Mocking the mockers: The ambiguity of a Youtube video
“This is too clever to have been done by creationists.”
I thought this while watching a nearly four minute Youtube video called “Beware the Believers” depicting a rapping Richard Dawkins and headband-wearing Christopher Hitchens. After a brief prologue in which an animated Dawkins introduces an audience to a “glorious age, the age of the machine,” it launches into biting lyrics that tear into the “appeal to authority” arguments often employed during evolution-versus-intelligent design debates. The cast of this music video is comprised of prominent atheists and scientists ranging from Charles Darwin to anthropologist Eugenie Scott, and if there’s one thing this lyrical group wants to convey to you, it’s that Dawkins “is smarter than you, he has a science degree.”
At surface level, the video is targeting the atheists and scientists it depicts. Creationists and religious apologists have long complained of the supposed elitism of prominent atheists, and here is a two-dimensional rendition of the alleged snobbery. With non-believers constantly using the word “irrational” to describe religious belief, it’s not too far-fetched to think the religious would strike back at the very university degrees that give many of these scientists their stature.
But seen another way, the video is mocking those very believers. The characters appearing in the piece are literally cut-out, enlarged heads bobbling to-and-fro over dancing real bodies — they’re essentially caricatures. Viewed in this light, the video is riffing on the often-bizarre paranoia of creationists who think “Big Science” is actively trying to suppress scientists who don’t subscribe to some kind of mainstream scientific doctrine, e.g. evolutionary theory. Given that a new documentary touting this very thesis, Expelled, was soon to be released, the video seemed an appropriate way to address this play-the-victim assertion.
The fact that the video was of unknown origin (the username of the person who uploaded it didn’t give any clue) further enhanced the ambiguity of its message. Perhaps because of this almost-perfect balance, the piece was widely linked across the web, making its way onto a number of extremely popular sites. Rather than being offended by the video, much of the online atheist community embraced it. As one Digg user put it, “Whether you’re a person of science, a person of faith or a mix of the two I think we can all agree that this is one catchy song. Kudos to the guy who made this, it’s hilarious.”
As the video spread, its origin remained a mystery. Many of those who viewed it — including me — thought it was too well written to have been created by the people behind Expelled. After all, movie critics have already eviscerated the film for its lack of originality, boring use of stock footage and overall failed attempts at humor. Clearly something as sharp and well-written as this couldn’t come from a Ben Stein cohort.
Well, it turns out we were wrong — somewhat.
PZ Myers, a biology professor and vocal atheist who appears in “Beware the Believers,” received an email this week from a man named Michael Edmondson who outed himself as one of the creators. “The intent of the video has been questioned a lot,” he wrote. “…I suppose the answer is that I tried to make something that was funny to me and It’s not really meant to convince anyone of anything.”
Edmondson is a 27-year-old film school graduate living in Vancouver. He previously worked creating marketing videos for Electronic Arts but left the company in 2004 to start Float On Films and do work on the side as a photographer providing artwork for the hospitality industry. From late last summer until the end of last week, he had done contractual work for Premise Media, the producers for Expelled. He has a visual effects credit in the documentary and was one of the main players behind the Youtube video.
I interviewed Edmondson this week and asked him how “Beware the Believers” came about. “Originally it was a six minute piece to be used within the film Expelled,” he told me. “It told the story of the ‘rise of the Machine’ (darwinism). When I had arrived the script was already written having passed through three sets of hands of writers directly or loosely connected to the film…In the editing room for Expelled the production team decided the film had taken a different direction in tone than expected and that the unfinished animation no longer fit the film.”
It was the producers who decided to shift the video online and make it a separate entity, with the hopes of it becoming a “viral piece,” as Edmondson put it. A person named Matt Chandler was brought in to write the lyrics. “Matt and I each wrote a version of the lyrics,” he said. “My version was the requested 90 seconds and well received. Matt’s was five minutes long but very layered and smart so we went with Matt’s and trimmed it to three minutes.”
To save time, he set up a blue screen in his kitchen and performed the dancing rather than animating the bodies of each character. It took him over seven months to complete, “worked on intermittently between other projects and tasks.”
Which brings me to the nagging question about the video’s origin: Was the creator — Edmondson — sympathetic to the Expelled thesis (that intelligent design is a legitimate theory and should be taught in the classroom), or was this a fly-by paid-for-hire production? To make matters even more confusing, at nearly the same time he outed himself Edmondson released a “sequel” to “Beware the Believers” in which Ben Stein is wearing a shirt that has the words “Poe’s Law” written on it. For those not familiar with it, Poe’s Law states that it is impossible to make a parody of fundamentalism without it being interchangeable with the real thing.
But which “fundamentalists” are being parodied here, the intelligent design proponents or the scientists?
I tried to get a reading on Edmondson’s leanings on this matter, asking him if he was sympathetic to Expelled’s cause. “The video wasn’t just meant to be funny. I think it has something to say,” he replied. “It was meant to spark debate and bring attention to the issue…What I meant was that the animation was not intended to convince people of anything. I hope no one over five years old learns really important things about the world through the song and dance of cartoon characters. In the second video there appears the text ‘In Vitro Vertas.’ It means ‘the truth is in the test tube.’ I think that is a true statement for this issue. If intelligent design is true the truth will eventually come out through the science. I think the film has a viewpoint that has the right to be heard.”
I pressed further, asking if the “Poe’s Law” written on Stein’s shirt meant that he was intentionally mocking the intelligent design promoters. “No… but yes,” he said. “Like many things we included in the videos what you see has everything to do with what you bring to it and can be interpreted a few different ways. A person’s world view colours how they see the world and these animations. We knew some people would see it that way. The animations make fun of everyone.”
Myers, who’s featured in both “Beware the Believers” and Expelled, seemed to agree with this notion, calling the video “equal opportunity mockery.”
“It’s a video that used wit and humor and irreverence and knowledge of contemporary attitudes that earned the attention given to it, no matter what view point it might have been pushing,” he told me in an interview this week.
I asked the biology professor about the possibility that Edmondson had crossed enemy lines to help out the Expelled people (it should be noted that I asked this question before I had been able to interview Edmondson). After all, many of Myers’s blog commenters had accused Edmondson of being just as guilty as the Expelled creators because he had helped out in the marketing.
“Most people don’t see the ‘enemy lines as sharply as an educated scientist or an ignorant creationist would,” Myers said. “To most people, the lines are pretty blurry and uncertain (although a little more education in biology would certainly help open their eyes), and the battle isn’t as clearly laid out as the actual participants see it. It seems to me that Edmondson is an artist who is playing around right on that boundary, and not so much an active transgressor.”
Besides, he said, the video “was an absolutely horrible piece of marketing.”
“It wouldn’t be a draw to Expelled’s target audience, nor would it persuade critics to go see the movie,” he explained. “The Expelled producers wasted their money on it, if they thought they were getting a marketing tool. I hope Edmondson got paid a LOT of the creationists’ money.”
Sadly, when I asked Edmondson how much he got paid to produce the video, it was the one question he neglected to answer.
Excellent article.
I think there’s an interesting difference here that cannot be emphasized enough, and that’s the reaction. Atheists can and do see the humor in this. When beliefs are poked at, the reactions can be quite different, and even violent.
Of course I’m not painting all believers with that broad brush. I do think the difference is in how the questions are approached; believers have ‘faith’ which is belief without evidence. They don’t believe they are wrong, they have faith, sometimes in spite of evidence.
Science explores, and if new information comes to light, changes. It is not dogmatic. We know we can be wrong, and when we are wrong, often we learn even more about ourselves, our world, and our universe.
Maybe that makes it easier to laugh at too.
Nice.
I thought the video was hilarious as well. Even after reading Edmonson’s statements, it *still* seems like a parody (but then again — I know enough to see through an Appeal to Authority argument, so anything that willingly and overtly uses them reeks of satire).
I agree with Marian as well - believers get their feathers ruffled when you blow a little rationality their way, but for their science arch-nemeses, it’s an invigorating breeze.
“Dick to the Dawk to the Ph.D.” -
Tell me again how clever the creators of this were. Anyone clever enough to check Wikipedia would know that a Ph.D. is not among Dawkins’ collection of degrees.
Reginald,
“Dick to the Dawk to the Ph.D.” This refers to Richard Dawkins, who does have a Ph.D. That is why “he’s smarter than you”.
Reginald,
“Dick to the Dawk to the Ph.D.” This refers to Richard Dawkins, who does have a Ph.D. That is why “he’s smarter than you”.
From Wikipedia, “He continued as a research student under Tinbergen’s supervision at the University of Oxford, receiving his M.A. and D.Phil. degrees in 1966, while staying as a research assistant for another year.”
D. Phil. stands for Doctor of Philosophy, i.e., Ph.D.
Reginald! - Comment #3
I’m told that a Ph.D and a D.Phil… are different only in name. (So wiki that Mr. Selkirk!) Also, “D. phil” just doesn’t have a ring to it… and few would have known what it meant.
But… there is a glaring error within Beware The Believers. Anyone with a D.Phil could pick it out easily. So far only one person had noticed and mentioned it (and it wasn’t Richard Dawkins).
Lovely video Mr. Edmondson,
oooh a challenge!..hmmm… the pictures of Aristotle and Plato, detail from “School of Athens” a fresco by Raphael (in the Vatican apartments) - Dicky D identifies Aristotle (right) as “Democritus” and Plato (left) as “Aristotle”.
Dawkins does have a DSc., a doctorate ranking higher than PhD/DPhil. Although I assume he still has his DPhil certificate in a draw somewhere - probably for use while rapping.
“if I was dyslexic, I’d even hate dog too”. Hilarious. People in nearby rooms came to ask me what I was laughing about.
Bingo! We intended to “just pretend” Plato was Democritus… because we couldn’t find a high resolution image quickly… but not so much confuse who Aristotle and Plato were. That really sucked.
@ Michael Edmondson: Well, it’s not entirely clear which errors are “glaring” and which are safely covered by artistic licence, but here are a few that caught my eye (ear):
a. Aristotle was a great biologist; indeed he was arguably the first biologist. His philosophy makes no appeal to “faith”; Aristotle is a champion of reason. Thus it’s an error to gloss Aristotle as advocating “faith” in his debate with Democritus (who was certainly not “more scientific”). And, along these same lines, there’s no reason to tie Aristotle’s prime mover to “magic.”
b. The animation pretends that Plato (from the School of Athens painting) is Aristotle, and that Aristotle is Democritus.
c. Paley wrote after Hume (which probably means he should have known better), so it might be considered an error to depict Hume (who is surely not a scientist) taking out Paley.
d. One might take away the erroneous impression that Darwin’s expedition took place after the Wilberforce-Huxley debate.
OK, I’ll stop being pedantic. (Besides, I’ll bet you have in mind something even more glaring that I haven’t listed.)
Hmm. Some sort of temporal anomaly with my last post. Sorry about that.
And I forgot to say once again that I still get a kick out of the video. Great work!
On the surface, the video clearly is espousing the idea of a science establishment suppressing scientific inquiry into competing theories. What convinced me that it wasn’t done by creationsists wasn’t that it was “too clever” for them, but the following:
1) reference to “natural selection” instead of evolution, something that ID folks almost never do;
2) the lyrics actually allow that Darwin saw things “no one had ever seen” on the Beagle’s voyage;
3) the bit showing Darwin raising the roof — no anti-Darwinist could have made that.
Peeps, just ask … the man! Of course many of us “grilled” Richard on the Ph.D. question at rd.net, and here’s what he said:
You’ll find the original posting at rd.net:
http://www.richarddawkins.net/articleComments,2409,Beware-the-Believers,RandomSlice,page5#152142
Cheers,
^_^J.
Michael, great video. I really liked it but struggled a lot trying to think what the real intentions of it were. In the end I decided it was satirizing the paranoid ideas of most IDers but I was sort of wrong on that I guess. It really was hard to come to a firm conclusion about that. Anyway, it was very enjoyable and I have gone back to look at it a few more times since then just to watch it again.
While I have been reading about this on PZ’s blog I never clued into your being Vancouver based. I’m in North Burnaby myself. Nice to see some talented people working locally (if not from here, I am actually transplanted from NB, I would never assume someone working here is from BC)
I’ve congratulated Mike and Matt on the video before; and I am impressed with the cleverly layered lyrics.
Matt and Mike basically a very large demographic. They are not creationists, and neither are they scientists. They are not expert in the various issues raised in the movie, but neither are they clueless on the background.
The great hope of ID is to sell the idea to such folks of “fairness”; that they “deserve to be given a hearing”. Mike puts it thus, according to the article: “I think the film has a viewpoint that has the right to be heard.”
I agree… in the sense that anyone has a right to be heard, no matter how stupid or dishonest their perspective. They have a “right”, but they don’t “deserve” to be heard in the sense of having any merit or value. Everyone has a right to be heard, but not everyone has a right to be correct. Everyone has a right to a fair hearing; but not everyone has a right for the conclusion of that hearing to be supportive.
The particular viewpoint given in the film is absurd; and not supported even remotely by the facts. The alleged repression and expulsions don’t hold up to examination. The way the Darwinism/Hitler link is set up is unmitigated bilgewater. Hitler distorted science every bit as badly as he distorted religion. Racist appropriations of science began long before Darwin was born (have a look at Linnaeus) and Darwin’s own contributions have far more to do with bringing about a recognition of the deep relationship of all humanity and the values of diversity than with a concern for racial purity (which is actually a very BAD thing for a species from an evolutionary perspective).
I really hope Mike and others who see this film go on to check the claims a bit further. A film can only ever give a brief introduction to a topic like this… just think how much detail has to be omitted when even just one book is made into a film. So check a bit. If an interested amateur like Mike can’t see the flaws and distortions and outright dishonesty in the film after checking out the background a bit, then there’s a problem.
It takes time to do this; I’m not being critical of Mike. I’m wishing him the best and hoping he will check it out for himself a bit further.