Now, it’s back in the hands of the scientists who really wanted [I know I wanted] Expelled to bomb hard. Over at ScienceBlogs, there is a heated blog fight going on debating the Creationist doc’s numbers. Poland at MCN’s the Hot Blog had already talked about it yesterday and now Greg Laden, who is taking heat for it:
All this happened, I suppose, because I dared to point out the obvious: Expelled is a success. I mean, it’s the eighth highest grossing political documentary of all time…after its first week. Randy Olson of course knows this, because he’s, like, a filmmaker.
But go ahead, ignore Olson. Keep on firing inward. Beat up on me. Call me (the author of The Republican War on Science) a creationist.
This abuse will not stop me from continuing to call for serious introspection about the massive communication crisis we’re facing in the science world.
I wouldn’t say it was a communication crisis; this is nothing new. Most people are either unaware of evolution or else refuse to believe that not only did we descend from “monkeys” but we are “monkeys.” [I know we’re apes, by the way, just using the commonly mistaken word “monkey” for effect] This must come as a blow to a people who have high regard for themselves in this world, even though we humans have not been here as long as some other, more successful, creatures. Needless to say, it is not surprising to me at all that Expelled would make money and this for two reasons. The first, our standards are movie goers are very low. We see this again and again, so even if the movie was poorly reviewed, which it was, it wouldn’t stop people from seeing it. The second reason it made any money at all WAS the publicity around it and the heavy rotation of those DUMB ads that played during the Colbert Report and the Daily Show – in short, the curiosity factor brought everyone else in. So you have the “tell us what we want to hear” faith-based learners (see, I didn’t insult anyone) and you have the “let me see just how stupid this is” movie goer. The science folks, who already know this, gave the film much more publicity than it otherwise would have gotten. End result? It’s all good. Discussion is good. The more people talk about the film’s hideous and unforgivable assertion that Darwinism caused the Holocaust, hopefully, the more the film’s flimsy message will reveal itself.
