{ Ignorance – Lori McKenna (Kasey Chambers cover)}
In the Kasey Chambers song “Ignorance,” covered above by folk-singer Lori McKenna, she sings, “If you’re not pissed off at the world / Then you’re just not paying attention.” There have have been several excellent documentaries in recent years that reveal disturbing information about our world that should make us mad. Chimesfreedom recently wrote about Gasland. Here, we discuss three other movies that make us mad: The Corporation, Food, Inc., and The Cove. All three movies are now available on DVD and Blu Ray.
(1) The Corporation (2003) is a documentary about the role of corporations in our society. The movie paints a disturbing picture of the power that corporations have and the damage they have caused with almost complete immunity. The movie is very disturbing, and almost overwhelming at times. In watching it, I kept wanting to take a break from the movie but could not stop watching. Just when you think the stories could not get any more disturbing, they do, such as information about how American corporations profited through supporting Nazi Germany.
Certainly, The Corporation has an agenda, so one should maintain a little skepticism. For example, the movie unnecessarily went a little overboard with a segment about corporations meeting the definition of a psychopath. But many of the techniques, like using movie clips, are designed to make the information entertaining. And if the movie makes you seek more information, then it is a success. Many of those interviewed provide intelligent commentary. In addition to insight from some who you would expect, like Noam Chomsky, there is interesting commentary from people like Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface, the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer, who had an epiphany after many years.
(2) Food, Inc. (2008) reveals information about the sources of our food. Yes, the movie includes some information about where our meat comes from, and I know a lot of people try to avoid being reminded of that knowledge. But animal flesh is not the focus of the majority of the movie. Among the interesting information is the extent to which corporations own and patent some of our basic food sources, a topic also briefly addressed in The Corporation.
(3) The third movie, The Cove (2009), is not as broad as the other two movies. Instead, it explores a narrower issue. The Cove delves into secrets behind the dolphin meat industry, focusing on a hidden cove in Japan. While you are learning that dolphins are more intelligent than you thought they were, you also may realize that humans are more devious than you expected. The Cove won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary of 2009.
Unfortunately, these three movies are not uplifting. The good news, though, is that there are intelligent people making these movies and that people are watching these movies to learn about the world around them.
It is easy to look away from unpleasant Truths. And there is a cost to having your eyes opened. These movies may affect how you view your food, the corporations around you, and your decision whether or not to visit Sea World. Do you want to know the information or not? It is like the movie, The Matrix (1999). Your decision whether or not to watch these movies is similar to the offer of whether to take the red pill or the blue pill. Welcome to the desert of the real.
“And you can turn off the TV
And go about your day.
But just ’cause you don’t see it,
It don’t mean its gone away.”
— Kasey Chambers, “Ignorance”
What is your favorite movie that makes you mad? Leave a comment.
(Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)
(2010) — released on DVD this month — are different but haunting in a similar way. So that after watching it, I felt like I had not breathed for the entire 88 minutes running time. Yael Hersonski’s documentary examines an unfinished Nazi propaganda film taken of the Warsaw Ghetto in May 1942, a few months before the people there started being sent to the Treblinka extermination camp. Although that uncompleted propaganda film, called “Das Ghetto,” was found soon after the end of World War II, another film of outtakes found in 1998 revealed how much of the propaganda film was staged. The Nazis made the Jewish people in the film participate in staged scenes to highlight a contrast between the poor and those who appeared to be more affluent.
