When I was a kid, the penguin was a character on Batman, or a type of suit one wore to fancy events. That was all before The March of the Penguins, or An Inconvenient Truth--apparently.
I'm reading Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur, and perhaps in great deference to the thesis of the book, want to bring attention to an an example of the cult of the amateur, with its abolition of the gatekeeper and erasure of truth, allows us to perceive a professional work of political communication as an amateur work of expression.
Maybe you've seen the Al Gore's Penguin's Spot on YouTube. If not, here it is:
It's funny. Some said it was poorly made,but it is exactly the kind of movie our free software (moviemaker, iMovie) does pretty well (the compositing might be a giveway). We are clearly meant to believe it was made by somebody on the Right with a legitimate beef against Gore's movie. Not so.
Keen notes that nothing could be further from the truth. The movie was sponsored by DCI Group, a conservative D.C. PR and Lobbying firm whose clients include Exxon Mobile (Keen, 2007, 18; Antonio Regalado and Dionne Searcey, "Where Did That Video Spoofing Al Gore's Film Come From?" Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2006.
Dig it
k
