{"id":1787,"date":"2008-07-15T04:00:21","date_gmt":"2008-07-15T09:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/07\/15\/stories-of-sizzling-science\/"},"modified":"2008-07-15T04:00:21","modified_gmt":"2008-07-15T09:00:21","slug":"stories-of-sizzling-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/15\/stories-of-sizzling-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Stories of Sizzling Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

So why didn’t I think of this? Marine-biologist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olson<\/a> has a new movie coming out — Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy<\/em><\/a> — and has asked a bunch of bloggers to simultaneously post reviews, to generate some buzz out there on the internets. (Full listing here<\/a>.) Next time I have a movie coming out, I’ll have to come up with something even more clever.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I’ve met Randy a couple of times, and he handed me a review copy of the DVD (premiere is this Saturday) at the conclusion of an enjoyable Mexican dinner with a bunch of local science\/media folks. None of this, of course, compromises my unswerving devotion to completely objective fairness, but the rituals must be observed.<\/p>\n

This is a movie with a goal, and it’s fair to ask how well it achieved that goal. To which I would answer: so-so. I thought the execution was a bit rough in spots, to be honest. It was clearly done on a shoestring budget — a running gag was the search for a famous celebrity spokesperson, and a couple of C-list celebs were dutifully trotted out (with captions so you knew they had appeared on TV), but nobody is going to mistake this for a Spielberg film, or even a Michael Moore film.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless: the goal was awesome! Namely (as I see it, maybe Randy would disagree), to make a movie about a scientific topic that would be interesting and perhaps even gripping to an audience that would generally not show up at movies about science. In particular, to make a movie with an actual narrative<\/em> — one with characters, that told a story, all in the service of a scientific purpose. Sizzle<\/em> is not a lecture, nor does it pretend to be. On the contrary, another running gag is the famous inability of scientists to cast their message in the form of a gripping story when they could instead take refuge in data-filled plots and multiply-qualified conditional statements.<\/p>\n

Which is great. Communicating generally, and storytelling specifically, are very particular skills that take a lot of effort to master. Too many scientists don’t think the effort is worth it, or are simply convinced that this is a skill they have already perfected. The best thing about Sizzle<\/em> is that it proves the existence, by construction, of an alternative model. This movie has a story, featuring actual characters, and — best of all — the characters actually learn and grow and change during the course of the film. All in the service of conveying a scientific message!<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I don’t think the message is successfully conveyed. The movie ends up reacting so strongly against the traditional pitfalls of misguided scientific presentations — too much data, too little drama — that it falls victim to the complementary pitfalls. At the end, I wasn’t sure why I should believe that global warming was a real problem, outside of some appeals to authority (these scientists sure are trustworthy, aren’t they?) and emotional gestures (polar bears are cute! the aftermath of Katrina was sad).<\/p>\n

So I commend Randy and the other people involved with Sizzle<\/em> for trying to break the mold of traditional scientific discourse, and for reaching out to new audiences. But I think that there is a tricky balance that has yet to be successfully struck: on the one hand, respecting the science, and being honestly informative without hedging the truth in the service of persuasion; and on the other, telling a compelling story that draws people in without giving them the feeling that they are being forced to eat their vegetables.<\/p>\n

Science is full of drama, excitement, and gripping stories. Making that excitement accessible to the wider world is by no means a simple thing, but it’s worth the effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So why didn’t I think of this? Marine-biologist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olson has a new movie coming out — Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy — and has asked a bunch of bloggers to simultaneously post reviews, to generate some buzz out there on the internets. (Full listing here.) Next time I have a movie coming out, I’ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-the-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}