An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth

* Opening sequence: idyllic nature scene, pleasant music, Thoreau-like reminder of nature as beauty, refuge, and spiritual inspiration

* Setting: An academic-looking lecture hall. This setting emphasized the seriousness of the endeavor: Gore the “policy wonk” with his slide show. This setting, returned to repeatedly throughout the film, stresses the importance of reason through association with a university setting.

* Humor: He introduces himself with the self-effacing statement, “I’m Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States.” He’s known as “kind of a nerd,” so Gore is establishing his credibility as a knowledgeable and serious person, but one who also has a sense of humor—i.e., he is establishing ethos.

* Archival footage: Black-and-white footage of Gore during the presidential campaign is spliced in as he is introducing himself—and establishing ethos as an elected official as well as a concerned public citizen.

* Juxtaposition: Visual images, especially photographs, are used to great advantage in this documentary; footage of belching smokestacks early on contrasts with the idyllic natural setting of the opening image.

* Context of Hurricane Katrina: Occasion (context) could be the urgency of global warming; also the immediate occasion of Katrina claimed national attention for this issue. With Gore’s face on the left, footage of Katrina fills the rest of the screen.

* Purpose: Right before we see the actual title of the film, Gore states what is certainly one (and some might argue the only) purpose of the documentary: that it is time to make significant changes in response to the reality that global warming (or climate change) is not a political issue but an ethical or moral one.

* “Lots of logos”: Gore provides hard data about global warming, using time-lapse photography, graphs, charts, statistics—yet he presents this information not as pure lecture but...