Comedy of Survival

["Jay Ball" <ageeball@gmail.com>]

Hello All,

I have a question about responses to Joseph Meeker's argument in *The Comedy
of Survival*. His central position, partly derived from Kenneth Burke, is
that the human relationship to the Earth is better served by comic rather
than tragic framing. Thinking about two of the difficult artistic choices
that went into the making of *An Inconvenient Truth* - whether to show a
polar bear drowning and whether to end the film with a frog boiling to death
in a beaker - I've been looking for critical responses to Meeker's position.
I can't seem to find any - all of the published literature I have read
supports his contention.

Are there any pieces advocating the utility of tragic framing that I may
have missed? One reason why I ask is that, many months after seeing the
film, I remain haunted and motivated by the image of the polar bear adrift
at sea and, if anything, annoyed by the cop-out of the cartoon frog being
saved at the end of the movie. I also wonder whether insisting on the
permanent loss of biodiversity isn't better strategy for raising mainstream
ecological awareness than the discourse we too often hear about the endless
regenerative capacity of nature.

Thanks for your help and thoughts,

Jay