[Politics] In Light of Recent Events, How Do You Feel About "Preachy" Environmentalist Media

[Hawki]

James Cameron's Avatar (2009) was preachy as fuck! The Navi are glorified <link=https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CantArgueWithElves>space elves that supposed to be seen as better than humanity. What a crock of shit. They're arrogant and not much better, coming off as unsympathetic.

Even if I agreed with that, I wouldn't say that's the same as being preachy.

Sonic CD - Sonic in general has done this well 95% of the time.

Much as I like Sonic, it's never really paid more than lip service to its environmental sub-text. It's like as far from preachy as you can get because it doesn't go beyond "pollution bad, Robotnik bad." Granted, both of them are bad, so it works in that sense.

 

[Silvanus]

Already is the blame game, boyo. It's just a blame game half the country -- since this is necessarily a discussion framed around US politics -- doesn't give a shit about, and another goodly portion hear about and think, "Christ, what a prick". And absolutely, the debate should shift away from climate change to economic and security self-interest, because that's what changes minds and gets policy positions enacted. They key policy positions are the exact same, and have the same policy outcomes, so why is the left irrationally wasting its time arguing a point that's never, ever going to be won, when it can reframe the debate around a subject practically no one has ever used and lost?

What argument has nobody used and lost? If it's the "supporting those hostile to us" one, just recall that the US and UK continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, and criticism of this falls largely on deaf ears.

Nobody is going to win a fundamentally moral argument by throwing ever more shit.

 

[BrawlMan]

James Cameron's Avatar (2009) was preachy as fuck! The Navi are glorified <link=https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CantArgueWithElves>space elves that supposed to be seen as better than humanity. What a crock of shit. They're arrogant and not much better, coming off as unsympathetic.

Even if I agreed with that, I wouldn't say that's the same as being preachy.

Sonic CD - Sonic in general has done this well 95% of the time.

Much as I like Sonic, it's never really paid more than lip service to its environmental sub-text. It's like as far from preachy as you can get because it doesn't go beyond "pollution bad, Robotnik bad." Granted, both of them are bad, so it works in that sense.

In Avatar's case, it's pretentious and preachy. I know the former word gets thrown out a lot, but when your movie boils down to a simple black and white my space elves are better than humanity cuz they are in "harmony with nature". To me it comes off as preachy, pretentious, and self absorbent. like I said before, Princess Mononoke did everything better than Avatar did back in the late nineties. Because being in harmony with nature doesn't stop persons or people from being dicks.

As for Sonic, Sonic CD in this case, does not get as much credit as it should for its subtle use of the green aesop. You see the reverse of destroying Robotnik's machines in the past. The environments are brighter in the good future, and you see and some stages that the machines are helping nature grow or working with it. See the background for good future palm tree panic for example. It does not beat you over the head thinking all machines are bad for nature, or machinery can't be used to help nature or plant life. Environmental stories did have this problem a lot in the 90s.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

I understand the point of the message but I don't care for when they shove the message down our throats (see Captain Planet).

The only examples I can think of that did it right were Princess Mononoke and the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Zanzibar".

And maybe that episode of Ok Ko: Let's be Heroes that crossed over with Captain Planet, though that one was rather tongue-in-cheek about it.

 

[Schadrach]

so why is the left irrationally wasting its time arguing a point that's never, ever going to be won, when it can reframe the debate around a subject practically no one has ever used and lost?

Because the point is to fight it in perpetuity.

Kind of like how the GOP really *really* doesn't want to actually overturn Roe v Wade and actually made abortion illegal nationwide, because if they were actually to succeed, they couldn't use "stopping the Democrats from killing babies" as a means to gather support and funding beyond maybe the next set of elections afterward. They want to be able to fight baby killing Democrats forever, because it's an easy sell to their base.

This is just the Democrats version of that. It gives them an easy issue to garner funding and support over that allows them to paint the other side as simply evil.

Most of the other big "wedge" issues that tend to get single issue voters are much the same - neither side wants to "win" them and it's easy to frame the opponent as simply "evil", so they want to keep fighting them forever because the fight is where they get their support and funding.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Can't stand it, and I say that as a fairly hard line environmentalist who actually wants shit done.

Specifically, what shit do you want done?

We are at the point now where the total collapse of most ecosystems, the displacement of a significant proportion of earth's population and massive global famine is inevitable within the century. At this point, the question is how bad will it be. How many billions (and it is billions) will be displaced or starve, and what form of civilization (if any) will be left at the end.

You've conveniently left out, of course, by far the largest group of people who are opposed to "doing shit" about climate change. People who are ideologically or personally invested in the idea of an economic system with minimal state intervention, who believe (or want to believe) that "the market" will sort everything out. These people are bad, sure, but they are not literal villains who are witholding environmental legislation out of spite (which ironically is the most Captain Planet view of this debate I've seen). They have ideological biases which make them susceptible to bad arguments, as indeed we all do to some degree or another, but ultimately for the most part opposition to tackling climate change is based in an ideological commitment to a laissez faire model of liberal capitalism and suspicion that efforts to tackle climate change are a front for pushing greater intervention in the economy.

And they are right, because we are at the point where tackling climate change will require some quite fundamental reorganisation of how the economy works. It is now not just a question of passing the legislation and breathing a sigh of relief because all the nasty climate change has been averted, it's going to happen and it's going to be extremely bad. It's also not something that can be tackled at the national level. So sure, you can frame this as some patriotic duty to STOP THE BAD BROWN PEOPLE FROM MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN 9/11 SUPPORT THE TROOPS but ultimately those OPEC countries also need to stop burning fossil fuels, and impoverishing their economies is not actually productive to reducing their reliance on fossil fuels. These countries, of course, have their own conservatives and climate change deniers.

So anyway, let's go back to the original question. What shit do you want done?

Because the shit that needs to be done is to prepare people for the radical political action and sacrifices, real sacrifices, which will be required to ensure the civilisation we live in and everything we have worked to build in our lives can survive the next few centuries. That is the harsh reality of it. We can lie to people and tell them the market will fix it and our leaders have everything in hand and you can't rush these things and anyway some Elon Musk type tech billionaire will invent a perpetual motion machine or something and it will all be okay. Sure, that's going to be a persuasive and effective argument. It'll probably be the argument that wins the political debate, at least for the next decade or two. But that's a bad thing, because it's a lie, and it's a lie we have to oppose, because even opposing the argument is laying the groundwork.

 

[Seanchaidh]

I'm sure preachy environmental(ist) movies may have influenced a handful of irrelevant consumer choices, and maybe even ticked awareness of the issue up a notch, but I can't say they were necessary and they certainly were not sufficient.

 

[Hawki]

In Avatar's case, it's pretentious and preachy. I know the former word gets thrown out a lot, but when your movie boils down to a simple black and white my space elves are better than humanity cuz they are in "harmony with nature". To me it comes off as preachy, pretentious, and self absorbent.

Avatar is hardly as black and white as you claim. Sonic is far more black and white than almost anything mentioned here.

The humans in the film aren't monsters. They've degraded their own world, and have come to Pandora to find a mineral that'll keep their civilization going. If they WERE monsters they could simply wipe out the na'vi without much fuss, except they try to find diplomatic solutions, even if they don't go about it the right way. Selfridge is open to negotiation. Quaritch is open to negotiation, and even when the hammer comes down, the RDA tries to minimize casualties. There's a period of 25 years between humans arriving at Pandora and the shit hitting the fan.

Before you get the wrong idea, this isn't to say that the RDA has the moral high ground. It doesn't. Humanity doesn't. In the context of the film, humanity's fucked up Earth, and has come to Pandora to screw things over in the process. But it would be easy to portray the humans as monsters in the film and it doesn't. And while the na'vi are space elves, they're not exactly peace loving. This is established from the outset, that they have bows, they completely outclass humans physically, have killed humans, and are hard to be killed themselves. One can't fault the na'vi for this at all (they're fighting off an alien invasion after all), but it's a false binary to claim Avatar is a case of "warlike humans, peace-loving natives." Part of why I love Avatar is it's basically a subversion of the entire idea of alien invasion. That here, not only are humans the invaders, but it's an invasion that doesn't go from arrival to "kill everyone" at the drop of the hat. Compare this to War of the Worlds for instance where, much as I respect the work, the Martians' first course of action is to still kill everyone in sight.

As for Sonic, Sonic CD in this case, does not get as much credit as it should for its subtle use of the green aesop. You see the reverse of destroying Robotnik's machines in the past. The environments are brighter in the good future, and you see and some stages that the machines are helping nature grow or working with it. See the background for good future palm tree panic for example. It does not beat you over the head thinking all machines are bad for nature, or machinery can't be used to help nature or plant life. Environmental stories did have this problem a lot in the 90s.

Except who's the machinery actually benefitting?

I'm aware of Sonic CD's time travel mechanic (I beat the game but never bothered with it), so yes, I'm aware that the "good future" is where tech and nature co-exist, while the "bad future" is where Robotnik's turned Little Planet into an industrial wasteland. But at best, these are allusions to the idea of sustainable development, and in the games, Sonic CD wasn't even the first game to do it. The first game to do it was, well, the first game, where we start off in Green Hill (verdant, unspoilt), and finish in Scrap Brain (industrial nightmare). But even in Little Planet, who's the machinery actually used for? The mobini? They're too small to even use the damn stuff.

Sonic's had an environmentalist theme, sure, but it's never fully engaged with it. I'd say the most in-depth it got was in SatAM, where we have Robotropolis (industrial hellscape), Knothole (verdant forest), and Mobotropolis (in-between), but even then, it's more Robotnik pollutes, and likes to pollute. Certainly a lot more sub-text than, say, Mario, but not exactly deep.

 

[Saelune]

Here is the thing, most people are stupid, and stupid people do not understand the concept of subtly.

 

[Asita]

Avatar is hardly as black and white as you claim. Sonic is far more black and white than almost anything mentioned here.

The humans in the film aren't monsters. They've degraded their own world, and have come to Pandora to find a mineral that'll keep their civilization going. If they WERE monsters they could simply wipe out the na'vi without much fuss, except they try to find diplomatic solutions, even if they don't go about it the right way. Selfridge is open to negotiation. Quaritch is open to negotiation, and even when the hammer comes down, the RDA tries to minimize casualties. There's a period of 25 years between humans arriving at Pandora and the shit hitting the fan.

It's also worth noting that the state of the earth is almost an afterthought. I think the only time it's mentioned in film (the theatrical release, at least) is when Jake's trying to appeal to the spirit of Pandora for help. Most of the environmental stuff? Backstory that you need to independently track down because it never made it to the film, and that which remained was more a facilitator than a focus, and the film comes off more as anti-imperialist than pro-environmentalist.

 

[Kwak]

I suspect passion for a concept is mistaken by those who haven't got that passion as preachiness. Fuck em.

 

[Satinavian]

I always disliked Captain Planet.

While it does mention the environmental problems of its time, it has villains who waht to increase pollution just for the sake of it. And most of the series is fighting against those villains as if fighting people does help.

It completely ignores the reasons for pollution and why it is hard to stop it. It is a cheap copout and one that harms the overall message by makig the plot an excersize in absurdity.

And no, the small end lecture things don't really save it. They only lead to those choosen kids being portayed as especially dense and negligiant, not as some kind of role model.

 

[Trunkage]

I always disliked Captain Planet.

While it does mention the environmental problems of its time, it has villains who waht to increase pollution just for the sake of it. And most of the series is fighting against those villains as if fighting people does help.

It completely ignores the reasons for pollution and why it is hard to stop it. It is a cheap copout and one that harms the overall message by makig the plot an excersize in absurdity.

And no, the small end lecture things don't really save it. They only lead to those choosen kids being portayed as especially dense and negligiant, not as some kind of role model.

It's a kid show. In the 80s, villains did villain stuff because villain. Polluting for polluting sake fits perfectly consistent with 80s television.

Not that your wrong. There was no nuance back then.

But then, I'm rewatching Young Justice with my kid. The Light's plan seems like utter nonsense basically amount to "rule the world" and relies on chance way to much. (Haven't seen season three, so I don't know if Savage miraculously make more sense then conqueror.) It's... no much better than Captain Planet's villians

 

[Satinavian]

The thing is, i was a kid when i have seen it first. And i still felt that way at the age of around 11.

But then again, i do think that a lot of shows aimed at children and teenagers seem to presume that their audience is incredibly stupid. Ok, it is now better than in the 80s but mostly because we have more options nowadays.

 

[Hawki]

It's also worth noting that the state of the earth is almost an afterthought. I think the only time it's mentioned in film (the theatrical release, at least) is when Jake's trying to appeal to the spirit of Pandora for help. Most of the environmental stuff? Backstory that you need to independently track down because it never made it to the film, and that which remained was more a facilitator than a focus, and the film comes off more as anti-imperialist than pro-environmentalist.

Saying Avatar is anti-imperialist isn't a stretch - it's outright stated to have anti-imperialist themes (though also pro-environment ones). That said, for me, it was very much pro-environment, with any anti-imperialist message being very tangental. Yes, in the theatrical version, the status of Earth is mentioned twice - Jake's plea to Eywa, and his monologue at the end ("the aliens went back to their dying world"). But even that aside, when you see that the RDA is there with an open-cut mine, when bulldozers carve a path through the rainforest, when the Omaticaya home tree is destroyed, when we consider Jake's arc and his feeling that Pandora is more "real" to him now than his old life, Avatar is seeping with environmental themes. In contrast, the anti-imperialist stuff is tangental. The RDA may be an "imperialist" force in a sense, but it's imperialism that stems from environmental degradation of Earth. If we define imperialism as "a state exerting control over another state's territory," then the RDA isn't really fitting the bill 100%. The RDA is there to make money, not to conquer the planet, even if the methods are similar at the end of the day.

I always disliked Captain Planet.

While it does mention the environmental problems of its time, it has villains who waht to increase pollution just for the sake of it. And most of the series is fighting against those villains as if fighting people does help.

And also our time.

But that aside, the CP villains can be divided into two groups - those who actively seek to cause pollution (Dr. Blight, Duke Nukem, Verminous Skumm), and those who want to get rich and don't care about pollution (Looten Plunder, Hoggish Greedly, Sly Sludge). I'm not calling this subtle, but it's a simplification to say that every villain in the show actively seeks to cause pollution. And even then, it does engage in other issues as well at times, such as the one where Looten sparks a war so that he can sell arms to both sides.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Snip.

No offense, but almost everything you just said is nonsense, and premised upon complete fantasy.

The fossil fuels industry is, bar none, the most mollycoddled, over-protected, and privileged industry in the history of the industrialized world on every conceivable level. No room for competition, argument, or debate on this subject at all. To the point most people -- yourself included -- don't even seem to consider the full extent of this protectionism and favoritism, if indeed it has been considered at all. Entire theaters have been opened in both world wars to secure oil rights for private companies; sovereign states have been overthrown on behalf of private oil companies; sovereign states have deployed combat troops against their own citizens on behalf of fossil fuel companies. Globally, that's a pedigree that spans from Lawrence of Arabia to Syria; domestic to the US, it spans from before Blair Mountain to well past Chevron v. NRDC.

Don't peddle that "laissez faire" bullshit where I can see it. The fossil fuels industry is existentially dependent upon government intervention...on its behalf. All things considered at this point, once government protectionism for the fossil fuels industry exits the picture, the "laissez faire" argument is the green argument because that means an end to tax, trade, and tariff exemptions for fossil fuels, an end to subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuels, an end to environmental exemptions for fossil fuel companies, an end to fast-tracking fossil fuel production projects, an end to defense spending to further the interests of fossil fuel companies, defense contractors, and oil-exporting countries, and all the other myriad of lesser ways the fossil fuel industry saps away at governments and their people like a century-and-a-half-old tapeworm.

The problem is, as you oh-so-inadvertently demonstrated, is the willingness of "environmentalists" to concede the premise to the opposition while waxing melodramatic about the climate, marching in perfect lockstep to the opposition's playbook while adamantly resisting the mere idea that just might be a catastrophic fuck-up to one's own position.

Oh, I'm sure at this point you're more than willing to say "well I already knew that, but the conservatives don't and are just useful idiots!" or what-the-fuck-ever. To which I say...yup. Because they've taken for granted extensive, pervasive, protectionism for the fossil fuel industry is the laissez-faire status quo, rather than a fundamental contradiction to their own values and beliefs around which they have to double-think. You want to stop the bullshit theatrics and actually start persuading people to enact policy, that's how you do it -- you co-opt their position to make your argument, and force them to confront their cognitive dissonance on your terms.

And, with regards to the fossil fuel industry's domestic record of foul play and bad-faith behavior to protect itself, once again we have the receipts. The legal battle over leaded gasoline, which was in essence a strategic, coordinated deployment of bad science by petroleum producers and automotive manufacturers to preserve their right to screw consumers in the face of newer, better, more efficient, and cheaper technology, is one. The other being the acid rain program, which had absolutely none of the dire costs and consequences warned by the coal industry, but was one of the single greatest policy successes enacted by the EPA. Two instances, right there, of the fossil fuels industry systemically, pervasively lying its ass off and exploiting any corruptive means necessary for government intervention, on its behalf, to resist free market forces.

 

[Trunkage]

The thing is, i was a kid when i have seen it first. And i still felt that way at the age of around 11.

But then again, i do think that a lot of shows aimed at children and teenagers seem to presume that their audience is incredibly stupid. Ok, it is now better than in the 80s but mostly because we have more options nowadays.

Well, kids usually don't do morally grey very well. I'm trying to explain to my 6 year old why Captain Marvel changed her attitudes and direction and she doesn't really get it yet (also, the movie doesn't explain it well, especially for a kid.) But even then, the Kree look like they are being manipulated as well. So...

Also, if you look on Twitter, a whole bunch of adults don't do morally grey either. Both sides are comparing people to Hitler all the time. But then 1945 Hitler isn't the same as 1933 Hitler. The former being way more evil than the latter. If you're going to call someone Hilter, maybe time stamp which Hitler you meant

 

[Hawki]

If you're going to call someone Hilter, maybe time stamp which Hitler you meant

Not that I call people Hitler, but you really think people are going to distinguish between time periods?

 

[Terminal Blue]

Don't peddle that "laissez faire" bullshit where I can see it. The fossil fuels industry is existentially dependent upon government intervention...on its behalf.

I want you to go back over my posts and tell me at what point I suggested that the fossil fuel industry is actually an example of laissez faire capitalism.

Laissez faire capitalism does not function in reality at all. It is a fundamentally ridiculous idea which somehow imagines that an unregulated capital monopoly will result in meritocratic wealth distribution in practice and that states can remain impartial in the face of private interests who can single handedly control their economies. But for some reason, large numbers of people believe in this very, very convenient pipe dream enough to base their voting behaviour around it. That is a sad reality we must deal with.

All things considered at this point, once government protectionism for the fossil fuels industry exits the picture, the "laissez faire" argument is the green argument because that means an end to tax, trade, and tariff exemptions for fossil fuels, an end to subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuels, an end to environmental exemptions for fossil fuel companies, an end to fast-tracking fossil fuel production projects, an end to defense spending to further the interests of fossil fuel companies, defense contractors, and oil-exporting countries, and all the other myriad of lesser ways the fossil fuel industry saps away at governments and their people like a century-and-a-half-old tapeworm.

You know how I described your worldview as the most Captain Planet thing on this thread..

It's because you don't seem to be able to understand how bad things happen except as the result of bad people clogging up a fundamentally good system and deciding to be evil for no reason.

Let's say there was some popular backlash against the fossil fuel industry, and let's say by some miracle government actually implemented all the things you just mentioned.

What do you think would happen next?

How would the free market play that one out?

 

[Trunkage]

If you're going to call someone Hilter, maybe time stamp which Hitler you meant

Not that I call people Hitler, but you really think people are going to distinguish between time periods?

Not really. But sort of

When we had the discussion on Concentration Camps, much of it was based on mismatched understanding of the term. Some only counted Nazi Final Solution Death Camps as Concentration Camps because of the Allies associated them before we realised they were there for extermination.

While others were taking the general term Concentration Camps that match with the Nazi ones until 1942. But definitely not after.

So... maybe it necessary in certain instances?