Dead Ahead: Exxon Valdez Oil Disaster in Context, conclusion

 

 

More importantly, in Dead Ahead Iarossi revealed that Exxon knew about Hazelwood’s drinking problem but allowed him to continue as captain of the Valdez. Iarossi resigned from Exxon in 1990 and became president of the American Bureau of Shipping, “a nonprofit corporation that classifies ships for insurers, inspects blueprints during construction and surveys vessels to make sure they are seaworthy” (“Where are They Now?). According to a 1999 Anchorage Daily New article, Iarossi told The Business Times of Singapore, “What we need to do is to try to develop much more of a safety culture, the mentality which is very much safety-oriented on the part of shipping companies and ship operating officers.” The film draws on this same representation of Iarossi as a figure disillusioned by Exxon’s failure to address safety issues to reinforce its argument for double hulled tankers, but not against oil. 

Representations of Dan Lawn parallel that of Iarossi and, again, validate the film’s call for safer transporting of oil. As chief of the Valdez office of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Lawn’s character confronts an unresponsive state government, a complaisant EPA, and an unprepared Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, asserting the need for both better preventative systems and emergency plans to tackle oil spills and their consequences. The film’s portrayal of Lawn draws authentically on his attempts to improve both prevention and response strategies. In a 1989 Seattle Times article, for example, Lawn asserts, “We are all to blame…. We demand petroleum products, but we’re unwilling to be taxed. We thought someone was taking care of it. We put in pro-industry officials, and our ability to control things went away” (“The Lost Frontier”). 

Although the film convincingly argues for more effective safety standards to prevent future oil spill disaster, Dead Ahead reinforces the arguments broached in Louisiana Story: If we successfully maintain the bifurcation between nature and culture—between a pristine Alaska and its oil—both can be preserved.

Dead Ahead: Exxon Valdez Oil Disaster in Context, continued

 

From its opening scenes showing Captain Joseph Hazelwood’s (Jackson Davies) absence from the bridge because of alcohol abuse to its dramatization of conflicts between the U.S. EPA and its local representative, Dan Lawn (John Heard) and between Exxon and its spokesperson, Frank Iarossi (Christopher Lloyd), Dead Ahead effectively addresses the post-spill disaster, arguing both through its narrative and cinematic portrayals of once-pristine waters and landscapes for double hulls in oil tankers and better implementation of protocols if and when another spill occurs. It does not, however, argue against the production and transporting of oil because, as Woodhead states, “America cannot afford to be without (oil) supply, but we better try to do a lot better in controlling how we get it out of there” (King). 

The powerful cinematic representations of the landscape became possible because “establishing shots and aerial footage were shot of the Port of Valdez,” even though Dead Ahead was primarily filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia. According to director Paul Seed, “it would have been difficult to shoot inside Alaska because of the unpredictable weather” (King). The wild shorelines of Vancouver overlap effectively with the establishing shots of Valdez and contrast well with the post-disaster shots of a spill (recreated with a gelatin-based food thickener) to accentuate the dangerous consequences of the spill—losing the pristine beauty of wild nature. 

These contrasting shots parallel the positions voiced by Lawn and Iarossi, who both in some ways oppose the organizations they see as responsible for the spill. Iarossi’s character becomes more authentic because Iarossi willingly answered interview questions, revealing, as he had during the actual spill’s aftermath, Exxon’s reactions to the spill. His focus on safety, however, reinforces the film’s emphasis on accident prevention rather than the eradication of oil production and shipment. Then president of the Exxon Shipping Company, Iarossi represented the company during public forums in Valdez and informed investigators that Captain Joseph Hazelwood was legally drunk during the tanker disaster.

Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Oil Disaster in Context

 Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster focuses primarily on the reasons behind both the spill and its slow cleanup, however, rather than on the inherently dangerous consequences of oil production and shipment. To reinforce this assertion that safety regulations, not the oil industry per se, caused this horrendous disaster and its catastrophic consequences, the film provides a reenactment of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker catastrophe, from the moments before the tanker ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, rupturing its storage tanks and spilling millions of gallons of oil, through its devastating aftermath. 

According to Los Angeles Times staff writer, Susan King, “the behind-the-scenes catastrophes after the mammoth oil spill… shocked the British creative team of HBO’s docudrama Dead Ahead.” The film’s researcher-writer Michael Baker and executive producer Leslie Woodhead called the disaster “a black comedy” (King) because of the neglect and greed of oil and pipeline companies, and the disastrous choices made by the Coast Guard, the EPA, and the first Bush Administration. 

As King declares, the film “depicts the bureaucracy, fighting, and finger-pointing among officials at Exxon, the Alyeska Pipeline Company…, the Coast Guard, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Bush Administration, while the spill was left basically unattended for days.” Anger with these multiple groups’ mistakes prompted Baker and Woodhead to move forward with the film. As Woodhead explains, “It is so infuriating, the revelation that the oil laid there for three days in beautiful weather. It was just a tangle of priorities and people trying to tidy up their own images which left the oil lying there in the water” (King). Baker agrees, asserting, “People started kind of blaming each other…. It became a question of controlling the media, not cleaning up the oil, but controlling the spill as an event” (King).

The Real Price of Oil: When Externalities Become Transparent in Oil Documentaries

 

While Louisiana Story and Thunder Bay suggest that oil production will either leave the landscape untouched or benefit its ecosystem, films responding to major oil spills, including the March 24, 1989 Exxon Valdez eco-catastrophe in Alaska’s Prince Edward Sound, highlight the negative effects oil disasters may have on the environment and the cultures and economies it supports. 

Instead of condemning the oil industry in general, however, these films attack individuals and promote safe production practices. In a move similar to that of Louisiana Story, Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster (1992), Black Wave: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez (2009), and Crude: The Real Price of Oil (2009), assert that because oil and the natural environment don’t mix, they must remain separate. Unlike Thunder Bay, which asserts that humans and the natural world can share an interdependent relationship, Dead Ahead, Black Wave, and, to a certain extent, Crude suggest that human and environmental disasters occur when safety precautions fail, either because of human error or blatant neglect. 

 If, as in Louisiana Story, however, oil companies enter the natural world briefly and with caution to avoid an indelible effect, then, the films suggest, they can avoid such disasters. Ultimately, these films perpetuate the same two myths upheld by Louisiana Story: If implemented correctly and safely, oil drilling can leave a natural setting untouched, so that humans and their technology can remain separate from nature rather than interconnected with it.