Water Rights in Fictional Film Part II--Rango and the Desert Land Act

 

Rango (2011) deliberately addresses water rights issues as it both elucidates the environmental history surrounding water rights in the American desert and critiques current water rights practices in the Las Vegas area. In an obvious homage to Chinatown noted by critics from Time Magazine to Salon.Com, Rango explores a hero’s attempts to “save a parched Old West-style town from the depredations of water barons and developers” (O’Hehir “Rango and the Rise of Kidult-Oriented Animation”). 

In fact, the mayor of Dirt (Ned Beatty), the Western town Rango must civilize, modeled his performance on that of John Huston in Chinatown. With help from a variety of anthropomorphized western characters, Rango (Johnny Depp) successfully returns water to the desert, defeating the water baron mayor and rehabilitating his henchman, Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), an obvious homage to Lee Van Cleef’s characters in his Western Films. 

Although A. O. Scott declares, “I confess I wanted a tighter gathering of loose ends, and a more thorough explanation of the politics of water and real estate in the fast-changing American West,” Rango effectively illustrates the continuing influence of nineteenth-century water rights issues. The animated film especially reinforces the ramification of those connected with the Desert Land Act of 1877.

Water Rights in Fictional Film, Part I

 

Multiple films fictionalize the actual water war in documented in Bolivia, where citizens kicked out its private water companies and began a sustainable water plan. For example, Andrew Hageman examines this issue in a dialectical reading of Even the Rain (2010), and

Abuela Grillo (2009) (66) that shows parallels between these fictional films and the documentary The Corporation (2003). 

This issue is also explored in more detail in the documentary Flow: For Love of Water, which documents the 1999 water privatization in Bolivia forced by the World Bank, which excluded 208,000 people from portable water in Cochabamba. Water was returned to the people of Cochabamba in 2000 and to citizens of La Paz in 2007, according to the film. 

Although the Nairobi summit’s solutions are not discussed, and the local solutions seem limited, the multiple problems associated with water rights are revealed and illustrated well in Blue Gold and reinforced by Flow. Contemporary films in a variety of genres reflect the ongoing influence of this doctrine of prior appropriation. Chinatown (1974) most clearly draws on the doctrine, and Quantum of Solace (2008) and Rango (2011) demonstrate the doctrine’s continuing influence.

The Rhetoric of Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008)

 

 

To move toward a solution to this conflict between profit and need, Blue Gold establishes the problem and supports it with illustrations from around the world. Our water is in crisis, a title card explains, and a World Social Forum in Nairobi is examining the evidence to determine the best ways to ensure water is available and affordable for everyone. According to Maude Barlow, fresh water only comprises three percent of the total water on Earth; yet, most of that is undrinkable because it is polluted by farmers, cars, and industrial wastes that cause miscarriages, low sperm rates, and disease. The Rio Grande River in the United States, for example, is so polluted that anyone entering it would need eighteen vaccines and shots to survive. Around the world, cholera, a water-borne disease, kills more than wars because of this overt pollution, and over 60 percent of the world’s wetlands have been destroyed. 

According to the documentary, the water crisis is a product not only of water pollution; however, it also is a repercussion of the mining for water by industry, farming, and the bottled water corporations. The world’s fresh water supply is becoming polluted so fast that corporations are mining it faster than it can be replenished. Individuals, factory owners, and farmers overuse groundwater, sometimes because of the doctrine of prior appropriation that states if farmers or factory owners do not use the water, they may lose their water rights. Urbanization and overdevelopment accelerates groundwater depletion because a paved land devastates the water cycle. Dam projects exacerbate the problem, according to Vandana Shiva, “choking the artery of the planet” and breaking a sustainable water cycle. 

To overcome this water crisis, Blue Gold declares that we need to work on a renewable supply and determine how much we really have to work with and live within those limits. The film asserts that water should be a public commons rather than a privatized source of profit, as it is now around the world—with help from big companies such as Veolia, Suez, Vivendi, and Nestle. The last scenes of the film highlight ways to solve this water crisis. A final documentary chapter, “The Way Forward,” introduces multiple examples of local residents usurping the power of these corporate giants. Uruguay rid itself of the Suez Water Treatment Company by changing its constitution. And Fryeburg, Maine poured Nestlé’s bottled water back into its aquifers. The film ends here, but the suggestion is that together, and primarily on a local level, the water crisis can be solved. Although these hopes seem unattainable as climate crises exacerbate droughts, the rhetoric of the film still resonates.

The Appropriative Doctrine and Contemporary American Film, Part I

Documentary films such as Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008) begin to elucidate U.S. water rights issues like the appropriative doctrine. In contrast to the Clean Water Act, the appropriative doctrine, “is a queuing system that rewards first movers.” Although those with water rights again hold only usufruct rights, “in this system, the first claimant to a water source has the highest priority to divert water, so long as the withdrawal is for a ‘reasonable and beneficial use’” (Donohew 89). The appropriative water rights doctrine, however, serves as “a basis for water markets. The doctrine allows for water to be claimed, diverted, and separated from land through which water flows. It can be transported out of a basin for use elsewhere. 

As such, those who buy water rights or lease water can change the location of diversion, timing of use, and nature and site of ultimate use, subject to regulatory approval to protect downstream claimants” (Donohew 90). Vandana Shiva agrees, arguing “the doctrine of prior appropriation established absolute rights to property, including the right to sell and trade water” (22). Because the appropriative doctrine “gave no preference to riparian landowners,” even those far from water sources could compete for water, a principle that “provided the essential ingredients for an efficient market in water wherein property rights were well-defined, enforced and transferable” (Anderson and Snyder 75). 

 As the title suggests, Blue Gold: World Water Wars also examines the worldwide consequences of commodifying water and offers grounding for narratives explored in fictional films like Quantum of Solace (2008), released the same year. And Blue Gold defines its purpose and rhetorical approach in its opening claim: “This is not a film about saving the environment. This is a film about saving ourselves,” narrator Malcolm McDowell declares. “Whoever goes without water for a week cries blood.” An historical overview of ancient cultures’ attempts to manage water reinforces the film’s premise. The Egyptians and Romans succeeded, where the Mayans did not because they had too little water, the film argues. Today water is a source of profit for a few but necessary for us all. Negotiating a viable resolution between these two world views serves as an objective for the film.