Selflessness — eddorre

eddorre

Selflessness

Two films have recently been making headlines lately with important messages about the environment and American politics.

The first, is the environment wakeup movie An Inconvenient Truth featuring Al Gore. The second is Aaron Russo’s political documentary, America: Freedom to Fascism.

Both of these movies claim to have important messages for all Americans. Certainly, we Americans, should use this knowledge for the betterment of our country (and in the case of “the Al Gore” movie the betterment of the world). As such, you would think that it would be important for as many Americans to view these movies as possible, right?

Let me let you in on a little secret. The people behind these films care about their cause but they don’t really, really care. What’s the difference? The first cares more about potential revenue and possible Oscar nominations than the actual message.

I know, those are pretty harsh words, but bear with me. If the message of these movies are so important why do we have to pay to see them? Why not distribute them for free on the website, BitTorrent, or YouTube?

Think of it like this. The red sun that Krypton revolves around is about to go nova yet Jor-El and a handful of scientists are the only ones that know about it. Instead of delivering the message freely to everyone they make a movie and charge 9 bucks to see it.

It just doesn’t feel right that anyone should pay money for a message that is so important. Sure, I can pay the 9 bucks or what not, but what about people that can’t (and there are millions of them)? Are they not important? Do they not deserve to understand the plight that we are all facing?

With those thoughts in mind, the message starts looking more and more hollow.

Comments

1
I can’t help but agree with your post. I haven’t seen the Russo film, but I did pay to see An Inconvenient Truth. On the way to the movie theater a thought occured to me. This movie is about environmental conservation and the future of the planet. Al Gore wants us to be more sensible about how we use oil, amoung other things. Why is he having me drive to a theater and producing more green house gasses to see his movie? On a side note, I know that a lot of the profits from Gore’s movie[I think it was half or all of just Gore’s profits maybe] went to solving the problem. That being said, I still felt like the movie was a campaign ad promoting Al Gore. He says he isn’t going to run for president, but I wouldn’t be suprised. If the response to his movie had been overwhelminigly positive from a majority of the public, maybe he would run.

Here’s what I think about “Hollywood”. They are out to make a profit. They will attempt to make a movie about any subject as long as it will generate that profit. If there is a large demographic of environmental conservationists that will pay to see a movie about just that, then the movie will be made and shown for profit. It’s a double edged blade. On one side it seems wrong to profit off of a good cause. On the other side it does get the message out to more people if “Hollywood” is willing to make that movie.

I only see three other options for Gore to get his movie to the masses.

Gore himself pays to have the movie played in theaters and buys all the seats for each showing so it is free to the public. He probably doesn’t have that much money.

Get the movie aired on TV. The major networks will only do it if Gore pays them a lot of money. Hell, even the news isn’t free anymore. It’s a joke, the Today show is like one big commercial. I wonder if PBS would have shown it?

Gore keeps doing what he has been doing. He goes around the world showing his slide show to groups of people. He still has to get payed to do this. The man is rich, but I’m sure he still needs a steady income. This limits the number of people he can get his message to though.

I think its just a hard pill to swallow. Its the way things are done. I think the infrastucture will have to be redesigned to change that way it is done, and that is a lot of work.
Billy http://www.eddorre.com

Saturday July 08, 2006 09:11
2
I think PBS would be a wonderful idea to get the message spread, if it’s really that important, which I think it is. Maybe after some coastal cities are partly under water, people will start doing something about all this. Anyway, I agree with both of you on your comments.
Robert http://osnr.org

Sunday July 16, 2006 16:54

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