Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 13:31:46 -0400
To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH - see it!


John wrote:

>   Thinking of Greg's comments to Emmy's message: good; let's talk 
>about puppet theater.  Haven't there been a lot of puppet shows 
>recently about climate change, weather, and the environment?  All 
>Species Day parades, educational puppet theater, Muppets, Heart of 
>the Beast Theater, Arm of the Sea Theater, Bread and Puppet's The 
>Uprising of the Beast, and Greenpeace spectacles?  Are puppets and 
>masks somehow better fitted to discuss such huge issues, rather than 
>actor-based dramas?

This in itself is a rather huge question, isn't it?   It seems to me 
that it hinges on another question - namely, what it means to 
*discuss* such issues.  One possibility is that by "discuss" is 
meant, impress upon the viewer most effectively this or that point of 
view.  In this case, the question of which medium is better fitted to 
the task - puppetry or actor-based dramas or documentary films or 
something yet different - would probably depend on the kind of 
audience one is addressing.  There are audiences that do not treat 
puppetry seriously; there are audiences that don't treat dramatic 
works of fiction seriously, and so on.  And is the intended audience 
already sympathetic to the given point of view?  Is puppetry a good 
medium to use when the task at hand is to change minds that are "made 
up"?  And what kind of puppetry - how big, how flashy?  Does it 
matter?  Is the potential effectiveness of the presentation 
proportional to the production budget?  And is it possible, in 
performing the effectiveness comparison, to abstract from questions 
of media authority - to compare, say, the potential impact, upon an 
individual, of a puppetry street parade with the potential impact, on 
the same individual, of a rousing actor-based drama produced for, and 
broadcast over, ABC?

But in the case of global warming, one can also mean "discuss" in 
another sense - namely, in the sense of honestly, openly, and 
open-mindedly *discussing* the scientific data: how they have been 
gathered, what statistical methods were used in processing them, what 
scientific methods were used in interpreting them.   These are very 
complex issues, and it is by no means the case that all honest 
scientists agree that the postulate of a "global warming" is 
scientifically sound.   It seems to me that in a politically healthy 
society, the first step in dealing with the issue would be not to 
impress upon the public - whoever one's public is - a point of view, 
but to foster in the viewer a desire to do the work (hard work) of 
learning the issues in their true complexity, and make available the 
tools needed to do so.  Would puppetry be well fitted for this kind 
of *discussion*?   And if yes, then what kind of puppetry would it be?

But there are other issues.  For example, irrespective of the 
question of whether there is or is not in fact a "global warming" in 
the sense in which it is presented in political debates, it is pretty 
clear to everybody that we are choking on our own pollution.  Why, 
then, is there no constant, grass-roots, public outcry about this? 
No general strike to demand that real money (rather than lip-service 
money) be put into research of alternative energies, that a real 
five-year or ten-year or twenty-year energy-makeover program be put 
into place?    Why is there no public pressure for the creation of a 
Los-Alamos-type scientific program for the development of viable 
clean-energy solutions?  Why does the public not rally all of its 
power to demand that this be given the highest political and 
financial priority?  If the "person in the street" is so passive 
about something that palpably hurts and harms hir and hir children 
every day, what is the hoped-for effect of creating impressive shows 
about the considerably less obvious issue of "global warming"?    And 
it seems to me that this question, too - effective for *what*, 
effective *to what end* - needs to be addressed when discussing the 
potential effectiveness of puppetry versus some other medium.


-m
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