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The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Most summers, Hollywood releases a disaster movie in which a highly implausible catastrophe
serves as the backdrop for heroism and hope. Murderous aliens invade or a large meteor hurtles
towards earth, and humans face the prospect of going the way of the dinosaurs. Audiences return
home momentarily frightened but ultimately safe in the knowledge that the chance of any such
cataclysm is vanishingly remote.
The Day After Tomorrow follows the usual script. The movie opens with a sequence of bizarre
meteorological events. A section of ice the size of Rhode Island breaks off the Antarctic ice cap.
Snow falls in New Delhi. Hail the size of grapefruits pounds Tokyo. Enter Jack Hall (Dennis
Quaid), a scientist whose research suggests an explanation: sudden climate change is a very real
possibility. The idea becomes a political football when it is ridiculed by the Vice-President of the
United States, but once torrential rains and a tidal wave flood New York City, Hall’s theories are
vindicated. In a matter of days, temperatures plummet – at one point, they fall 10 degrees a
minute to 150 below zero. The entire northern hemisphere is plunged into a new ice age. Almost
everyone freezes to death in the northern United States while millions of desperate southerners
flee into Mexico. A human drama unfolds along with the disaster. Hall’s estranged son (Jake
Gylenhaal) and his girlfriend (Emily Rossum) are in New York when the storms hit. Hall makes his
way from Washington D.C. to rescue them and achieve reconciliation with his son.
Although is seems like standard fare, The Day After Tomorrow is a Hollywood disaster movie with
a difference, for it is based on a three-part idea with considerable scientific support. Everyone
agrees with Part 1: Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have released increasing quantities
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as we burn more and more fossil fuels to drive our cars,
furnaces, and factories. The great majority – but not all – scientists agree with Part 2: The
accumulation of carbon dioxide allows more solar radiation to enter the atmosphere and less heat
to escape. This contributes to global warming. As temperatures rise, more water evaporates and
the polar ice caps begin to melt. This causes more rainfall, bigger storms, and more flooding. Part
3 is the most recent and controversial part of the argument. The melting of the polar ice caps may
be adding enough fresh water to the oceans to disrupt the flow of the Gulf Stream, the ocean
current that carries warm water up the east coast of North America and the west coast of Europe.
Computer simulations suggest that decreased salinity could push the Gulf Stream southward,
causing average winter temperatures to drop by 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the United States
Northeast and other parts of the Northern hemisphere. A recent Pentagon study suggests that
such climate change could cause droughts, storms, flooding, border raids, large-scale illegal
migration from poor regions, and even war between nuclear powers over scarce food, drinking
water, and energy. The Day After Tomorrow greatly exaggerates the suddenness and magnitude
of what scientists mean by abrupt climate change. “Abrupt” can mean centuries to climatologists,
and temperature drops of 10 degrees a minute are pure fantasy. Still, at the movie’s core lies an
ominous and real possibility.
The Day After Tomorrow also teaches us an important sociological lesson about the framing of
issues by social movements and their opponents. Environmental problems do not become social
issues spontaneously. They are socially constructed in what might be called a “framing war.” Just
as Jack Hall and the Vice-President sparred over the credibility of Hall’s prediction of sudden
climate change, so do groups with different interests dispute all environmental problems, framing
them in different ways so as to win over public opinion.
Before environmental issues can enter the public consciousness, policy-oriented scientists, the
environmental movement, the mass media, and respected organizations must discover and
promote them. Members of the public also have to connect real-life events to the information
learned from these groups. On the other hand, some scientists, industrial interests, and politicians
inevitably dispute the existence of environmental threats. For example, the big oil-producing
states, oil companies, and coal producers deny that global warming is a problem and hire
scientists to help them make their case. Consequently, some members of the public have begun
to question whether global warming is really an issue. Part of the environmentalists’ response
involved piggybacking their message on The Day After Tomorrow. In the months leading up to
the release of the movie, they bombarded journalists with e-mails explaining global warming and
offering interviews with leading scientists on the subject. Newspapers and magazines around the
world subsequently carried stories on the issue. Environmentalists then distributed flyers to
moviegoers leaving theatres. In this way, The Day After Tomorrow became not just another
disaster movie but part of the framing war around one of the major environmental issues of the
day.