The Politics of Accuracy in Judging Global Warming Films

Abstract

15/07/13 MEB. Accepted for pub., OK to pub

Decades Away orThe Day After Tomorrow?: Rhetoric, Film, and the Global Warming Debate

“…This rhetorical strategy, however, is uniquely germane to scientific discourses around a fictional film, and is not readily available in discussions about scientific documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth. Mellor (2009) argues that global warming documentaries are inherently hamstrung by questions of accuracy because they rely on simulations, demonstrations of events that have not yet happened. Therefore, a film like An Inconvenient Truth will not pass scientific muster in many of its depicted metonymic connections (e.g.…”

The Toxic Screen: Visions of Petrochemical America in HBO'sTrue Detective(2014)

“…A majority of scholarship on representations of ecological destruction focuses on either explicitly proenvironmental films (Hammond & Breton, ; Mellor, ; Rosteck & Frentz, ; Salvador & Norton, ; Von Burg, ) or still images in news reporting, advertising, photographs, and children's fiction (Corbett, ; Dobrin & Morey, ; Slawter, ; Wolfe, ). But, one reason to attend to the toxic screen is that television has been recently flooded with toxic images of pollution and economic maldevelopment.…”

Navigating US greenways: US political reflections inAn Inconvenient Truth

“…From it, Hollywood produced the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (Gore 2006;Guggenheim 2006), detailing anthropogenic global warming and its dire planetary consequences. The film swept the nation and the world, winning numerous awards, aiding Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize co-win (Norwegian Nobel Committee 2007), inspiring public concern and local action (Rootes 2007;Johnson 2009;Mellor 2009), and producing the "Al Gore Effect" (Jacobsen 2011). Many credit it key to raising US global warming awareness (Demos 2008;Galehouse 2008;Peirce 2008).…”

“…Many credit it key to raising US global warming awareness (Demos 2008;Galehouse 2008;Peirce 2008). Clearly, although a political film (Mellor 2009), it enjoyed widespread appeal. Though created and narrated by a clear political partisan, its mass US popularity suggests that An Inconvenient Truth likely appealed to members of diverse social groups, including perhaps multiple (US) political ideologies.…”

“…The current study offers an analysis of a political film (Mellor 2009) by a wellknown US politician on a highly contested US political matter. Therefore, the conceptual definition of ideology most appropriate to this analysis is that of US political ideology, and all references to ideology refer to US political ideology exclusively.…”