The Rembis Report and Other Fascinating Topics - Volume LVII

Documentaries.

July 29, 2022

Documentaries.

In lieu of channel surfing for news, or perhaps, in spite of it, I find myself tuning into documentaries more often. The great thing about documentaries is they don't have any commercials. Don't be confused by the ones you see where the whole thing looks like one big, long promotion for a single product and they keep flashing an 800 number on the screen every two minutes, those are infomercials, or you might be watching a shopping channel.

We know that, Mike.

Okay, well, maybe some people don't. I am just trying to be helpful.

And informative, like a good documentary. Not all documentaries are for everybody. They might cover a subject that you have no conceivable interest in, like basketball, or running, or competitive chickens, but then, you give it a few minutes and you find out that there is more to the story than you expected. Every Oscar night one of the really good wins a trophy.

So, when I feel like being informed by more than just daily news, I seek out something educational. Much of the time I dive into anything having to do with astrophysics, the one subject I was better at in school than writing. I sometimes wonder if I have watched every mainstream astronomy docuseries there is. Cosmos, both the original with Carl Sagan, and the recent ones with Neil deGrasse Tyson, check. How the Universe Works, check. Through the Wormhole, check. But after watching for a while, and reading advanced physics books by Brian Green and Stephen Hawking, there are only so many different ways to explain Einstein's theory of relativity, that it gets kind of old. I feel like I understand time dilation inside out and can probably teach it.

So, I seek out new information on stuff I know little about. I recently started running through a lot of Netflix documentary series. The Future Of __________ (every episode fills in the blank) gives some insight on what our futures may hold in the way of travel, entertainment, communication, food, and a variety of other subjects. One episode was about lab grown meat.

I like meat. Have always been a huge fan. Knowing that protein and fat can be grown in a lab, so we don't have to slaughter animals has true appeal to me. But will it taste the same? I don't know. So far, criticism runs only along the gamut of personal preference, so you can't know unless you try it yourself.

But when I see documentary series like Rotten or Dirty Money which expose criminal corruption in milk, honey, maple syrup, and cod fishing on top of the terror I already know exists for the animals, it makes me want to eat less meat. But being a human raised on meat, it is a tough habit to kick. It is such a conundrum. Why do lambs and chickens taste so good? Is it because they are cute? Pigs are cute, too! And they are delicious!

Are all cute animals delicious?

I am so conflicted.

The other thing that science and nature documentaries never fail to point out is the extreme pollution caused by humans and how mitigation efforts fail because the problems are just too huge to properly solve. Latif Nasser points this out splendidly in parts of his series Connected, the Hidden Science of Everything. So does the CNN docuseries Patagonia: Life On the Edge of the World. In addition to the biological disaster that is waiting to happen by fish farming Atlantic cod in South Pacific waters, one blurb that stuck out to me was that only 9% of the world's plastic has ever been recycled.

Think about that. Think of all the plastic you have used for everything in your life and try to imagine how much of it is only 9% that ever went away and came back as plastic again. Guess where the rest of it is? In A Plastic Ocean you can see it. It is everywhere. You are ingesting it. It is in your food and in your lungs. It is even up in the clouds. All of us have microplastics in us.

Marc Maron does a great job of scolding the people of the world in the preamble of his talk with Fleetwood Mac rocker Lindsey Buckingham. He takes on the persona of the Ocean and gives a scathing rebuke of humanity for our stupidity, selfishness, and destruction. Listen and be humbled.

We awarded Best Documentary to Chasing Water, at the 2011 Clearwater Film Festival. Pete McBride's study of the Colorado River makes a great point about where the water goes on its way from the Rockies to the Pacific, and is just one of the many, many, other fine documentaries there are to help us understand that the world is at war with only one kind of inhabitant - Us.

So, what do we do to save the Earth, its animals, and the Oceans? Stop using plastic and eating meat altogether? That is much easier said than done. I don't have a clear solution, other than to say, find alternatives. But again, easier said than done.

What about starting over? Hitting the reset button? Instead of worrying about extinction, just bring back whatever disappears. If we can make new plastic, and grow meat in labs, why not new animals?

Stephen Spielberg lays bare the issues with doing just that in his docuseries of Jurassic Park films. These bold narratives show us all the problems we have had since the reintroduction of dinosaurs to the world. They are not like any other documentaries. They follow around the biologists and get way too into the drama of their lives for my taste, but they do make an excellent point: if we can grow dinosaurs in a lab, we can eat them before they escape and eat us. But then you are killing animals again. So, why not lab grown dinosaur meat? Maybe the cute factor isn't there and they don't taste that good. I'm not sure, but I would think that one brontosaurus could feed a lot of people.

I am thrilled the world has dinosaurs again, but glad they are not in my neighborhood. It is bad enough when a stray dog or a flock of geese comes and messes up your lawn, but dinosaur poop? Nope. Not interested. I am not scooping that. They need to keep those animals contained to the island sanctuary they set up.

As dangerous as that place is, I still want to go there once they straighten out all the problems. It is clear that they have tons of OSHA violations, but I am hoping to run into the Jurassic World Park manager Claire Dearing. She is so cute! She looks just like Jessica Chastain. No wonder the dinosaurs want to eat her.

Documentaries will not solve the world's problems, but they do a lot to raise our awareness. Like I said, there is something for everybody. Criminal investigations and mysteries to solve, food porn, outdoor adventures, machinery for gearheads and steampunks, and lots of war and history. You can find just about anything to amuse yourself and learn something about the world you never knew, and probably never thought to ask.

Best of all, you can discover other cultures. I did not think I would ever get into reality TV game shows at all. Stuff like Big Brother, Survivor, The Bachelor, Love Island, those are not for me. I am not into all that drama, but with the buffer of a foreign language and subtitles, I was somehow drawn into the South Korean reality show Squid Game. It was really a lot of fun and saw the demise of hundreds of humans who were messing up our planet. So, kudos, South Korea. Well done.

I wonder what kind of games they play in North Korea.

Thanks for reading.