(Click on image to be linked to the site, the movie is about 20 minutes, I highly recommend it)
The Story of Stuff is a documentary about all of the 'stuff' that we take in and dispose of on a regular basis, at its core it is a criticism of the current system of business in regards to environmental and social responsibility as well as the morality of a consumerist culture. It packages a lot of complicated and interrelated issues into a nice 20 minute movie (as opposed to months reading dense texts), taking the viewer through the motions of the entire cycle of our consumer goods; detailing the extraction of raw material, the production of goods, the distribution of goods, the consumption of goods, the disposal of goods, and finally what it would look like to positively change the system and the role you play in it.
Since it is a fairly broad collection of topics I'll let the discussion be open to what you would like most to talk about. Basically I want to know what you think about the ideas presented in the film and what they have to say about our culture. If you don't feel like watching the whole movie I would encourage you to make sure and watch the Consumption chapter, this focuses mostly on the role Consumerism has to play in our world. I definitely agree with what they present and would love to see society change for the better and allow for a more sustainable and socially conscious existence. However I am perhaps a little too cynical when I look around and very much doubt that there will be a unified and concerted effort to sacrifice luxury in the name of equality.
Your thoughts?
1 comment:
I very much agree with your view point on this topic. I just watched this video in my sociology class and we got to discuss it briefly. The whole idea of why our society is based around consumerism is almost irreversible at this point. It took fifty years for us to make this mess, and as we all know, it takes a lot longer to clean up a mess than it does to make one.
Post a Comment