This past week in my energy of earth class, we viewed the 2012 documentary titled Switch. As a student who is majoring in film and minoring in Earth sciences a film like this is right up my alley. It follows a man named Dr. Tinker, who travels the globe learning about and exploring the possibilities of alternative energy sources, as well as our main sources of energy used today. It is clear that everyone can relate to this topic as we all use many forms of energy, everyday, to power almost everything we do.
This documentary caused me to have a mixture of thought about the topic it discusses, and how it discussed such. I did in fact enjoy this documentary, I thought it was filled with tons of valuable information that everyone on earth should be exposed to, as we consume massive amounts of energy everyday and often don’t even think about how large these numbers are.
Now what festered on my mind more than anything after viewing, was the importance of this documentary, and wondering how few people have actually viewed it. As someone who is attending school to essentially make documentaries similar to this one, many would assume I was constantly intrigued by the film. But there were many points within this film, where I was bored, my mind wandered, and I began to feel tired. This lead me to pose the question of the importance of being able to portray important issues like this in an entertaining manner. Should film makers be striving to make important issues more entertaining, or is it the job of the audience to be mature and recognize when certain messages and content outweigh the need to be entertained for a small amount of time.
