Thursday, August 19, 2010

'The Silence of the Lambs' personified

I found the film Wolf Creek so scary I couldn’t watch it after dark [1]. And I haven’t dared to try The Texas Chainsaw Massacre let alone The Silence of the Lambs. In other words, horror movies aren’t for me. And I’m not for them. So I avoid horror films. Like the proverbial plague. But sometimes one slips in under my radar. A cinematic wolf in sheep’s clothing. An example is the 2008 doco Food, Inc. [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Last Tuesday night Sweetheart Vivienne and I watched it. Its name’s benign enough – though perhaps the Inc’s a giveaway in this era of corporate excess. But its content puts it fairly and squarely in the horror movie genre. To me it’s a visual depiction of Michael Pollan’s 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma [7]. Indeed Pollan’s in the film. As an articulate good guy, along with Joel Salatin [8]. But the bad guys are legion. And they’re all corporate – corporate bullies. Faceless and soulless agribusinesses. Out to screw the farmers on one side and the consumers on the other. And succeeding in screwing everyone including, I dare say, themselves – though they’re too stupid to know it. And how do we know the movie makers aren’t biased against them? Because all the bad guys declined to be interviewed. Oh, and the biggest bully? Why M**santo, of course. Easily. In summary, if you eat food you must watch, i.e. endure, Food, Inc. Its website says ‘You’ll never look at dinner the same way’ [9]. Oh yeah.

1 comment:

Chris Burrows said...

We have not watched many of the same movies for the same reasons.
But real life is usually really more horrifying as I am sure Farm Inc. will prove.