Point of View Randy Olson
A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
Environmentalists must speak from the heart . . . and from points south
“
H
ow are you going to cut through
the green fog?” The radio inter-
viewer was referring to the glut of
environmental media these days. And as a
>lmmaker, I knew what he was getting at;
last year, independent >lm distributors
developed a “no mas” attitude toward >lms
that aim to save the planet. Unless they are
amazingly entertaining, the distributors just
don’t see a market for them.
This question—how to communicate
e=ectively to the general public—>rst
grabbed my interest when I was a professor
of marine biology. Intrigued, I ended up
resigning from my tenured position, moving to Southern California, and entering
>lm school and acting school. I arrived in
Hollywood in 1994 with a great deal of self-con>dence. My short >lms had won some
awards, I had a PhD, and I really felt I knew
more about communication than most of
the “idiots” who inhabit the >lm and television industry.
I was wrong.
As an academic, my brain was as well
developed as the biceps of an Olympic athlete. I could recite for you the phyla and
major classes of the entire animal kingdom, as well as the Latin names of countless species. And I thought that was all you
needed to do to enlighten people: spout the
facts. It took a crazy acting teacher for me
to begin to grasp my handicaps as a communicator.
At >rst, I was totally lost in the class. Our
bombastic teacher used to scream one basic
rule to us, night after night: “As an actor, when
it comes to connecting with the audience—
the entire audience—you have four organs in
your body that are important: your head, your
heart, your gut, and your sex organs. Guess
which is the most powerful.”
A few years later I returned to working
with academics and environmentalists, and
her words began to resonate. I found myself
looking at failed environmental communications campaigns and seeing the enormous amount of information—facts and
>gures—they were hurling at the public. I
began hearing the humorlessness of so
many environmentalists and wondering
why they couldn’t just lighten up a bit. And
while some great environmental writers
know how to speak directly to and from the
heart, so much of what gets communicated
by large environmental organizations ends
up devoid of passion and sincerity.
That acting teacher was right. The four
organs are indeed a major secret to reaching
the public. The object is to move the message out of the head and into the heart with
sincerity, into the gut with humor, and if
you’re skillful enough, all the way down to
the lower organs with sex appeal. But there’s
a catch. As you reach the broader audience,
you may >nd your more academic colleagues staging a ?ank attack. My movie
Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy causes
large audiences to laugh raucously, and
Variety gave it a rave review, saying the
movie is “an exceedingly clever vehicle for
making science engaging for a general audience.” But the science world? Nature, the
most important voice of science, titled their
review “Climate Comedy Falls Flat.” The
humor and emotion seemed to o=end the
Nature reviewer.
Taking risks to protect the environment
is not just about standing up in front of bulldozers in a forest. There is a courage needed
for mass communication, too. You can stick
with only the facts and >gures, but they will
never reach the heart of a mass movement.
To truly motivate the nonacademic public,
you have to take some chances, come down
out of your head, and reach for the other
organs of the body.
Figuring that out is essential to saving
nature. a
Randy Olson wrote and directed Flock of
Dodos: The Evolution–Intelligent Design
Circus, and Sizzle: A Global Warming
Comedy. He is the author of Don’t Be Such
a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of
Style, forthcoming from Island Press.
