>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."
This LA Times writer is either very clever or a total bonehead. In effect he is reinterpreting the words of a rather sharp neo-Marxist academic. Kellner obviously meant to advance a critique of hypocritical Hollywood liberal moralism by means of a systemic anlaysis of capital accumulation and ecological degradation. Instead the writer paraphrased him to suggest that there is scientific uncertainty about the effects of toxins on human health. Or to suggest that "we are all equally to blame" for global warming, biodiversity loss, urban sprawl, etc. When the left offers a much-needed, structurally-based critique of limousene liberal moralism (which paints corporations as free-floating agents of "evil" while leaving deeper political-economic dyamics unadressed), the mainstream media turns it into hash for property rights zealots.
Anyway, the main moral of the story of the film "Erin Brockovich" is that the best that environmental populists can hope for is to sue the pants off big nasty companies for a cold cash settlement. It ends up recapitulating the logic of cost-benefit analysis (so many cancer deaths = so many dollars of pay-off) instead of even vaguely recommending the possibility that some version of economic democracy might prevent all this bullshit in the first place. But of course to criticize the film for this only sets the stage for a right-wing invective against our "overly litigious society" and ambulance-chasing lawyers.
John Gulick