[X-posted]

Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? I just heard a story on All Things Considered discussing this new documentary featuring Al Gore's global warming lecture-like riff. ATC's host Michele Norris set the stage for opposing Gore's “showmanship” to the “truth” or “science” of his lecture. Certainly, Gore’s presentation has a stylistic or performative element; some people have even wondered where this Al Gore was during the 2000 presidential campaign. But why must the performative be separated from the factual? Doesn’t this precisely reduplicate the misleading binary that has been with us at least since Plato?

Here’s an example from the film and NPR’s analysis. At one point in the documentary (and in his lecture), Gore displays a graph that horizontally spans his stage. It also vertically (the temperature/carbon dioxide axis) ascends above Gore’s head, and so to illustrate a point, he has to use an “elevator.” Norris and NPR's two “in-house experts”--film critic Bob Mondello and science correspondent Richard Harris--exchange the following:

Mondello: “...he's making a point that's so dramatic at that moment, that I thought, well, okay, this is one of those places where movies really work because it allows you to make something visual....”

Norris: “But did he walk right up to the edge, though, when he got on that mechanical lift? ...There was a bit of showmanship in that.”

Harris: “There definitely was, and let's not forget that that lift takes him up into the projected future, not the present. But yeah, I think that is actually what's going to happen with carbon dioxide, absent any huge change in global attitudes about climate change...”

Of course the selection of the interviewees already outlines the stakes—art v. science—and the idea that the two are mutually exclusive. Michele Norris reinforces this exclusivity by directing the questions about fact to Harris and the questions about the effect of the film’s rhetoric to Mondello. But notice of course that when Harris critiques (if gently, but “definitely” pejoratively) Gore’s “showmanship,” he does so by immediately undercutting the foundations for its claims to truthfulness—predictions can’t be quite as true as descriptions. In other words, rhetoric is linked to doubtful truth claims. But even Harris has to concede that the showmanship itself doesn’t mask falsity; rather, it merely emphasizes what (Harris thinks) “is actually...going to happen.”

Nevertheless, the presumed impossibility of the art critic judging fact—and the resulting need for a scientist to judge the true value of the film—recapitulates the idea of rhetoric as something apart from—and usually incommensurable with—fact and truth. That's frustrating.

But as you all watch Inconvenient Truth in the coming days and weeks, I wonder if you think it's the kind of thing to teach in the rhetoric classroom. To begin thinking about 306 in the fall, I wonder how it would match with Free Culture. (Though I haven't read FC, clearly it's about piracy and property, but clearly also, one of the ways Gore thinks truth can be inconvenient is when the wishes of those with lots of property oppose its claims.)