In case you might have been thinking about awarding the Annual Wooden Spoon for PR to the Vatican, you might take a look at this: the “No Pressure” video by Richard Curtis for the 10:10 Climate Emissions Campaign. Just Google “No Pressure” and “10:10” and you will get hundreds of internet entries on this topic, but the easiest entry point to the discussion is James Delingpole’s blog at The Telegraph. I won’t embed the video here – I warn you: it is NOT for the faint of heart. It’s just unbelievable that anyone thought this would help their campaign.
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I can see how the writer of Blackadder, etc could think this was funny. I could see that this was his motivation. But, boy, did he miss the mark! What a shocker!
Mind you, I’ve seen abortion ads that would stack up against this one and they weren’t even trying to be funny.
Just goes to show that a sense of humour is a … err … funny thing.
Of course! I hadn’t made the connection to Blackadder, but now you mention it…
Apparently he also wrote 4 weddings and a funeral and Notting Hill – I don’t remember anyone exploding there.
The serious point, I believe, is that some of the green movement has convinced itself that “the end is nigh”, to use the old phrase. In that case, anything, including threatening videos, and maybe threatening actions is justified.
The trouble is, they have a long record of being wrong in their predictions, and Fred Pearce, for one, predicts that population is plateau’ing:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/population-growth-is-an-ageold-problem-get-used-to-it-20101006-167pk.html
You miss the point (though, Lord knows, that’s very easy to do where this video is concerned). The video is not supposed to be threatening; it’s supposed to be funny (in a black-humourish kind of way). Curtis, remember, cut his teeth in the 1980s when grotesque, offensive images were considered cutting-edge comedy.
People might feel amused by this video (though I’m not one of them) or they might feel disgusted, but in neither case will they feel threatened. Whatever else the makers of this video are doing, they are not trying to intimidate anyone into supporting their endeavour.
This is one of those moments where you have to say “what in the name of all that’s holy was going through their minds when they made this?”. And the best answer that I can come up with is that this is a very ham-fisted attempt at self-deprecatory humour. They are aware of the stereotype of the environmental activist as humourless, puritanical, a zealot, and a scaremonger. And they use a wildly exaggerated version of this stereotype to poke fun at themselves in an attempt to forestall an attack based on that stereotype.
If that’s what the film is trying to do, it fails miserably, in my view. Far from defusing that stereotype and clearing it out of the way so that it doesn’t obscure the message about the campaign and its purposes, the images presented are so grotesque and arresting (and unfunny) that they almost completely obscure the message.
Ive never saw an abortion ad as you explain Tony.
Are you confussed or just making this up to defend your eco-fascist mates?
Whatever else the makers of this video are doing, they are not trying to intimidate anyone into supporting their endeavour.
This is exactly the message I came away with Pere.
If we don’t follow wholeheartedly the “go green”campaigns there will be consequences. No pressure?
Except that you’re overlooking the point that the film is so over the top that you couldn’t be expected to take it seriously, and you can’t think that the makers intended you to take it seriously.
Nobody who intends to blow you up makes a funny film about blowing you up, expecting you to take it as a threat about blowing you up.