Expelled

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a documentary film conducted by Ben Stein In the Style Of documentaries of the 2000s.

The substance? It's on "Darwinist" evolutionists and how they try to suppress the views of anyone in favor of "Intelligent Design". Depending on whom you ask and how they're feeling on the day you ask, Intelligent Design is either a form of creationism, or a form of evolution which nonetheless contains the tenet that certain things cannot have evolved without outside help. It also argues that "Darwinism" creates atheism and moral corruption.

You can imagine how well the existence of such a film went over. Critics hated it before they saw it, and not entirely without reason.

It did surprisingly well In America, considering it was an independent film (financed by intelligent design proponents). Naturally, it got help from church groups. It might have done even better, except Yoko Ono noticed that John Lennon's music was being used in the film to suggest a position that Lennon would never have supported (maybe even two of them), and the film was pulled out of theaters so the copyright issue could be settled.

Tropes used in Expelled include:
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: If you're going to argue that Intelligent Design is a real possibility and doesn't require belief in God, then panspermia should not be offensive to you...
  • Big Bad: Richard Dawkins. Ben Stein thinks Dawkins is THE atheist to beat if atheism is indeed correct. He treats his confrontation with Dawkins as the Final Boss of the movie.
  • Documentary of Lies: For instance, to illustrate the point of the evils of evolutionary theory, the movie includes a passage from Darwin's The Descent of Man that seemingly favors eugenics and culling the infirm and insane, but cuts Darwin praising doctors and lawmakers for their care of the concern of the weak and the poor. These portions of the text are in the middle of the quote, making their exclusion an intentional lie by omission. The following paragraph of the book, omitted in its entirety, has Darwin unambiguously state as evil that the very views the film ascribes to him.
    • This is called quote mining, a very common tactic which has also been used against Richard Dawkins the same way.
  • Executive Meddling: Well, distributor meddling. The film originally used "Imagine" by John Lennon as background music to what sort of civilization would be created by a society that had shoved religion aside. The footage it backed was of Soviet Russia. Yoko Ono disapproved of this use of John's music and sued for infringement. It was ultimately declared Fair Use, but the video distributor cut the offending footage from the DVD, anyway.
  • Fictional Document: This film is full of new productions made in the style of 1950s educational films.
  • Godwin's Law: Fast and hard.
  • Hitler Ate Sugar: The documentary goes some ways to tie Darwin and his work to eugenics and ultimately to the Nazis. It becomes all the more obvious as it progresses.
  • Insane Troll Logic: Hooboy.
  • In the Style Of
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