Hot "Stuff": A Viral Video Hits the Classroom »
Posted By JamesMarcus 6 months ago in NewsOn Sunday the New York Times ran a story about Annie Leonard, who is fighting a one-woman crusade against excess consumption and waste. Her primary tool is a 20-minute video called The Story of Stuff, which has become a viral hit in classrooms since Leonard first posted it on the Web in December 2007. Six million people have viewed it on the filmmaker's own website, while the version on YouTube has clocked many more hits (it's hard to tell the precise number, since the film has been chopped up into segments and reposted by other viewers).
As the Times also notes, the film has its share of detractors, who argue that Leonard applies too broad a brush to industrial society. In the opening sequence, she does admit her own addiction to the iPod and various other consumer items. But her mea culpa goes no further. Capitalism itself is depicted as a bloated, top-hatted monster, like a more dastardly vision of the Monopoly Man. And Leonard's definition of what goes on in a factory is surely a little black-and-white: "We use energy to mix toxic chemicals in with the natural resources to make toxic, contaminated products."
In Missoula, Montana, one irate parent complained when the film was shown in a science class. As reported in the Missoula Independent Online, "The controversy began in October, when Kathleen Kennedy, a science teacher at Big Sky High School, showed her class The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute video about sustainability. One student's father, Mark Zuber, thought the video was biased and ill-suited for Kennedy's Wildlife Biology class, and lobbied the school district to take action against her."
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JamesMarcus
James Marcus is a writer, translator, critic, and editor. He is the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut and ...
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Spadecaller6 months ago
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Thanks for posting this interesting piece. One thing for sure; despite whatever labels some people will attach to her perceptions and views of industrial society, they have merit and value that can benefit anyone with some degree of open mindedness.
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JamesMarcus6 months ago
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Many of her points are hard to dispute--who's going to speak up on behalf of products that are designed to self-destruct within 18 months? Nor will mindless consumerism find many defenders. But without capitalism, she wouldn't have her iPod, nor the World Wide Web, which allowed her to reach many millions of viewers in just over a year.
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JamesMarcus6 months ago
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Oh, of course the industrial processes could (and should) be tweaked to avoid toxic materials. No argument there. I meant that it's hard to build a factory without raising capital, so that capitalism does tend to raise its ugly head.
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tehranchik6 months ago
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I'm a capitalist James. I guess I'm a limited capitalist. Maybe there's another word for it. I think we can be capitalists and do things right.
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Bloated corporations don't fit into my kind of capitalism and that's where the limits would come in. Proportionate pay and benefits for from the profit and income of any company. The owner/ceo/employer would still have a sweet income but so would the employees. If the company has a bad year - everybody has a bad year. I know I'll get zinged to hell and back but it's a fair way to run things.
Products that are made to last (longer than 18 months) from materials that aren't toxic should be a goal of capitalism.
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MRCOFFEECAKE6 months ago
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Thank you. That's probably the best video I've ever seen for explaining how we're messing up our world.
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She left out how we go to war for these resources, enslave the unfortunate victims of simple societies and often use religion as our justification..
THAT would be another set of videos, but it all ties in. -
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MRCOFFEECAKE6 months ago
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Thank you. That's probably the best video I've ever seen for explaining how we're messing up our world.
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She left out how we go to war for these resources, enslave the unfortunate victims of simple societies and often use religion as our justification..
THAT would be another set of videos, but it all ties in. -
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