Abstract to Master's thesis (cum laude) UCT

Abstract

The media have a critical role to play in informing and changing public opinion on climate change, “the defining human development issue of our generation” (United Nations Development Programme for Human Development Report, 2008, 1).  Developing countries are most likely to suffer the worst effects of climate change, yet few studies exist on climate change communication in the media in developing countries and in particular in Africa.  Studies on climate change communication in the media focus mostly on the print media and on developed countries yet in Africa more people consume their news through television or radio.  So far no study has examined television news reports of a United Nations Conference of the Parties in Africa.  This study examines the way four South African television news stations (three public and one private) framed climate change news over six weeks: two weeks before, during and after the 17th United Nations Conferences of the Parties in Durban (COP17) South Africa, 2011/11/07 – 2012/01/07.  Coding words were used to identify climate change stories in the main news casts on SABC 1, 2, 3 and e.tv each day.  These were transcribed and in the cases of SABC1 and 2 broadcasts translated from three indigenous languages (Afrikaans, isiXhosa and isiZulu) into English.  A quantitative, descriptive statistical analysis looked at the occurrence of four primary frames in these climate change stories, using binary coding questions to identify each frame.  The results in the binary coding sheets were analysed by using spreadsheets.  The coding questions were also used to identify and explore secondary and additional frames, which were then illustrated in graphs.  Differences in framing between public and private television were also illustrated in graphs (for example local versus foreign stories, time devoted to stories, depth of stories and occurrence of climate change stories with a human angle).  Secondly, a qualitative inductive analysis of text and visual material looked at links between frames (for example the link between extreme weather conditions and human action using cause and impact visuals, as well as the link between news image and source – the framing of the politician, the activist and the scientist.)  This section also looked at emotionally anchoring images of hope and guilt and the role of banners, posters and maps in climate change stories on television.  Though other studies claim that coverage of the summit was “almost invisible” (Finlay 2012, 16) this study showed very high coverage on especially SABC 1 (isiXhosa and isiZulu).  The following hypotheses were confirmed: the political/economic frame will dominate on all stations during COP17 but the ecological frame will be highest on at least some stations in the weeks after COP17.  The ethics frame will be dominated by the secondary “Inequality/Justice” frame while the “Religion” frame will be of minimal importance.  When activists set the agenda, the motivational frame will hardly feature.  Climate change scepticism will receive little attention on South African television.  Local (South African and African) stories will be more prominent on public television than on private television.

Keywords:  climate change, COP17, South Africa, framing, public and private television broadcasting.

Demise of the first electric car in Africa: The late Vuyo Mbuli interviews Kobus Meiring, CEO of Optimal Energy, the company that developed the Joule.

This interview has been transcribed as is, leaving out “ah”s and “ehm”s and repetitions for clarity and easy reading.

Vuyo:  Have you ever asked yourself – in fact this comes from the conversation we had just the other day with another National Order Recipient, Musibudi Mangena.  We were talking about his ten years as minister of Science and Technology.  He spoke about spear-heading this initiative to create an electric powered car here in SA – the Joule.  Well, in case you have been wondering where it has gone to, this morning we are joined by Kobus Meiring who is the former CEO of Optimal Energy, the company that developed the Joule.  Kobus, good morning to you.

Kobus: Hi, Good Morning.

Vuyo: Welcome, thank you for joining us here on Morning Talk on SAFM.

Kobus: Thank you for inviting me.

Vuyo: OK, so, let us just check: What happened to the Joule?

Kobus: Well, we had to close down the company, Optimal Energy, about the middle of last year, and one of the shareholders of Optimal Energy is the Technology Innovation Agency and they essentially took all the vehicles and all the equipment and all the IP and so on and I think most of that has been given to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

Vuyo: You had also made a specimen car – what is it called, a test vehicle?

Kobus: Yeah, we’ve all in all made about 10 prototypes of which the last four were what we call customer-ready prototypes of the Joule, so the look, the feel, the performance, everything was essentially as the final vehicle would be except that these were hand-made, they were not made in a production line.

Vuyo: Yeah… And the cost… how much money had been invested in this project up to and including when you closed it down?

Kobus: Round about 300 million.  I don’t know the final number, but that’s a sort of a ball park of which… Well, a little bit of history: The first investor was in fact the Innovation Fund which was an instrument of the Department of Science and Technology at the time that Minister Mangena was the minister of Science and Technology.  They were then later joined by the IDC - the Industrial Development Corporation - who became the biggest single shareholder.  Then the Innovation Fund was in fact disbanded and absorbed into the Technology and Innovation Agency about two years ago… so that is a quick history of the shareholders -  of the investors.

Vuyo: So have we lost this initiative now? No electric powered car can come out of SA in the present context?

Kobus: Sjo, that is a big question.  I think what is absolutely true and clear is that you cannot start an industry like this without firm government support.  And when minister Mangena was still there, he was a great champion of this cause and he championed this at cabinet level and we had the necessary support there.  And I think this is not just only true of SA, it is true anywhere.  If you look at the South Korean industry, if you look at a lot of other industries, government took a decision that this is what they are going to support and this is how they started the industry.  Because these are long-term investments, these are not overnight get-rich-quick-schemes, they are really long-term investments.  So while we had the necessary government support, things went very well.  The IDC came on board and the IDC eventually said look, we need government to spell out exactly what they had in mind and how they support this thing and until they do that, we cannot continue putting money into this thing and that really was… to some extent…the end.  So if you say is it impossible, is it dead, I would say that unless government really spells it out very clearly, what they want to do and where they want to go, it probably is dead as it is.  I think we certainly have the ability in this country, we have the human capital, we have the knowledge, the experience, whatever to make this work, there is enough resources to make it work without a doubt but it is not something you start without very strong national support.

Vuyo: How far were you from going to production with perhaps even becoming… getting the car to be commercially available and that kind of stuff?

Kobus: Well if you divide the total process into sort of three big steps, then the one is the prototype development, the second is setting up the plant and doing series production and then obviously the third is to market and sell these things.  We had completed the prototype development.  I think all in all we have done about 40 000 km electric on these cars without incident and we were ready to start the production, the series production part of the process, which is a very expensive part, which is typically in this industry and in many industries, an order of magnitude, sometimes even two orders of magnitude more expensive than the initial development process and that is really where we got stuck.  We had lined up quite a number of potential partners, suppliers, industrial suppliers all over the world to set this up; we had lined up the East London Industrial Development Zone... They bought into it quite strongly, they gave us a piece of land and they were willing to put up the plant in exchange for a long-term lease.  So many of the pieces of the puzzle were in place and if you look at the Industrial Policy Action Plan at the time it actually spelt out very clearly (the policy plan that the DTI publishes and sort of updates on an annual basis) it spelt out very clearly support for the commercialisation of the SA electric car. So… in a sense you can look at it and say well everything was in place…

Vuyo: So how did you then lose the government’s support, what happened in that space?

Kobus: Vuyo that is a very good question which I don’t really have the answer to.  I think it is a question of… well as the IDC said at a number of meetings: It is fine to put it in the Industrial Policy Action Plan, it is fine to say the right words, but you actually have to write it into the national development plan, you have to actually put your money where your mouth is in a sense, there needs to be a budget item on the national budget to say that is what we are going to do.  We’ve for instance, to back that up, we worked out a very detailed employment plan of the sort of employment this would lead to which would be very very substantial.  So all of those things were in place, but the fact is in the end it was never put into the national development plan, it was never capitalized to the extent needed and that essentially was the end of it.

Vuyo: Yeah…The number to call is 0891104207.  Were you very disappointed with its demise?

Kobus: Yeah, it’s impossible to express my disappointment in words, I tell you…

Vuyo: Yeah…

Kobus: Because I think, you know SA has a track record of doing fantastic things on the technological front and unfortunately also a track record of not commercialising their own things.  We tend to commercialize imported products under licence, we tend to sell our innovations to be commercialized in another place and I… and we really saw this opportunity to say look we have a very strong car industry, it is one of our top 5 at least, export products.  So we know how to make stuff, we know how to make stuff to export quality to world class quality, we know how to design and develop stuff, many many examples of that, but we have never married our ability to design and develop to our ability to produce world class goods and this was a real opportunity to do this.

Vuyo: Yeah… OK.  I get this. Kobus Meiring, we are talking about SA’s electric car, its history, what has happened to it, you may have some thoughts.  Is this in your view a missed opportunity?  What are your thoughts? Give us a call at 0891104207. Would you like to tweet? Well we are accessible that way we are @Mbulivuyo and @SAFMradio.  You are also welcome to send us a text message at 34701. This is SAFM Morning Talk.  SAFM is as you know SA’s news and information leader.

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Morning Talk on SAFM:

Vuyo: SA’s news and information leader.  Let’s hear from Roels… is it Roels or Roelf?

Roelf: Roelf.

Vuyo: Hello Roelf.  Welkom.

Roelf: Hello. Hoe gaan dit? (LAUGHS)

Vuyo: Goed, self?

Roelf: Hello Vuyo.

Vuyo: Hello.

Roelf:  Kobus… morning. You sound tired and you sound gatvol but I can understand it completely.  I think this is a highly missed opportunity.  One just wonders if it is not the same thing that happened with the, what’s the car they had in America, the Volt or what was it called? 

Kobus: Yeah the original one was the GM.. the EV1, from some 20 years ago.

Roelf: Yeah.  One just can’t help to think that maybe it is the same thing that happened there -  that it was bought out by government or stopped being supported by government because they are going to lose so much in the fuel taxes that they are making.  Anyway the only thing I wanted to say to you is that I feel sorry for it, we were really looking forward to something that … that exciting coming from SA, so … best of luck mate.  Thanks Vuyo, thanks for your programme.

Vuyo: OK thanks Roelf.

Roelf: OK.

Vuyo: OK.  Kobus?

Kobus: Yes, I think it is an interesting comment and it’s one that we’ve heard before and maybe there is some truth in it, but it’s just that you don’t want to get into a conspiracy theory conversation.  The fact is that there were many supporters but there were also a number of groupings that would not support something such as this.  And if you take the motor industry as it is in SA today…it is completely foreign- owned, it is I think probably in terms of manufactured goods second of our major export earners so it is a very strategic asset for this country and the motor industry certainly has a very very strong voice in terms of what the government does and does not do…

Vuyo: How far were we from manufacturing the car, exporting it… two years, three years, five years?

Kobus: We had a very very detailed industrialization plan which would take us… I think about 40… just over 40 months from…and that would include setting up a brand new plant.  If you could move into an existing plant, you could cut some time off that.  We had exhibited the car in Paris and Geneva before to very very good response.  We had some very good international motor journalist response and write-ups about the car. The strategy from day one was that we would essentially start exporting the moment the car runs of the line.  The SA car market is a very interesting market place and a very difficult market place in the sense that of any specific vehicle not that many are sold, although many cars are sold – over half a million cars are sold.  But you need to sell about 50 000 of anything in the non-exotic sort of class, to make it worth your while.  Of course if you go to Ferraris and Porches you can sell much less and still make it viable.  But 50 000 vehicles a year of any specific type and model does not happen in this country and if it does happen it might happen to one or two brands in one model.  So to make a business like this viable you have to do export from day one and our whole marketing philosophy and strategy was to test the export market very early to make sure that we aimed the car at the right market and to test acceptance of that market and I think in both of those instances we had a tick in the box that we were on the right road.

Vuyo: OK. Let’s hear from Brady in East London.  Hello Brady.

Keith: Hi Vuyo, its Keith here.  I am just a little confused.  Earlier this week we heard you had one of our ministers on the programme, lauding the merits of this motor car, how many jobs it is going to create and feeding down-time for the spares to be made etcetera and now you are telling me it is not a project anymore?

Vuyo: Yeah, we were talking about when he was minister – Musibudi Mangena – he was championing this particular initiative among other things and now we are just reflecting back on the work that had been done up to and including the point when they just had to give up on it. And Kobus is the CEO of the company that…

Keith: Oh, so you’re saying the programme earlier in the week was a delayed programme from some time ago?

Vuyo: No, the programme earlier in the week, we were talking about him receiving one of the presidential awards and then we were reflecting on some of the work that he did when he was minister of Science and Technology and one of the things that he did was work with Kobus Meiring…

Keith: Oh.  The way it came across to me, maybe I was listening with the left ear instead of the right ear that that was a going programme that it was almost about to be launched… I was a bit confused…

Vuyo: Oh OK. No, no. Glad to have been able to clear that up for you Brady.

Keith: (LAUGHS) Thank you very much.

Vuyo: Thank you very much Brady in East London.  Dave is also in East London in the Eastern Cape, hello Dave.

Dave: Good morning Vuyo and good morning Kobus.  Indeed, Dave from East London, I am in business here and Kobus, first of all we in the business environment here commend you for all the hard work and pioneering efforts you guys made in Optimal Energy to get as close as you did.  I guess you must be discouraged, but take heart, that you had a lot of supporters here and you still do.

Kobus: Thank you very much.

Dave: Just one question I want to ask you: Do you think the window of opportunity has now closed in terms of the development of electric cars like the Nissan Leaf or whichever one is at the head of the game now or is that window still slightly open for us?

Kobus: I think the window is still open.  The car business is not one that… the winner takes all.  It is a business with quite a number of players, yes there is always consolidation taking place, but there are a number of players and if you look at the cars out there today, not the electric cars but just the internal combustion engine cars, there is little to choose between one car and the next in terms of any specific unique selling proposition or unique technological feature or anything like that.  And our whole aim was to say look we are not going to have the first electric car, there will be others, so what we have to do is we have to be competitive and we have to make sure that we stay competitive at all times.  So from the point of view of having a competitive product that we can put on the market and if maybe in a year or two we can make sure that we catch up and it is still competitive, absolutely.  So from that point of view I think it is certainly doable, I don’t think that window has closed.  I think the window in fact for electric vehicles has in a sense opened slower than what some people had forecast, I think if you look at Nissan Leaf for instance, yes they are selling all over the world, but it hasn’t happened as quickly as people had thought.  The oil price has sort of got stuck at around 100 dollars at the moment a little bit up a little bit down and people are lulled into saying well, you know at that level I can… I am happy.  But the point is if you look at the long term forecast of where the oil price is going, of where global warming is going, all of these, I think the electric car is just inevitable, you are not going to stop it, it is a question of what is the best time to start and what is the best way to approach it.

Vuyo: All right.  Dave?

Dave: All right just, listen I won’t comment and I won’t keep you long but I know your technology in terms of battery power must have been very advanced.  It appears that even Boeing could not find a decent supplier of batteries for their Dreamliner, maybe that is an opportunity for you guys.

Kobus: Yeah, that is a very interesting one on the Dreamliner that we followed closely.  Our batteries were lithium based and the Leaf’s batteries are lithium based and the Renault Fluent’s batteries are lithium based.  Your cell phone, your lap top, all of these things are lithium based.  The Dreamliner had lithium based batteries and they ran into trouble and I think the quickest solution to a problem  - and you know when a problem happens on a production line it is quite different from when a it happens during development when you have a little bit of time to try and resolve it.  So their quickest and safest solution was to go back to the previous technology battery on the Dreamliner.  But I have no doubt that given another few years they are going to be back with lithium because it is by far the highest energy content battery around and if you need it to give you distance like in a car then that is what you need.  So people like Toyota like Nissan like Renault have done a tremendous amount of work on proving the safety and homologating lithium type batteries and we were basically to some extent all these lithium batteries go back, boil down to similar sort of chemistry and that is what we were utilizing.

Vuyo: OK. Just looking at what some of our listeners are talking about on the text message line: this one asks, “Why was the Joule not exhibited at motor shows in SA?

Kobus: Yes, we were… in 20… when was the…2011, the Johannesburg International Motor Show. We were planning to go, we had a stand allocated to us and I think if anybody still has a copy of the show catalogue you can see our name there.  But it was decided by our shareholders not to go at the very last moment …

Vuyo: Why?

Kobus:  (PAUSE) Vuyo…I am not a hundred percent sure.  We did go to COP17 two or three months later.  We were under severe financial pressure at the time.  It was certainly not a unanimous decision not to go, but unfortunately we did not go.

Vuyo: OK.  “And government will definitely kill the electric car, will lose too much money in petrol tax the project has been bought.” This is Marcus in PE that is the theory you have been talking about earlier as well and then “Do you think the fact that the power changed hands all the time in government organizations supporting the Joule was one of the problems?” Do you think the change of power was one of the problems, Kobus?

Kobus: To some extent yes.  Just before minister Mangena left and it was said the other day as well, he was not an ANC minister.  But just before he left an inter-ministerial committee was announced specifically to support the commercialization of the electric car. And that we thought was a very important break-through because it took it out of the hands of just one champion who might or might not make it through to the next round…

Vuyo: (LAUGHS) Yeah…

Kobus: … and give it a broader sort of support.  But unfortunately I think that just came too late and that inter-ministerial committee never… it was announced, it was in the paper and it was gazetted, but it was never… I don’t think it ever really came into function.  So yes, I think that hand-over probably had a very big effect.

Vuyo: Yeah.  Just two things: There was no option of listing… because of the work that you had already done and the potential that was there… there was no opportunity of listing the company?

Kobus: Vuyo, no, not in the SA context.  I think if you look at the Canadian sort of start-up listing possibilities we could qualify for that but we could not qualify for listing under the SA rules of listing because we were not trading yet and that precluded that.

Vuyo: OK.  And then of taking it to South Africans, I mean the guys calling in saying you had a lot of support – there was no opportunity of taking it to South Africans and getting them to be… perhaps the people who galvanize the process and support it and fund it in some way?

Kobus: We thought a lot about that.  But you are talking about a substantial amount of money and you need to do that in a very very organized way, like listing - listing is a way to sort of do that in a properly controlled manner.  To do that outside of formally listing it, I would not say it is not doable, but it is… we did not see that as being within our possibility of getting that right.

Vuyo: OK. Stay with us Kobus, we will talk to you some more after the news headlines at 11.30.

News.

Vuyo: If you would like to call in, we are talking about the Joule that is the electric car that was being developed here in SA, was being developed, is it not being developed anymore.  Our guest is Kobus Meiring, the CEO of the company that was driving this initiative.  Kobus so, all of the research and other elements donated to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University… to do what with it? Is it housed in a museum, do you know what is being done with all this content, knowledge and information?

Kobus: Vuyo, no unfortunately I am not completely up to speed with what is happening there – I know there was a launch about a month ago, maybe two months ago of an electric vehicle charging infrastructure project at which there was at least one Joule, I don’t know how many there were, there was certainly also a Nissan Leaf.  Interestingly enough there was a big launch at Gerotek beginning of the year by the Department of I think Environmental Affairs, which was called “South Africa’s Electric Car” which turned out to be also a Nissan Leaf.  So… no, I do not know what Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University is doing with it, I assume they are using it for educational research and so on.  

Vuyo: Yeah.  There is no way of coming back to a project like this in your view? With your knowledge, expertise and you know, project management skill?

Kobus: Well, I think speaking for myself and for everybody, really for every single person that was involved in the project this was absolutely the dream that we were trying to do and people were trying to realise and people were and still are very passionate about making this work.  So if somebody today said, look, we had a new think about this and we want to do it and if you guys want to take part in it… even if it is in a different form or manner or so on, I think you’d find a surprisingly large amount of people saying yes, we want to do this because we think it can work.  And I think it is a mixture of interesting engineering work, interesting commercial work and also the fact that we are doing it in SA.  We really often tend to think that we cannot do things in SA and unfortunately that Afro-pessimism thing is still very much with us.

Vuyo: How many people were working on this project, how many engineers?

Kobus: I think at the height we were about 120 people, of which about 80 or 90 were engineers, so a substantial amount of engineers under one roof.  And it was actually interesting and to some extent scary at the time that in Cape Town where we were based, we were regarded as one of the bigger engineering companies.  We had more engineers under one roof than just about anybody else this side of the Orange River.  That is not counting civil engineering companies who are specifically focused on building and civil works like that.  But a multi-disciplinary engineering thing… there are not that many of them around…

Vuyo: Yeah. 0891104207  Let’s tell you Kobus what people are saying again on the text message lines: “I imagine…” No. “Technically it is still behind - minimum 500km range, speed, availability of electricity, these are challenges to overcome, 200km between charging is an issue” Is that where you were – 500 km between charging or was it 200km between charging?

Kobus: One of the biggest differences between our car and some of the other cars is that we said we don’t know what will be the best battery configuration, either chemically, physically or from a range perspective, which ones the customers really want, so we came up with the biggest and most versatile battery space as a lot.  So we could in fact fit a battery in there that could give you the 500km range. Our market research said that it would probably not really be what the customers wanted.  And we ended up with a battery that gave you about 250km range on the new European drive cycle.  Because if you analyse what people… how they drive, where they drive to and you say, well this would initially be aimed as a city vehicle in many instances as a second vehicle, to do 250km a day would mean you could live in Pretoria, work in Jhb, drive around, go back home and still be very comfortable by either charging that night or maybe even only charging the next day.  So this whole paradigm of going to the garage and filling up just falls away.  We think we need to do 500 or 600km on a tank, which you do because it is a hassle to go to the garage, but it is not really a hassle to plug in your lap top or your cell phone or your tooth brush or whatever and that is really the paradigm shift that needs to be made.

Vuyo: OK.  Mzwandile lives in Jhb, let’s hear what he’s got to say. Mzwandile good morning.

Mzwandile: Brother how are you?

Vuyo: Ah, ek is nxha, outie, hoe lyk dit?

Mzwandile: Ek is goed, man. 

Vuyo: Eh, Tata.

Mzwandile: Look Brother I don’t know if I have heard correctly – that the project has been canned?

Vuyo: Yes, you’ve heard it correctly.

Mzwandile: OK so now what I want to know: What about the money that was spent on the project? Because one look at that project and look at it with pride with what we are going to do with it as a country… as the professor has just said, the car was a car that was going to be used probably inter-city – Jhb to Pretoria, probably from Jhb you can go to Mangaung (inaudible) and stuff like that.  So who canned it and what was the reason behind it? Because one look at this and look at it politically it seems somehow we were bulldozed by the oil companies because once you come up with something that will not require oil and stuff like that, you will be bulldozed, especially with us as a country, we are a small country with no power and we can easily be bulldozed.  But looking at it - China has the same things that are happening, I remember I was in China and most of the bikes there were running on electricity.

Vuyo: Yeah. OK.  So Kobus, were you bulldozed by the energy companies?

Kobus: Sorry Vuyo, you just broke up there.  Could you just repeat it?

Vuyo: Were you bulldozed by the energy companies, by the oil companies in particular?

Kobus: No, no we were not. And I think there are two reasons for this.  The one is that I don’t think there will ever be a precipitous change from oil to electricity, it is going to be a gradual thing, we are never going to run out of petrol as such, it is just going to become more and more expensive.  Global warming is going to become more and more of an issue, but it is not going to be an overnight sort of thing. So that is the one side of it the other side of it is I think what we were trying to do was really difficult, it was a challenge, so you essentially don’t need to try to stop something like that, you could just stop supporting something like that and it will also stop.  And I think to a large extent this is what happened here.   I don’t think there was any, you know, sort of positive undermining of what we were trying to do, maybe one or two small exceptions, but in general not.  But if you don’t put the right amount of support at all levels into something like this, it will just not take off the ground.  You need to put a lot of energy into something to get it to fly.  So we went through a stage where we said it feels as if we built an aeroplane, we’ve fuelled it up, we are ready, we are at the beginning of the runway, we are starting to roll.  But because the powers that be don’t have the necessary confidence, they say well look, OK you can start running down the runway but don’t go too fast and what that implies is that you can never take off.  You are going to run out of runway at some point, but you are never going to take off and you are never going to know if you could have taken off.

Vuyo: OK.  “We heard that Malaysia was interested in the car” this from Jane, was Malaysia interested in the car?

Kobus: Sorry, just repeat that?

Vuyo:  Jane says she heard that Malaysia was interested in the car?

Kobus:  Oh, Malaysia.  Yes, we actually had a large delegation from Malaysia here who drove the cars and so on, on the very day that we closed down the company.  We have tried to keep the conversation with Malaysia going via the DST because the DST in a sense is the over-arching owner of this.  And it has been hard to really build up momentum there and that is more than a year ago now.  So there have been sporadic conversations with the Malaysians since, but once again it is one of those things where you don’t need to kill it, it will die by itself if you don’t feed it enough.

Vuyo:  All right. “This is a good idea says Modise in Mafikeng. “ We’ve got another sort of four or five minutes to talk.  Let me just take this break, Kobus and then I’ll talk to you – we’ll just talk about engineering and some of the knowledge that was cultivated during this period.  We’ll be back in a moment.

Kobus: All right.

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Vuyo: All right.  Just finally Kobus, talk a little bit about the engineering-learning.  I mean would you say that as far as motoring engineering, motor car engineering is concerned we have really moved significantly because of that project?

Kobus: Yes I certainly think we did.  When we started and we wanted to employ people with automotive experience, they were just not existent.  Because, yes, there were people involved in the car factories in SA but those car factories are making cars to somebody else’s design.  And the automotive development work in SA has been limited to doing maybe suspension for local conditions or radiators for local conditions, air conditioners for local conditions, that sort of thing. A basic from the ground up automotive design development in this country has not been done at this level at all.  There were some racing car constructors, notably a guy like Owen Ashley in Cape Town who was doing design from the ground up – very very knowledgeable.  But we literally took clever engineers from all kinds of other backgrounds and turned them into I think quite a formidable team of automotive engineers by the end of the project.

Vuyo:  Yeah.  It has been a pleasure chatting to you, thank you so much for your time and thanks for the innovation, I think it is quite an inspiring story.

Kobus: Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

Vuyo: Thank you very much Kobus Meiring.  We were talking about the Joule, the car the country was developing but we are not developing it any more.  Thank you very much for the moments Kobus Meiring.

Vuyo Mbuli transcription

Today is the funeral of Vuyo Mbuli - excellent TV and radio presenter, fearless when an issue is close to his heart, loyal to everything that will make a successful, prosperous and peaceful South Africa.
On 26 April, less than a month ago, on SAFM Morning Talk, he interviewed CEO of Optimal Energy who designed and built the Joule - the first electric car in Africa.  Vuyo was a big campaigner for the Joule and his last words at the end of the interview was that he wants to start a SAFM campaign to save the Joule. I will transcribe and post the 42 minute interview on this post over the next couple of weeks.

My experiences around COP17

President Jacob Zuma at COP17 in the emission free, homegrown electric Joule, designed by Cape Town company Optimal Energy. To industrialize this car, will cost about R9 billion. Paul Hoffman, director IFAISA said: Recover R35bn from the arms deals, invest 9 billion in EV Joule and create 10 000 green jobs. http://tinyurl.com/7l9jm2w

Other experiences: There were some "Aha!" moments, like when Dr Morne du Plessis from the WWFSA said he believed Africa could bypass coal-fuelled electricity and jump directly to wind and solar energy provided that the Green Fund is established and properly administrated.  There were also moments of frustration when I felt leaders needed to make important statements and they did not.  Also when I realised how little the public and some journalists really understand about climate change issues.  And it is all there - you just have to look it up!

My experience of the First Annual Climate Communications Day on Thursday 1 September at the Elangeni hotel in Durban:

There were very few South Africans represented.

9.15 The first plenary session:

The story is complex, not simplistic and linear and we have to express it like that.

For farmers climate change is now a real issue – not something out there and far away.

How and where is the science of climate change communicated to the media? At the moment is is insufficient and fragmented.  There need to be more structured meetings.

How should scientists communicate? They should not dumb it down, not speak "nerd language." Journalists should get into the nitty-gritty even if it is difficult to communicate the nuances.

Haili Cao, (Caixin Media, China): Know your audience – are they educated? First educate the journalists before we educate the public.

Is it urgent or non-urgent? If it comes across as non-urgent it means we reporters have not done our job.

Joydeep Gupta (IANS/Third Pole Project, India): You don’t have to tell a small holder farmer about climate change – they don’t call it that but they feel its effects.

And the average urban person – what is happening – are their houses on fire?  There are already dramatic stories. Focus on the humanitarian view of climate change.

The jargon jungle of climate change is one of the big problem issues.  Know your subject well enough to get over that.

What is the place of social movements? Should journalists link up with them? Joydeep feels we should draw the line between journalists and NGO’s.  When we start looking like activists, we lose credibility, there is a conflict of interest.  Social movements have to make the connections and transform it to a political movement.

From the audience: A local rabbi from Durban does not believe journalists should stay emotionally uninvolved. How can you be passive -if your house is on fire?

Climate change could be presented as health, gender, or fisherman stories.  People want to listen to positive adaptation stories, otherwise we might be left with Climate Change Fatigue syndrome.

Question from Lagos: Should we not keep our eyes on the big picture?  People want to know what decision makers are doing – there should be a balance in what we communicate.  We have to report on the hard stuff too, not only the small stories, not always in an entertaining, relaxed mood.  Our governments keep stalling and postponing, we have to wake them up.

Andy Mason from Oneworld: Today is World Aids Day.  Denialism was also an issue in SA with Aids.  Metaphors, symbols etc. were crude and lacking in sophistication.  Climate Change communication is also crude at the moment.

What about denialists? Some editors feel there should be a "balanced" view in their articles. Things have changed in the last 9 years. Now, 97% of scientists believe in human induced climate change.  Should we also entertain the flat earth- view to be seen as "balanced"?

Second Plenary session 11.15am:

Kelly Rigg ( Global Campaign for Climate Action/TckTckTck): Who do politicians listen to? Expand the number of people who talk about climate change – we have to move beyond the converted.

The fossil fuel industry pays for denialists. They are very smart about how they do it – 450 links to every story, so their stories rise up in the search engine.  They give politicians the cover not to do the right thing.

We can’t fund like fossil fuel, but we have the majority of people on our side. Get info out to union leaders and organizations and influencers.  That will also change the media discourse. (Agenda setting)

Educator from the audience: The way in which we will drop the bomb is by NOT involving children and communicate to them.  Today they live in our world, tomorrow we will live in theirs.

Indi Mclymont-Lafayette (Panos Caribbean, Jamaica) Music that captures the messages work very well in  Caribbean.

Slacktivism – social media like facebook an twitter – just click on a link then you do not have to do much else?

Kelly Rigg: By having people follow you on twitter, who are not really converted in temrs of climate change, could open up their minds (Leonardo de Caprio follows TckTckTck and now many of his fans follow them as well).  Social Media networks spread the message but is not the real replacement for activism. (Chris Librie from Hewlett Packard says without IT there would be no social media.)

From the audience a journalist from Malawi: Terminology is one of the biggest barriers to climate change communications in African languages.

Journalists complain of problems with editors - they often ask, "so where is the story?" It is not riveting enough. Indi responds: Journalists should form strategi alliences to address editor problems

Taiwan University professor from audience:  – How do we train students to become independent reporters? She is also from Peoples News Platform. Wambi Michael (Uganda Radio Network, Uganda) responds: University students of environmental disciplines should go and work at radio stations etc to see how to communicate information. There should be more on-sight training of journalists. In Uganda people have been told to plant trees, so they planted Eucaliptes. Now they are facing water shortages.

Chris Librie from Hewlett Packard reminds us that IT is only responsible for 2% of the world's CO2.

13.45 First Breakout session.  We could go to one of the following sessions: "Communicating climate change with Games",  "Climate Movies" or "What's God got to do with it?" I chose the movies.

We watched 6 trailers, then the panel discussed them.

An Inconvenient Truth:

The movie made 50 million dollars, 6th highest of all documentaries.  It made complicated issues clear, had powerful visuals and solutions.

Comment from audience: The movie was shown in small villages in my country, Sierra Leone and translated.  It worked well, even children recognized the signs like water shortages.

Jacqueline Frank (Regional Project Coodinator, Media Capacity Building of Africa Adaptation Programme): Ask yourself, what is your goal an who is your audience? What do you want them to take away? Fear and concern, just realizing that there is a problem? People now want to see solution, not fear-mongering movies.

The Day after Tomorrow:

It made 540 million.  Is it good or bad for us that so many people saw it? There is a similarity with holocaust films. But it could be an entry point. It could be useful supplemented by other information. It tells people, "Nothing, not even the American army can save the day if it is too late."  We need the media to make the link between this movie and climate change on behalf of the people.

Other trailers: Everything's Cool, Sizzle,The 11th Hour, The Age of Stupid, Fahrenheit, Addicted to Oil.

I was disappointed that The Fourth Revolution was not discussed as it is mostly a documentary of positive solutions
.

Albert Einstein: Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.

14.40: Second Breakout Session:

Choices: "The Dragon's Breath: From the front lines of climate change to the front page", "Climate Change Skeptics in the Global South?" and "Connecting IT and Climate Communications".  I chose the first topic.

Three researchers form the IDRC-DFID Climate Change Adaptation in Africa programme attempt to convince three "dragons" (media editors) that their stories are worth covering. The editors (Joydeep Gupta,
Tim Williams and Laurie Goering then show what the media really want in terms of news, stories and human interest.  For those pitching their stories, ingenuity and inspriation will be critical.  The researchers were: Dr Hussein Elmzouri, National Institute of Agricultural Research Morocco on facing water scarcity in Morocco’s plains and mountains, Dr Maria Onyango on harnessing indigenous climate forecasting knowledge and Dr Paul Mapfumo of University of Zimbabwe on protecting soil to increase smallholder resilience. These scientists had 3 minutes to pitch their stories to the editors.

Story one:

Editors: What is the story? I need a conflict - it works in Hollywood, it works in the newspapers.  Is this relevant for the UK? Do you think this is good news?

Story two: Harnessing indigenous climate forecasting knowledge – Dr  Maria Onyango senior lecturer Bundo University Kenia.

Rural community knowledge base 90% of their planting skills on indigenous knowledge.  Local predictors got together with modern scientists and they bonded.  There were a  lot of similar perceptions between the two groups.  Their communications improved livelihoods, because local communicators could communicate better with the people. They helped to translate information into the local language and also got the government involved.

Editors: Medium is very important  – are you looking at radio or print? Did you use TV cameras, audio recorders, notes, photos, videos? Who long did this take?

Forecastings are usually just before planting. Integrating knowledge is very valuable, it is better accepted by community rather than outsiders who are coming to intrude.

Editors: We want more evidence - what was the hard evidence?

Story three:  Protecting soil to increase smallholder resilience. Prof Paul Mamfumo Univ Zimbabwe.

We worked with local leadership and with seed people. We term them the learning centres, we put knowledge in their hands.  Only after working together, we could see changes.  They put their knowledge into our minds, we put our knowledge into their hands. Soil is a good entry point for climate change.

Editors: Good start, but where is the middle and end of the story?

Eg Start: Lack of food self-sufficiency. Middle: Bring together and exchange ideas. End: Enable community to generate good food income.

How many people benefited? It is not in context – how big is the problem?

Dr Mapfumo: The mealies used to be thesize of my pen.

Editors: – good image, people could understand it well.  The story should be macro, then a little bit micro to put it into context and then get to the closing point. There is a big difference from how scientists, social media and mass media see events.

UCT Climate Change talks organized by the Department of Film and Media Theory 30 November 2011

Vivienne Walsh: Residential and commercial consumption of energy is second  only to that of transport.  High income groups are highest in energy consumption, although they are the smallest group. My thoughts on this: Well, then we need the electric Joule, affordable to those higher income groups who are highest in energy consumption - since transport is the biggest culprit.  Surely they will mention this...

Energy Security main goal.

Criteria1:

Resilient city , poverty alleviation, economic development, low carbon.

Criteria2:

Energy efficiency: 10% energy consumption reduction target by 2012

Renewable energy projects – 10% RE contribution by 2020

Water from mountain- harness energy.

Retrofits by city council.

Sustainable transport: Bus Rapid Transit system (BRT)

Climate Adaptation Plan of Action.

Sea level rise analysis

Coastal protection zone.

Building resilience in low-income communities: ceilings, solar water heaters, access to climate finance, develop green economy – strategic partnerships.

Education and awareness, resource efficiency and sustainability campaigns

Discussion: do you let media get involved? Media releases.  Community papers highest info source for CT

Methodology of carbon footprint calculation NB – not always best practice used. 

Energy Resource Management Department: Climate Adaptation plan of action.

Hilton Trollip- Optimal Energy Future (Renewables) – Energy and climate change unit of Environmental Resoucre Management Department

We rely on journalists to get the numbers out.  Audience profiling: how do you assess the numbers?

This (UCT) Audience : A third did 12^th year maths.  What about people who know less than you?

Scientists and journalists should spend more time together to make climate change understandable.

1% of scientists with huge amounts of money behind them try to claim that climate change is not important.

CT 6,4 tons per capit.  We can flatten out carbon emissions with no extra cost.

Inefficient economy, fewer jobs, vulnerability to carbon constraint, susceptible to oil price rise – end of cheap oil.

Internationsl energy agency: middle scenario fuel prices could quadruple

Can we meet by science required national target by 2030?  If electricity efficiency, transport efficiency and renewable electricity supply.  People are uneducated because a lot of money is spent on advertising business as usual.

CT Adaptation measures:

Water.

Retrofit existing stormwater

Insulating houses – ceilings retrofit

Sea level rise and CPZ. Revised floodlins under climate cange scenarios.

Sustainable urban drainage system (DUDS)

25 year bulk water planning horizon incl climate projections.

Ecosytems mapping and quantifying services – look at green infrastructure

Monitor air quality – research

Ground water monitoring

Rainfall monitoring (change in patterns)

Map all sector’s vulnerability – spatial

Risk reduction programme

Have to take skeptics and activists to go together in greening Cape Town. Cannot go too fast, take everyone with.  The activists have their voices in the social media.  Community newspapers are most useful in climate change info.

Michelle Preen:

Head : Environmental Capacity Building, training and education.

Climate Smart Cape Town Campaign 30 partners.

Won best stand – Climate Smart Cape Town. Pavillion is off the grid – powered by solar and wind, rainwater collections.

I found it interesting that no mention was made of Cape Town's emission free car, the Joule. Perhaps because they could not sponsor the Cape Town Climate Smart programme?  Pity - the foreigners attending this conference would have found it fascinating.  Fortunately SA's smart people got it together and just before the end of COP17, SA's president Zuma learnt about the Jewel in his country and so did Pravin Gordhan (Cheryl Carrolus ordered him to have a ride in the Joule) as well as Science and Technology minister Naledi Pandor.  No thanks to Climate Smart Cape Town.

So these were my highs and lows of COP17 SA2011.

Adaptation as a function of Evolution

Adaptation as a Function of Evolution

Evolutionary Theories of the Arts and some threads unraveled from The Orchid Thief
(Susan Orlean) and Adaptation (Charlie Kaufman)

Copyright Rouxnette Meiring

2 November 2011

Evolutionary theories of the arts

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”  Charles Darwin.

Can the integrated explanatory framework of evolutionary anthropology, biology and psychology offer insights that we can apply to literature and film?  I want to argue that it can.  I will use remarks and findings by sociobiologists and leading theorists in the new movement of the Evolutionary Theory of the Arts to substantiate the claim.  I will also consider aspects of the adaptation process in the film Adaptation by screen writer Charlie Kaufman from the non-fiction account The Orchard Thief by Susan Orlean, in order to further explicate the claim.  Let us first look at what the theorists have to say:
Edward Osborne Wilson, the father of sociobiology, published a book in 1998 called Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge in which he reviews methods to unite the sciences with the humanities and pleads for more attention to interdisciplinary research and he believes that "although art is not part of human nature, appreciation of art definitely is. "  Evolutionary theorists of the arts seem to agree with him.  Brian Boyd wrote a book in 2009, called On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction where he proposes art and storytelling as adaptations and he explains the evolved cognitive mechanisms underpinning fiction. (Boyd, Carroll & Gottschall, 2010: 547)  Joseph Carroll's book Evolution and Literary Theory integrates traditional humanist theory with evolutionary psychology, which in turn opposes poststructuralist theory.  His Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature and Literature is a collection of essays that takes in new developments in this field.  Jonathan Gottschall's 2008 book Literature, Science and a New Humanities, also draws attention to the importance of interdisciplinary study.  In a book edited by Boyd, Carroll and Gottschall, they explain their views as evolutionary theorists of the Arts as follows:

“We believe that works of art are shaped by our evolved human nature, by culture and by individual experience.  Adopting an evolutionary perspective enables us to build theories of literature and film not from near the end of the story but from the start, from the ground up.  By building in this way, we can ask altogether new questions and return to older questions with sharper eyes and surer hands.” (2010:3)

What exactly is adaptation from an evolutionary biological point of view?

Theodosius Dobzhansky, prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist attempted the following definition of “adaptation” as scientists still understand it today:

“Adaptation is the evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its habitat or habitats.” (Dobzhansky, 1968:1-34)

What about filmic adaptation? Filmic adaptation consists of the reading of a book and the writing of a film script.  So how could we link what the evolutionary biologist have said about adaptation, to what has been said by the evolutionary theorists of the art?  Robert Stam, referring to the film, Adaptation, remarks in his Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation (Stam & Raengo 2005) “The film brings out the Darwinian overtones of the word ‘adaptation’, evoking adaptation as a means of evolution and survival.”  The biological definition of adaptation could be compared to adaptation as an art form in two ways:  Firstly, the habitat/habitats of the world of art are the society/societies of the time with its habits and fashions and socio-economic and political views.  The evolutionary process whereby the organism (the novel or film) is able to survive the passage of time depends on its universality, timelessness or ability to adapt in order to stay relevant.  Secondly, the evolutionist believes that fiction/art is part of humanity because it was selected as something that enhanced survival (in other words it is an adaptation) or it was a by-product of “something else” that was an adaptation.  In his chapter, Darwin and the Directors, Murray Smith believes this “something else” is our capacity to imagine.

“One thing that sets us apart from other species is our ability to simulate, in our minds, circumstances which we might encounter, or indeed which we have encountered in the past.  And in doing so, we are able to rehearse how things might go in circumstances we have not actually experienced.  The imagination, in other words, enhances our foresight and supercharges our ability to plan; and it is not hard to see how this improves our fitness in the environment of human action.”  (Smith in Boyd, Carroll & Gottschall 2010:259)

At this point, it is perhaps appropriate to also look at definitions of the term “evolution”, since evolution and adaptation are key words in this essay.  It is interesting that in Darwin’s glossary at the end of The Origin of Species, the word “evolution” does not even appear.  Professor Manfred Laubichler and professor Jane Maienschein, wrote in an article, Embryos, Cells, Genes and Organisms: Reflections on the History of Evolutionary Developmental Biology”:”The notion of evolution originally referred to the unfolding of a preformed structure within the developing embryo and only later acquired its current meaning as the transformation of species through time.” (Sansom & Brandon (eds) 2007:chapter 1)  A more recent explanation comes from one of the most respected evolutionary biologists, Douglas J. Futuyama, defining biological evolution in Evolutionary Biology, (Sinauer Associates 1986 ) as follows:

"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. “

Evolutionary theory is extremely relevant to literature, art and film, when one poses the question: Why would emotions have been naturally selected as one of the human traits to help us survive as a species?  Murray Smith again seems to have the answer.  He believes emotions motivate us firstly to act decisively in the world and not just drift among equally weighted options.  Secondly it provides us with quick and intense responses to our changing environment – something reason alone cannot always provide. (Smith 2003)  Film, more than any other art form, depends on the interplay of emotions as expressed in the human face, voice, posture and gesture.  Many of its sub-genres are even named after emotions (weepers, thrillers, tear-jerkers, horror-movies).  Smith also argues that this dependency accounts for the foundational significance of facial expression in films where the characters have lost the ability of facial expression. (The English Patient, Les Yeux sans Visage)  Sight is our dominant sense for good evolutionary reasons. Andrew Parker, research fellow at Oxford’s Department of Zoology claims in his book In the blink of an eye: the cause of the most dramatic event in the history of life that the “Cambrian explosion” happened because life-forms had their eyes opened literally for the first time during that period and suddenly there was enormous pressure to evolve. (Parker,2003)  It is fascinating to learn that some cells in the brain fire only when eyes stare straight at the human being! This effect is amplified emotionally through the amygdale, which is the brain’s emotional router. It has always been crucial to human survival to recognize another person as a distinct individual and to read his emotions and intentions. (Joseph Anderson, Character in Citizen Kane, 1996, from Boyd, Carroll & Gottschall, 2010.)  But are facial expressions universal or do they depend on culture? Paul Ekman is a contemporary evolutionary scientist of facial expression and he believes that a range of basic emotional expressions are instantly recognized cross-culturally.  These emotions are happiness, sadness, disgust, anger, fear and surprise.  These basic facial expressions play an important role to orientate the audience towards a scene in a film.  Expressions associated with higher emotions like love, admit more cultural variation.  Ekman mentions culture-specific display rules which govern certain emotions and determine who can express their emotions and when.  (Ekman,1982)

It is perhaps necessary here to mention the fact that sensitivity to emotional signals is absent in certain psychological conditions, like Asperger’s syndrome where the cognitive ability of people with Asperger’s allow them to articulate social norms in a laboratory context and show a theoretical understanding of people’s emotions but they have difficulty acting on this knowledge in real-life situations.  The wonderful novel by Mark Haddon, (winner of the Whitbread book of the year) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time sheds tender light on this condition.  It might be an interesting topic for research in evolutionary film theory.  Film therapy could perhaps be developed as cognitive behavioral therapy for people with Asperger’s.

David Bordwell believes affinities and curiosities about other humans as well as the bonding effects of watching a film with others, are only some of the things that need to be investigated through systematic study of the cinematic experience and the range of emotional effects it could have. If we look at culture as an elaboration of evolutionary processes, there should be no gulf between “biology” and “society”.  The effects of film stem from their impact on our sensory systems, which prompts us to detect movement, shape, colour and sounds all of which is a transcultural capacity.  He says:

“And because affective states and counterfactual speculation are of adaptive advantage, it is likely that an artistic medium that permits emotional and imaginative expression would have appeal across cultural boundaries.” (Bordwell 2008 in Boyd, Carroll & Gottschall 2010:283)

In his essay, Art and Evolution: The Avant-Garde as Test Case (Boyd 2008) Brian Boyd defines art as being “cognitive play with pattern”.  In most of the animal kingdom, “play” takes up a large amount of the animal’s time and plays an important part in the process of learning to adapt to real life.  It is also known that the amount of play in a species correlates with its flexibility of behavior.   Boyd quotes biologist Stephen Jay Gould who said “The human mind delights in finding pattern.”  Art is the opposite of lack of pattern.  Strong emotional reactions are elicited by our perception of pattern or the deviation from it. 
To summarize:  Boyd (2010:436) sees art as an evolutionary adaptation and offers seven distinct biological benefits of art, which do indeed offer insights that we could apply to literature and film:

1.      Art improves our production and processing of pattern especially in the key areas of sight, sound and sociality – it can reconfigure minds since the emotional intensity (engaging attention and stirring response) helps consolidate memory.

2.      Those with talents in arts, earn the attention of others which correlates with status and thus reproductive and survival success.

3.      It intensifies the advantages of shared attention and shared purpose.

4.      It strengthens group allegiance and tribal identification.

5.      The stimulus of art offers relaxation in a stressful society.

6.      It generates confidence that we can transform the world to suit our preferences.

7.      It supplies skills and models we can refine and recombine to ensure ongoing cumulative creativity.
In the next section, I will look at interesting comparisons between adaptation in evolutionary biology and in film.

The Orchid Thief (Susan Orlean) and Adaptation (Charlie Kaufman): unraveling some threads

The Orchid Thief is a book of creative non-fiction in which the New Yorker writer Susan Orlean tells the story of John Laroche, the “orchid thief” and three Seminole Indian men who were caught in 1994, leaving a wild swamp in the Fakahatchee Strand Reserve in the Florida Everglades, with bags full of Ghost orchids (Polyrrhizalindenii).  Orlean found the story interesting and went to Florida to find out more.  She reports on the court case, but also on the history of orchid collecting and the eccentric world of orchid collectors with their subcultures and smugglers.  She delights her readers with interesting facts about orchids – for example that it takes seven years from seed to bloom, there are over 100 000 named varieties and hybrids and orchids live so long they are made provisions for in wills.  Laroche becomes a friend and also her character study of human passion for collecting and acquiring. The book becomes an obsession with obsession.  Laroche tells Susan that orchids are considered the most highly evolved flowering plants on earth. (Orlean 1999:49). It also becomes clear that orchids are extremely adaptable, which is part of their ability to survive. Images from the book suggests the similarities between orchids and art adaptation: “Its essential character can be repeatedly re-imagined”  and “Florida is a warm, tropical place…infinitely transformable.  It is as suggestible as someone under hypnosis.”(1999:51) These images suggest creativity, fertility and change.  We also learn of the orchid as a hybrid form, and of mutations and cross-fertilization and that only complex plants rely on cross-fertilization.  On p 53 Laroche says, “Charles Darwin believed that living things produced by cross-fertilization always prevail over self-pollinated ones in the contest for existence because their offspring have new genetic mixtures and they then will have the evolutionary chance to adapt as the world around them changes.”

Stam believes film adaptations are also hybrid forms like the orchid and a meeting place of different species/genres.  He asks in his Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation (2005:3) “If mutation is the means by which the evolutionary process advances, then we can also see filmic adaptation as mutations that help their source novel to survive.”  Other images from the book that could be compared to film adaptation, or the view that prevails in some literary circles of film adaptation, is the parasite metaphor – the adapter becomes the giant orchid flower, sucking the life out of its host.  Adaptation, the film, is a 2002 American comedy-drama film directed by Spike Jonze, written by Charlie Kaufman and based on Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief. The film had been in development from 1994.  Columbia Pictures asked Kaufman to write the film script, but he went through writer’s block as he realized that there is no narrative to the book.  He then decided to write a script about his experience of adapting The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. He creates main characters that are not in the book, himself amongst others and a twin brother who writes formulaic, commercial scripts but is very successful doing just that.  Another new character in the film is script guru Robert McKee who is the author of the famous Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting.

One struggles to find anything in the plot of this film script resembling Susan Orlean’s book.  But when Orlean was asked whether she thought the film was a faithful adaptation of her book, she said that ironically it was an extremely faithful adaptation of what the essence of the book was for her and that in spirit, it was faithful. (“Its essential character can be repeatedly re-imagined”) She saw her book as a character in the movie, as the protagonist, and felt that it was far more respectful and attentive to her work than she would have expected. http://movies.about.com/library/weekly/aaadaptationintc.htm

In terms of adaptation as enhancing quality, Orlean said in a Texas Book Festival audience interview in 2008: “Charlie [Kaufman] unearthed themes that were not explicit in the book.  There were qualities of the book that emerged through the film that I did not have a grip on myself.” (Heller: 2008)  In his discussion of the film, Adaptation, Robert Stam notices that Charlie even struggles to “adapt” to everyday life – he cannot even survive, much less evolve.  Stam also finds it apt that the film is set in Hollywood, the cut-throat city where it is a matter of survival of the fittest. (2005:3)  The film starts with two of Robert McKee’s big no-no’s.  “God help you if you use voice-over” and “never call attention to yourself.”  We hear the voice of Charlie the scriptwriter in a neurotic monologue about his own short-comings and eccentricities.  He ends it with the observation that it is so depressing that his psychological problems are probably all due to some “chemical misbalance” or “misfiring neurons” in his brain.

The film is full of evolution and adaptation images – many more than in Orlean’s book (“There were qualities of the book that emerged through the film that I did not have a grip on myself.”) (Heller: 2008)  An evolution fantasy sequence, created by Digital Domaine starts with events “four billion and forty years ago” and ends with the birth of Charlie – in the city of ”adapt or die” – Hollywood.  Laroche listens to a recording of Darwin’s book The Origin of Species while he drives his truck to the Fakahatchee to collect orchids.  Throughout the film he has a lot to say about adaptation and evolution.  According to him adaptation is “to figure out how to thrive in the world.”  References to evolution and adaptation are also uttered by scriptwriter Charlie. He says adaptation is “the journey we all take… trapped in our own bodies.”  After the Robert McKee course on script writing, he confesses that McKee’s words shocked him. He echoes the meaning of adaptation in biological terms when he says, “It was about my choices as a human being”.  The character Robert McKee advises him “The characters must change and the change must come from them.”  But then, according to the Susan Orlean character in the film, “change is not a choice… it happens.”  Remember that Douglas Futuyama said in his definition, "In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change.”  Laroche, as if responding to Orlean’s “change is not a choice, it happens” idea, tells her later in the film, “The drug helps people to become fascinated,”  which is the one change she would like to see happening in herself.

The word “orchid” comes from the Greek word “orchis” which means testicle.  It is ironic that Charlie is not only going through a “sterile” phase as adaptation script writer, he is also sterile in his relationships with women.  He masturbates constantly and fantasizes about sex with every woman he meets, but his “real-life” relationship is at a dead-end because of the choices he makes.  Remember, Brian Boyd defined art as being “cognitive play with pattern” and biologist Stephen Jay Gould said “The human mind delights in finding pattern.”  The idea of pattern and finding patterns to make sense of an otherwise overwhelming world is also a key idea in the film.  Orlean says in the film, “There are too many directions to go in, too many choices.  Obsession limits it to something digestible.”  In the dream-sequence Charlie imagines her talking to him and telling him, “Focus on one thing in the story that you feel passionate about and write about that.”  We recall Murray Smith’s remark that emotions motivate us firstly to act decisively in the world and not just drift among equally weighted options.  Charlie has Orlean confessing, “I want to feel what it feels like to care passionately about something.”

The suggestive metaphor of pollination and cross-pollination as well as mutation is also beautifully illustrated in the film with close-ups of butterflies and orchids. It is often also cross-pollination and mutations that helps a source novel to survive and to adapt to changing environments and tastes as well as to a new medium. Stam reminds us that film is a form of writing that borrows from other forms or writing:  “Do not adaptations ‘adapt to’ changing environments and changing tastes as well as to a new medium, with distinct industrial demands, commercial pressures, censors’ taboos and aesthetic norms? And are adaptations not a hybrid form like the orchid, the meeting place of different ‘species?’” (2005:3)  Ironically, Charlie does not allow himself to be cross-pollinated at the start of the film.  He fears the Hollywood block buster story and the Robert Mc Kee “recipes”.  He does not want to share his work with his brother Donald, although Donald constantly talks about his work to everyone who wants to listen and he is always enthralled with other people’s ideas.  And then we find out that against all odds, Donald has written a successful script.  Charlie tells his agent and the producer, that he does not want to tarnish the film with car chases, drugs, sex and murders as the typical Hollywood film does.  In the end that is exactly what he does – the one piece of advice that he takes from McKee - to “wow them in the end” and he forces his characters to go through a catharsis, another one of McKee’s requirements.  The other McKee “principles” he ignores – don’t use voice-over, never call attention to yourself and you cannot have a protagonist without desire.  Eventually he writes a digressive, non-linear plot with fake catharses in the end. 

The final scenes in the film echo the pursuit of the orchid hunters in the olden days – running through swamps, escaping murderers, being eaten by crocodiles… Susan Orlean’s last words in the film have definite evolutionary connotations: “I want to be a baby again, I want to be new…”  And then we have the last shot: The fast-forward of growing and dying flowers in the foreground and the Hollywood traffic and fast lane cut-throat life in the background. It gives us a time-frame.  Life is short and life is very long – the life of a flower lasts for a couple of days, that of a human being some decades and of the evolution of a species, a couple of eons.

I want to conclude that the integrated explanatory framework of evolutionary anthropology, biology and psychology can in fact offer many insights that we can apply to literature and film.  And we will always be looking for more insights, because as Brett Cooke wrote in his 2002 essay, Human Nature, Utopia and Dystopia (Boyd, Carroll & Gottschall 2010:381): “We will always be driven to discover what it is to be human, to be ‘us’.”

Bibliography

Boyd B, Carroll J & Gottschall J. (eds.) Evolution, Literature & Film 2010, Columbia University Press, New York

Darwin, Charles The Origin of Species 1929, Watts&CO Fleet Street London.

Dobzhansky, T.; Hecht M.K.; Steere, W.C. 1968, On some fundamental concepts of evolutionary biology, Evolutionary biology volume 2 (1st ed.).  New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. pp.1–34.

Ekman, Paul, (ed) Emotion in the Human Face 1982 2^nd ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Haddon, Mark, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time 2003, David Fickling Books, London.

Heller, A. Texas book festival interview with Susan Orlean 2008, Youtube video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUwrIeEB9-Y

Mascie-Taylor, CGN &Rosetta L (eds.) Reproduction and Adaptation 2011 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Murray R & Topel F Interview with Susan Orlean and producer Edward Saxon about Adaptation and The Orchid Thief  http://movies.about.com/library/weekly/aaadaptationintc.htm

Orlean, Susan, The Orchid Thief 1999 “Vintage” Random House London.

Parker, A. In the blink of an eye: the cause of the most dramatic event in the history of life 2003 Simon & Schuster UK Ltd London.

Sansom R & Brandon R.N. Integrating Evolution and Development 2007, MIT Press, Cambridge.

Stam, R & Raengo A. (eds) Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation 2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford.

Wilson, EO, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge 1998, Afred A. Knopf Inc. New York.

Filmography

Adaptation. Dir. Spike Jonze Columbia Pictures, 2002.