Libby, Montana Rhetorical Analysis, Continued

 Libby' Montana's attempt to take a balanced approach to the issues of asbestos poisoning and cleanup also dilutes the film’s rhetoric. By including conflicting perspectives like those of townspeople suspicious of the EPA, as well as bureaucrats concerned about the economic downsides of a Superfund designation, the filmmakers’ own sympathies with those affected by asbestos become less clear.

The historical strategy Carr and Hawes-Davis implement with their subject may also limit the power of the film’s rhetoric because it lacks the personal appeal of Blue Vinyl and shifts its strategy from argument to exposition, slowing down its momentum and, perhaps, causing audiences to lose interest in the mystery being revealed (perhaps too sluggishly). For us, however, the historical approach doesn’t go far enough to reveal the history of resource exploitation in place in the West since at least the General Mining Act of 1872 which declared that

“all valuable mineral deposits in lands belonging to the United States, both surveyed and unsurveyed, are hereby declared to be free and open to exploration and purchase.”  

Instead, the film takes an historical approach in its narrative that begins with the transition from logging to mining in the mid-20th Century, drawing on an environmental nostalgia for a once pristine region and highlighting the town’s surrounding forests, lakes, and mountains.

Libby, Montana’s welcoming sign illustrates the town’s ties to a frontier past of forests and wildlife, an ironic touch in what has become a cancer alley.	Although many reviewers criticize the multiple scenes highlighting the road-side evangelist, in this shot he condemns the asbestos producers in ways that move the narrative of the film forward.
A taxidermy shop serves as another sign of the mythical wild past Libby continues to embrace.	Nostalgia lingers for a more pristine era before Zonolite as with this annual Logging Days celebration. This sign welcomes area visitors to the festival.
To emphasize the irony behind the celebration, Libby locals watch a parade during Logging Days in front of a store selling lumber. These locals struggle with an EPA that in their eyes challenges the rugged individualism on which the town and region were built.	The film takes the time to illustrate the benefits Zonolite brought to the community as one of the biggest producers of asbestos and its offshoot products, including insulation and fertilizer.

Shots demonstrate how this simpler lifestyle translated to an idyllic town life in the 1950s.  According to the EPA, however,

“While in operation, the Libby mine may have produced 80 percent of the world’s supply of vermiculite. Vermiculite has been used in building insulation and as a soil conditioner. Unfortunately, the vermiculite from the Libby mine was contaminated with a toxic form of naturally-occurring asbestos called tremolite-actinolite asbestiform mineral fibers” (“Libby Site Background”).

Despite this nostalgia for the pristine Libby before vermiculite, the film also suggests that the area’s resources have been depleted for years, explaining that after fur traders left the area, logging companies came in and overcut and harvested the mountain forests, depleting resources in the Montana region. According to the film, there were up to 2000 people working in the Forest Service and 200 in the mine during this seemingly untouched period, and Libby was seen as a flourishing community. Yet today, Libby is still represented as a good place to hunt and fish. Visitors can tour the Mineral Avenue attractions and social clubs on the down town main streets. The police are efficient and protect tourists suggesting that the town has remained untouched by the modern world, and loggers’ days and taxidermist exhibits commemorate the logging and fur trading industries of more than half a century ago.