The Age of Stupid: Do documentary films lead to change?

It's true, but does it make change?

On the one hand, it’s an entertaining look at the dangers of our global economic model— how it inadvertently degrades human beings around the world and wrecks our shared climate, forests, and other species.

But on the other hand, it’s all stuff we know. Does hammering away at negativity for 90 minutes really change behavior?

I saw The Age of Stupid in on a big screen a chilly room with two dozen others in the small Bolivian town of Samaipata. Eva, an Englishwoman living here, gathered us—Bolivians, Americans, Europeans, Asians—to watch it. Afterwards we drank mint tea together and I was frankly surprised by people’s reactions.

I’d expected some outrage at what we just saw, and ideas of what to do to change things. Instead, there were two quite different general reactions from the group.

First: people felt deflated. I didn’t hear many positive thoughts about how humans might change things. The film shows an African women in the Shell oil area, an Indian business tycoon launching that country’s first EasyJet type airline, an American oil engineer in the wake of Katrina… and several others. The point being that we’re in, as one person says toward the end, that we live in “the age of ignorance, the age of stupid,” willfully foisting disaster upon the planet. Worse, the film that suggests that everyone profiled (with perhaps the exception of a wind-farmer in the UK)—and by extension every one of us in the audience is so deeply implicated by our lifestyles that there’s no way out.

Second audience reaction: We’re going to hell-in-a-bucket so let’s enjoy the ride. Several people said that only a total environmental cataclysm could shake us out of our trance. So we might as well have fun while it lasts.

One take away for me is that the negative approach—so beloved by environmental documentarians—may be ineffective.

Sure, we absolutely need to know the facts. But much more importantly we want to feel hopeful, inspired, and joyful— and then act creatively toward change from that space.