The Age of Stupid – Academic Movie Review

The Age of Stupid – Academic Movie Review

- Are you stupid, or are you smart?

The Age of Stupid’

I believe these four words can be a good enough hook for anybody, for it is a somewhat unique combination of words. ‘The Age of Stupid’ is a documentary movie that deals with the matter of climate change. And yes, as you can imagine, it reveals unhealthy parts of our world, that are suffering from climate changes, natural disasters, tyranny of oil companies, etc. However, one thing that differentiates this movie from other typical environmental documentaries is that this movie does not throw overwhelming amount of statistics and graphs at its watchers; it simply shows six different stories of six different people, and asks, “Why didn’t we save ourselves when we had the chance?”

Yes, I really do believe that this documentary movie ‘could’ have worked out very well, for it did not recklessly throw numerous facts which most of them people cannot understand, like most of the other documentaries. It rather demanded quietly to people to know about these serious climate change problems. However, my overall impression I received after finishing the movie was very different from what I expected at the beginning, for the movie was totally disorganized.

The entire movie is continued and connected by the old man in the archive who plays different kinds of videos that show different aspects of global climate problems. There were mainly six characters throughout the entire movie, and they were:

<from wikipedia, 'The Age of Stupid' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Stupid>

If the clips were organized in the order of the bullet points like the one above, it would have been much easier to comprehend the meanings that each character was trying to convey. However, the six different stories were divided into smaller clips and were pretty much randomly put into the story line of the movie. In addition to all this mixture of six totally different stories, short clips of animated cartoons were put in-between some scenes to illustrate further on some points, with no intention of smoothing out the disorganized clips. Thus, unless one watched the movie over two times, it was extremely difficult to grasp what each event meant, what they symbolized, and what the entire movie wanted to say. Hence, it is my firm belief that if a group of short clips were played under one small theme, then another group in another theme, the entire movie would have conveyed its meaning much more effectively and powerfully.

-the film was somewhat similar to Pablo Picasso's pictures; different parts were randomly mixed together.

Another thing that I want to talk about is the controversy on the topic of whether climate crisis actually exists or not, and I would like to approach this topic on the eye level of the general public. This controversy has lasted for decades, and it never seems to end. The movie also mentions this controversy, while trying to prove that it’s real. Both sides have reasonable evidences to support their arguments, and the more you research, the more confusing it becomes.

 Climate Crisis is REAL

<http://www.ted.com/playlists/78/climate_change_oh_it_s_real.html - 8 TED talks about Climate Crisis is REAL> - VIDEO CLIP

Climate Crisis? That's just a big HOAX

<http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/proved_no_climate_crisis.html>

 <pictures from 35 Inconvenient Truths: The errors in Al Gore’s movie>

Looking from these, we might as well just conclude that it is practically impossible for people without any expertise on fields of the matter to be able to decide definitively which side is right. Only particular group of people, such as climatologists and astronomers will be able to directly look at the effects of global warming, such as reducing polar caps, rising sea level from space, and the people at large will never be able to know for certain.

However, one thing that anyone can be certain about is that producing massive amount of trash, doing activities that lead to pollution, reckless usage of Earth’s natural resources, and many more of the same nature all contribute to environmental problems regardless of the how big or small the amount. Therefore, I argue that instead of taking part in useless debate over the existence of climate crisis, we should rather use that time to find out more about how we can actually reduce our environmental pollution, and protect the Earth from further agony.

“In my opinion, our use or misuse of resources the last 100 years or so, I’d probably rename that age, something like The Age of Ignorance, The Age of Stupid” - Alvin DuVernay


As I conclude this film review for ‘The Age of Stupid’, couple of questions still continue to linger in my mind; Are you stupid? Or are you smart?

Or 

who is it to decide?

Just Imagining!

Just Imagining!

Contrary to a playful and energetic attitude I had at the beginning of the semester in KMLA, I am very exhausted these days. And especially yesterday, the exhaustion was at its peak. Having slept too little the day before because of the presentations and quizzes I had this week, I wasn't feeling too well. I didn't want to talk to anyone, and I was in some kind of a half-sleep state all day. On top of all this, I had this anxiety that I was doing poorly in every class and quiz. Maybe this anxiety tired me. Or the fatigue in me induced the anxiety. I don’t know which came first, but one thing I knew for sure was that this anxiety was driving me crazy.

This is a brief list on things that caused the anxiety; I messed up my presentation in the Korean class. I was caught drowning in Chinese class. I probably got the base score in Mr. Menard’s TOEFL essay. I also messed up the speech I made in Mr. Menard’s class. I flunked my math quiz. I couldn't understand anything in the SAT biology class. There was just too much homework for the ‘Introduction to English Literature’ class. And there were quizzes I had to prepare, biology, English literature, French, and in addition to these, I had a linguistic Olympiad to prepare for.

I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't think straight. I just couldn't. So when I came to the dormitory after all the classes, I told my roommate that I was miserable; that I probably flunked all the quizzes and presentations. But what my roommate told me changed my feelings completely. He said, “Nah~ You’re just imagining. Shut up and come look at this funny picture”.

At first I was bemused. I am in this miserable state, and all he tells me is that I’m just imagining, so come look at that stupid picture? But then, something hit me; I was just imagining things. Yes, I was just imagining things. I thought about my worries again. I found out that most of them were not ‘facts’. I found out that all those worries could start with the word, ‘probably’.

After this split second thinking, I completely came back to my usual self; Optimistic, cheerful, etc. I could think straight, and I organized the things I had to do. I convinced myself that the past is past and what really mattered was the ‘present’.

Um… Now this essay kind of turned into some kind of a ‘personal narrative speech’, which I did not intend to do, and I am beginning to think that I could have done a much better job on Mr. Menard’s class if I had talked about this topic, instead of the weird museum story that I talked about. However, as I said before, past is past. Enjoy your pleasant future. : )

KMLAWH --> 10v3 18th waver WooHyun Cho 131136

I changed my blog name from "KMLAWH" to "10v3 18th waver WooHyun Cho 131136", but it still appears as 'KMLAWH' on your (Mr. Menard) "KMLA Frosh Writing' blog.

Just so that you know :)

Thank you!