But ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ has a
message for President George W. Bush
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Gersh Kuntzman
Newsweek
Updated: 5:44 p.m. ET May 28,
2004
May 28 - How do I know that George W. Bush can actually
be defeated in November? Simple, I've just seen the big summer blockbuster
movie.
That may not sound like the best way to determine the president's
vulnerability—after all, summer blockbusters typically concern themselves with
high body counts rather than high approval ratings—but this time, the summer
blockbuster is "The Day After Tomorrow," a rabidly pro-environment, anti-Bush
lecture released by Twentieth Century Fox.
Let's put that another way:
when conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch releases a movie that depicts
President Bush as little more than a vapid pawn of Vice President Dick Cheney
and decries him for, of all things, his environmental policies, you
know the president is in trouble.
And what a movie this is! With
its unassailable B-movie pedigree—its director, Roland Emmerich, also helmed the
timeless classic "Independence Day"—"The Day after Tomorrow" is nothing if not
action packed. The special effects are terrifying! The close-ups are extreme!
Computer monitors are always beeping incessantly! Polar ice caps are breaking
off in continent-sized chunks! Product placements are really obvious! (The hero
scientist drives a fuel-efficient Honda.)
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And
the arguments between scientists and the government officials are extremely
bitter! And scientists are all heroes while the small-minded, myopic, government
officials are all, well, small-minded, myopic, Bush administration officials who
spout things like, "With all due respect, Dr. Hall, but our economy is just as
fragile as the environment." (Cut to footage of the entire Northern Hemisphere
turning into an ice cube!)
And just tell me another summer blockbuster
that has the guts to slam the White House for pulling out of the Kyoto Accord
(extra credit if any of the target audience of 12- to 18-year-old boys knows
that the Kyoto Accord is a treaty to reduce greenhouse gases and not some new
Honda sedan).
A brief plot summary follows (avert your eyes if you are so
unschooled in summer blockbusters that you don't know how such movies will end
from the minute you sit down): National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) discovers that the greenhouse
effect is melting the polar ice caps much faster than once anticipated. How
fast? Let's put it this way, by the end of this sentence, the polar ice caps
would have already melted (that's fast). Of course, no one in government—least
of all the vice president, who is played by Dick Cheney look-alike, Kenneth
Welsh—believes him. In fact, they demean his computer models and, worse, his
manhood (yes, that Cheney guy plays rough). Thanks to the tenets of the summer
blockbuster, though, Hall is right about the melting ice caps. The subsequent
glut of fresh water in the oceans shuts down the Gulf Stream and triggers a
worldwide megastorm that doesn't end until the entire Northern Hemisphere is
frozen. The United States is evacuated to Mexico (which seals its border,
forcing millions of Americans to become illegal aliens), the president freezes
to death and the Cheney guy has to give a speech admitting that his
environmental policies have been a disaster (he eats so much crow that we can
only hope he's on the Atkins).
As
fact, this movie is to environmental science what “JFK” was to the grassy knoll.
But as an attack on President Bush, it's as dead on as “The Sorrow and The
Pity.” So naturally, every environmental group on the planet is endorsing it.
MoveOn.org calls it "the movie the White House doesn't want you to see" and Al
Gore has even traded in his day job (which was what, exactly?) to promote it. At
the same time, NASA briefly ordered its scientists to refuse any interview
requests, lest the space agency appear too sympathetic to the hard-working NASA
scientists in the movie who are constantly being ignored by the White House.
(The paleoclimatology program at NOAA is reportedly slated for a real-life Bush
administration budget cut, so maybe NASA's fears of unmuzzling its scientists
were not so absurd.)
Of course, the havoc unleashed by the aliens in
Emmerich's prior (and far better) B-movie is much more likely to happen than an
insta-ice age killing half the planet in an afternoon—but that's sort of the
point. (Unlike the pissed-off aliens of "Independence Day," Emmerich seems to be
saying, we Earthlings at least have the power to stop destroying the planet by
ourselves). Global climate change is happening—and if it takes a horrendously
inaccurate, ham-handed, cheesy summer movie to point it out, that's good enough
for me.
And, apparently, Rupert Murdoch. "Part of the reason we made
this movie," said Mark Gordon, one of its producers, "was to raise consciousness
about the environment."
What's next? Well, if Murdoch suddenly buys the
rights to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," we should all get used to the
phrase "President Kerry."
* * *
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Gersh Kuntzman is also Brooklyn Bureau Chief of
the New York Post (full disclosure: The New York Post is also owned by Rupert
Murdoch's News Corporation). His website is at http://www.gersh.tv