Have you ever found a piece of media that works so perfectly in the way it’s presented that you feel like maybe everyone else should stop trying?
Ok, so perhaps it is just me, but “Storm,” the animated short from Tim Minchin on YouTube, is what the medium should be. It’s not clickbait or the start of a rabbit hole. It is a single piece of art. But first, let me explain the animated short and we’ll get to why I feel that way.
Tim and his wife go to a dinner, hosted by a physician and his actress girlfriend who they know from back home. “And they’re always great fun so to dinner we’ve come.” But the fifth is an unknown who’s just moved there from Australia, where Tim, his wife and the actress girlfriend hail from.
That’s the setup for Storm, the name of the fifth, and the title of this animated short and a book by Minchin I’ve purchased but have yet to read. It was first this animated short that drew my attention to the book.
The short definitely deserves its time in the spotlight. While it may have been relevant to some people 15 years ago upon its release, it would perhaps be much more relevant as time goes by.
Storm can be whoever you like, but in most cases it’s the person who is the odd one out. A few opinions from Storm that act to set Tim off:
“You can’t know anything , knowledge is merely opinion.”
“But the human body is a mystery! Science just falls in a hole when it tries to explain the nature of the soul.”
“Science is just how we’re trained to look at reality.”
“How does science explain psychics? Auras? The afterlife? The power of prayer?”
At this point in the story, Tim has retorted once, but it’s about to go down. Not even stares from his wife and the actress have been enough to keep him from answering this one from Storm:
“You’re so sure of your position, but you’re just close-minded. I think you’ll find that your faith in science and tests is just as blind as the faith of any fundamentalist.”
With the time nigh, Tim’s rebuttal – “Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.” – is just the beginning.
Tim’s own internal struggle to hold back is gone. And the “in for a penny, in for a pound” flurry that follows is beautiful. It’s beat poetry with a great backbeat, wonderful rhymes, and a pro-science, pro-education, pro-curiousty rant that feels more relevant now than ever.
I don’t think the answer is to stay silent or to not invite Storm to dinner. I think this is art telling you in the most extreme of ways that we should still be able to have these conversations. Perhaps they can be had with a bit less aggressive or combative language.
But who am I to say? I watched this on my own years ago. Then I watched it with my then-fiance Stef and my best friend of more than three decades. Apparently, in our little circle, I’m the Tim.
That’s apparently my bias towards Tim, whose comedy and music I have enjoyed. But what it doesn’t do is negate my feelings about this being not only a great piece of modern performance art, but perhaps one of the best uses of a platform like YouTube.
Now, we’ll see about that book when I get to it on my reading list.