Confession: I’m a documentary junkie. In the past year, my Netflix has flipped between “The Pixar Story,” “Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man” and “The September Issue,” an inside look of the day-to-day operations at Vogue through the eyes of creative director Grace Coddington and editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.
However, my favorite documentaries are the “Food, Inc.” types—the ones where I leave my couch ready to swear off evil in the form of pre-packaged, hormone-infused chicken nuggets. Seconds later, I vow to never again touch foods containing high fructose corn syrup—until, you know, I realize corn is in absolutely everything. And then, life goes on.
But sometimes it’s hard to shrug off the call-to-action. Some documentaries are practically sweating at the brow with such a fervor of immediacy that I feel compelled to just drop everything and act, albeit usually I have no idea where to begin.
I remember reading a user review on Netflix after watching Michael Moore’s latest rage-against-the-system documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Story.”
“If you’re like me,” the anonymous commenter said, “you always walk away from Michael Moore films infuriated by the injustices that he’s exposed and screaming, ‘This is an outrage!’ … but you don’t really know what you’re supposed to do about it.”
And honestly, a year after viewing this film, I no longer feel the same intensity of anger when watching these films. It’s as if this hate-the-system angle has been so saturated into the genre in the last 10 years that filmmakers like Moore have lost some of that initial credibility as that one guy looking out for the little man. Heck, maybe this one guy’s just angry.
As I rewatched “Bowling for Columbine” this summer, I couldn’t help but cringe at the interrogation of the 80-year-old conservative Kansas school board member. Careful editing made her out to be the biggest nut job since Ren from “Ren and Stimpy.” How is it that I can completely agree with Moore on the overarching ideas and yet find his movies so—well, painful?
If there’s anything the recent debt ceiling talks have shown us, it’s that there’s no shortage of people willing to speak their opinions. We’ve got that stubborn self-assuredness down, but perhaps what we need to do is look back in history. Athens got fed up enough with one Socrates. At a certain point, maybe there are enough gadflies and now what we need are more people willing to test out another’s point of view.
And that’s the heart of my new column. In the vein of documentary filmmakers like Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”) and Colin Beavan (“No Impact Man”), I’d like to take my own spin at stepping into an unusual situation just for the sake of embracing new perspectives, take in the inevitable revelations that come from being slightly uncomfortable and share my experience each week.
Although I draw inspiration from the title from Spurlock’s docu-series “30 Days,” I’ll narrow the experiment for the sake of this column to something the can be done in Savannah every other week. My first week, I plan to attempt decreasing my own carbon footprint by following the seven-day “No Impact Experiment” on Beavan’s website.
Whereas Beavan spent a year without electricity, producing zero waste and buying nothing but local food, the website’s proposed week-long experiment confronts the same issues by removing one high-impact activity per day. I’m going to amend it slightly, by focusing on one high-impact activity per week to allow more time for immersion.
If you have any ideas for “Seven Days” including weird jobs to try out, places to volunteer, less traditional lifestyles to experience or quirky hobbies to test, feel free to email me or leave a comment with your suggestions for future weeks.
