Science - the story we've been sold
This is one of the first Horizons I ever made. It was also the first time I had a major complaint made against me and the first time I had to officially defend my job. Jana Bennet was Horizon editor at the time. She was one of the best I have worked for. She had brains and bottle.
I was very young to be moved up to Horizon and an 'anniversary' programme was seen as an easy stepping stone. All you were supposed to do, what Jana asked me to do, was pick 'golden moments' from previous Horizons, stitch them together and bingo! I didn't do that. I wanted to say something more than "remember this bit!" I thought here was a great opportunity to look at how science broadcasting had portrayed science, its roll in society, what cultural image or narrative of science in society had been created by science broadcasting? Horizon was the oldest and best at the time and had had a huge influence on most other science broadcasting around the world. What was the narrative? What idea or ideal of science and its relation to us were we presenting?
This seemed to me a great chance to look at the ideology (if there was one) of western science and science broadcasting.
The way I did it was to watch probably 90 or so Horizons and take footage and narration from about 70 of them. Rather than stitch together memorable clips I chose instead to use the footage as if it were raw rushes straight from the camera. Often, in fact most of the time, I took the narration written for one film and played it over the footage of another film. The effect was to get one film to comment upon and shed light on the unspoken assumptions of another from the same era.
Over all I aimed to present a brief history of how we had seen - or been told to see - the role of science in society. I wrote no commentary of my own telling people what to think, but let the narration from the original films comment on the assumptions embedded in them that had been left unsaid but were there nevertheless. I wanted the archive to tell its own story and speak for itself.
Ian and I are going to talk in more depth about this film and reactions to it on a Hyperland podcast in the next few weeks.
I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on the film itself and more especially what you think about the relationship of science to power today.
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It's brilliant. Very sad you're not longer making films. It's a loss.
If you do make another film, you could do worse than look into what David Bohm said about all this. What he called 'the movement of thought'
Incidentally, technology and science produce labour saving devices. They have no power to change people fundamentally. But to imagine science can change people, is a terrible mistake, which we all keep making, both the poor and the rich.
Because to improve productivity with technology, only has one effect: to increase rent. And it this people rich and poor, equally fight each other over. The economic rent. It in no way makes the distribution of wealth more just.
Tony Benn was a brilliant politician. He knew this very well indeed. I know many people who knew him. But he chose to ignore it and be yet another key agent for dividing people from one another. An ego trip for him was more important than those he talked big about saving.
I was temporarily banned by Substack yesterday it was a computer error.
Substack Support <support@substack.zendesk.com>
Tue, Jun 18, 4:33 PM (19 hours ago)
to me
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Hi there,
Tex here from Substack Trust & Safety. Thanks for taking the time to submit this appeal.
It appears that one of our platform safety detection mechanisms incorrectly flagged your publication as spam. I've reactivated your account so you should be able to start publishing again immediately. I apologize for the inconvenience.
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Tex @ Substack
My Comments on this thread and I assume on all others on the platform have not been restored even though the error is admitted as per the E Mail above.