that actually was a catalyst for positive change, look to something like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

That was required reading for me in high school, and being young and ignorant, I believed it. That damn book, with the banning of DDT it engendered, has caused more human suffering and death from Malaria than all the NAZIs in history.

"The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that ‘in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million [human] deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable.’ The World Health Organization stated that DDT had ‘killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance.’”--Forbes, 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/09/05/rachel-carsons-deadly-fantasies/

BTW, FWIW, have you noticed the similarity between Rachel Carson and Dr. Surridge who experimented on humans in V for Vendetta, and that the roses V left as his calling card were Scarlet Carsons? I always go for the movie connections.

Bitch.

You should make that movie, Stewball. I think it's your calling.

I will just as soon as you come up with the $50 mil to make it. Sorry to see you're still not coming up with substantive responses, but of course that would mean you'd have to stir that cognitive soup between your ears--which is hard given the soup is little more than a thin fog. Need some salt?

Yes, I'm well aware that some people believe Rachel Carson is worse than Hitler. Unsurprisingly, I think that argument is hilarious bullshit, but let's agree to disagree, shall we? <3

[Stewball]

So you still disagree it was a catalyst for positive change, despite admitting your argument is mostly limited to the situation in the US?

If you're talking about An Inconvenient Truth, re: my last post.

[Stewball]

Yes, I'm well aware that some people believe Rachel Carson is worse than Hitler. Unsurprisingly, I think that argument is hilarious bullshit, but let's agree to disagree, shall we? <3

Why don't you try reading my post first, and since your response came up almost as soon as my finger came off the "Enter" button, I can only assume you barely had time to skim it, much less read the link.

[Suture Self]

So you still disagree it was a catalyst for positive change, despite admitting your argument is mostly limited to the situation in the US?

My bad about my characterizations of your sources. I've realized I was wrong so I apologize. I confused that Eco Magazine with something else and I'm probably too quick to judge a master's thesis paper, although, to be fair, that's not the best source of information, and the polling info is kind of murky.

You're starting to convince me that it had more of an impact in Australia than I realized, so that's great! Any other countries you could mention?

[Suture Self]

Yes, I'm well aware that some people believe Rachel Carson is worse than Hitler. Unsurprisingly, I think that argument is hilarious bullshit, but let's agree to disagree, shall we? <3

Why don't you try reading my post first, and since your response came up almost as soon as my finger came off the "Enter" button, I can only assume you barely had time to skim it.

No, I read all of it! I didn't click the link, though.

I'm just well aware of your talking points and don't feel like arguing on more than one front right now. <3

[Stewball]

No, I read all of it! I didn't click the link, though.

The heart of the argument.

I'm just well aware of your talking points and don't feel like arguing on more than one front right now. <3

I don't do talking points, which you obviously just used yourself. In any case, give that fog a good rest.

[Pickpocket]

I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but that's literally ShogunRua's entire shtick. The amount of cognitive dissonance in this post is astounding.

I was responding to someone calling him an idiot. Are you thinking with your emotions again?

Also, way to ignore literally every other point I made. Typically when you get BTFO you just stop responding but this time you actually cherry picked what you did and did not want to respond to. Now I'm rofling

PickPocket, all I can say is: Don't worry, Al Gore documentaries aren't the existential threat to the American way of life that you think they are.

That's not the point. We are talking about movies that inflicted change on the world. To say that AIT has had no impact is insane and frankly idiotic.

An Inconvenient Truth did very little to change anything at all.

There's been several posts about it's impact. Your willful ignorance is astounding. They teach it in schools!!! Government funded schools. Fuck

One might even argue it had a negative effect (see: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/ ... 080-f1.jpg).

I'm not even sure what I'm looking at here. Did you make this in powerpoint or something? This means nothing

If you want to continue the crusade against the great lie that is climate change, I'd recommend you learn how to assess your threats more accurately.

I've said many times I'm in the "I don't know camp." The problem with your side of the argument is that simply asking a question is deemed an act of stupidity while I see it as just trying to gather information. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I know something as complicated as climate.

I'm hoping the Ayn Rand Mega Nerd Squad can at the very least agree with this.

This is what I'm talking about with you. Attacking the character of someone rather than their ideas. Just so everyone knows, ShogunRua and I have combined read 3 Ayn Rand books and now we are mega nerds. This is the logic of the left. They cannot beat you with facts and logic so they turn to the thing they know better than anything else: their emotions.

Also, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is probably the most famous environmental activist work in the 20th century and had enormous political and social impact. Read up on it.

You've posted this 3 times I think in this thread. Listen, it's not the most famous environmental activist work dude. The fact that you have to keep begging people to look it up proves this. It has fucking 20,000 ratings on goodreads. An Inconvenient Truth has 63,350 ratings on imdb.

Your history is off and you're placing way too much emphasis on a million dollar Al Gore slideshow. Also, just because the media are all barking in unison at a squirrel climbing up a tree doesn't mean the squirrel is an adequate depiction of "public awareness" or "public perception". The media is full of shit. An Inconvenient Truth as a political wedge issue is more comparable to the Starbucks cup drama that's currently happening than anything that could honestly be called a "catalyst for change".

I'm really interested in hearing how you think public awareness is formed. If not the media, than whom?

I'm just well aware of your talking points and don't feel like arguing on more than one front right now. <3

You've posted 12 times in this thread in the past day and now you "don't feel like it." lol fucking classic

I'd respond to more, but Dardan has already destroyed you. This may help you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_b ... ted_States

[Suture Self]

An Inconvenient Truth did very little to change anything at all.

There's been several posts about it's impact. Your willful ignorance is astounding. They teach it in schools!!! Government funded schools. Fuck

Lol, they teach Bill Nye in schools, too. They show a lot of videos in school. Does this mean it had an impact? No. It just means teachers are too lazy to teach actual climate science. If this is your proof that it's had a significant impact on public awareness concerning the realities of climate change, I'm not convinced.

[Suture Self]

Your history is off and you're placing way too much emphasis on a million dollar Al Gore slideshow. Also, just because the media are all barking in unison at a squirrel climbing up a tree doesn't mean the squirrel is an adequate depiction of "public awareness" or "public perception". The media is full of shit. An Inconvenient Truth as a political wedge issue is more comparable to the Starbucks cup drama that's currently happening than anything that could honestly be called a "catalyst for change".

I'm really interested in hearing how you think public awareness is formed. If not the media, than whom?

The media is definitely complicit in making climate change a wedge issue, don't get me wrong. That's actually part of my point. Public awareness of climate change being a wedge issue isn't public awareness of the reality of climate change. The media loves framing it as a wedge issue.

[dardan]

This is the logic of the left. They cannot beat you with facts and logic so they turn to the thing they know better than anything else: their emotions.

https://reason.com/archives/2014/06/13/ ... n-liberals

The divide in emotion and intelligence is more complex than left vs. right. It depends on what kind of liberal you are and what kind of right-winger you are. And even then, this generalization is way too strong.