Libby, Montana--the Documentary: A Rhetorical Analysis

 Libby, Montana and the Superfund

The town highlighted in the documentary bearing its name, Libby, Montana, did receive a recommendation from the EPA for a superfund site status, and the narrative surrounding the superfund’s implementation is documented well in Drury Gunn Carr and Doug Hawes-Davis’s traditionally structured Libby, Montana (2004). With a synthetic approach that combines interviews with victims with news reports and archival footage of mining operations providing historical context, the film illustrates the dire living conditions in Libby, where for decades the Zonolite Company mined vermiculite, a mineral used for insulation that also contained tremolite, a deadly type of asbestos. This more traditional approach to documentary also incorporates a balanced perspective of the environmental issue virtually missing from Blue Vinyl.

Opening scenes of Libby, Montana draw from a science film illustrating the rise of vermiculite, a source of asbestos, as an ancient mineral from the earth’s core.	This science film also demonstrates the versatility of asbestos by showing its flexible mineral structure
Many early scenes provide a nostalgic glimpse of the pristine waters and forests around Libby. This scene shows archival footage from what look like the 1930s of a lake surrounded by forested hills.	The film includes different parts of a regional map. In this segment, the Zonolite Company’s location is pinpointed.
This scene also provides a nostalgic look at Libby’s past. The shot is in color, suggesting that it came from a more recent era.	The map of the region gives very specific information about vermiculite mining by the Zonolite Company.
Although the film depicts the region's past from a nostalgic perspective, it gives a nod to other environmental disasters in the area. This scene illustrating lumbering practices foreshadows ...	... the overcutting that occurred over the decades in the lumber industry. Nostalgia seems unwarranted when juxtaposed with images of a past that encouraged exploitIng resources. The number of felled trees in this scene is both awe inspiring and horrific.

Unlike Blue Vinyl, Libby Montana looks more like what Patricia Aufderheide calls a “regular documentary,” featuring

“sonorous, ‘voice-of God’ narration, an analytical argument rather than a story with characters, head shots of experts leavened with a few people-on the-street interviews, stock images that illustrate the narrator’s point ...,perhaps a little educational animation, and dignified music” (10).

This “regular” synthetic approach weakens the film’s rhetoric, so the documentary remains compelling only because the human impact of eco-disaster in the Libby community infuses an emotional appeal to the audience and filmmakers.

The documentary’s approach muffles their argument in multiple ways. Instead of structuring the film as an anti-corporate argument, for example, Carr and Hawes-Davis organize it like a mystery, with facts revealed slowly to build toward a conclusion. Although Helfand and Gold choose a similar structure, because they also include a clear position and a personal narrative with which audiences can connect, their film maintains its strong rhetoric consistently. Because of its mystery structure, Libby, Montana, on the other hand, can, as Mike Hale of the New York Times explains,

“be hard to follow and frustratingly incomplete if you don’t already know the framework of the long-running and complex story.”