The Rhetoric of the Eco-Documentary

Although many would argue that all texts, including documentaries, are inherently rhetorical, since they address an audience from a particular standpoint, historically, the rhetorical documentary presents an argument and lays out evidence to support it. In The Rhetoric of the New Political Documentary, however, Thomas W. Benson and Brian J. Snee assert, “The rhetorical potential of documentary film… relies not on an audience who merely provides the rhetor with resources that might be exploited in persuasion but instead on an audience who is actively engaged in judgment and action” (137). 

Audiences do not merely mimic the action on the screen, according to Benson and Snee. They interpret the actions documented, and invent and engage in acts of their own that respond to the film’s rhetoric, but from the viewer’s perspective. Some of our work examines this rhetorical potential in relation to food industry documentaries. The best of these eco-documentaries fulfill Paula Willoquet-Maricondi’s definition, “to play an active role in fostering environmental awareness, conservation, and political action…, that is, to be a member of the planetary ecosystem or ‘ecosphere and, most important, to understand the value of this community in a systemic and nonhierarchical way (10).” 

When taking a rhetorical approach, documentation of actions also seems to adhere to the criteria Karl Heider outlines for ethnographic filmmaking, when explaining, “the most important attribute of ethnographic film is the degree to which it is informed by ethnographic understanding” (5). According to Heider, first of all, “ethnography is a way of making a detailed description and analysis of human behavior based on a long-term observational study on the spot,” (6). Secondly, Heider suggests that ethnography should “relate specific observed behavior to cultural norms” (6). The individual narratives these films provide also support Heider’s third criteria for an effective ethnography: “holism” (6). These interconnected stories are “truthfully represented” (Heider 7) according to Heider’s final criterion for an effective ethnographic film, all in service to the films’ rhetoric.

Ellen Swallow Richards and Self-Sufficiency Standard

 

 

For a working adult in Illinois, an hourly wage of at least $8.57/hour was necessary in 2002 to earn the $1508 per month (with 176 hours per month of work) or $18,097 per year salary necessary to meet housing, food, transportation, miscellaneous, and tax expenses (Pearce and Brooks 8). For a family of four, with two working adults, a pre-school child, and a school-age child, an hourly wage of at least $10.07 per adult was necessary in 2002 to earn the $3543 per month (for 176 hours per month of work) or $42,519 per year required to meet these same basic needs, as well as child care expenses (Pearce and Brooks 8). 

This Self-Sufficiency Standard makes clear that at least some of our basic needs have become commodities, which consumers must purchase for survival, a dilemma chemist Ellen Swallow Richards examines in her multiple explorations of human ecology at the turn of the twentieth century. The Human Ecology movement grew out of the work of Richards, who translated Haeckel’s work from its original German and, according to Robert Clarke, introduced the concept of ecology in the United States. Richards defined human ecology as "the study of the surroundings of human beings in the effects they produce on the lives of men" (1910). 

Instead of “fair use” approaches to ecology, with an ultimate goal to maximize benefits of nature for humans, our research sometimes explores how Richards’ human approaches to ecology are manifested in documentary and feature films addressing air pollution, climate change, water rights, and the clothing industry. This approach also points to sustainable development as an alternative to resource exploitations and the everyday eco-disasters associated with them. Our exploration of everyday eco-disasters demonstrates some of the disastrous consequences of applying an economic approach that condones over-development and exploitative overuse and commodification of resources sustaining our basic needs.

Human Ecology and Basic Needs on Film

 

Much of our research explores films associated with our basic needs (air, water, food, clothing, shelter, and energy), and the everyday eco-disasters associated with their exploitation. Such exploitation is typically associated with a “fair use” model of ecology, which grew out of economic approaches to the environment connected to Social Darwinism. 

Human approaches to ecology, however, maintain the worth of our basic needs, either as separate from or part of nonhuman nature. Whether defined by psychologist Abraham Maslow as physiological needs, by Reality therapist, William Glasser as survival needs, or self-determination theory as competence in dealing with the environment, our most basic needs all highlight our connection with our external ecology. 

The worth of our basic needs has been calculated in the U.S. and around the world in the last decade to determine the lowest income necessary for a family’s survival. This calculation resulted in the Self-Sufficiency Standard. According to Diana Pearce and Jennifer Brooks, “The Self-Sufficiency Standard measures how much income is needed for a family of a given composition in a given place to adequately meet its basic needs—without public or private assistance” (1). 

This Standard differs from the federal poverty measure in multiple ways: It takes into account regional differences, changing demographics, and new needs. As Pearce and Brooks explain, “there are many families with incomes above the federal poverty line who nonetheless lack sufficient resources to adequately meet their basic needs” (1-2).

Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Oil Disaster in Context Conclusion

 

More importantly, in Dead Ahead Iarossi revealed that Exxon knew about Hazelwood’s drinking problem but allowed him to continue as captain of the Valdez. Iarossi resigned from Exxon in 1990 and became president of the American Bureau of Shipping, “a nonprofit corporation that classifies ships for insurers, inspects blueprints during construction and surveys vessels to make sure they are seaworthy” (“Where are They Now?). According to a 1999 Anchorage Daily New article, Iarossi told The Business Times of Singapore, “What we need to do is to try to develop much more of a safety culture, the mentality which is very much safety-oriented on the part of shipping companies and ship operating officers.” The film draws on this same representation of Iarossi as a figure disillusioned by Exxon’s failure to address safety issues to reinforce its argument for double hulled tankers, but not against oil. 

Representations of Dan Lawn parallel that of Iarossi and, again, validate the film’s call for safer transporting of oil. As chief of the Valdez office of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Lawn’s character confronts an unresponsive state government, a complaisant EPA, and an unprepared Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, asserting the need for both better preventative systems and emergency plans to tackle oil spills and their consequences. The film’s portrayal of Lawn draws authentically on his attempts to improve both prevention and response strategies. In a 1989 Seattle Times article, for example, Lawn asserts, “We are all to blame…. We demand petroleum products, but we’re unwilling to be taxed. We thought someone was taking care of it. We put in pro-industry officials, and our ability to control things went away” (“The Lost Frontier”). 

Although the film convincingly argues for more effective safety standards to prevent future oil spill disaster, Dead Ahead reinforces the arguments broached in Louisiana Story: If we successfully maintain the bifurcation between nature and culture—between a pristine Alaska and its oil—both can be preserved.

Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Oil Disaster documentary in context continued

 

 

From its opening scenes showing Captain Joseph Hazelwood’s (Jackson Davies) absence from the bridge because of alcohol abuse to its dramatization of conflicts between the U.S. EPA and its local representative, Dan Lawn (John Heard) and between Exxon and its spokesperson, Frank Iarossi (Christopher Lloyd), Dead Ahead effectively addresses the post-spill disaster, arguing both through its narrative and cinematic portrayals of once-pristine waters and landscapes for double hulls in oil tankers and better implementation of protocols if and when another spill occurs. It does not, however, argue against the production and transporting of oil because, as Woodhead states, “America cannot afford to be without (oil) supply, but we better try to do a lot better in controlling how we get it out of there” (King). 

The powerful cinematic representations of the landscape became possible because “establishing shots and aerial footage were shot of the Port of Valdez,” even though Dead Ahead was primarily filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia. According to director Paul Seed, “it would have been difficult to shoot inside Alaska because of the unpredictable weather” (King). The wild shorelines of Vancouver overlap effectively with the establishing shots of Valdez and contrast well with the post-disaster shots of a spill (recreated with a gelatin-based food thickener) to accentuate the dangerous consequences of the spill—losing the pristine beauty of wild nature. 

These contrasting shots parallel the positions voiced by Lawn and Iarossi, who both in some ways oppose the organizations they see as responsible for the spill. Iarossi’s character becomes more authentic because Iarossi willingly answered interview questions, revealing, as he had during the actual spill’s aftermath, Exxon’s reactions to the spill. His focus on safety, however, reinforces the film’s emphasis on accident prevention rather than the eradication of oil production and shipment. Then president of the Exxon Shipping Company, Iarossi represented the company during public forums in Valdez and informed investigators that Captain Joseph Hazelwood was legally drunk during the tanker disaster.

Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster in Context

 

Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster focuses primarily on the reasons behind both the spill and its slow cleanup, however, rather than on the inherently dangerous consequences of oil production and shipment. To reinforce this assertion that safety regulations, not the oil industry per se, caused this horrendous disaster and its catastrophic consequences, the film provides a reenactment of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker catastrophe, from the moments before the tanker ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, rupturing its storage tanks and spilling millions of gallons of oil, through its devastating aftermath. 

According to Los Angeles Times staff writer, Susan King, “the behind-the-scenes catastrophes after the mammoth oil spill… shocked the British creative team of HBO’s docudrama Dead Ahead.” The film’s researcher-writer Michael Baker and executive producer Leslie Woodhead called the disaster “a black comedy” (King) because of the neglect and greed of oil and pipeline companies, and the disastrous choices made by the Coast Guard, the EPA, and the first Bush Administration. 

As King declares, the film “depicts the bureaucracy, fighting, and finger-pointing among officials at Exxon, the Alyeska Pipeline Company…, the Coast Guard, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Bush Administration, while the spill was left basically unattended for days.” Anger with these multiple groups’ mistakes prompted Baker and Woodhead to move forward with the film. As Woodhead explains, “It is so infuriating, the revelation that the oil laid there for three days in beautiful weather. It was just a tangle of priorities and people trying to tidy up their own images which left the oil lying there in the water” (King). Baker agrees, asserting, “People started kind of blaming each other…. It became a question of controlling the media, not cleaning up the oil, but controlling the spill as an event” (King).

The Real Price of Oil in Oil Disaster Documentaries

 

While Louisiana Story and Thunder Bay suggest that oil production will either leave the landscape untouched or benefit its ecosystem, films responding to major oil spills, including the March 24, 1989 Exxon Valdez eco-catastrophe in Alaska’s Prince Edward Sound, highlight the negative effects oil disasters may have on the environment and the cultures and economies it supports. 

Instead of condemning the oil industry in general, however, these films attack individuals and promote safe production practices. In a move similar to that of Louisiana Story, Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster (1992), Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez (2009), and Crude: The Real Price of Oil (2009), assert that because oil and the natural environment don’t mix, they must remain separate. Unlike Thunder Bay, which asserts that humans and the natural world can share an interdependent relationship, Dead Ahead, Black Wave, and, to a certain extent, Crude suggest that human and environmental disasters occur when safety precautions fail, either because of human error or blatant neglect. 

 If, as in Louisiana Story, however, oil companies enter the natural world briefly and with caution to avoid an indelible effect, then, the films suggest, they can avoid such disasters. Ultimately, these films perpetuate the same two myths upheld by Louisiana Story: If implemented correctly and safely, oil drilling can leave a natural setting untouched, so that humans and their technology can remain separate from nature rather than interconnected with it.