http://www.calendarlive.com/top/1,1419,L-LATimes-Oscars-X!ArticleDetail-2704 1,00.html Tuesday, March 27, 2001
COLUMN ONE Seeing a Greener Big Screen "Erin Brockovich" has plenty of company as films increasingly cast polluters as the villain. But businesses call the depictions slanted and say firms do their part for the environment.
By GARY POLAKOVIC , Times Environmental Writer
When Julia Roberts won an Oscar Sunday for her portrayal of pollution sleuth Erin Brockovich, the triumph was both personal and political.
"Erin Brockovich," based on the true story about a down-on-her-luck file clerk who successfully took on the polluter of a desert town, riveted public attention on chromium contamination in the San Fernando Valley. It helped fuel public outrage that contributed to the so-called Brockovich Bill, which requires state health officials to report water pollution levels to the governor by January 2002.
Although it hit box office pay dirt, "Brockovich" proves that ticket sales are not the only form of green Hollywood has in mind these days.
Buy a pair of admissions, load up on popcorn and hunker down in front of the big screen, and here is what's been playing at a theater near you:
An attorney portrayed by John Travolta who sacrifices everything in an attempt to show how a chemical company allegedly poisoned a Massachusetts town with toxins in "A Civil Action."
An EPA agent played by Steven Seagal tracking down toxic waste dumpers in Appalachia in "Fire Down Below."
An Indian girl named Pocahontas teaching a European newcomer how "every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name" in Disney's animated film.
Movies increasingly warn about the plight of the planet. As art imitates nature, films dealing with the environment are becoming more common and successful.
By no accident, the motion picture industry has adapted new environmental themes to old genres. As the stable of ready villains has shrunk, Hollywood has cast greedy corporations in the bad-guy role once occupied by Communists, space invaders and cowboys wearing black hats. Films about the environment seek to capitalize on public mistrust of big, faceless institutions just as did "The Insider" and "The Fugitive."
Beyond mere entertainment, some Hollywood executives see environmental-themed films as a powerful force for social change. The trend, they said, is the latest manifestation of a tradition in which cinema has been used to instruct on matters ranging from courtship to fashion to patriotism. And as more films are distributed overseas, conservation as a virtue is being extolled to ever greater audiences.
"A lot of the things we learn, we are learning from TV and movies, and people are learning things to help our environment. The idea is to get as many of these messages into the films as possible," said Debbie Levin, executive director of the Environmental Media Assn., which was created by Alan Horn and Norman Lear and their wives in 1989 to mobilize Hollywood on behalf of the environment.
Horn, now president and chief executive officer of Warner Bros., predicts that the trend will last. "We'll be seeing more of these films. The issues are here to stay. This is not a fad."
Many producers, actors and environmentalists believe that the planet is in such desperate condition that it would be unconscionable if Hollywood did not use such a powerful medium to quicken a conservation conscience.
"People need to understand these are pressing problems," said David Irving, chairman of the film and TV program at New York University. "Movies that are even mediocre or hit you over the head are not necessarily a bad thing."
Conservatives Call Films Shallow
But business leaders and political conservatives deride Hollywood's treatment of environmental issues as hypocritical and shallow. Such critics poke fun at how Hollywood decries the loss of natural resources when films glamorize conspicuous consumption, and the entertainment industry is dependent on the largess of advertising firms selling more and more consumer goods. And they argue that movies distort issues as often as they explain them.
"All the public ever sees are Julia Roberts and John Travolta as underdogs going up against big business. The reality is businesses do a lot to improve the environment while trying to promote economic growth and prosperity," said Jeffrey Marks, director of air quality programs for the National Assn. of Manufacturers.
"Nobody sees manufacturers installing air and water devices to reduce pollution. Those actions are not very glamorous, and the public isn't aware the environment has improved tremendously, because of the stereotype perpetuated by the films in Hollywood."
Douglas Kellner, who holds a chair in philosophy of education at UCLA and is coauthor of "Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film," agrees that many of today's films about the environment are militant and anti-corporation.
"They are showing the dangers to the environment due to out-of-control corporations and the need for regulation. It's very political, and there is a Hollywood-left that makes those films," Kellner said. "It sends a warning to corporations: One day, if you mess up, a movie may be made about it. It's a positive effect for the environmental movement."
At the same time, he said, a movie "simplifies issues to good and bad and seeks a resolution. But in fact the issues in the environment are not just good and bad."
Similarly, Eric Stone, a biologist and professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, said that though movies with an environmental theme can help educate the public, Hollywood's approach can also obscure the real problems.
"In this field, there aren't many bad guys, and the bad guys are often us," Stone said. "We're all guilty of being irresponsible consumers and making choices to satisfy our creature comforts that are not necessarily in the best interest of the environment. Environmental issues involve complex problems that will take changes in behavior, rather than putting bad guys in jail or catching the midnight dumpers."
Southern California is a case in point. Our pets, machines and lawn-care products cause runoff that contributes to water pollution and beach closures. The state's energy crisis is not helped by the power demands of big houses or the purchase of inefficient lights and appliances. And much of the smog is caused by emissions from consumer products and sport utility vehicles.
Yet complexity and ambiguity do not make for great Hollywood films, said Kym Murphy, vice president of environmental policy at the Walt Disney Co., which owns Touchstone Pictures, Buena Vista Pictures and Miramax Films.
"You have to take an environmental issue and make it fun and exciting and light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel. If you portray environmental issues as 'how much time do we have left?' no one wants to see that. But if you have a film that advances toward a possible solution, then it's a go-see movie," Murphy said.
Executives at Los Angeles-based Jersey Films, which produced "Brockovich" for Universal Pictures, make a similar argument about their film. At heart, they said, it is a story about personal empowerment as well as politics. Because Brockovich stood up to powerful interests, she has become a role model, they said.
"People need protection from these large corporations that are really unaccountable," said "Brockovich" producer Michael Shamberg. "There's a strong empowerment message. Like war in Vietnam or World War II, corporations make war against the environment, and the counterforce is people standing up against that. It's a worthy cause. I can't see the downside of it."
In "Brockovich," the climax of the movie occurs when Pacific Gas & Electric Co. agrees to pay the residents of Hinkley, Calif., $333 million to settle a lawsuit alleging hexavalent chromium in the water caused cancer and other illnesses--a true story. But not mentioned in the film is that the scientific community is divided over whether traces of chromium in water pose a significant risk.
There are no published studies that have found a significant cancer increase from drinking it, even in lab animals consuming extremely high concentrations. The substance can cause cancer if inhaled in sufficient doses, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency remains unconvinced that hexavalent chromium is carcinogenic in water.
Movies Can Seem Prescient
Of course, motion pictures sometimes have had an uncanny way of portending disaster. No one scoffed at "The China Syndrome" when the 1979 film debut was followed by a nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl meltdown in the former Soviet Union. Even "Waterworld," which critics panned as the costliest film ever made, seems slightly less ridiculous after the world's leading scientists announced in October that global warming may boost world temperatures by up to 11 degrees--65% more than previously thought--enough to cause sea levels to rise as much as 3 feet.
"I think we are getting some good education in these films," said Anne Ehrlich, associate director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.
In some cases, however, scientists said using fear to sell motion pictures has led to harm to the environment. Some assert, for example, that the 1975 movie "Jaws" changed public attitudes about a fish.
"I remember going to piers at Port Hueneme and Ventura and you'd see people catch a little shark, I mean a nurse shark or something totally beyond harmless, and people would scream, 'Jaws! Jaws!' and stab them to death. That was within a couple of months after the film," said Milton Love, biologist at the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara.
"People had vaguely negative feelings about sharks before, but it turned into complete antipathy," he said.
Author Peter Benchley said he regrets that his bestseller-turned-blockbuster movie led to shark slaughters in the United States. He is now an advocate for shark protection.
Others point to distortions of public policy caused by what game managers, environmentalists and wildlife biologists routinely refer to as "the Bambi effect"--a tendency to ascribe human characteristics to wildlife.
For a predominantly urban U.S. populace, the only contact people have with wild animals is through TV or cinema, where fuzzy little critters discuss romance, self-determination and loyalty like pals over a cup of coffee, said Mark Damian Duda, a Virginia-based consultant and author of "Wildlife and the American Mind."
Game managers said such sentiments sometimes impede their ability to control animal populations. It is, for example, still very difficult to win public approval for doe hunting in many states because people, including even deer hunters, object to blasting Bambi's mother, officials said. Those attitudes have complicated efforts to control deer numbers even as a suburban population explosion among herds has led to traffic fatalities and nuisance conditions from Washington, D.C., to Minnesota to South Carolina, Duda said.
"Cinema brings people things they normally would never see, the beauty of the American landscape and wildlife in all its splendid glory. It creates empathy and builds a constituency for wildlife, and that's good," he said.
"But on the other hand, sometimes these scenes tend to make animals more human and give animals human characteristics, but wild animals are wild animals. People don't dance with wolves, little boys don't ride on the back of orcas, and people don't become best friends with grizzly bears."