(Critical Junkyard) "Homeopathic Doses"

Hullo,

Luckily for me my vocabulary isn't that good, so I can easily find new terms to post on here.

So in the Baudrillard China Syndrome article that Dr. Davidson e-mailed us, I came across many confusing things.

But I will only discuss the homeopathic dose.

One sentence that stuck out to me (mainly because I am dumb and had to read it 12 times) was "--but the cold simulacrum and of its distillation in homeopathic doses in the cold systems of information".

I think I get stuck on this because the earlier part of the sentence is actually quite long and he says cold twice and I just don't like him.

Okay, so, was does das mean? Well I had to look it up.

"the method of treating disease by drugs, given in minute doses, that would produce in a healthy person symptoms similar to those of the disease"


Okay, so, was does das mean?


I am not sure. But I think it relates to our relationship with the media. (Well, not the literal definition, but I think that is how it interacts with our toxic discourse). On one hand, knowledge about a disaster is a good thing, right? We all want to know about nuclear failures and how to prepare and prevent others, but on the other side, the media kind of causes the event and the panic that goes along with it.

And now for something completely different

Sometime around the oil spill I stumbled upon this video.
Its portrayal of the events surrounding BP and their struggle to stop the spill is a nice change from the toxic discourse with its lost paradise or Gothicised Squalor.

(Critical Junkyard) Ecocide

The term ecocide can be applied to refer to large-scale destruction of a habitat. It can also mean a substance that kills enough species in an ecosystem to disrupt its functionality. Examples for an ecocide would be the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the Exxon Valdez.

(A toxic Text) Fierce Creatures

Fierce Creatures is the “not-sequel” to A Fish Ccalled Wanda. It was directed by Fred Schepisi and Robert Young and its cast starred Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cleese and Kevin Kline. The movie is set in an English zoo that has been taken over by Octopus, an American company. The environmentally conscious messages are of course all over the movie, as it is of course about the poor British David against the evil American Goliath (Kevin Kline in a dial role). The Americans (of course) only want to make money which is why Rollo Lee (Cleese) and the other workers (amongst other a brilliant Michael Palin) have to gang up to save the zoo (a plot involving a gun, a lemur and flour).

The scene that environmentally struck me the most though was when Vince McCain brings in an animatronic Panda. At first the workers don’t realize it’s an animatronic reacting all the more betrayed when they find out. They argue that an animatronic doesn’t belong in a zoo because it is “artificial” to which McCain simply replies: “Having pandas in England is artificial for God’s sake!”

This quote crystalizes the constructedness of environmental discourse and its understanding of the “natural” a theme we have spent quite a bit of time on lately.

Another way to die

Hello everyone!
Today, I'm going to present another song. This time it's about the song 'Another way to die' from Disturbed.

The song tries to wake up people with a really direct speech. Just look at the chorus:

"Still, we ravage the world that we love.
And the millions cry out to be saved.
Our endless maniacal appetite.
Left us with another way to die."

The rest of the lyrics can be found at the bottom of this text. So what I thought was the most interesting about this were the videos. Yes, videos as there are two versions to the same song. These videos show many catastrophic scenes like we've seen them before in other videos. But I've never ever seen these videos on television (I can only speak for Germany of course). So even though they try to wake people up, they fail because the media won't support this. How unexpected, right.

Well, here are the videos:

1. Video
2. Video

Lyrics

(A Toxic Text) Resident Evil Franchise (The Obvious)

Everyone knows these kind of movies: A deadly Virus is created by mankind, released, and turns people into mindless, cruel, brutal and bloodthirsty creatures that can't be stopped.

In the Resident Evil Franchise the virus spreads in an underground research facility and then finds it's way out infecting a city first and then spreading over the whole world. There are only a few survivors led by Alice (Milla Jovovich). Together, they try to find a safe place and also try to fight the company that still runs experiments to strengthen the virus.

What's interesting about this is that Alice herself was an experiment, cells were injected and gave her new abilities. And it seems she is the only one that can find a way out of this mess. So basically, they fight experiments with an experiment, science versus science, mutation versus mutation. Humans technology destroys humanity, and only human technology can save them.

Of course there are many different shades that can be analyzed.

*A Toxic Text* Once Upon a Forest

I first watched Once Upon a Forest when I was much younger, and it was a movie that didn't attract much notice. I remembered though that in the beginning of the film, the characters were faced with a crisis when a truck hauling a trailer full of gas wrecks and the gas finds its way to the homes of the animal characters. The cartoon shows both the plants and animals reactions to the gas. Birds flee. Flowers wilt. This is an example of a betrayed eden in the way that the chemical was introduced to the environment and upsetting the natural balance of the forest.

The film received a lot of criticism when it was released in 1993. And a Washington Post article said "And though the humans are redeemed (somewhat) and the woodland parents reunited with their youngsters, the filmmakers -- director Charles Grosvenor and producers David Kirschner and Jerry Mills -- employ shameless shock tactics to send their save-the-earth message. It's true than human beings are polluting and destroying the planet, but does anyone really think that the way to help children love nature is to teach them to hate mankind?"

Another review for Variety comments that civilization is portrayed as the source of evil. That the film creates an us against the world feeling.

While the plot of the film does seem a bit dark for children, it does openly show and/or discuss a massive amount of families that were killed or split apart, the idea that there is a children's film that is conscience of the dangers of pollution and or toxic elements.

Here's two links for the beginning of the film. It really begins about 13:30 minutes into the first part and continues shortly into the second.

Part 1

Part 2

13:30