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March 19, 2005
IMAX Films Fail "What Most People In Kansas Think" Test

As you can well imagine, this makes me very angry.

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject - or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.

The number of theaters rejecting such films is small, people in the industry say - perhaps a dozen or fewer, most in the South. But because only a few dozen Imax theaters routinely show science documentaries, the decisions of a few can have a big impact on a film's bottom line - or a producer's decision to make a documentary in the first place.

People who follow trends at commercial and institutional Imax theaters say that in recent years, religious controversy has adversely affected the distribution of a number of films, including "Cosmic Voyage," which depicts the universe in dimensions running from the scale of subatomic particles to clusters of galaxies; "Galápagos," about the islands where Darwin theorized about evolution; and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," an underwater epic about the bizarre creatures that flourish in the hot, sulfurous emanations from vents in the ocean floor.

"Volcanoes," released in 2003 and sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation and Rutgers University, has been turned down at about a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, said Dr. Richard Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer who was chief scientist for the film. He said theater officials rejected the film because of its brief references to evolution, in particular to the possibility that life on Earth originated at the undersea vents.

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said the museum decided not to offer the movie after showing it to a sample audience, a practice often followed by managers of Imax theaters. Ms. Murray said 137 people participated in the survey, and while some thought it was well done, "some people said it was blasphemous."

..snip..

"If it's not going to draw a crowd and it is going to create controversy," she said, "from a marketing standpoint I cannot make a recommendation" to show it.

The New York Times

Besides the obvious outrage of science museums rejecting scientific films because religious people object, this "director of marketing" should be well aware that if a film creates controversy, ticket sales will almost certainly go through the roof. Controversy is almost never bad for the bottom line.

Carol Murray's lack of marketing savvy not withstanding, this whole religion vs. science thing is really getting out of control. It seems to me that a lot of people who don't care to live in a fundamentalist theocracy (see Afghanistan and Iran for examples) - we'll call these people the "Not-Insanes" - don't take this issue seriously enough. For rational people, the whole thing is too absurd to be real. We can't really imagine that so many people can be so narrow-minded. It hurts the head. It's reason versus fantasy, and reason is losing. We have to fight harder.

The article ends with this anecdote..

Dr. Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer, recalled a showing of "Volcanoes" he and Mr. Low attended at the New England Aquarium. When the movie ended, a little girl stood in the audience to challenge Mr. Low on the film's suggestion that Earth might have formed billions of years ago in the explosion of a star. "I thought God created the Earth," she said.

He replied, "Maybe that's how God did it."

Conservatives would see this exchange as an attack on the poor little girl's beliefs. She's just seen a film that contradicts what her preacher told her. How dare a science museum so abuse an innocent little girl?

The reason for this reaction is fear. They are afraid to have to try to explain to the little girl that the world is a complex place, and that there may not be any easy answers. They are afraid of dealing with their religion's texts as metaphors or allegories because it's hard. It's much easier to take everything at its literal word and stop thinking. Mostly, though, they are afraid of letting the little girl make up her own mind. In other words, they hate freedom.

The answer the scientist gives to the little girl is a good one, and demonstrates that an understanding of science and religious faith need not be mutually exclusive. His answer begs many more questions, and that's a GOOD THING. Instead of putting bags on their children's heads and sending them out into the world to fail, fundamentalists could maybe try exercising their god-given power to reason. They want to honor god by denying the powers he gave them. Frankly, the god that they believe in would seem to be profoundly cruel to have given man a rational mind and all this empirical evidence, and then demand that he ignore it.

It is their religious duty to go against their nature, and to prevent their children - and ours! - from exercising theirs.

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