The 11th Hour is a very powerful, and moving piece. Not only is this piece enlightening, but it also follows Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor's basic stases model. The first question that this stases model answers is the question of fact; in other words, "What is it?" This question is answered throughout the film, but it is strongly mentioned in the beginning when the narrator, experts, and clips show how human society and humans' creations are destroying nature. The experts go into great detail about how if we destroy nature, we will also be destroyed. They do a very good job defining what is currently happening to our earth's climate.
The second stases question in Fahnestock and Secor's model is the question of fact, "How extensive is their use" (Fahnestock 429). This movie shows many facts about our earth. First off, they have evidence to back each one of their claims about the dissolving climate and of the increase in global warming. They tell these facts to the audience, but then they back them up with real life events; for instance, the ice caps are melting. They even show a chart that reflects the change in temperatures that we have witnessed during the last decade. Because these facts are visually seen, and backed up with much evidence, they can be seen as facts.
Next is the question of cause, "What brought them about or what is their history? or What are their effects?" (Fahnestock 429). The question of cause is answered from beginning to end in this movie. The experts, as well as the narrator, state how humans are using too many resources at the same time. This is the main cause for our climate decline. They say how we rely too much on oil and energy, which is causing pollution to be outrageous. Another cause of this problem is the pollution that is going into the ocean. This waste is wrecking our ocean and killing sea life.
The forth stasis is evaluation, "Are they a good or bad policy?" (Fahnestock 429). The answer to this is obvious from the beginning of this movie--no, what is going on now in our world is not a good thing. The pollution is killing our wildlife, and putting all nature at risk. Throughout the whole film, the experts are attempting to sway human beings against doing the things that they are doing, and trying to make the environment more green. They evaluate this issue by showing the negative aspects of the pollution and global warming. One very vivid negative that they mention is the increase in childhood diseases and cancers. The reason this is so vivid is because after mentioning it, we see clips of sick children. This is a very powerful scene that clearly shows that the evaluation of this issue is not good.
The last stasis level question is the proposal, "Should they be continued, expanded, reduced, eliminated?" (Fahnestock 429). The last bit of the movie is really just proposals of what we could do better as a society. They propose many solutions like transferring away from oil use, become a reuse economy, and begin using more energy from the sun. As they said in the movie, there is enough energy in the sun to fuel everything on earth more than once. This definitely seems to be a plausible solution to our problem. The experts also propose the we begin shifting the way we act, and let us know that we do have a choice in our actions.
As Fahnestock and Secor say, "Another way to look at the stases is to see them as sitting between the general outline of an argument, applicable to all arguments regardless of field" (Fahnestock 429). This statements seems to be very true. In their article,"The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument," they seem to be talking about writing arguments, but their stases level questions work wonders for a spoken argument as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment