Inconvenient Cocooning: Gore Playing Well in Red States?

The San Francisco Chronicle runs a bit of wishful thinking under the heading “Gore movie reaching the red states, too.” The article finds that An Inconvenient Truth has grossed $13 million and this week will likely become the third-highest-grossing political documentary of all time (which is nice as far as it goes but that is a pretty limited category). Also, the $13 million figure while strong is hardly overwhelming when compared to Fahrenheit 9/11’s $119 million gross.

Weaker still, the article makes largely unsupported claims about “the film's continued success in red states like Georgia and Texas.” To start with, the article doesn’t cite any specific numbers for red states. More significantly, even if the film is doing some business in red states the author ignores the fact that significant numbers of liberals and progressives live in red states. Red states may vote 60% (or even 70% or 80%) Republican but that still means there are significant numbers of other people in the state. Since it doesn’t take very many people going to a the theater to produce box office numbers like those of Inconvenient Truth, a likely interpretation is that the liberals/progressives in red states are going to see this movie.

Doing a few thousands dollars of business doesn’t mean the working man “truck driver” figure the article trots out is going to see the film. For the most part the people going to see the movie are already liberals/progressives. While it makes a better story to play up red state success (surely what the Chronicle’s liberal readership wants to read), the article is an instance of liberal cocooning.

All of which isn’t to say I don’t think An Inconvenient Truth will have an influence. The film will have an impact, just a more limited one. After seeing the movie, my wife is now committed to buying a hybrid as our next car. As significant as any individual action the movie encourages, the movie has become a platform from which Gore has been able to reshape the national debate on global warming. Today it is harder today to argue that any significant scientific doubt remains on the subject. Yet in the terms of creating the political will to change US national policies, An Inconvenient Truth won’t have a significant impact. Liberals and Democrats need to be honest with themselves about where the nation is on these issues if they are going to devise winning political strategies.