After viewing Food Inc. and writing about it for one of my classes, I found myself continually coming back to some critics and bloggers who dismiss the film's message of consumer empowerment as naive. Personally, I didn't feel that the film was naive, but found it refreshing that the film asked its audience members to do something about the issues raised in the film. Well, maybe more than refreshing. As a person interested in the problems of consumerism and a believer that ordinary people do have power to make large scale changes, I want people to watch a film like Food Inc and actively make changes in their lives. I frequently watch documentaries about social, environmental, and political issues that work to educate audiences, yet can leave an individual feeling overwhelmed and powerless to change anything. Documentaries of this sort are usually made with a goal to shape opinions, but wouldn't shaping action be even more effective?
Some might argue that it would be impossible to go all organic or all local, and I would have to agree. It would be very time consuming and very expensive to undertake such a lifestyle, although some can do it. Personally, I am not going to give up everything that's not local, and my trips to the 99 Ranch Market to purchase honeydew soymilk shipped from Hong Kong definitely disqualify me from being a locavore. However, I am not silly enough to buy things like strawberries, oranges, or raisins from outside of my currently location in California, since all those things are made right where I live. So what does it matter if I get my produce locally? Would that even make a dent in corporate food? If Steven Hopp is correct in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, then by eating one local meal a week, it could change the food economy up to 10 percent, and "reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels."
I also think back to a consumer culture course I took a couple years ago. Most people think about consumer movements as Upton Sinclair's Jungle or the addition of labeling on food products, but we talked extensively about the links between Civil Rights actions and consumerism. Bus boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins were an intricate part of protests and action against segregation. The pressure placed on national chains that had segregated branches in the South were the most effective because the pressure placed on them was national. Additionally, the U.S. government used commerce to get its way, in Katzenback v. McClung, in which the U.S. Supreme Court, deemed segregation at restaurants illegal because it violated the interstate commerce clause.
I think in such a consumerist society that purchasing power can make a difference, and I don't think its naive to ask people to know how their food or other products are produced.
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i totally agree w/ you. unfortunately most people are ignorant about the sources of the food that they place in their bodies. this stems from a lack in education, both at school & at home. my mother is a preschool teacher who tries to incorporate such elements in her programming as having children grow sunflowers & exposing them to foods such as raw, unprocessed fruits & vegetables. most 3-4 yr. olds in her class don't even know that carrots grow in the ground. that's why i espouse involvement in community gardens & the propagation of school gardening programming especially in lower income areas. there is an amazing sense of empowerment that comes w/ eating food that was grown through your own hard work. i also would suggest that you check out the new documentary - Dirt - which is amazing & will give you a new perspective on the ground on which you walk.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I think the people who call things like this naive are often the people who tried to make a difference, had hope, but failed(which isn't necessarily a bad thing, the most successful people fail the most). Maybe they just couldn't stick to a local diet, maybe they couldn't quite make ends meet while doing real beneficial work, etc. Then instead of bouncing back up and learning from these mistakes, they gave up on their dreams. I think they say it is naive our of the goodness of their heart, deep down. They don't want you to experience what they had to go through, so their advice is just to not bother trying, so you don't have to risk failure. It is definitely a sad situation to be in, so I really try and empathize with these people. After all, what is life without hope and purpose?
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