Academic Film Review: The Age of Stupid
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit Southern regions of United States, and caused 46.6 billion dollars of economic losses and 1833 people of casualties, which is regarded as one of the largest damages that United States has ever got. In 2010, Russia had hottest summer throughout its history, recording 38.2 degree Celsius, which led 56 thousands of people to lose their lives. All of these continual major environmental problems, which are even getting worse these days, are neither due to coincidence nor temporary misfortune. Rather, they are the signs of significant changes in climate.
‘The Age of Stupid’, directed by Franny Armstrong, is a film
in which Peter Postlethwaite, one of the last humans left on the Earth in 2055,
looks back history of human being and throw a question, ‘Why did not humans stop climate change
when they had the chance?’ Answering to this question, the film
reveals several perspectives of people toward the environmental problems by
telling stories of six main characters, those who all underwent different
experiences, and in distinct situations. Through them, the film alerts us the
severity of current status quo regarding the environmental issues, emphasizes
how stupid we are being right now, and proposes the necessity of changing our
attitudes.
Looking into several
scenes and data presented in the film, I was able to readily recognize how
climate change became so severe and problematic these days. In the film, Jamila
and Adnan seemed to lose everything: both their father and their humanity, because
of Iraq War. Their hobby is pretending to shoot and kill others, and their thoughts
are completely filled with extreme anti-Americanism. What we have to
concentrate on this is that these socially detrimental aspects that two Iraqi
children show are due to conflicts dealing with the possession of the resources.
This made me to think of the butterfly effect, a theory that a small change at
one place can result in large differences to a later state. From this viewpoint,
even trivial human behaviors that artificially expand the greenhouse effect,
such as overusing air conditioner, or taking cars in spite of close proximity, can
ultimately cause second-hand and third-hand negative effects to human society not
only in the environmental aspect, but also in various ways either socially or
economically.
Then what is a conducive
factor for this butterfly effect related to the environmental issues? Excessive
and unlimited greed of mankind is the answer. Since the Industrial Revolution,
humans have become highly contingent to fossil fuels, in order to maximize
productivity and achieve rapid development. Thanks to advent of these new resources,
lives of people became much more affluent and convenient. On the other hand,
simultaneously, as the amount of greenhouse gases emission skyrocketed, climate
changed dramatically, which led lots of natural disasters occur in much more
significant scale. To deal with these problems, in 1997, 39 countries
passed Kyoto Protocol to obligate developed countries to subside their carbon
dioxide emission to 5.2% lower than the amount they produced in 1990 until
2020. At first, the effect of the Protocol seemed to be auspicious.
Unfortunately however, President George W. Bush of the United States asserted
that "It exempts 80% of the world, including major population centers
such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the
US economy," and did not ratify the Protocol. Moreover, in 2011,
Canada, Japan, and Russia stated that they would withdraw from the Protocol,
which made the prospect of it much darker. Due to many countries' greedy
attitude that only cares about their further development, natural disasters
harmed human society much more frequently, global temperature increased a lot,
and sea level rose constantly, causing lots of countries lose their
territories. Tuvalu, the most serious case among them, even declared territory
abandonment declaration in 2001, and is seeking for the alternative place for
their people to live in.
In this current world, a lot
of countries are keep looking for ways to fulfill their unlimited desire to
develop, and ever-lasting avarice, while others are putting full of their
effort on maintaining their existence and survival. Like this, if human beings
do not stray away from selfishness, and let this equity issue become more
serious, it would ultimately end up in deterioration of the whole world, as it
is shown in year 2055 of the film. Rather than showing stupidity to our
decedents and making them blame us for not protecting the environment and
demolishing ourselves, would it be much better to keep balance between
development and conservation? Now, it is time for humans to adapt new
development model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
http://www.ted.com/talks/johan_rockstrom_let_the_environment_guide_our_development.html
Dessai, S. (December 2001), Tyndall Centre Working Paper 12: The climate regime from The Hague to Marrakech: Saving or sinking the Kyoto Protocol?, Norwich, UK: Tyndall Centre, p. 5
Dessai, S. (December 2001), Tyndall Centre Working Paper 12: The climate regime from The Hague to Marrakech: Saving or sinking the Kyoto Protocol?, Norwich, UK: Tyndall Centre, p. 5
Why is 'The Tell-Tale Heart' Gothic Fiction?
There are a number of various genres of writings that have made humans be thrilled, and express their feelings for long time. Among these numerous genres, a short story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' seems to be in the gothic fiction genre, in which many different genres are mixed together.
What is gothic fiction then? It is a mode of writing that is composed of mainly two elements: horror and romance. Horror, as most of us already well-know, is the genre that catches attention of readers by including inconvenient emotions, such as fear or desolation. Moreover, it usually deals with several extreme and unrealistic factors, including murders or monsters, in order to maximize tension in readers. The other element of gothic fiction, romantic, is a genre that we should look into much more carefully and precisely. Although many people misinterpret as the type of writing that talks about aspects related to love, but this is romance genre. Romantic, however, is the term that reveals excessive feeling of humans toward certain objects, either it can be attachment, love, or even abhorrence. A representative masterpiece of gothic fiction genre is Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein,' in which all the aspects mentioned above is contained.
'The Tell-Tale Heart' also consists of factors of gothic fiction. To begin with, horror is apparently well-shown in this novel. The murder scene is meticulously portrayed, by which readers can easily recognize how the man approached the old man, how he killed, and how he buried the dead body. Furthermore, a very dark atmosphere proposed by the narrator with the man's emergent actions and mental instability truly assist readers to feel tension and fear. Personally, especially the scene which the man suddenly starts to hear strange irritating sound while he is trying to prevent police officers from figuring out his crime obviously made me concentrated deeply, and be fearful.
In addition, factors of romantic genre can also be readily found in 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. There are a lot of scenes that illustrate how much the man is wanting to kill the old man, and the effort that he puts in his vicious action. Additionally, at the front and the end part of this story, the man keeps insisting that he is not a mad person in order to conceal his guilt, even though it is too obvious that he committed the crime. Like this, 'The Tell-Tale Heart' shows characteristics of romantic genre: passionate wants and extraordinary persistence of the main character.
Not only horror and romantic, but there were lots of parts in the story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' that also revealed many different genres. For instance, the relationship between the man and the old man was not uncovered even until the end of the story, which seemed to be quite mysterious to me. Regarding these minor distinctive genres, horror, and romantic factors combined together as I mentioned above, 'The Tell-Tale Heart' is definitely gothic fiction.
Self-narrative Speech - My Dark Past
When we generally think of elementary school students, especially those in lower grades, positive aspects such as purity, goodness, virtue, and any other characteristics of typical student like 철수 or 영희
in many textbooks usually pop up in our minds. However,
unfortunately, those features were not stories of my world, and totally
unrelated to my elementary school life. Rather, I was the one who was completely
shrouded in disobedience, and underwent dark past.
When I first became 2nd grade student in 2005, I don’t know why but I was overly excited and really amused by the fact that I am now no longer the youngest person at school, and felt that I grew up a lot, even though I was only 8. This made me start to behave wrong. In order to be shown to people as ‘grown-up’ person, I exaggerated my actions, and behaved as ardent as possible. I did not pay attention to teachers, made noises, and I even went outside and played during classes. Although some of my actions were too extreme and abnormal, my mere intention was just to get attention from people, and show off myself, but from viewpoint of adults, my behaviors were absolutely trouble-making, immoral, and could be thought, “How dare you.”
My deviation did not end in my school life. Coincidentally, I spent my 2nd grade life concurrently with prosperity of Kart Rider, a computer game that made thousands of people including me crazy and waste time. I was completely addicted to this car-racing game, which led me to go to PC방s and friends’ houses after school every day. Since my parents strictly prohibited playing games, I had to deceive my parents a lot, by giving excuses such as, “I did my homework with my friends,” or “I came late because I had to clean up my classroom.” I know that this was utterly amoral behavior, but at that time, my eagerness to play game was much bigger. As time passed, naturally, my parents got to know my deviation, and chastised me harshly, but I did not end. I kept went home late after enjoying in cyber space, regardless of apprehensiveness of my parents. When it came to this extent, my parents did not take part in my actions, and just let me do what I want. I finally became a student who makes trouble at school, and causes anxiety to my parents.
All of these amoral behaviors due to my immaturity ended in one day. It was neither due to my parents nor teacher. It was because of intervention of third person. On that day, I was going back home after playing Kart Rider at my friend’s house for five hours as I had done every day. In order to go quick, I took short-cut, a path passing through slum. Also, since it was about 8’o clock p.m., it was really dark and dangerous for 8 years old small child to pass alone. As you might have already expected, I was caught by a gangster in 5th grade. He daunted me, by giving physical intimidation such as grabbing me by the collar, with countless of slangs. I could truly feel I was shivering a lot with full of fear, and it was definitely one of the scariest moments in my whole life. I kept shouted with tear covering my face, “Anyone please help me!” and hopefully, there was a cleaning man passing by. He scolded the gangster harassing me, rescued me from that horror situation, and helped me go back home safely.
After that horrifying incident, I changed my life style adversely. I started to put my eyes on blackboard rather than chatting with classmates. I started to get along with my friends and go back home in time rather than wasting time solely in cyber space. My behaviors changed so much that teachers even asked me “Did you eat something wrong?” The cleaning man’s help was the rescue not only from that day, but in long-term, it also surely assisted me to get out of inappropriate life pattern and callowness. It was the experience from which I was able to fiercely recognize the necessity of protection and assistance of adults, and how much it is important to cut coat according to the cloth.
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