What’s Your Flat Earth?
Feeling superior? Behind the Curve reveals the flat earther in all of us.
Behind the Curve, a documentary about people who believe the earth is flat, is a remarkable film. Most would put flat earthers behind the glass for us to gawk at, like animals in a zoo. These filmmakers adopted a far more humane approach: they put us all in the zoo right next to them.
Flat earthers are our paragons of irrationality, ridiculed for the sheer brazenness of their beliefs. How can they endure the weight of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary, unless they’re irredeemably stupid or deranged?
Yet the film introduces us to people who defy these hurtful caricatures. We’re struck by their intellect, their curiosity, and their ingenuity. It’s hard to insulate preposterous claims from criticism. Flat earthers invent a range of creative hypotheses to prop it all up, along with experiments to test them. Bob Knodel, one of the more engineering flat earthers in the film, defends their ethic. “Not any one single experiment proves anything conclusively, that’s why we’re building a preponderance of evidence.“
It sounds strangely scientific. And this is how the filmmakers pull us all into the zoo. They break down the various defense mechanisms flat earthers use and present them in uncomfortably familiar…
