Weird science

Ben Stein stumps for intelligent design
in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

UNEVOLVED: Stein

by MATTHEW HAYS

Ben Stein knows he’s in for an uphill battle. His film, which he co-wrote and narrates, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, works to demystify the ideas behind intelligent design, that contentious—most would say absurd—notion that challenges Darwin’s theories of evolution.

It’s an uphill battle, of course, because Stein is an avowed cultural conservative (his CV includes “former Nixon speechwriter”) and the film sides with conservative crusaders who argue that intelligent design is not merely a front for creationism and that it should be taught alongside evolution in schools as an alternative. Stein is fully aware that most of the arts journalists he’s talking to are (ahem) of the lib/left variety, so the questions aren’t always chummy.

“You know what? The great majority of the interviews have been very friendly,” Stein asserts, seemingly surprised by the response. “There was one fellow in Halifax who got angry with me, but other than that, things have been fine.”

Certainly, there are many things to balk at in Expelled. Given that Michael Moore has taken so many hits by the right (Republican presidential hopeful John McCain condemned Fahrenheit 9/11 while admitting he’d never even seen it), there’s something vaguely hypocritical about someone copying Moore’s template quite so obviously. There’s the appeal to American patriotism, ironic file footage, leading interviews and the somewhat obtrusive presence of Stein himself, as some kind of investigative protagonist. (There’s even a cameo by Charlton Heston, in footage of Planet of the Apes.)

“Yes, I owe a considerable debt to Michael Moore,” Stein concedes. “I don’t find him as appealing as his mother does, but he has managed to make contemporary documentaries that are very persuasive. And he’s found an audience.”

That’s something Stein may have a tougher time doing. Even diehard creationists and Republicans may have trouble swallowing Stein’s various theses, including connecting Darwin to Hitler, equating the freedom to discuss intelligent design with bringing down the Berlin Wall, and various other vague and poorly-drawn analogies. Sadly, Stein and director Nathan Frankowski manage to miss a good opportunity at out-Mooring Michael Moore—but instead, fall into many of the traps the doc box-office champ is so often chided for: gross oversimplification, cherry-picking the facts and broadly caricaturing the enemy.

No, we’re the victims!

But the toughest pill to swallow is the historical context of the timing of the release of Expelled. Now, at the ebb of the Bush double term, at a time when a Republican administration did their very best to suppress information that got in the way of their various ideological goals—whether it was about global warming or the threat Saddam Hussein posed—a Republican makes a film claiming victim status. You got it—that stench in the cinemas is of rat. But Stein protests: “The side we’re on is always the side that’s persecuted,” he argues, not very convincingly. “And the other side always seems to be tough. Conservatives feel they are bullied by the left, and vice versa. That’s just the way it always is.” (For the record, Stein says the Bush administration has “not been a calamity” but does acknowledge the invasion of Iraq was “a colossal mistake.”)

Stein makes a series of arguments in the film, including his attempt to separate creationism from intelligent design. One is religious, he argues, while the former is a valid theory, which should be discussed freely—despite the lack of any support from the vast majority of the scientific community. At one point, he careens into a cautionary diatribe regarding Darwinism, suggesting (amid a visit to a concentration camp) that heavy investment in such ideas will no doubt lead to more genocide.

Stein wears his ideology proudly, so much so that it begs for ridicule. He ends his film, Inconvenient Truth-style, delivering a lecture about the importance of free speech and I.D. But his speech is intercut, inexplicably, with Ronald Reagan delivering his famous “Tear down this wall” Berlin speech! (It must be the first time in decades that a documentary filmmaker has used Reagan file footage non-ironically.)

I’m prompted to ask one last question of Stein, before our scant 10 minutes is up. Some aboriginal legend has it that the world was once completely covered by ocean, and then, a turtle rose up to the surface with sand on its back. This sand then became the land that would allow humankind to live. Should this theory be taught along Judeo-Christian mythology in schools?

Stein pauses. “You know, they probably already teach that in native schools, so it’s already being taught.”

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
opens this Friday, June 27