Column: "Ben Stein's Important Movie, Falling Short"
Thursday, 24 April 2006
603 words
By the time Richard Dawkins admits intelligent design was likely, but denies God as a factor in it, the viewer is less pleased than he should be. And that’s too bad, because with its budget and distribution, Expelled could have dealt a much greater blow to the wall erected around Darwinism. As it is, merely a glancing blow.
[1] Stein interview:
603 words
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed begins with stock footage of Germans diving through the barbed wire that was eventually replaced with the Berlin Wall, used to signify the barrier erected between those scientists who swallow Darwinism whole and those who have questions about Man and the planet Earth that Darwinism cannot effectively answer.
“I mean, we basically say it's very hard to believe that something came from nothing and that we don't understand that where gravity came from,” Ben Stein, the movie’s co-writer and star told Glenn Back, “we don't understand where the laws of physics or thermodynamics or fluid motion came from, we don't understand how life came from a mud puddle when there was one that was mud and the next day there was life and then a few billion years later there was man. How did that happen? No Darwinist has ever been able to come close to an explanation.” [1]
Fair enough. But as sure as the Sun will set in the West, we know the broader scientific community has no tolerance for anything other than the strictest adherence to Darwinism (warts and all). So after seeing Expelled I tried to imagine the viewer who wasn’t already aware of the metaphorical wall, who actually was in doubt whether their child would face undue criticism for asking similar questions in a high school or college class, or who wasn’t at least peripherally aware of college professors who were denied tenure, or fired altogether, for raising the question of Intelligent Design. Said another way, I had trouble figuring out why Expelled was made.
Of course, the same could be said for just about every movie hurled into wide release since Gone With the Wind, so perhaps lingering over the “Why?” of things was beside-the-point. Later it occurred to me that “Why?” was an instinctual reaction to disappointment: Stein and company had at their disposal the means to deal a significant intellectual blow to the scientific consensus, but squandered it by insisting on making a modern movie (which is also meant as a broad indictment against contemporary filmmakers).
There is nothing wrong with Expelled that some rewriting and a competent editor couldn’t fix, but because the movie was designed to cut so significantly against the grain, those responsible should have held themselves to a higher standard and thrown the audience more meat. It would have been helpful to hear, “Here is Darwinism as understood and taught, and here is Intelligent Design as advanced.” And to be fair there is some amount of that, but it feels disjointed. Just as your mind whirs to take it in, the film cuts to another position or interview. There is much too much quick editing between these positions and conversations (i.e., modern filmmaking), the end result being that too few arguments are made at sufficient length.
Further distracting is the fact Expelled insists on employing needless animations, little cartoons, dopey songs, and clips from old B movies. They exist to prove various points – and for what it’s worth, does prove them – but too often at the expense of seriousness. About production values Stein has made a point to say Expelled was very expensive to make, as documentaries go, but what good is a large budget when you sacrifice sagacity?
“I mean, we basically say it's very hard to believe that something came from nothing and that we don't understand that where gravity came from,” Ben Stein, the movie’s co-writer and star told Glenn Back, “we don't understand where the laws of physics or thermodynamics or fluid motion came from, we don't understand how life came from a mud puddle when there was one that was mud and the next day there was life and then a few billion years later there was man. How did that happen? No Darwinist has ever been able to come close to an explanation.” [1]
Fair enough. But as sure as the Sun will set in the West, we know the broader scientific community has no tolerance for anything other than the strictest adherence to Darwinism (warts and all). So after seeing Expelled I tried to imagine the viewer who wasn’t already aware of the metaphorical wall, who actually was in doubt whether their child would face undue criticism for asking similar questions in a high school or college class, or who wasn’t at least peripherally aware of college professors who were denied tenure, or fired altogether, for raising the question of Intelligent Design. Said another way, I had trouble figuring out why Expelled was made.
Of course, the same could be said for just about every movie hurled into wide release since Gone With the Wind, so perhaps lingering over the “Why?” of things was beside-the-point. Later it occurred to me that “Why?” was an instinctual reaction to disappointment: Stein and company had at their disposal the means to deal a significant intellectual blow to the scientific consensus, but squandered it by insisting on making a modern movie (which is also meant as a broad indictment against contemporary filmmakers).
There is nothing wrong with Expelled that some rewriting and a competent editor couldn’t fix, but because the movie was designed to cut so significantly against the grain, those responsible should have held themselves to a higher standard and thrown the audience more meat. It would have been helpful to hear, “Here is Darwinism as understood and taught, and here is Intelligent Design as advanced.” And to be fair there is some amount of that, but it feels disjointed. Just as your mind whirs to take it in, the film cuts to another position or interview. There is much too much quick editing between these positions and conversations (i.e., modern filmmaking), the end result being that too few arguments are made at sufficient length.
Further distracting is the fact Expelled insists on employing needless animations, little cartoons, dopey songs, and clips from old B movies. They exist to prove various points – and for what it’s worth, does prove them – but too often at the expense of seriousness. About production values Stein has made a point to say Expelled was very expensive to make, as documentaries go, but what good is a large budget when you sacrifice sagacity?
By the time Richard Dawkins admits intelligent design was likely, but denies God as a factor in it, the viewer is less pleased than he should be. And that’s too bad, because with its budget and distribution, Expelled could have dealt a much greater blow to the wall erected around Darwinism. As it is, merely a glancing blow.
[1] Stein interview:
last accessed 22 April 2008
posted by Brian S. Wise | 8:04 AM
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