I’m not surprised

That new Darwin film, Creation (reviews here and here) doesn’t look like it will get to my neighborhood theater — it hasn’t got a US distributor, for familiar reasons.

A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer.

Creation, starring Briton Paul Bettany, details the naturalist’s “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote On the Origin of Species.

It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God after the death of his daughter, Annie, 10.

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere today. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors turned down the film that will prove divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll taken in February, only 39 per cent of people believe in the theory of evolution.

Movieguide.org, an influential site that reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as “a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder”. His “half-baked theory” influenced Adolf Hitler and led to “atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering”, the site stated.

Although, to be fair, this is only part of the story. One reason it probably isn’t getting picked up is that it isn’t a blockbuster story — it’s a small film with a personal story. That’s not to say it’s a bad movie, but it’s not a Michael Bay noisemaker with car chases and explosions, or giant robots, or a remake of a 1970s cheesy TV show. That makes it a tougher sell.

Also, while it’s going to generate a little controversy from the know-nothing brigades, it’s not a movie that embraces the controversy and makes a lot of PR waves. I suspect it’s falling into the valley of the dead movies, where it’s got just enough negative vibe to turn away a segment (a small, stupid segment, of course, but theaters don’t care about the IQ of the people buying popcorn) of the population, but not enough shock value to make it a must-see movie for the controversy alone.

Roger Ebert doesn’t review Creation

There’s a new movie coming out about Darwin that does something different: instead of talking about the science of evolution, it’s about Darwin’s personal life. Roger Ebert has seen it and offers a few thoughts on the subject matter (it isn’t a review, though!), and it sounds interesting — I’ll be seeing it if it appears in Morris, which isn’t likely, or when it’s available on DVD, which is much more likely. I’m not worried that it will provide comfort to creationists, but I am a little concerned that it may Hollywoodize history a little bit.

Ebert points out that it focuses on the difficulties he had with religion, and how it colored his marriage and work. I don’t know how well it represents reality, though. It’s a lens we use to look back on the 19th century, but it may not be entirely fair to Darwin’s views.

Fearing to offend his wife, he was shy about extending his belief to the evolution of mankind itself, but it is certainly what he privately thought. He denied being a atheist, but said agnosticism came close to reflecting his views. Apart from his research and ideas about science, that conflict in this marriage and with the conventional religious of his times was the most significant thing about him.

I have my doubts that the conflict with religion was a major issue with Darwin. He avoided it very effectively, and did not make public pronouncements on religious belief. He differed from his wife’s opinion, but here’s the thing: there isn’t the slightest hint in any of his writings that he was even tempted to disagree with Emma, and the impression I get is that at every step his priority was to accommodate his ideas with his wife’s beliefs.

Yes, I said it: Charles Darwin was an accommodationist.

I don’t think the most significant thing in his life was the conflict with religion at all — his family and his happy relationship with his wife and children was #1, and I don’t think ‘conflict’ was a word that applied (although, of course, it would have to be emphasized in a movie).

It also leaves something out: Darwin himself said that his greatest talent was as a businessman. Over his lifetime, he invested carefully and wisely and grew a small seed of money given at his marriage into a huge fortune. If anyone wants to sort out what contributed most to his scientific work, I think that fact should loom much larger than a slight tension on matters of religion in which he always deferred to his wife.

Here Comes Science!

I got a letter from John F — you know, John Flansburgh, of They Might Be Giants — and he says, “We’ve got this new album coming out that you might like, want me to send you a copy?”, and so I nonchalantly type back, “Sure, here’s my address,” which was really hard to do when you understand that I was dancing jigglety-pigglety in my chair, pumping my fists in the air, and shouting “WOO-HOO!” at the same time. It would have been impossible except for my blogging superpowers. (Oh, yeah…I’m a TMBG fanboi.)

I got the album Here Comes Science the other day, and it is fabulous. It’s kids’ music, so it’s catchy and a teeny-tiny bit didactic, but don’t let that put you off — I’ve loaded it onto my iPod and am enjoying it all the time. It’s also contains a CD and a DVD: each song also has an animated cartoon to go with it. They’re great and enthusiastic songs — my favorites so far are “I am a paleontologist” and “Science is real”.

You should buy it. It’ll be available next week, or you can always stop by my house and I’ll put the DVD up on the big screen and we can all rock out in my living room — I’ll push all the furniture to the side so we can all dance. Or if you’re cheap and don’t like me, you can subscribe to the TMBG podcast on iTunes: they’re going to release a song a week.

Can’t wait? You can get a look at “Science is Real” right now.

I should warn you, though, it’s controversial. Yeah, right. Look at the comments on Amazon. The song “Science is Real” contains these lyrics:

I like the stories
About angels, unicorns and elves
Now I like the stories
As much as anybody else
But when I’m seeking knowledge
Either simple or abstract
The facts are with science
The facts are with science

This has prompted a few comments.

I love TMBG more than anybody, but was it really necessary to take a pot-shot at religion?

This guy must be one of those thin-skinned elf worshippers.

As a Christian I’m offended by comparing unicorns, elves with angels. Unicorns and Elves are fiction, and angels are biblical. End of story.

(Shhh. Don’t tell him about Numbers 23:22 and 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Job 39:9,10, Psalms 22:21 and 29:6 and
92:10 or Isaiah 34:7. Unicorns are biblical, too.)

This is why the accommodationist strategy is doomed to failure. There is no gentle demurral from religion that will not offend someone — even fun songs about science are expected to pretend that angels are real.

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus!

Whew, dodged a mistake — the movie is on RIGHT NOW! An alert reader caught me in time and let me know I live in the Central Time Zone. I haven’t even touched the hooch yet.

It starts with Deborah Gibson, Submarine Pilot, dodging angry whales, and…breaking a giant octopus out of a block of ice? And it then destroys an oil drilling platform? I’m confused. That means I have to take a sip. (No, not a drink. I plan to survive this event.

A shark just leapt up and ate a jetliner? What the hell? OK, big drink. Never mind survival.

I may not make it through this abomination. It’s not just the drinking and the bad movie, it’s the commercials every 5 minutes.

I don’t understand. Suddenly the navy is involved in giant shark hunting? Firing a battleship’s cannon at it? And it survives?

It just ate a battleship. I didn’t buy enough hootch for this thing.

A plan! Corral each monster in a bay: Tokyo Bay and San Francisco Bay. Yeah, I can tell this plan will work just great.

Why do the fake scientists in this movie keep peering into microscopes and pouring colored fluids back and forth? They’re studying something the size of a freight train!

Debbie and Asian scientist she just met get lusty over death talk, have sex, and get inspired to use pheromones to draw monsters into bays. Pheromones are made suddenly in lab, and are fluorescent green. Weird.

Asian scientist talks about it’s fate that he and Debbie will be together. Prediction: he’ll be eaten soon.

The octopus just ate a jet fighter. Tally so far:

Octopus: One oil platform, one small jet fighter.

Shark: One jetliner, one battleship.

PZ: One glass of wine.

For some reason, placing the tiny beaker of pheromone bait requires Debbie to drive a submersible to place it in just the right spot. It’s supposed to attract a monster across half the width of the Pacific Ocean!

The submersible claw gets jammed, of course. And here comes the shark. At 500 knots! Don’t worry, the submersible outruns it.

Shark just ate another battleship and the Golden Gate bridge.

The octopus is not getting enough screen time here. If I wanted all sharks all the time, I’d be watching the Discovery Channel.

Octopus was apparently wreaking havoc offscreen. Debbie Gibson’s lover reports that they shot it with artillery and just made it mad.

Since big guns did nothing, they’re obviously going to have to nuke it.

Until Debbie has a brilliant idea: have the two fight each other to the death. Saw that one coming from a mile away.

The only way to get the two monsters to fight is deliver another tiny container of pheromone from a submarine piloted by Debbie. Of course. This is insane.

Debbie is now lustfully hoping for a bloodbath. What happened to the earlier insistence on catching them alive?

Shark has eaten an oil tanker now, and is chasing Debbie Gibson’s sub. At 500 knots, probably. Debbie shoots it with torpedos that miss, until the entire US submarine fleet shows up to shoot at it, too.

And then the octopus shows up to eat 5 submarines! Yay octopus!

Shark and octopus finally meet: octopus is winning with nice strangle hold, until shark bites off one of his arms. Dirty fighter! They separate so SyFy can squeeze in another commercial.

The shark is trying to eat Debbie’s submarine. Just ate it in half, but Debbie is getting away in a submersible.

The octopus just destroyed the submarine containing Debbie’s sensitive Japanese lover. She’s going to rescue him, apparently.

SHARK/OCTOPUS FIGHT!

They wrestle around for a bit, then…both dead? Just like that/ How anticlimactic.

Final tally:

Shark: One jetliner, two battleships, an oil tanker, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Octopus: An oil platform, one small jet fighter, and six submarines.

PZ: Two glasses of wine.

I think the octopus was robbed. Maybe if his diet had been as robust as the shark’s, he would have won at the end.

Signs of progress

This is one of the best ideas around for promoting better science communication: The Science and Entertainment Exchange forges an alliance between scientists and the popular media. This interview with Jennifer Ouellette shows that she’s doing it just right, since it isn’t one of these things where surly scientists are invited in to criticize, but where entertainers can tap into the imaginations and weird, twisty brains of scientists to get cool ideas that they can use.