Without The World Without Us
By Brian Lambert
I didn't make a list, but if I did, Alan Weisman's book, The World Without Us would have made it as my favorite of '07. A "thought experiment" about life on earth after all human activity has ceased (more like abruptly disappeared), it was thoroughly engrossing start to finish with a commendable balance of reporting (nice travel budget, pal), prose, and sci-fi-style imagery.
Quite obviously, tonight's History Channel film, Life After People, has no association with Weisman or his book. (Neither is ever mentioned, and I wasn't able to connect to a human—coincidence, I'm sure—at either The History Channel or St. Martin's Press to find out why.)
I did watch a screener The History Channel folks sent out late Friday, and although compelling enough to hold your attention for a couple hours, it suffers from the lack of science chops Weisman brought to his book. (Louise Erdrich's store, Birchbark Books, brought Weisman, who has Minnesota roots, in to speak last fall.) Its editorial decision to dumb down a topic presumably of interest to a science-inclined audience is familiar enough to anyone following commercial media but baffling just the same.
It's telling what is missing or soft-pedaled in the History Channel film. Where Weisman provides (another) startling description of the Texas-size whorls of floating plastic and human effluvia in all oceans and reminds his readers that except for an infinitesimally small percentage, every piece of plastic ever manufactured is still in the environment and will remain in the environment for millenia to come, tonight's film never makes that point. Likewise, Weisman's gripping chapter on the petrochemical complex outside Houston is totally ignored as is the half-life of nuclear fuels in the world's reactors. Similarly, the film makes only passing mention of the compounding effect of global climate change on the natural world's reclaiming of coastal cities.
It is tempting to speculate that the film's producers (and/or nervous History Channel executives) dialed back on anything smacking of "politics"—you know, all that "debatable" existence of non-biodegradable plastic waste and climate change stuff—in favor of simply delivering the apocalyptic eye candy. In that regard, of course we do have the Hollywood money shots: The corroded Eiffel Tower collapses (three or four times). Ditto the Brooklyn Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge. Time-lapse special effects over thousands of years give us Manhattan's skyscrapers crumpling and eventually covered with so much vegetation, they appear like nothing more than gentle hills, à la Mayan ruins.
When I touted the book to friends, a persistent response was, "Oh, no people? That sounds so grim." Or, "Well, where did all the people go?" That speculative "thought experiment" thing might have needed more explaining. In the actual reading, Weisman's book was oddly reassuring, at least to anyone who paid any attention at all in high school science. Human activity on earth has been a nanosecond in cosmic time, and no reputable scientist seriously expects us—or at least anything much like us—to still be around 100,000 or a million years from now. I was a science dullard, and I picked up that much.
In Weisman's scenario, which is supported by scientists he interviews in various disciplines, the natural world rebounds quite vigorously in the absence of our squalor. Oceans refill with fish life. Large mammals return to the plains and savannas. Reforestation—richly varied reforestation—is the norm. And what the hell, you can park anywhere!
Life After People is like the manga version of Weisman's book. But think about it. The most likely audience for this film are people who, if they haven't read Weisman's book, are hip enough to science to be intrigued by the premise. As I watched, I kept asking, "So why not deliver the science? You've got the pictures. So satisfy the crowd that reads The New York Times Tuesday science section. Or are they too highbrow and, therefore, too much of a risk to appeal to?"
I thought the same thing watching the Will Smith movie I Am Legend, which has a taste of this premise. Never mind the movie pretty much died when we got into the—by now cliché—zombie attacks. I kept thinking, "What is the harm in dropping in a couple paragraphs of dialogue—hell, a couple lines from this world-class scientist—discussing, I don't know, the chemical structure of the disease, his immunity—anything—that might bolster the story's credibility for anyone who stayed awake in senior high science?" Is that kind of thing so unequivocally perilous at the box office? I guess so.
Maybe there's a "Director's Cut" version The History Channel will run in a few months with all the "science for thinking adults" they left out of this one.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
Tuffy Weisman. Yet another star from the Golden Age of St. Louis Park. Not all of us became doctors, lawyers, satirists, journalists or indy filmmakers. Thankfully.
LAMBERT: Well, someone has to warm the stools at Bunny's.
Posted by: A Son of Mississippi on January 21, 2008 at 4:08 PM
Watching it right now and I'm already bored. Oooo, yes, how will the pets do? What will be Fifi's fate? We're gone. They're not pets anymore, just weak organisms soon to be culled back.
And, gasp, "pests" will invade our homes. Well, yes, except we're all gone so they're not "pests" anymore, they're just rats and insects, etc. Truly a facile yawn, so far. I may not bother staying tuned.
That said, yes, one of the best books of 2007. Reading it, one almost finds one's self rooting against our species.
Here's hoping Mr. Weisman sues them. Or, better, that he gets together with a quality production company produces a better version of IMAX theatres. But them look at the wort of sentimental crap they run to put enormous butts in the seats.
LAMBERT: The "World Without Us" website -- linked in the post -- has a lot of good connections.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on January 21, 2008 at 8:33 PM
The "World Without Us" (sounds like a soap opera built around a suicide pact) website is, I'm sure, chock full of gee whiz goodies. But I'm not one of those people who watches television for the website. Guess that makes me a media coelacanth.
But for me, a work of television either stands on its own merits or it doesn't. And, as you've already well stated, WWU didn't. Whatever's on their website should complement the broadcast, not serve as an anodyne to it. God, the overwrought and generally illiterate writing alone was insufferable. The skyscrapers "are about to come face to face with terra firma"?! Puh-leaze. Nauseating.
Nothing is safe from the dumbing down influence of TV executives who hold their viewers in the lowest esteem, women particularly given virtually no credit for having a sophisticated thought in their heads exceeding makeup tips and lifestyle anxieties.
LAMBERT: Whenever a premise falls as short as "Life Without People" I always -- being a half-full guy -- think, "there's no reason why someone can't do this again, and do it right."
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on January 22, 2008 at 10:03 AM
I do dream of a world without SOME of us...
LAMBERT: Oh, go ahead. Name names.
Posted by: Frogman of Grant on January 22, 2008 at 11:41 AM
My apologies, I reversed "The World Without Us," the book, and "Life After People," the naked cable ripoff of Mr. Weisman's estimable book.
That mea culpa posted, yes, let us hope that a more sophisticated and thorough-going film version of Weisman's book is in production, which may account for The History Channel's obviously rushed job. This seems a perfect project for Smithsonian's HD satellite TV incarnation with Showtime. Given the book's scope, it seems less appropriate for a one off, and better suited to a series.
LAMBERT: Chapter by chapter would be fascinating. ... as long as it doesn't conflict with Season #2 of "Ice Road Truckers".
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on January 22, 2008 at 11:50 AM
Hey, I'm just thrilled to see a posting by Mr. Leinfelder that doesn't contain the word 'coelacanth'. I can only look it up so many times.
Keep up the good work, Floater.
Posted by: A Son of Mississippi on January 22, 2008 at 1:21 PM
Son of Miss, sorry to have troubled you. But why would you have to look up "coelacanth" more than once? This is concerning.
Perhaps some ginko biloba on a daily basis would help with those memory deficits. Or, do as the nuns taught me and keep a vocab notebook.
If you want to get familiar, using old monikers and such, I suggest you come out from behind your nom de web. This way, it's just kinda' creepy.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on January 22, 2008 at 3:20 PM
This 'science' that you speak of...where there's a narrative of pristine creation, then desecration by man, followed by a (wished for) Gaia induced apocalypse that rids the Earth of humanity and returns it to its pristine state....how is that not a religion?
LAMBERT: If not sure whose sacrificial ox you're trying to gore, but the Gaia-induced part isn't in Weisman's book. (He speculates only idly about some pandemic.) Obviously though there is more than a little whiff of "Return to Eden", albeit one with no Adam, no Eve and a lot of simmering nuclear fuel and plastic.
Posted by: 108 on January 22, 2008 at 7:20 PM
As reported over at MinnPost, a documentary is in the works.
http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2008/01/15/475/best-selling_author_alan_weisman_talks_about_a_world_without_people_--_and_growing_up_in_st_louis_park
"And, yes, there is a documentary movie deal with a French producer underway. Weisman said he will serve as a consultant."
LAMBERT: There is hope at last.
Posted by: ReadsTooMuch on January 22, 2008 at 9:03 PM
108, where do you get a religious subtext to Weisman's book? I guess the trick is not to read it.
"Pristine eden"? The book starts the day after all human kind disappears from the earth. Look to the Old testament for a "pristine eden." Evolutionists don't conceive of a "pristine eden."
It's a thought experiment, not a death wish. I think you're mistaking Weisman with the Rapture crowd who enjoy imagining their cars careening out of control down the freeway and frightening all the sinners after they've been swept into heaven.
LAMBERT: I wonder if Weisman has any appeal for the Rapture crowd?
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on January 23, 2008 at 10:52 AM
World Without Us was definitely a fave of mine, as well. Biggest thing I took from it, and I don't know if the History Channel ep covered it, but for me it was the basic premise that life will go on. Not neccessarily HUMAN life, but some sort of life, and that life, be it microbes or mammals will continue to EVOLVE.
To paraphrase a George Carlin rant, "...save the planet? F**k the planet, the PLANET isn't going anywhere. It will still be here!"
LAMBERT: Revised cry -- "Save the Planet for Me!"
Posted by: essar1 on January 23, 2008 at 2:45 PM
I think a big part of the appeal of The Rapture scenario is the same appeal that country clubs hold--exclusion. Weisman's scenario would seem to imply (if we strain ourselves into imposing a religious subtext onto this purely secular thought experiment)that the whole six billion, or so, of us got raptured on up to heaven, specific religious affiliations aside. THAT, my friend, would probably enjoy precious little appeal with the Rapture crowd. I mean, where's the fun of gettin' swept on up to heaven during rush hour if the damn sinners are not left behind to suffer for a thousand years or so? Hellooooo...got schadenfreude?
LAMBERT: I get your point. What religious-thinking doesn't want to be anointed ... in front of those who aren't and won't?
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on January 23, 2008 at 10:46 PM