If this is how stoked people can get in 2009 about a 2012 movie, what will happen in 2012?
Will we be totally over it? Can it get more hysterical?
Believe me, we’re all quite hot under the collar now. Articles are appearing from NASA, National Geographic, the BBC, the Telegraph, etc etc…and that is in addition to the squillions of twitter comments, articles on blog, Webzines and forums all over the Internetz.
(I know because we track references to 2012 on themgharris.com and because I set up a Twitterfeed based on a search for ‘mayan’ AND ‘2012’.)
The world is going to end! The world isn’t going to end!
Which could it be?
The 2012 movie crew are getting flak from some quarters for stirring the fear. Well, if they’d taken an Al Gore-style approach to a doom-laden catastrophe-scenario and produced a documentary with Science Data And Evryfin, like ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, I’d be angry too. That would be lame and silly at best, dangerous and irresponsible at worst.
But – unlike a few wingnuts who’ve inhaled too much sherbert – they didn’t. They made a daft-as-a-brush-and-twice-as-fun megablockbuster, a disaster movie in which clearly at some point they’ve thought, ‘Screw it. Let’s blow everything up.’
It isn’t Bergman, that’s for sure. But you could probably tell that from the poster.
If you want to see some of these frankly hilarious wingnut films, check out the video section of mayan2012kids.com. Mainly these films are sitting on YouTube not harming anyone. I have to say that if you lose sleep over what you see ranted about on YouTube then you deserve it. Although some of the clips are from the History Channel. Naughty, smack you, History Channel!
The very best article I’ve read so far comes from Rod Liddle, a columnist for The Spectator (The UK’s equivalent of The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine with intellectual, political-right leanings.) His column this week discusses 2012 hysteria as part of a general passion of hand-wringers for apocalypse, now. If it isn’t that society is going to hell in a hand-basket, it’s that we’re all doomed because of global warming global cooling climate change, ancient prophecies of catastrophe or even the mysterious disappearance of honeybees. Don’t worry though. It wouldn’t matter if all the bees died.
Well if you’ve ever had to listen to a passionate Warmist over dinner, you may have had the thought ‘they’re having so much fun. What a spoilsport I’d be to ruin it with actual scientific evidence and rational thought.’
You would be a rotten spoilsport. As Rod Liddle writes, “The bee holocaust myth is just another example of our strange yearning for catastrophe.”
We need to believe in catastrophe, like we need ghost stories, monsters and the paranormal. Doesn’t make it any more real.
Again, I’m with Liddle on the climate change thing. As Rod Liddle puts it, ‘My own view of climate change — or global warming as it used to be called, before the evangelists changed tack when they realised everything wasn’t getting warmer — is absolutely open. I am a little sceptical of man-made climate change because, for me, the raw statistics do not quite add up, but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. And I also reckon that most of the stuff urged upon us in order to address climate change makes sense for other environmental reasons anyway.’
All the same, it’s eerie to watch insane notion, like 2012 doom, being taken seriously enough that big news organisations feel the need to refute it.
Hey guys, you are intruding on MY territory – the world of make-believe!
It makes me wonder how seriously anyone should take them on issues like climate change. Or politics.
Because the truth is, some clever publicists have hooked into the irrational fears of the public, into a segment of people who have by now swallowed so much Warmist garbage that choking down a bit more unscientific or New Age daftness will be very easy. They’ve made a viral marketing campaign so successful that it’s tricked all those serious news agencies into publicizing the movie.
It couldn’t have been done though, if people weren’t already primed.
If my turn ever comes to speak to the media about 2012, you know what line I’m taking. And you know what, if you listen to what Emmerich et al are actually saying in interviews, it’s the same thing. 2012 simply represents a generalised fear of the end – a fear that is pretty old.
Remember St John and the Book of Revelations?
One reply on “The world loves a catastrophe – 2012 movie hysteria”
Hating to let science get in the way of a good conspiracy theory, but talking to a beekeeper the other day – he told me that part of the problem is the increase in cash crops such as rape (we’ve all noticed how yellow the countryside looks in May these days) rape causes the honey to crystalize in the hives and this in turn causes the bees to die. Of course there’s onther factors too – always are. But I thought it was intersting.
BTW – enjoying this series of blog posts – sounds like my sort of film!