Journey Five: Academic Film Review "The Age of Stupid"

Alas! The time has already passed when we could have saved ourselves. We are aware that there's global warming but seem to lack the idea of why it occurred in the first place. ‘What am I doing in this hostile situation?’ Am I helping the world or harming it? We clean our own houses in order to live in a purified environment. But what are we doing to our real home “Earth?” People yell towards humanity to be aware of global warming, but are they? The ego-centrism of humanity has led to suicide and an apocalyptic future.

Yes, Put it out right now!

The Age of Stupid is a documentary directed by Franny Armstrong released in 2009. The main theme portrayed is global warming and climate change. The movie starts with Peter Postlethwaite who is an archivist, guarding all of humanity’s achievements. The archivist looks back to 2008 from 2055 trying to find out the reason why we have forced suicide upon us. 2055, humanity has already met an end to its survival. The movie begins with a shocking image of the future showing the harsh environments of Earth and how we have reached extinction. The scene gives a pivotal sense that we should make change now as the reviewing pasts are the current situation to us!

The Apocalypse

Armstrong’s main word in the film was ‘stupid’. The film relates consumerism, war, and climate change to global warming. It is a fact that humanity is developing at a remarkable speed but as to the development we’re not changing.

The main method that Armstrong uses in the film is showing. Rather than telling facts, the film shows stories. The 6 characters in the story reveals the cause and effect of global warming using the irony of a character. Irony emphasizes each point better as the story goes on. The stories are based on real-life events and it examines the character closely like a documentary film. The main irony which is depicted in the film concerns the character Jeh, an Indian entrepreneur who’s determined to make India’s cheapest plane company. He believes that climate change and poverty are the most essential goals that humanity should solve. To achieve this he constructs airplanes. Airplanes consume lots of oil and is responsible for emitting over 4~8% of green house gases each and every year. Since the 1850s it has contributed in the temperature increase of 0.03~0.06°C overall. Airplanes are one of the transportation that produce the most amounts of emissions. And ‘climate protector’ Jeh tries to make airplanes as much as possible to eradicate poverty.

“Ultimately we all contribute to green house gases, we all contribute to the crisis that we have today with the planet. So ultimately ensuring our planet is safe and healthy is each one’s job, task whether you do it in your own way using less tissue paper, buying green cars or not flying.” -Jeh, Entrepreneur of GOJET-

Like this, Armstrong portrays the irony of humans. Economically it’s called a trade-off, the two goals that are contradicting each other. We try to achieve goals that are perhaps ideal. But to argue that we are concerning for global warming, perhaps a glance towards the back would help us all.

By showing the changes in Mont Blanc and the events in Iran and Nigeria we see the results of our energy consuming lives. But what's done is done! We need the solutions for the problems that we face today. The film gives an idea that until 2015 we should have stabilized the emissions. It is apparent that we should act now, but is it easy? The film shows the hardships in solving global warming. Humanity has stepped into a stage where aesthetics and money are the most important aspects of life. Piers Guy, a wind turbine maker who uses renewable resources that are available, like the wind to stop global warming. However the people of Cornwall are concerned about the aesthetics while our home Earth is being tortured. We humans are the major setbacks for our problems.

“Local anti campaigns are one of the key factors stopping about 80% of the proposed wind energy project, have they all been built 10% of our electricity would be non-pollutant." -From "The Age of Stupid"...-

We know the solution is there somewhere, the only thing that stands in front of us is the reflection of ourselves. The irony is within us, we have concerns for global warming but we are the ones blocking the way. The age of stupid is upon us, the film explains thoroughly about the significance of global warming using irony and showing various causes of global warming. But the film is merely a mean to awake the behavior that sleeps inside our minds. The behavior that tells us "What are we doing right now, it's time to solve."

Sources

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091221/full/news.2009.1157.html

http://www.spannerfilms.net/films/ageofstupid

http://academichelp.net/academic-assignments/review/write-film-review.html

http://www.enviromedia.com/enviroblog/

http://phys.org/news/2011-03-airplane-contrails-worse-co2-emissions.html