Formal Response

Cory Maddocks

Samantha Mudd

October 18, 2010

Formal Response

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was a pretty interesting video about Al’s view on global warming. The documentary beings with Al Gore giving a brief description on what global warming is and also his political journey through the ranks from small politician to almost the next President of The United States. After talking about the presidential campaign, he starts going into more detail about global warming. The next hour of the documentary is Gore sharing scientific studies and other very intriguing evidence. At the end of the video, Gore slows everything down and becomes more urgent in his talk. He becomes more persuasive in his speech and wishes for people all around the world to step their game up and realize what is happening and to do something about it.

The films central claim is to inform people about what global warming is and how to help stop global warming. The evidence that Gore provides is very astonishing. He has been looking into global warming since college when his professor mentioned some things about it to him. He then ran for president and ever since not being elected he has been going all over the world trying to tell as many people as he can about global warming. And if Al Gore is saying these statements of global warming they have to be accurate because he has hired the top scientist in the world to go over the world to see the effects on global warming all over. He is also a well-known political figure and if he were to like then it would hurt his reputation a lot.

Al Gore intended this film to open the eyes of Americans to actually pay attention to what he has been seeing for years and finally he has riveting statistics to back up his work. He tried to hit the emotions of the viewers by explaining that if global warming melts the glaciers that the water level will increase, therefore flooding some of New York and destroying the World Trade Center Memorial. He also talks about how his family’s tobacco farm closed down because his sister died from lung cancer. This really doesn’t have to do with global warming, but the viewer kind of feels bad for him and wants to help him. Now the actual effect it had on me is mixed. I really haven’t paid attention to global warming, but seeing the statistics and some scientific evidence has opened my eyes to it. When hearing Gore talk about the plan to stop global warming is very good, but I don’t think he will be able to wipe out global warming completely. A lot of his ideas are all based in the future and I just don’t think he will be able to figure it all out.

Al Gore took on various roles as the main actor in this documentary. For most of the beginning he took the role as an informative actor. He informs the audience about his life and about what global warming is. He also has some moments where he makes the crowd laugh a little. For example, in the beginning he announced his name and he said “should have been” president. This steams from when he lost against George W. Bush in the infamous Presidential vote. Then towards the end of the film he becomes a persuasive actor in trying to persuade the audience to believe in global warming and support changes to help stop it. Gore’s quote, “ It’s our time to step up to the plate,” means he is giving us a challenge to be serious in global warming and to act.