Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 13:40:32 -0400
To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH - see it!


Boy am I glad I waited to respond. Thank you once again Malgosia for 
stating the issues in a much clearer way than I ever could have!

Fred - still waiting for "Nuclear Winter"

On May 25, 2006, at 1:31 PM, malgosia askanas wrote:

> 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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