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According to the film, we are indeed living
in the age of stupid. There are increasing numbers of environmental problems,
yet countries like China and the United States are consuming more fossil fuel,
accelerating the problems related to the dearth of energy sources. The Brazilian
government is investing more on developing the Amazon rainforest, which poses
significant impact on the ecosystem of South America, and the desertification
process is deteriorating the living conditions in Northern Africa.
Nevertheless, at least for now, such situations don’t seem to improve.
In this film, age of stupid, an unnamed
archivist, living in 2055, shows several incidents in the past that is related
with Earth’s environment. This archivist mentions his archive footage as ‘when
we could have saved ourselves’. He tells his story with mainly 6 groups of
people: Al Duvernay-a resident of New Orleans, Jehangir Wadia-an Indian
businessman, Jamila and Adnan- two Iraqi children, Fernand Pareau-an eighty two
years old man who works as a guide on the Mont Blanc glacier in France, Piers
and Lisa Guy- a British couple who is interested in wind power, and Layefa
Malemi, a Nigerian woman who struggles with poverty despite the wealth of oil
in her country.
From these characters, I could figure out a
common problem: lack of proper information was the common factor for the environmental
problems we could see in the clip. According to the Nigerian women, media
reports its country as prosperous due to oil industry, but in reality, she is
in destitute condition. Though the U.S. government commented Iraq war as an act
for world peace, it was actually an act of oil savaging. The family, who were
with the Mont-Blanc guide, seemed surprised by the fact that lots of snow
melted in Alps, indicating that general people might not have realized the condition
of Alps. Furthermore, if people had realized the importance and the process of
wind energy, the British couple could have won the court. Moreover, Al
Duvernay and Jehangir Wadia do not seem to have proper knowledge about the
impacts their companies pose on environment, even though they know it is
important to protect Earth.
With this, I argue that the role of media
is extremely crucial. Solving Earth issues is difficult since our actions do
not immediately impact our daily lives. To illustrate, if we dump trash in a
river, we don’t shower with the water we dumped our trash. This is the reason
why media, in which we encounter almost every day in our life through
television or internet, is crucial in making us realize about such problems.
Associating the 6 groups of people, if media were able to spread accurate information,
that Iraq war was an action for gaining oil, or Nigerians are not living in
wealth in contrast with its country, more people could have realized such
problems and could have prevented the disastrous catastrophes in 2055.
Unfortunately, media tend to conceal some
crucial facts, because of governmental pressure or fear that it would arouse
public anger. In fact, lots of information about the environment is distorted.
For instance, there are rumors that data that support global warming is
miscalculated. To add, when there was a hydrogen fluoride gas emission in Korea
recently, Search Engine ‘Naver’ actually shut down all the news related to
hydrogen fluoride gas emission so that it won’t become a hot issue.
Media, by definition, is a tool used to
store or deliver information or data. It is evident that its role is to let
people know the right information. Right now at this moment, in contrast with
the archivist, we should consider more on how we can save ourselves, rather
than when we could have saved ourselves. Media should not be the one that makes
us stupid with distorted fact. Instead media should press accurate information
that will help citizens realize the seriousness about the earth’s condition.
With it definitely is possibility for the situations to improve.
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