I am personally really interested in television and how TV shows are written and created. For this final project, I chose to adapt the all American ABC program Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives is a primetime television series that depicts middle class families in the suburbs. I decided to take the idea of family and friends in a close-knit community, but place them in a climate-changed world.

I chose to write the pilot script of a new television show that takes place in 2046 suburbia. The characters are facing different and new challenges because suburbia no longer exists in the lavish housewife way. Women are struggling to gather water and feed their families because of the uncontrollable wildfire that just ran across the Midwest. The only way for a once successful businessman to provide for his family is by spending hours working in the fields. It is still called the fields even though it is now burnt down to nothing. It is a man’s job to try to clean and clear the area, so harvesting can hopefully begin again. I think writing a pilot script is an interesting way to tell a story because it allows for the reader to understand the characters and the way they live.

Penelope Owen is a young married woman living on Jasmine Way who is the narrator in the entire series. At the beginning of the pilot episode Penelope commits suicide and the reason is unknown to everyone including her husband. She says, “Normally there’s nothing exciting about my life, but that all changed last Tuesday. It was a typical day at first. I went to the well for water, washed my hair, and made my husband a sardine sandwich. I spent the day as I had spent any other day since the Miranda wildfire. It was so shocking when late last Tuesday I decided to take a piece of coarse rope, tie it around the banister, and let my feet come out from under me” (Salcido 1). This is how the first episode begins of my climate change housewife television series. I wanted to catch the script reader on the first page because a viewer can lose interest if something doesn’t happen in the first three minutes of a TV show.

Writing this script has been entertaining, but also challenging because I had to incorporate elements that I had not thought about like camera direction and scene. I had to really think about how I wanted the scenes to look and the direction I wanted to go.

In my opinion, Cli-Fi is not yet popular. The first time I heard about a work of cli-fi was the movie 2012. This movie goes through the events of an average American family who wants to survive with the wealthiest and most influential people in the world. The character Charlie Frost played by Woody Harrelson is a theorist who has been predicting all the disasters happening in the movie for years, but no one listened to him. This is like the cli-fi writers and movie directors right now. They are foreseeing the potential danger to our planet. Nobody believed Charlie Frost in 2012 because everyone though he sounded crazy and unstable. Everyone believed that these catastrophes couldn’t actually happen, and I think that is what people think of cli-fi books and movies.

The New York Times “Room for Debate” article answering the question: “Will fiction influence how we react to climate change?” have writers share their opinion about whether works of literature is working to spread to the word of global warming. George Marshall the founder of Climate Outreach Information Network says, “Stories are vitally important for us to make sense of climate change. The rational side of our brain can readily accept that this is a problem. But it needs the alchemy of stories to turn that cold data into the emotional gold it needs to mobilize” (Marshall). His point is very true because people can’t imagine facts and data they can only imagine the stories people share or stories they read. People need to be told what they should expect the future to look like. But that being said, everyone has different opinions of what the future looks like. So stories are different and inconsistent and that makes people not want to listen to them.

In class we left voicemails for the game and website Future Coast. Almost all the voicemails students recorded were negative. The timestream I complied with all the voicemails had family as the main theme because that seemed like the biggest concern. Children and parents were worried about the future and whether they would see each other again. These voicemails are tying to send the same message cli-fi writers are sending to predict what the future will look like for humans. Even though these voicemails were influential the question is how many people are listening to them and actually doing something.

All the writers in “Room Debate” believe that cli-fi is helping. Dan Bloom blog “Dan Bloom’s Cli Fi Dreamin’ Webzine” he states that “novels and movies have the power to change minds” (Bloom). While this may be true it is not changing enough minds fast enough. I agree with the novelist Sarah Stone who Bloom quotes as saying “If we survive, ‘it will be in part because of the books like this one (California by Edan Lepucki), which go beyond abstract predictions and statistics to show the moment-by-moment reality of a painful possible future, the price we may have to pay for our passionate devotion to all the wrong things’”(Bloom). This is a very accurate because many people don’t think global warming is an important enough topic. Most people think that the warm days in December are normal, but they’re not. People are not realizing the danger we are in because not enough people have heard or read the stories writers are predicting.

In the first take home quiz the first question asked “what do you think is an important or interesting feature to narrative discourse” this allowed me to think about the figurative language. Figurative language was defined in class as language used in an unusual way; usually when language goes beyond the literal meaning or departs from the usual order of words. In the novel Odds Against Tomorrow the author Nathaniel Rich uses an excessive amount of imagery to describe how different tragedies will strike the world. For instance, when Mitchell is talking about the possible situations his audience is often scared by the amount of imagery and detail. Mitchell says,

“Chinese sleeper agents are activated in every major U.S. city. Cyberattacks strain the electrical grid, checkeboarding it. Kidnappings, corruption, political murders begin to occur. Slowly at first, then more frequently. Why? No one knows. Policemen are assassinated by the dozen. Prominent journalists begin to vanish. The managing partner for your firm is going out for his early morning swim at his home on Long Island when a band of Chinese agents stun him with a taser and throw him into the back of an armored truck. Your managing partner wakes up in a dungeon, four levels below Canal Street, his wrists cinched to his ankles, and an apple in his mouth” (Rich 59-60).

Contine reading →

This past weekend during the Super Bowl a commercial caught my eye. I was standing in Pegasus Pizza waiting to order my small cheese pizza and the song “this land is your land, this land is my land…” started playing on the television. The new Jeep commercial is promoting the importance of taking care of our earth. It starts with a scene of the ocean, to the snowy mountains, then the grand canyon, and across the landscape of the United States. All while the song “This Land is Your Land” plays promoting the importance of preserving America. It doesn’t stop there though, it continues to show popular landmarks throughout the world. The camera goes from the streets of India, to the rivers of Vietnam, to the Great Wall of China, and much more. Showing people of all different ethnicities, ages, gender, and religious beliefs coming together as one. Climate change will effect everyone all over the world and Jeep is trying to spread that message. The Jeep commercial inspires people to treat the earth with respect. At the end of the commercial the words “The world is a gift. Play responsibly.” flashes on the screen reminding everyone that they should not take the world for granted.

As this commercial played I thought back to everything we have learned in class so far, and how we have talked about people not taking initiative to change the way we live. But, I think that Jeep is one company trying to make a difference and opening peoples eyes.

Another company I found advertising for climate change is the website Nature is Speaking, which features celebrities speaking from the perspective of the earth. For example, Harrison Ford is The Ocean, Julia Roberts is Mother Nature, Kevin Spacey is The Rainforest, and many more public figures speak out. The videos are unique and captures an audiences attention because its new and inventive because a viewer isn’t being lectured on climate change but instead hearing what our earth has to say about it.

Harrison Ford says, “Humans there no different. I don’t owe them a thing. I give, they take, but I can always take back. Thats just the way its always been. Its not their planet anyway. Never was, never will be.” I think this audio clip is a reality check to some people because some people feel the earth is ours, but it really isn’t. We live here and have taken over, but plants and animals were here before us. This land didn’t start with us, but we have taken over and have been destroying where we live. Hopefully more propaganda for global warming will start to make its way into the media, so more people realize that this is real. The saying on the website says, “Nature doesn’t need people. People need nature” and this is very true. We rely on water, soil, and clean air to live and without generations will be lost. One benefit to the Nature is speaking website is there’s a tab, so people can do something. People can act and start making a difference. Its great to see advertising and public figures starting to take a stand.

There were three different ways climate changed was presented to us last week in class. One is the Global Weirding website that shows us how the earth will change throughout the years. The Global Weriding website has a timeline that takes you through the future years and how the earth is going to be permanently affected. The second is the scientific book, “Climate Change” by Mark Maslin which talks about the evidence of climate change, the impacts, the politics, and much more. It tells the reader about the facts surrounding climate change and what is the cause. The third way climate change is brought up is through a fictional story. One fictional story we read was “Diary of an Interesting Year” by Helen Simpson, that described how terrible global warming had become and how it has affected her family. Out of all three forms of information about climate change the story, “The Diary of an Interesting Year,” had the biggest affect on me.

The short story written by Helen Simpson was most impactful because of the obstacles the main character had to face due to global warming. She went through horrible conditions like no sewage system, no food, no heat and much more. People in this futuristic world had to fight over something as simple as a can of sardines. The bugs, due to the lack of sanitation left people with bites and sores. But, the biggest difficulty the main character had to battle with was the violence. In a society where order has been lost violence breaks out because people will do whatever it takes to survive. She had to fend for herself and in some situations she was unable to protect herself. The lack of structure allowed for peoples survivor instincts to take over, and this means doing anything and everything they can to stay alive. Doing anything and everything includes having to make one of the biggest sacrifices as a woman, and that is giving up her child. The main character writes, “I’ve wrapped your remains in my good blue shirt; sorry I couldn’t let you stay on board, but there’s no future now for any baby above ground” (114). The main character had to sacrifice her child because she thought the conditions were too horrific. To me, that’s when you know climate change has taken over. When people no longer want to reproduce and bring a beautiful baby into the world.

Even though this is a fictional story, it could one day become reality. The story is based in 2040, which means I would be 46 years old and that’s a frightening thought. I would still be young and wanting to enjoy life, but global warming could get in the way of that. People can read facts and scientific information about climate change, but I feel the real way for people to realize what is happening is through stories. People don’t understand the significance of what is happening around them, and once they read a disturbing story like the “Diary of an Interesting Year,” they start to grasp the impact of climate change. For some people facts and predictions open their eyes to the reality they can someday face, but for me reading a fictional story opens my eyes.

Cite:

Simpson, Helen. “Diary of an Interesting Year.” I’m with the Bears. N.p.: Verson, n.d. 101-15. Print.