If Al Gore paraded around the National Mall wearing a sandwich
board and screaming, “We’re all going to die,” the nation’s opinion
leaders would roll their eyes and conclude that the former Vice
President’s long slide into insanity was finally complete. But
because Al chose to express this sentiment using a more
technologically modern medium — a movie titled An Inconvenient
Truth — crazy Al has won back some of the sophisticates’
respect he lost during the MoveOn.org/”how dare they!?” phase of
his post-public office life.
Al Gore has become to climatology what Dan Brown is to theology.
And since we’re on the subject, Dan Brown has become to theology
what Eric Schlosser is to sitology and Michael Moore is to foreign
affairs.
Movies are the new sandwich boards. Suddenly, crazy people with
daft ideas are being taken seriously. If you’ve got a crackpot
theory that doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of attention and is
too intricate and abstruse to fit on two sheets of plywood, just
turn it into 120 minutes of movie magic!
Back to Al Gore. There has been no shortage of debunkings of
Al’s end-is-near snuff film (here and here, for example). These point-by-point
refutations use the printed word, research, scholarship, and cool
logic — but we are left unsatisfied. Al’s got video of himself
giving a PowerPoint presentation and computer generated graphics of
what the world will look like if we all don’t stop using disposable
wooden chopsticks (no, really).
Clever amateurs have responded to Al in kind. Some web-based
videos have swirled through the blogosphere ridiculing the Vice
President-turned-college professor-turned-urinal
manufacturer-turned television executive-turned-movie producer.
Some are cute and biting (for example) but are only a couple minutes long
and don’t have the vast fortune of Laurie David backing their
promotional campaigns.
As for Dan Brown and his wildly popular book-turned-movie
The Da Vinci Code, all I can say is that the editor of a
popular religious webzine recently told me he could not find anyone
willing to write in defense of the movie and the accusations it
makes about Church history. Nevertheless, Brown, who lives a few
towns over from me, is presently having an underground tunnel dug
through his yard so he can access his lap pool without exposing
himself to the elements. That is to say, Mr. Brown has become
shockingly wealthy selling a conspiracy theory that has, I’m sad to
say, convinced many of the people who have been exposed to it.
And of course, we have Mr. Eric Schlosser, who doesn’t like
McDonald’s very much and is apparently convinced that they are
poisoning his food. Or something. Mr. Schlosser is rolling out his
conspiracy theory on the silver screen as well. A fictionalized
film version of his book Fast Food Nation takes yet
another whack at the fast food industry. It also goes quite a bit
further than its stated mission; IMDb describes the film thus: “An
ensemble piece examining the health risks involved in the fast food
industry and its environmental and social consequences as
well [emphasis added].” The Motion Picture Association of
America gave the picture an R rating “for disturbing images, strong
sexuality, language and drug content,” which makes very little
sense to me. What is more, the film is a dud. Writes Wendy Ide in the Times of London,
“Early buzz about [director] Richard Linklater’s Fast Food
Nation as a Cannes competition front-runner quickly turned
stale after the muted response to the first press screening.”
Apparently few Frenchmen share Mr. Schlosser’s paranoid worldview.
And if you can’t get the French all worked up about American
hamburgers, then you have little hope of winning over the broader
American public.
There’s a movie protesting Wal-Mart, too. And one that protests
the Patriot Act. And one that protests industrial agriculture. And I am sure the
years 2007 and 2008, the last two of George Bush’s presidency, will
bring us many more celluloid conspiracy theories.
When I was younger and I allowed myself to get upset at liberal
Hollywood propaganda, my liberal friends would say, “Relax! It’s
just a movie.” It seems now that our liberal friends need a little
reminding. Get over yourself, Al. It’s just a movie.
