I thought it was very, very lame. Watching it, you can only assume that people are irretrievably nuts to create a system built entirely on stupidity and harm. According to the film, the only thing that is produced by American manufacturing is "toxics." Who wants toxics? How do they get people to buy them? If pure sadomasochistic insanity is the principle that drives our entire economy, we're way past saving.

wow. i'm always impressed by how different two people's reaction can be to the same piece.

Watching it, you can only assume that people are irretrievably nuts to create a system built entirely on stupidity and harm.

that's how i feel looking around, tho...before i even saw this short!

According to the film, the only thing that is produced by American manufacturing is "toxics." Who wants toxics? How do they get people to buy them?

it's true, ms. leonard assumes we know about certain toxins in our everyday products. many don't. and for many, it's a hard pill to swallow. its frightening, once you begin studying how prevalent all these poisoned goods are. i wonder if you are in part reacting to that initial feeling. there definitely is a resistance in us (AS the consumers we are!)

but maybe not. maybe you are purely talking about story structure. i felt tho, that the film really got a lot across rather simply and effectively. and i've studied storytelling for a little while. however, i am open to hearing how, specifically, you felt this one fell short in structure or delivery. right now, the only specific criticism i hear from you is that it assumes the watcher understands that all products made in our system of extraction/consumption/distribution come with toxic side effects of this process, and that this should be made clearer. right?

here is annie's bio. you can see why, living in her world and occupational history, she might feel those things are common knowledge to us.

Annie Leonard is an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, with more than 20 years of experience investigating factories and dumps around the world. Coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption, a funder collaborative working for a sustainable and just world, Annie communicates worldwide about the impact of consumerism and materialism on global economies and international health.

Annie’s efforts over the past two decades to raise awareness about international sustainability and environmental health issues has included work with Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance, Health Care without Harm, Essential Information and Greenpeace International. She currently serves on the boards of GAIA, the International Forum for Globalization and the Environmental Health Fund. Previously she has served on the boards of the Grassroots Recycling Network, the Environmental Health Fund, Global Greengrants India and Greenpeace India.

During the 1990s, Annie visited countries throughout Asia to track exported waste from the U.S. and Europe. She documented her findings in many articles and testified before the U.S. Congress in 1992 on the issue of international waste trafficking, in an effort to ban US waste exports to the Third World.

and as far as your final criticism, what i actually like about ms leonard's short (as well as gore's presentations) is that both these people tell us we are NOT beyond saving.

but it takes all of us dropping our cynicism and resistance. and joining the fight.

I didn't express myself very clearly - sorry. I too thought the movie expressed a lot of important concepts, but did so with no acknowledgement of how things could possibly have gotten this way (assuming that people are not all dumb as rocks).

What the movie tells me is that people go out into the world, despoil the planet and torture fellow human beings, set up poison factories, and go home and drink the poison we made at our crummy jobs. Guess we'll go eat worms. Even knowing that everything the movie said is actually reflected in the world I live in, it doesn't describe the world I live in. I don't walk into a store looking for poison pillows. I might be sleeping on poison pillows, but it's not because I asked for extra poison, please. The problem isn't that people love drinking poison and enslaving the developing world and accelerating the planet towards inhospitability. The problem is that people like to think that the American consumer culture can be maintained without depending on those things.

And I don't think I'm telling you anything remotely new here - I just think that this movie is useless without any acknowledgment of why (they cover "how" just fine) things got so crappy.

El porque is too hard to comprehend for most people. It is saddled in too much political ideology, ie. Capitalism, Free Enterprise, Upward Mobility, The American Dream, The Land of Opportunity. These concepts are ingrained in our subconscious and the vast majority of us believe them unquestioningly and are willing to spend our precious treasure to "defend" them.

The "WHY" is too emotionally charged for many and not really within the scope of the movie. Annie is a scientist and is presenting her work for lay people like us. The why is for each of us to ask and figure the answer to.

An alcoholic has to first STOP drinking before he can figure out why he's hooked. You can't go on drinking AND analyze why you're destroying yourself at the same time. Get it, now.

If she had gotten into the why, the real message of HOW would be completely lost. Me entiendes?

Paz Y Amor

El Puerco

sara, you sound to me as if you are defending yourself from blame. but i really dont think that's so important as fixing the problem. we are all blameless, we are all to blame. settled! the point is that we are now perpetuating a harmful cycle, very harmful. our ignorance can be forgiven. but refusal in the face of knowledge? that approaches willful harm. so this is why i thank ms leonard for bringing us knowledge.

This thing was _great_. Of course it was simplistic -- it was a 20-minute clip about our entire society. It is covering a _staggering_ range of sciences and studies. It's made to wake people up to learn the specifics. Upshot: it stimulated new thinking on this issue for me.

absolutely. i'm with you on this.