When a word or expression undergoes degradation in its meaning and associations over time, linguists call it "pejoration." It's simply that some words become so contaminated by the semantic baggage they carry that they, as words, become "bad" in themselves. "Gung Ho" is an example from the military. In 1942 it was used with pride to describe an enthusiastic unit. It doesn't mean that today. Perhaps the most familiar everyday example is "undertaker." The word was a standard reference for the occupation until it became contaminated by covert associations. Boy, did it become contaminated. It was replaced by "mortician," which then underwent its own pejoration, so that today we have "funeral directors." (It won't be long.) Our culture has struggled with "housewife" ("domestic engineer") and "garbage man" ("sanitation engineer") and "atomic" ("nuclear"), which is why the Atomic Energy Commission turned into the Nuclear Regulatory Agency. (I thought I heard someone crying, "Why this tedious introduction!")
Nuclear energy is one of those issues that attracts grandstanders, something on the order of smoking or child pornography. Nobody is FOR it. Everyone is AGAINST it. The utilities want profits and labor wants jobs. If PG&E could find a cheap, risk-free way of turning a grain of sand into enough energy to keep Julia Roberts' wraparound smile dazzlingly alight for a thousand years, they'd jump at the chance. You want to make a successful movie that cashes in on existing prejudices and makes a bundle? Make one about nuclear energy and the non-existent sinister forces organized around its promotion. It's a cheap shot and it can't fail. (It's like satirizing the Miss America Pageant.)
Nuclear power seems to be relatively safe if properly researched and handled. (Even Isaac Asimov agreed.) When it's not, then you get Chernobyl or, if you're lucky, you get the Three Mile Island accident, which I have seen described in the media as a "catastrophe." What catastrophe? Despite human stupidity and technological failure, Three Mile Island had redundancy built into its safety mechanisms and they worked. (If there are sinister forces at work, it might have been the producers of this disaster movie engineering the Three Mile Island accident at the time of the movie's release. One of the characters even makes a remark that an accident at the Ventana plant could "contaminate an area the size of Pennsylvania." Wow!) I said that nuclear power "seems to be relatively safe" deliberately. It will take a long time and careful monitoring to know just how safe they actually are. And by "relative," I mean simply that nuclear power has the potential to destroy great numbers of lives when an accident happens, whereas we already KNOW that the burning of fossil fuels in the form of oil, coal, and gasoline are already doing that, and has been doing it since the industrial revolution began. (The Parthenon sizzles like a giant Alka Seltzer in all that acid raid.) Yet many of us prefer to go on dying from sources whose names don't have a "nuclear" appendage. What is it that "makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of?" I don't know. I'm just asking.
The movie is a piece of manipulative and propagandistic junk, and not very good junk at that. Michael Douglas is a good guy. You can tell because he's wearing a beard. The company and almost all its representatives are evil. They not only use shoddy workmanship but they try to cover the evidence of their deceit by murdering people. They try to cover up the close call at the plant, too. Then we have the easy-on-the-eyes Jane Fonda whose looks and manners are exploited by her employers, just like all women broadcasters do nothing but present stories on balloons that have gone astray or the weather or whatnot. (This movie was made before Connie Chung was paid a royal salary while she took time off from work in order to "try to become pregnant.") If you're going to have somebody insult and patronize Jane, Stan Bohrman is the man for the job. He's a real anchor in LA and comes on like a ton of bricks. When a serious story comes her way, though, Fonda grabs for it with gusto. Jack Lemmon comes around too. He recognizes the danger. Exactly what the danger is, isn't made too clear, aside from ominous references. A lot of tanks and pipes begin to clank and shiver and finally fall apart, with nothing important seeming to have resulted. What was that all about?
Unable to get a response from the utility company, and with Jane unable to get her employers to pay attention, Lemmon commandeers the plant's control room at gunpoint and demands a chance to tell the public. His wish is granted. But, presented with a microphone and camera, Lemmon turns to jelly. If he was previously bursting with the need to shout out the truth, he now becomes bafflingly circumlocutory. "Was there a cover up?" Jane urges him on live TV. "I -- it didn't -- I -- it wasn't natural -- there was just something UNNATURAL about the incident," he fumbles. This delay allows for a good deal of suspenseful cross-cutting between his gibbering nonsense and the SWAT team burning their way through the steel door. The SWAT team succeed while Lemmon doesn't. Even his friend, Wilford Brimley, who knows the truth, sounds evasive. "Jack never took a drink, so he couldn't have been drunk."
The movie is an insult to objectivity and to the native intelligence of the viewer, although it may tap into some of his or her deepest prejudices. Instead of "atomic" or "nuclear" power, how about "molecular" power? Or better yet, "clean" power? We can sprinkled it with arugula and claim it lowers your cholesterol.
Nuclear energy is one of those issues that attracts grandstanders, something on the order of smoking or child pornography. Nobody is FOR it. Everyone is AGAINST it. The utilities want profits and labor wants jobs. If PG&E could find a cheap, risk-free way of turning a grain of sand into enough energy to keep Julia Roberts' wraparound smile dazzlingly alight for a thousand years, they'd jump at the chance. You want to make a successful movie that cashes in on existing prejudices and makes a bundle? Make one about nuclear energy and the non-existent sinister forces organized around its promotion. It's a cheap shot and it can't fail. (It's like satirizing the Miss America Pageant.)
Nuclear power seems to be relatively safe if properly researched and handled. (Even Isaac Asimov agreed.) When it's not, then you get Chernobyl or, if you're lucky, you get the Three Mile Island accident, which I have seen described in the media as a "catastrophe." What catastrophe? Despite human stupidity and technological failure, Three Mile Island had redundancy built into its safety mechanisms and they worked. (If there are sinister forces at work, it might have been the producers of this disaster movie engineering the Three Mile Island accident at the time of the movie's release. One of the characters even makes a remark that an accident at the Ventana plant could "contaminate an area the size of Pennsylvania." Wow!) I said that nuclear power "seems to be relatively safe" deliberately. It will take a long time and careful monitoring to know just how safe they actually are. And by "relative," I mean simply that nuclear power has the potential to destroy great numbers of lives when an accident happens, whereas we already KNOW that the burning of fossil fuels in the form of oil, coal, and gasoline are already doing that, and has been doing it since the industrial revolution began. (The Parthenon sizzles like a giant Alka Seltzer in all that acid raid.) Yet many of us prefer to go on dying from sources whose names don't have a "nuclear" appendage. What is it that "makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of?" I don't know. I'm just asking.
The movie is a piece of manipulative and propagandistic junk, and not very good junk at that. Michael Douglas is a good guy. You can tell because he's wearing a beard. The company and almost all its representatives are evil. They not only use shoddy workmanship but they try to cover the evidence of their deceit by murdering people. They try to cover up the close call at the plant, too. Then we have the easy-on-the-eyes Jane Fonda whose looks and manners are exploited by her employers, just like all women broadcasters do nothing but present stories on balloons that have gone astray or the weather or whatnot. (This movie was made before Connie Chung was paid a royal salary while she took time off from work in order to "try to become pregnant.") If you're going to have somebody insult and patronize Jane, Stan Bohrman is the man for the job. He's a real anchor in LA and comes on like a ton of bricks. When a serious story comes her way, though, Fonda grabs for it with gusto. Jack Lemmon comes around too. He recognizes the danger. Exactly what the danger is, isn't made too clear, aside from ominous references. A lot of tanks and pipes begin to clank and shiver and finally fall apart, with nothing important seeming to have resulted. What was that all about?
Unable to get a response from the utility company, and with Jane unable to get her employers to pay attention, Lemmon commandeers the plant's control room at gunpoint and demands a chance to tell the public. His wish is granted. But, presented with a microphone and camera, Lemmon turns to jelly. If he was previously bursting with the need to shout out the truth, he now becomes bafflingly circumlocutory. "Was there a cover up?" Jane urges him on live TV. "I -- it didn't -- I -- it wasn't natural -- there was just something UNNATURAL about the incident," he fumbles. This delay allows for a good deal of suspenseful cross-cutting between his gibbering nonsense and the SWAT team burning their way through the steel door. The SWAT team succeed while Lemmon doesn't. Even his friend, Wilford Brimley, who knows the truth, sounds evasive. "Jack never took a drink, so he couldn't have been drunk."
The movie is an insult to objectivity and to the native intelligence of the viewer, although it may tap into some of his or her deepest prejudices. Instead of "atomic" or "nuclear" power, how about "molecular" power? Or better yet, "clean" power? We can sprinkled it with arugula and claim it lowers your cholesterol.