"Media Watch" for www.FerretMag.com, a social activism e-zine

 


http://www.ferretmag.com/


by Matt Jones

Reviews of the latest books, films, and music that mirror - or make - our social awareness

Books

An Incovenient Truth

The book’s roots as Al Gore's slide show are very much in evidence. It does not pretend to grapple with climate change with the sort of minute detail and analysis displayed by three books on the subject that came out earlier this spring (The Winds of Change by Eugene Linden, The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery and Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert), and yet as a user-friendly introduction to global warming and a succinct summary of many of the central arguments laid out in those other volumes, An Inconvenient Truth is lucid, harrowing and bluntly effective.

Like Gore's 1992 book Earth in the Balance, this volume displays an earnest, teacherly tone, but it's largely free of the New Age psychobabble and A-student grandiosity that rumbled through that earlier book. The author's wonky fascination with policy minutiae has been tamed in these pages, and his love of charts and graphs has been put to good use. Whereas the charts in Earth in the Balance tended to make the reader's eyes glaze over, the ones here clearly illustrate the human-caused rise in carbon dioxide levels in recent years, the simultaneous rise in Northern Hemisphere temperatures and the correlation between the two. Mr. Gore points out that 20 of the 21 hottest years measured "have occurred within the last 25 years," adding that the hottest year yet was 2005” a year in which "more than 200 cities and towns" in the Western United States set all-time heat records.

Pausing now and then to offer personal asides, Gore methodically lays out the probable consequences of rising temperatures: powerful and more destructive hurricanes fueled by warmer ocean waters (2005, the year of Katrina, was not just a record year for hurricanes but also saw unusual flooding in places like Europe and China); increased soil moisture evaporation, which means drier land, less productive agriculture and more fires; and melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, which would lead to rising ocean levels, which in turn would endanger low-lying regions of the world from southern Florida to large portions of the Netherlands.

Gore does a cogent job of explaining how global warming can disrupt delicate ecological balances, resulting in the spread of pests (like the pine beetle, whose migration used to be slowed by colder winters), increases in the range of disease vectors (including mosquitoes, ticks and fleas), and the extinction of a growing number of species.

Already, he claims, a study shows that "polar bears have been drowning in significant numbers" as melting Arctic ice forces them to swim longer and longer distances, while other studies indicate that the population of Emperor penguins "has declined by an estimated 70 percent over the past 50 years."

The book contains some oversimplifications. While Gore observes that the United States is currently responsible for more greenhouse gas pollution than South America, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, Japan and Asia combined, he underplays the daunting increase in emissions that a rapidly growing China will produce in the next several decades. And in an effort to communicate the message that something can still be done about global warming, he resorts, in the book's closing pages, to some corny invocations of America's can-do, put-a-man-on-the-moon spirit.

For the most part, however, Gore's stripped-down narrative emphasizes facts over emotion, common sense over portentous predictions” an approach that proves considerably more persuasive than the more alarmist one assumed, say, by Tim Flannery in The Weather Makers. Mr. Gore shows why environmental health and a healthy economy do not constitute mutually exclusive choices, and he enumerates practical steps that can be taken to reduce carbon emissions to a point below 1970's levels.

Gore writes as a popularizer of other people's research and ideas. But in this multimedia day of shorter attention spans and high-profile authors, An Inconvenient Truth (the book and the movie) could play a similar role in galvanizing public opinion about a real and present danger. It could goad the public into reading more scholarly books on the subject, and it might even push awareness of global warming to a real tipping point” and beyond.

Film

Thank You for Smoking

The concept of journalistic balance is premised is on the notion that there are two sides to every story, but what happens when one of those sides is wrong? For tobacco lobbyist Aaron Eckhart, the deliciously fatuous hero of Thank You For Smoking, that's never an issue: "The beauty of argument," he says with a grin, "is that if you argue correctly, you're never wrong."

Based on Christopher Buckley's satirical novel, the film could apply to many of the issues of the day, from the war in Iraq to illegal wiretapping to Guantanamo—any subject in which the facts are vulnerable to obfuscation. Smoking just happens to be the most pointed example: Cigarettes are proven killers, yet they continue to be made available to consumers, an ongoing phenomenon owed mainly to lobbyists convincing politicians to allow their constituents to be poisoned. In this deeply cynical yet piercing comedy, the truth always runs a distant second to political gamesmanship.    

Ideally cast as a smug operator not unlike his character from In The Company Of Men, Eckhart proudly declares himself the face of cigarettes, spinning away on behalf of a lobbying group bankrolled by Big Tobacco. Along with drinking buddies Maria Bello and David Koechner—who represent the alcohol and firearms lobby, respectively—Eckhart styles himself as a "Merchant Of Death" (together, they're "the M.O.D. Squad"), but public contempt ricochets off him. With the industry facing heavy losses in court rulings and a decline in its core users, Eckhart hatches a plan to boost sales by putting cigarettes into Hollywood movies. Over his ex-wife's objections, Eckhart takes his impressionable son (Cameron Bright) out to Los Angeles to see what dad does for a living. Meanwhile, a Washington reporter (Katie Holmes) tries to profile Eckhart for a major newspaper, but the two quickly find ways to compromise the story.     

Much like his father Ivan (Ghostbusters), first-time director Jason Reitman has a broad, anything-goes comedic sensibility that allows silly gags and incidental humor to sneak in alongside the satirical barbs. His generosity leads to a memorable gallery of supporting performances: J.K. Simmons as the boorish head of Eckhart's lobbying group, William H. Macy as a strident anti-smoking senator from Vermont, Rob Lowe as a Hollywood super-agent with an Asian fetish, and a scene-stealing Adam Brody as Lowe's motor-mouthed lackey. Not all of the elements come together—the romantic subplot with Holmes comes with an obvious hitch, and the film ends with a shrug—but Thank You For Smoking has an unrelenting energy that never pauses for moral tongue-clucking. Think one look from his son's innocent eyes will convince Eckhart to change his ways? Not a chance.

Music

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

On paper, Bruce Springsteen's The Seeger Sessions seems like a terrible idea: traditional American folksongs paid hyper-reverent homage by one of rock'n'roll's most earnest performers, an attempt to transform campfire songs into sermons and anoint sweet, old, cord-cutting Pete Seeger high priest of Americana. Instead, this collection—consisting of songs Seeger has sung, but none he's written—is a boisterous, spirit-raising throwdown, conjured by a 12-man band (guitar, harmonica, tuba, violin, B3 organ, upright bass, banjo, piano, drums, accordion, trombone, saxophone, trumpet, and more) and a pack of grinning backup singers. Perhaps ironically, Bruce Springsteen—one of America's most-adored songsmiths—is soaring high on a record full of tracks other people wrote.

On The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen growls, warbles, groans, and gags, sounding often like Tom Waits (check the scratchy, ominous vocals on "Erie Canal") or later Bob Dylan. It's a stark contrast to Seeger's crisp, clear pipes, and it reinvigorates a handful of ancient American tracks. Like any good folk record, The Seeger Sessions tackles the tangle of war, strife, poverty, and unrest, but does so without sacrificing joy or release (really, the very reasons people began singing in the first place). The resulting collection happily drowns out echoes of Springsteen's underwhelming recent efforts, and just might be the very best and most inspiring album Bruce has produced in more than a decade.

Embracing early E Street shuffle and ditching the solemnity of 2005's Devils and Dust, The Seeger Sessions culls from a century of rich, gritty Americana tradition, from bluegrass to country to rhythm and blues to gospel, rock'n'roll, Zydeco, Dixieland, and more. Springsteen is an obvious descendent of folk tradition, but, as he writes in the record's liner notes, this is "street corner music, parlor music, tavern music, wilderness music, circus music, church music, gutter music." Or: The Seeger Sessions is a party record.

Clawing through Seeger's considerable catalog, Springsteen ultimately selected a smart, varied, and cohesive smattering of songs, proving he retains a deep and nuanced understanding of folk tradition. In a recent New Yorker profile of Seeger, Springsteen talks about folk songs as tools with potential to become "righteous implements when connected to historical consciousness," and claims to have chosen this particular repertoire because, "Everything I wanted, I found there." Appropriately, Spingsteen's voice seems custom-made for tracks like "We Shall Overcome," where his signature gravity spreads shivers, destined to silence even the most jaded listeners with its convincing optimism. Written in 1905, "Erie Canal" (sealed comfortably in the consciousness of any kid born or raised in western New York), is ominous and hypnotizing, with banjo picks punctuated by organs, strings, and an unexpected Dixieland breakdown midway through—it's not hard to imagine whole arenas shouting, "Low bridge, everybody down!"

The gorgeously explosive "O Mary Don't You Weep" cracks open with teasing fiddles, before horns and drums kick up and Springsteen's throaty shouts are rounded out by a bevy of backing singers, organs sliding in and out, a gloriously sloppy mélange of sound, as indebted to New Orleans as it is to Newport. Springsteen's voice is gravelly and real, happily divorced from the overproduction and studio tweaking that plagues his recent work, and perfectly in sync with his band's raucous, gleeful pounding. Everyone here is loose and intoxicated, and nowhere else is the record's quasi-live conceit (the record was made in three day-long sessions, preceded by no rehearsals) as gloriously palpable.

Springsteen has a habit of folding current events into his songs without ever being specific enough to limit a verse to a single time and place. Unsurprisingly, that timelessness syncs up perfectly with the centuries-old songs on The Seeger Sessions, and, if nothing else, confirms that Bruce Springsteen was the right (and maybe only) person for this particular gig. Less an exhumation than a celebration, The Seeger Sessions is the best proof we've got that America's folksongs are also our finest artifacts. It's all here: recipes, prayers, promises, fears, hopes, and hollers.