On the 4th of June there was a screening of the documentary Anthropocene: The Human Epoch in Leicester city centre. These are my reflections, which I have been sitting on for a little while.
Anthropocene was an ode to large machinery. A glorification of the ‘human dominion’ of the world. With a dangerously lacking message, it turns into entertainment based on our collective destruction and the suffering that climate change is already bringing to communities across the world.
Why is there effort being put into naming this epoch the ‘Anthropocene’? What does this mean for anyone who is not an academic researcher? What does this mean for those communities rapidly watching their ancestral lands literally falling into the sea? Nothing was explained alongside the imagery of ‘impressive’ feats of engineering, such as the monster excavators of the Hambach coal mine.
The documentary ends with one message: we are all implicated. This was a perfect message for it to end on as it illustrates the whole film’s failure in grasping and communicating that we are not all implicated equally.
The fishing communities I work with in Indonesian Borneo are not as implicated as the mass-consuming communities of the West. The poacher that was so vilified in the documentary is not as complicit as those who have and still benefit from the colonial ransacking of Kenya. The documentary focuses on the tragic loss of elephants, and yet ignores one of the biggest causes of deforestation and environmental degradation worldwide: the livestock industry. Let us also not forget that 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all greenhouse gas emissions. By ignoring these issues, the documentary, whether its makers like it or not, turns political, for the filmmakers have made conscious decisions on what they believe is worth showing as a story of our world.
The filmmakers say they didn’t want to create a ‘divisive’ film that points fingers (1). But until we can have honest conversations about where the real responsibility of climate change and environmental destruction lie (hint: it’s not with the elephant poachers), we will not find a solution. Of course, the direct and lethal impacts of climate change have come sooner to those already marginalised in this world. It hits communities of colour, and indigenous communities first. It hits everyone other than those who are truly the most implicated, first. It’s a tough thing pointing the finger at those in power, and at the political-economic system that we have all become entrenched in. By not doing so, the documentary is a total cop out.
I was also shocked at the portrayal, or complete lack of portrayal, of resistance against these extractive industries. The documentary shows very little of the efforts done worldwide in the fight for environmental and social justice. Taking the Hambach coal mine, the documentary portrays a scene of inevitability: the last three families with little to no hope of saving what’s left of their village. It completely ignored that last year saw some of the biggest demonstrations to try to stop the expansion of the coal mine and protect what is remaining of Hambach forest. A reported 50,000 people flocked to the area turning the Hambach forest into a symbol in the international anti-coal movement. People have been inhabiting that forest for over six years and there continues to be active resistance against the coal mining operations and expansion to this day. Not showing that there are people actively fighting for our futures robs anyone watching this documentary of hope and empowerment. If we want to look at the ‘power of people’ we cannot continue to gawk at our destructive power, instead we must look towards our collective power to fight for a better world – indeed, to fight for our survival.
We also need to look more broadly at this documentary and what it represents. The website promoting it calls it ‘a cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive re-engineering of the planet’. This is the most disgusting use of words: it is not a cinematic meditation, it is a traumatic reliving of the constant, terrifying and unjust extirpation of the world as we know it for the gain of the few, wealthy and powerful elites. The description of the documentary from its website is as follows:
the filmmakers have traversed the globe using high end production values and state of the art camera techniques to document evidence and experience of human planetary domination…. At the intersection of art and science, ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch witnesses in an experiential and non-didactic sense a critical moment in geological history — bringing a provocative and unforgettable experience of our species’ breadth and impact.
But exactly who gets to watch this documentary as an artwork, a cinematic experience? Who gets to analyse its imagery as some sort of provocation? It surely is not the mining communities in Russia. Or those workers felling trees in Canada. Or the poacher hunting elephants. I am not stunned by the visuals of the documentary, but of the lack of self-awareness in the making of it.
Climate change kills. People are literally dying.
My rejection of this documentary is also personal. I was left feeling such disempowerment and frustration at the end of that screening that it was clear to me that I cannot watch documentaries like this anymore. Along with the many other researchers and activists worldwide, I literally must work every single day of my life to keep hope through my work. I cannot watch any more documentaries which makes this harder for me.
Many people are still in search of how they can find hope, and with the documentary providing no directions at all my fear is people will walk away from it in the way they have been trained over a lifetime: by shutting off those emotions, and accepting the dangerous idea that it’s just too big for them to do anything about.
We don’t need a ‘wake-up call’ – the threat and reality of climate change is very, very clear. The time for documentaries to ‘raise awareness of the state of the planet’ is long gone.
We need documentaries that are a call to action. At this point in time, anything less than that is dangerous.
The event in Leicester city centre ended with a group discussion. It was complete with the typical characters: the white woman asking how those working in the timber industry don’t feel guilt, the white man nihilistically proclaiming that everything is going to be f%&!ed anyways, and all us academics in all our privilege performing our mental gymnastics about whether or not media should be ‘political’.
We must do better.
Dr Sara A. Thornton 