I am about to watch the fifth episode of the new series "cosmos", the first version being narrated by Carl Sagan from 1980. This re-release has all the cultural battles packed into it, the animated depiction of a scientist under the boot of dogmatic religion, the story of science being told in a literary way rather than in cold hard facts. Telling the story of science as a narrative, a contunuing journey, rather than flashing complex equations is a move form the scientistic side that slightly shocked me. They want a story that can be understood by the people they want to convince, a story on par with their current religious beliefs. Although this move displays some awareness of how to persuade people, it does not ultimatley succeed due to the antagonistic role that religion gets to play against the protaganist "science". Of course, the scientific view of the world is far more justified and in that sense is not on par with religous belief.
Other than that, and to the content matter, I think there are too many of these space documentaries now. If you have seen five of them, you have seen them all. The same metaphors, the same phenomena that is suppose to inspire us with "awe" is presented in pretty much the same way. Tyson is arguably the best presenter of matters relating to the cosmos, and beats these other guys by a long shot, both in style of narration, choice of metaphors, and cheer enthusiasm for the subject matter.
The very vivid animations I assume was the creatation of Seth MacFarlane, who also created the famous TV shows "Family Guy" and "American Dad". It is interesting how many bad taste-jew jokes MacFarlanes has gotten away with, it is even more amazing that he got away with this religion-bashing on Fox. Perhaps Murdoch and Roger Ailes have grown soft and liberal, I doubt it though.
Out and over
Discouraged youth
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