Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Splattergate: Team stupid



By my count, on six pages of youtube, there have been 979,854 views of the "no pressure" movie, tantalisingly short of the million mark - but up on the 600,000 count measured yesterday.

It it really rather telling that eco-fascist Adam Vaughan over at The Guardian cannot cope with the idea that the movie has gone viral. He is only prepared to state in his piece that "it has received over 170,000 views on YouTube and postings on countless other sites" - and that was at a time when it was well over the 600,000 mark.

Vaughan is turning out to be a classic example of warmist denial. The film, he says, was "intended as a tongue-in-cheek spoof of hectoring greens, shows schoolkids, office workers, football manager David Ginola and actor Gillian Anderson being blown up for not signing up to cut their carbon emissions". Not a few commentators rather dispute that version and even greenie-queen Jo Abbess is a little miffed.

"In a critical stage of the the battle to win hearts and minds with a massive global campaign," she writes, "Franny Armstrong has decided to blow up every ounce of credibility she has ever earned by agreeing to produce what has to be the most repulsive, sick little film in the entire universe." She adds: "So much for decades of trying to convince people that the green movement isn’t all about world domination through domestic fascism and mind control."

Of course, The Guardian is "media partner" to the rapidly sinking 10:10 organisation, which somewhat constrains its coverage - "distorts", some might say. But it might do well to read its own copy, in its own original launch article, where we find an interview with Franny Armstrong:
"Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody's existence on this planet? Clearly we don't really think they should be blown up, that's just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?" jokes 10:10 founder and Age of Stupid film maker Franny Armstrong.

But why take such a risk of upsetting or alienating people, I ask her: "Because we have got about four years to stabilise global emissions and we are not anywhere near doing that. All our lives are at threat and if that's not worth jumping up and down about, I don't know what is."

"We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure – a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change," she adds.
Oddly, there is no suggestion there that the film is "intended as a tongue-in-cheek spoof of hectoring greens ...".

Then, however, Damian Carrington wrote: "The public reaction to the film will be fascinating – please add yours below," referring to the comments section ... which is now closed. And of course, subsequent comment columns are open only to a dwindling band of believes as the eco-fascist moderators move in to pre-moderate (i.e., exclude) critical commentators. It really is interesting how greenery and censorship go so comfortably hand-in-hand.

As for the genius behind the film, "It amazes me that my life is so much more meaningful than what was planned for it …" says Franny Armstrong, in another gushing Guardian interview. But she is being interviewed in a pavement cafe, to avoid the noise and frenetic activity from her own staff who, prophetically, she calls "Team Stupid". Well, she said it, and who are we to disagree?

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