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Hollywood's religion -- fundamental environmentalism Opinion by Scott Holleran
The plot presumes environmentalist premises, which leads to wildly irrational notions that the world will end in a week's worth of climate change. What man might do to prevent the end of the world is left unanswered, though a government-subsidized electric car does make an appearance. With computer-generated imagery, blowing up the world is easier to portray than raising taxes, outlawing SUVs and regulating each aspect of human existence, from changing diapers and taking out the garbage to building roads, houses and shopping centers. People are the primary problem with "The Day After Tomorrow," which insists that human life is not the standard of value. Instead, the Earth is an end in itself, so the people who move about in the movie are like robots wired with ecology's corollary view, multiculturalism -- they feel, they speak, they act and they don't matter. Humans are depicted strictly as the Earth's inhabitants, a means to the end of Earth as God. "The Day After Tomorrow" trivializes people by stripping them of any claim to interact with the environment in which they live. Wolves attack, trees are holy shrines, the air must never be altered. The environment can never be changed, shaped, altered -- except for man, who must serve as Earth's lowest slave. The cast of "The Day After Tomorrow" are barely recognizable as humans: They are sacrificial lambs for Mother Earth, paying for the sin of driving an SUV. Much of this recycled trash is laughable and it is tempting to dismiss "The Day After Tomorrow" as an overproduced Hollywood spectacle. But there is something sinister about a movie that shamelessly exploits the memory of Sept. 11, 2001, with people stranded on rooftops, plunging airplanes and New York as the epicenter of destruction for its own sake. The helplessness, as against greatness, of humanity is Hollywood's worst stock in trade -- from lesbian serial killers to endless portrayals of drug addicts. It's surprising that it took so long for environmentalist propaganda to make its way into major motion pictures. At its core, "The Day After Tomorrow" dramatizes its faith that Earth is better off without man -- we have it coming. The world's wretched people and the world are not worth saving if these dolts who represent humankind are tossed into the perfect eco-storm. With no trace of irony, Roland Emmerich, who also wrote the script, lets an astronaut deliver his anti-technological theme that man -- particularly Western man -- deserves to be ruined. The German-born director also depicts the end of the United States of America with relish. "The Day After Tomorrow" is a homily brought forth by true believers, with its deity revealed in the movie's final image. That the masses are already on their knees in the Church of Environmentalism doesn't make "The Day After Tomorrow" any less fallacious or monstrous -- or totally, 100 percent faith-based. Scott Holleran (scottholleran@mac.com) is a freelance writer in California.
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