Move over, Leni Riefenstahl, you now have serious competition indeed, courtesy of the smiling eugenicists at 1010 and their catechism of cataclysm, "No Pressure":The green thumb of the left hand of environmentalism is soaked with crimson this week, as a British taxpayer-supported group's attempt to bring attention to their upcoming advertising campaign got a little more attention than they bargained for. Against all reason, they packaged their appeal to conservation within a despicable gorefest launched with a preview in the UK-based Guardian newspaper, whose readers were given the first look at this "edgy" ecology lesson last Thursday, reminding us all that we can't expect to make omelettes without first breaking a few eggs:
[W]hy take such a risk of upsetting or alienating people, I ask [director Franny Armstrong]: "Because we have got about four years to stabilise global emissions and we are not anywhere near doing that. All our lives are at threat and if that's not worth jumping up and down about, I don't know what is."Two reactions. One, it's yet another example of how the well-intentioned animists who can successfully see the spark of the divine Creator in slugs and bugs, seem to have exhausted that insight by the time they get around to seeing their fellow human beings. No wonder we can be treated as just so much collateral damage, our tilling is merely part of the toil that goes into preparing the soil of any field for planting, a necessary evil familiar to every hopeful gardener.
"We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure – a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change," she adds.
Jamie Glover, the child-actor who plays the part of Philip and gets blown up, has similarly few qualms: "I was very happy to get blown up to save the world."
Two: is this film really aimed at the increasing number of blaspheming skeptics no longer holding their iron-clad faith in the man-made religion of man-made global warming? My sense is that it's real target audience are the fellow travelers who might be straying from the party line. Tithing must be in serious decline for No Pressure to warrant shot after shot of terrified blood-stained survivors of each explosive purge. Death comes quickly, after all, to the characters in the vignettes who disagree; the terror is reserved for those left behind, haunted by the shocking price to be paid for free will. Beyond the purported conservationist message of the film, isn't it also whispering:
"When you join this club, you never leave."
No pressure, because there's no real freedom to choose in the first place.
The artful photography, the studied realism of the special effects, the impressive acting (is there anything harder to pull off than acting natural..?), all this and more reveal how much thought, labor, and talent must have gone into the creation of this monstrosity. There was just one thing missing: moral judgment. An admission agreed to by the sponsors of the film, who upon seeing it were reported to be "absolutely appalled" at the result of their good faith. Thankfully, the backers have come to their senses, so that the film will no longer be distributed to UK theaters, as originally planned. (!)
"Many people found the resulting film extremely funny", the filmmakers contend in their eventual apology. This is absolutely true, as we may read, with mounting horror, as the initial article in the Guardian fills with reader comments rising to the defense of the indefensible, revealing all the more clearly how far Great Britain has fallen in our lifetime. Where once there were giants like William Wilberforce, capable of seeking justice for people and animals both, now there remains caricatures of his shadow, willing to see people as animals, ready for herding... and culling.
The sickest joke seems to have turned out to be in the apology:
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."Live and learn"... a priviledge not extended to the heretical characters of their macabre video.
