The Richard Curtis directed 10:10 campaign video No Pressure has prompted a furious backlash from climate change deniers.
Yesterday evening the 10:10 campaign issued the following statement:
Sorry.
Today we put up a mini-movie about 10:10 and climate change called 'No Pressure’.
With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Britain's leading comedy writer, Richard Curtis - writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and many others – agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended.
As a result of these concerns we've taken it off our website. We won't be making any attempt to censor or remove other versions currently in circulation on the internet.
We'd like to thank the 50+ film professionals and 40+ actors and extras and who gave their time and equipment to the film for free. We greatly value your contributions and the tremendous enthusiasm and professionalism you brought to the project.
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,
Franny, Lizzie, Eugenie and the whole 10:10 team
Criticism
Montagu spent a bit of time this morning scouring the interweb to get a feel for the criticisms of the No Pressure film. The general line of argument is something like "eco-fascists want to explode CHILDREN who don't agree with them" which represents a massive sense of humour FAIL on a film that was clearly meant to be a joke. Rather than reproduce the more ludicrous criticisms here lets take what can possibly be defined as the more "sophisticated" end of the climate denier spectrum as an example.
James Delingpole is a climate change denier and occasional Telegraph journalist that has been described by George Monbiot as specialising in "ill-informed viciousness provided for free by trolls on comment threads everywhere, but raised by an order of magnitude."
Delingpole argues that "With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness."
Snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy? The extent to which the criticisms of the film reveal the hysteria of climate change deniers is entirely predictable. More surprising is the speed at which the 10:10 campaign capitulated to this, clearly deciding that No Pressure had become a propaganda own-goal in the space of a few hours. This shows the effectiveness of the climate change deniers at setting the agenda in online discourse.
However, it may also reveal some of the limits of the 10:10 campaign: the attempt to package a message about climate action in a simple, acceptable, a-political way. Perhaps the speed at which the campaign had been taken up in the mainstream - celebrity endorsements, Sony, David Cameron and so on - had given them the confidence that they had their finger on the Zeitgeist? The No Pressure film itself has a simple message - everyone should do their bit - and packages it with a mixture of light-hearted shock and celebrity endorsement. The negative response - removing and, for a time, attempting to suppress the video - demonstrates how this tactic can run into problems, shying away from genuine conflict at the first sign. Maybe they should have stuck to their guns a bit more and given the film some time to reach the right people? Or maybe made a stronger political argument about the obstacles to climate change action? You are never going to persuade hysterical climate change deniers like Delingpole, a man who lists his "likes" on his blog as "Margaret Thatcher; Ronald Reagan; English tradition; the American Way". I'd suggest exploding him.
Showing posts with label Celebrity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Celebrity. Show all posts
Saturday, 2 October 2010
Friday, 1 October 2010
Franny Armstrong's No Pressure Video and Climate Change Activism
Richard Curtis has made a short video to publicise the upcoming 10:10 campaign initiative.
Nice.
A previous post discussed the radical potential of the 10:10 campaign. This video makes an interesting follow-up. It is a series of short-sharp-shock films that appear to be custom designed for distribution through social networks as an internet meme. They come with celebrity endorsements from the likes of Gillian Anderson, David Ginola and Tottenham Hotspur ("The first football club to sign up") and present a simple, clear message about reducing carbon emissions through activities like cycling, changing light bulbs and insulation.
In this way it is a good example of one of the current trends in media activism. This focusses not on addressing systemic barriers to climate change solutions, but on individual activity. It does nothing to create strong ties between activists as part of a grassroots movement (one of the stated aims of the 10:10 campaign), but instead relies on weak ties generated through social networking. Further, in adopting the established conventions of commercial advertising and integrating itself with celebrity culture, the radical potential of such campaigns are blunted - and radical campaigns are surely what are needed. In this way it is exactly what Micah White was criticising in the previous post - "To increase click rate, they water down their messages and make their 'asks' easier and 'actions' simpler." No pressure indeed.
It will be interesting to see how effective the 10:10 campaign turns out to be. Hopefully I am completely wrong and billions of people across the world will radically transform their daily lives giving governments no option but to drastically redesign the organisation of the advanced industrial economies and channel resources into a sustainable but fair production model based on human need.
Nice.
A previous post discussed the radical potential of the 10:10 campaign. This video makes an interesting follow-up. It is a series of short-sharp-shock films that appear to be custom designed for distribution through social networks as an internet meme. They come with celebrity endorsements from the likes of Gillian Anderson, David Ginola and Tottenham Hotspur ("The first football club to sign up") and present a simple, clear message about reducing carbon emissions through activities like cycling, changing light bulbs and insulation.
In this way it is a good example of one of the current trends in media activism. This focusses not on addressing systemic barriers to climate change solutions, but on individual activity. It does nothing to create strong ties between activists as part of a grassroots movement (one of the stated aims of the 10:10 campaign), but instead relies on weak ties generated through social networking. Further, in adopting the established conventions of commercial advertising and integrating itself with celebrity culture, the radical potential of such campaigns are blunted - and radical campaigns are surely what are needed. In this way it is exactly what Micah White was criticising in the previous post - "To increase click rate, they water down their messages and make their 'asks' easier and 'actions' simpler." No pressure indeed.
It will be interesting to see how effective the 10:10 campaign turns out to be. Hopefully I am completely wrong and billions of people across the world will radically transform their daily lives giving governments no option but to drastically redesign the organisation of the advanced industrial economies and channel resources into a sustainable but fair production model based on human need.
Labels:
Celebrity,
Climate Change,
Environmentalism,
Media Activism,
New Media,
Videos
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
BBC Factual Programs, Social History and Celebrity
Montagu’s Daughter recently had the opportunity to watch Who do You Think You Are? on BBC 1 with Irish actor Dervla Kirwan (it was a slow night).
Dervla is from Dublin and already knew she was the great grand-niece of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins. A particularly interesting subject for the show, you might think, and we do see her learning of her grandfather’s role in the Irish war of independence and subsequent support for partition. In fact the show glosses over this period, save for a few awkward references to the Irish Republican Army not being the same as the modern IRA, and a particularly poor description of the Black and Tans’ role in repressing the nationalist movement. The show steers clear of anything controversial. Perhaps the complexities of British imperial history and the Irish freedom movement are beyond the format?
More effective was the exploration of the life of Dervla’s maternal grandfather, a Polish Jew who escaped persecution to Ireland and married her Catholic grandmother. Both would have had to give up a lot for the sake of their relationship and were ostracised from their communities. Harry Kahn was later sentenced to one year’s hard labour by Sir Frederick Faulkner in a particularly nasty anti-Semitic miscarriage of justice. The case was taken all the way to the House of Commons and was probably the source for a passage in James Joyce’s Ulysses. A story of love among hardship, then.
Who Do You Think You Are? is a success story of British television. Now in its eighth series it regularly attracts audiences of six million, has its own BBC magazine, interactive section on family history of the BBC website, a 2010 BAFTA nomination for Best Factual Series and the format has exported to the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and South Africa.
It is also a good example of the way social history is packaged in contemporary British broadcasting. An edu-tainment hybrid, the show mixes a fascination with celebrity with popular genealogy and the traditional documentary-history format. Each show's narrative is constructed through a dramatisation of the research process with the subject visiting archives and meeting experts, adding a gloss of celebrity sparkle to the ordinarily dusty activity of sitting in libraries and searching micro fiche. The human reactions of otherwise unreachable stars – crying at the fate of their forebears/revelling at struggle in the face of adversity – provides the pay-off. And along the way we learn about social conditions for the working-classes in mid-Victorian Britain, say. It counts towards the BBC’s statutory commitment of factual programming (1295 hours in 2009/10) as part of its Public Service Remit, yet also connects with broad, mainstream audiences. Win-win?
For the celebrities there are obvious benefits. They get screen time and the opportunity to build upon their brand identity, ubiquity and marketability. The program makers get to tap in to this brand in their marketing – a good example of synergy. But this also reveals its limitations as a factual programme. How far are the didactic potentials of the show limited by the format? In organising the historical information around the narrative of one particularly successful individual – a successful narrative resolution, if you like – every episode tends to celebrate social mobility. Times were tough for my family, but through hard work and the unbridled opportunities provided by post-war capitalism, we got there in the end, shiny, happy and rich. When confronted with more genuinely challenging and less well understood historical events and issues, in this example at least, the program breaks under the pressure, unable to cope.
How to explain this? One answer is that people aren’t interested in complex representations of history and don’t want to learn ‘stuff’, preferring to be dazzled by simple stories with happy endings and shiny people (although I don’t know if Bruce Forsyth or Chris Moyles would fit into that category). So if program-makers can create a format which gives them that while sneaking in a bit of history, all the better.
Another answer, however, can explain modern factual broadcasting in terms of structural pressures towards commercialisation, of which cross-platform celebrity branding is a major part. While shows like this help the BBC fulfil its commitment to factual programming – a key thing that would be lost if the BBC went commercial – they must also be understood as a component of the commercial media landscape and the way that public service broadcasting is increasingly put under pressure to fulfil objectives in the interests of private business – in this case subsidising the development of celebrity-actor brands – at the expense of more complex but informative and useful understandings of history.
Which is it, A or B?
Dervla is from Dublin and already knew she was the great grand-niece of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins. A particularly interesting subject for the show, you might think, and we do see her learning of her grandfather’s role in the Irish war of independence and subsequent support for partition. In fact the show glosses over this period, save for a few awkward references to the Irish Republican Army not being the same as the modern IRA, and a particularly poor description of the Black and Tans’ role in repressing the nationalist movement. The show steers clear of anything controversial. Perhaps the complexities of British imperial history and the Irish freedom movement are beyond the format?
More effective was the exploration of the life of Dervla’s maternal grandfather, a Polish Jew who escaped persecution to Ireland and married her Catholic grandmother. Both would have had to give up a lot for the sake of their relationship and were ostracised from their communities. Harry Kahn was later sentenced to one year’s hard labour by Sir Frederick Faulkner in a particularly nasty anti-Semitic miscarriage of justice. The case was taken all the way to the House of Commons and was probably the source for a passage in James Joyce’s Ulysses. A story of love among hardship, then.
Who Do You Think You Are? is a success story of British television. Now in its eighth series it regularly attracts audiences of six million, has its own BBC magazine, interactive section on family history of the BBC website, a 2010 BAFTA nomination for Best Factual Series and the format has exported to the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and South Africa.
It is also a good example of the way social history is packaged in contemporary British broadcasting. An edu-tainment hybrid, the show mixes a fascination with celebrity with popular genealogy and the traditional documentary-history format. Each show's narrative is constructed through a dramatisation of the research process with the subject visiting archives and meeting experts, adding a gloss of celebrity sparkle to the ordinarily dusty activity of sitting in libraries and searching micro fiche. The human reactions of otherwise unreachable stars – crying at the fate of their forebears/revelling at struggle in the face of adversity – provides the pay-off. And along the way we learn about social conditions for the working-classes in mid-Victorian Britain, say. It counts towards the BBC’s statutory commitment of factual programming (1295 hours in 2009/10) as part of its Public Service Remit, yet also connects with broad, mainstream audiences. Win-win?
For the celebrities there are obvious benefits. They get screen time and the opportunity to build upon their brand identity, ubiquity and marketability. The program makers get to tap in to this brand in their marketing – a good example of synergy. But this also reveals its limitations as a factual programme. How far are the didactic potentials of the show limited by the format? In organising the historical information around the narrative of one particularly successful individual – a successful narrative resolution, if you like – every episode tends to celebrate social mobility. Times were tough for my family, but through hard work and the unbridled opportunities provided by post-war capitalism, we got there in the end, shiny, happy and rich. When confronted with more genuinely challenging and less well understood historical events and issues, in this example at least, the program breaks under the pressure, unable to cope.
How to explain this? One answer is that people aren’t interested in complex representations of history and don’t want to learn ‘stuff’, preferring to be dazzled by simple stories with happy endings and shiny people (although I don’t know if Bruce Forsyth or Chris Moyles would fit into that category). So if program-makers can create a format which gives them that while sneaking in a bit of history, all the better.
Another answer, however, can explain modern factual broadcasting in terms of structural pressures towards commercialisation, of which cross-platform celebrity branding is a major part. While shows like this help the BBC fulfil its commitment to factual programming – a key thing that would be lost if the BBC went commercial – they must also be understood as a component of the commercial media landscape and the way that public service broadcasting is increasingly put under pressure to fulfil objectives in the interests of private business – in this case subsidising the development of celebrity-actor brands – at the expense of more complex but informative and useful understandings of history.
Which is it, A or B?
Labels:
BBC,
British television,
Celebrity,
History
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)