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A Review of Roland Emmerich's 2012

By Arlon Staywell RICHMOND — How do you know when your attempts to help aren't working? When do the best intentions not have the best results?
So called "political correctness" was perhaps built upon a foundation of good intentions. There have been warnings lately that it could go too far. Has it?
Please consider the very "politically correct," by some accounts anyway, movie "2012," the one directed by Roland Emmerich.
Please note that this article reveals significant details about movies that you might not want to see before the movies themselves. They are however both old movies.
The disaster movie is suprisingly like the 1951 movie, "When Worlds Collide." The disasters aren't the same, but the response to them is basically about rich and powerful people organizing a solution that can only include a small percentage of the people in danger, about who gets salvation.
The more significant difference between the disaster movies is that black people appear not to be included in salvation in the 1951 movie. At least that is how it appears to many today. No blacks go on the same ship which is the focus of the movie. Many critics, amateur and "professional" alike, attribute that to the racism seen perhaps in the South about that time.
A careful study of the movie 2012 (It was released in 2009) shows an obvious attempt to correct such racism by clearly including black people in salvation. Never mind what it means that a point in Africa becomes the highest in the world after all the changes and destruction.
That correction was however seriously misguided. It is based on a misunderstanding of the place of science in people's lives in the 50s. Please note that about that time people were not yet sent into space, dogs and monkeys were. Now consider the response if anyone had suggested that blacks be used instead of dogs or monkeys. That, rather than their exclusion, would have been considered most racist.
Few people in those days saw science, rocket or otherwise, as salvation. Few would have bothered to cross the street to get a ride on some stupid space ship.
So where is the hubris? The hubris is that they think black people would miss the rocket scientists on their little trek.
But, some critics persist, what about these days when people frequently do go into space, shouldn't we make some adjustment for that?
If space travel were significantly safer and more productive the argument might be valid, but the truth is that it is about as safe as it ever was and no more productive. In fact more people died in the latter part of the space program.
So the movie 2012 dodges the point and doesn't use space travel to escape the disaster. It still depends on technology for salvation, but instead uses specially designed ships to wait out by sea the disaster mostly on land.
Can you wait for the celebration in 2012 when people bring out their DVDs to show their political correctness?
That might be a bigger disaster than the one in the movie because, rockets or not, it still depends on technology for salvation. It snubs religion. The Italian leaders refuse to board the ships. They pray instead but Saint Peter's goes crashing into the plaza. An elder at a Far Eastern temple lets a disciple try to board the ships but remains in his temple himself. The temple is destroyed, the disciple is saved. Is the message there that the only good religion is one the sees salvation only in technology?
What a person grounded in reality sees in the movie 2012 is a misplaced faith in technology, the same misplaced faith that caused so many to see racism where there was none at all. It's the same misplaced faith in science that caused recent health care reform to pass that forces people to bear the finacial costs of highly questionable, even clearly erroneous, math and science.
And technology is not salvation. It can't save you from a cold or the flu much less cancer. Science creating life from lightining and mud is just a fairy tale. No known "technology" can do that. The second law of thermodynamics says so, that's the real science. Technology can't save you from tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. Good communication should help a little, save a few lives, but large numbers do still seem to keep dying, of all colors. Are we politically correct yet?
And even the people who have faith in science must be getting sick of it constantly taking another guess, in the news, every day.
Now ask yourself. What is your plan for salvation? I know a large number of you want to go to God the Father. I am not sure as large a number knows the way. Maybe you shouldn't forget your plus five wooden shield.

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