There’s been plenty of coverage in the land of blog on the 10:10 video short that was rapidly withdrawn. That it has all gone tits up is amusing to those of us who do not worship at the feet of Gaia. On the face of it, the greenies have committed a massive faux pas, shooting themselves in both feet. But, have they?
One suggestion made (and I don’t recall where, exactly) is that the whole thing was a double bluff. That the film was deliberately awful and that removing it was planned all along as part of an inverse marketing strategy. That it has gone viral achieves the ultimate aim; to get everyone talking about the campaign. Well, that objective was certainly achieved. And, the 10:10 people deny the double bluff. I can’t help wondering though if that isn’t a double bluff as well. I mean, if it was planned that way all along, the denials would also have been planned. They would say that, wouldn’t they, to coin a cliché.
As for the film itself, it was supposed to be funny, apparently. Now, I consider my own humour to be fairly well developed – if somewhat on the dry side – but I didn’t find it funny. Not even a slight twitch of the smile muscles. Maybe it’s just me but I have never found blowing people up amusing – where’s the wit? Where’s the clever wordplay? Where’s the sharp observation? Where is the absurdity? Blunt instruments do not make good comedy. Sorry, but on the humour scale, it registered in multiple minus figures. It was about as unfunny as Two pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps or the execrable Inbetweeners. Which, I guess, tells us much about Richard Curtis. I’m beginning to suspect that Blackadder was an exception rather than the rule.
So, in summary, a climate campaign group produced a dreadful film that failed in its core purpose and failed in any way to be funny. The question, then, is did we fall for a massive con-trick and are they giggling at our gullibility?
Possibly a double bluff but Hanlon’s Razor suggests otherwise. I suspect the Gaiaists have just grown so confident that sceptics are generally disliked that they felt they could depict the lives of sceptics, or even those who were simply a bit indifferent, as being so without value or worth that they wouldn’t be missed if they were got rid of. I think they are so convinced of their cause they simply didn’t see the obvious parallels, and you don’t have to go near the limits of Godwin’s Law when there are a heap of examples of regimes treating dissent or unwillingness as a good reason to dispose of someone as casually as taking out the garbage. Sure, that’s not just stupid but also requires industrial grade hubris, but their industry/religion pretty much runs on that. Of course it could be a clever ruse but there are very powerful reasons for thinking they probably just stuffed up and let the mask slip.
If it is a double bluff then it has gone horribly wrong. I hear Plod is investigating on behalf of Tottenham’s supporters’ rather large Jewish contingent.
The film was sick and I really hope they get dragged through the fire for it.
I don’t think it was a double bluff, I honestly have seen little evidence that these people are so subtle. You only have to go onto various pro warming environmental sites to see that there are fanatics out there who actually do believe that a bout of genocide is necessary to protect the planet. They are utterly convinced despite an ever growing body of evidence that the planet is doomed unless we go back to a medieval economy (with a high technocratic “green” elite governing us) and a massive die off in human numbers.
Yeah, I know, but it was so awful and frankly so predictably awful, that I couldn’t help wondering. Did no one at any point in the process pose the obvious point that it would be counter productive? Or are dissenting voices within their own ranks cut off too?
Not that I have a problem with the mask slipping. The more the merrier on that score.
I disagree about it not being funny in any way. When I started to watch it, I laughed out loud, because to me it seemed like a very over-the-top and vicious (but very funny) attack on the Green Movement, by people who really hate it, for its thinly veiled barbarism, both in its argumentative style and in its ambitions for (i.e. against) Western (now rapidly becoming Global) Civilisation.
The two best jokes were at the beginning and at the end. The school teacher was really sweet and cuddly and nice, until she murdered the heroic dissidents. Hah!! And the Scully actress muttering (just before also being squelched by the recording twat) about what shits they were to demand even more that free voice-overs from her, that was funny too, I thought.
Humour is of course subjective. But I really did find this very funny. So to that small extent it really was funny. I’m not saying you should have laughed, just that I did, and still do.
And all the funnier, for me, was (and is) that the stupidly deluded people who made this thing were viciously attacking themselves.
But I do agree, not funny in the way they meant it to be. Had I been a Greenie watching it, I’d not have been at all amused. Although apparently even some of them thought it funny, for the idiot reasons Angry Exile refers to.
They never seem to do any volunteering on that score. Odd, that. Clearly not dedicated enough.
So, Brian, you laughed for the wrong reasons eh?
I have written about this and yes, absolutely they planned a viral marketing campaign (why wouldn’t they?). But, the vehicle was meant to be the humourless and po-faced who would be outraged by exploding children. Observe the jokey warning at the beginning of the film about exploding jelly and bananas and the follow up ‘behind the scenes’ film with the excited children covered in fake blood. These were inserted to manage the exploding children perception. However, judging by comments and blog posts almost no one was upset by this.
They clearly failed to audience test this film and ended up managing the perception; ‘OMG. They are exploding children’, whereas the real audience perception was; ‘OMG. They want to kill us’ and the film appears to confirm this preconception.
I believe that the idea of it being a double bluff was Leg-Iron’s.
As for Blackadder being an exception, Blackadder I wasn’t very funny at all and was mostly written by Curtis. For Blackadder II, Ben Elton was brought in and Blackadder II was far and away funnier than the 1st series.
That’s strange, I only really enjoyed the very first series, the Black Adder. The Elizabethan one was the worst. As for the 1010 film, it’s deeply horrible.
Thank you you’ve finally jogged the right brain cells so thinks clicked as to what it reminded me of. Surely it was really just a homage to Monty Python’s “How not to be seen”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zekiZYSVdeQ
Ah, yes, great minds and all that… Or is it fools seldom differ?
On the matter of Blackadder, I liked series 2 the best and series 1 the least.
I didn’t find this film offensive at all. Rather, I found it puerile, stupid, unfunny, ill-conceived and evidently self-defeating. As I am not offended by the children being blown up I presume that there’s something wrong with me…
Longrider,the double bluff idea occurred to me shortly after I’d written to my MP. Then I thought about it and went ‘Nah.’ If the 10:10 lot were smart enough for a subterfuge that Machiavellian, they’d have made it differently.
The parodies are already hitting YouTube.
“Did no one at any point in the process pose the obvious point that it would be counter productive?”
In my experience, greenies and the left in general don’t think anything through at all. I think it was in Affluenza that the author seriously suggested valuing all privately-owned homes, then knocking a nought off so working class families could afford to buy one.
They seriously don’t understand anything about unintended consequences.
The point surely is whether this – whatever it actually is -is going to make people believe in “climate change”. Has anybodies mind been changed or is it likely to be?
I honestly can’t see it as anything other than self indulgent, risible shite no matter what perspective I try to take.
Whenever I see an advert that really misses the mark, as this does, I attribute it to cocaine.