A New Dust Bowl Coming?

A New Dust Bowl Coming?

As we have commented on earlier in our examination of Pare Lorentz’s The Plow that Broke the Plains (1937), the idea of “eco-memories” are complicated and prone to be shunted aside for ideas of endless progress and boundless wealth extracted from “nature.” As the film asserts:

High winds and sun

A Country without rivers

And with little rain

Settler: Plow at your peril

Two hundred miles from water

Two hundred miles from town

But the land is new

Many were disappointed

The rains failed

And the sun baked the light soil.

The drought that is now plaguing a significant portion of the U.S., however, may soon lead to conditions favorable to a repeat of the parched 1930s. Everything is in place. A complacent set of state governments that refuse to acknowledge scientific facts, coupled with the over-farming in the Plain States, have created conditions that will, many people warn, lead to a recurrence of the catastrophe of the 1930s. Looking at Lorentz’s short documentary that carefully details the causes of the disaster also aligns with recent historical texts by Donald Worster, such as Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (1979) and Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (1985), as well as The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (2006) by Timothy Egan.

Endless stories about shrinking water supplies, depletion of aquifers, sale of cattle due to grass die off are also coupled with farmers exploiting marginal land for profit, stripping protective crop covers to feed stock, and opening up land that was set aside in the 1930s to prevent the very disasters that had just visited the water of the U.S.

Texas now is suing other states for access to river water. Oklahoma and Kansas are disaster areas due to a blasted out wheat crop. Farmers are selling their water allotments to energy companies to use for “fracking.” One more season of hard drought, paired with high winds, may produce the very conditions documented by Lorentz and novelists like John Steinbeck in Grapes of Wrath.

The fragility of the landscape is duplicated by the fragility of memory. Eco-disasters are quickly forgotten, and if they are repeated, it will not be because warnings were not present, but that people refuse to remember or believe that documentary images of whole cities being buried in “dust storms” are nothing more than the overheated imagination of liberal filmmakers in the faraway Neverland of Hollywood.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi: Preserving A Way of Life

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) chronicles the day-to-day work life of 85-year-old Jiro Ono, a world-renowned sushi chef and owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a prestigious ten-seat sushi restaurant in Tokyo, the only restaurant of its kind with a three star Michelin rating. Although this prestige attracts sushi lovers from around the world to make reservations months in advance for one of the few seats at Jiro’s sushi bar, it is Jiro and his sons, rather than the restaurant, that provide focus for this revealing documentary.

Although the film’s production notes suggest the film “is a thoughtful and elegant meditation on work, family, and the art of perfection,” however, the relationship between Jiro and his eldest son moves beyond revealing the complexity of Jiro’s multiple roles as culinary success and loving but demanding father. The relationship also reveals the changing attitudes toward the environment that must be embraced for the dream of sushi to continue. In order to continue the traditions Jiro establishes as a sushi master, his eldest son Yoshikazu must encourage an aquatic conservation missing from Jiro’s experience. The drive to maintain his father’s reputation as a sushi master, then, parallels the desire to preserve the sea life that sustains it.

Despite any weaknesses they note, reviewers laud the film’s presentation of Jiro and his goals to create the perfect sushi. Noel Murray of the A.V. Club notes that the film “argues persuasively that it’s that constant pursuit of improvement—even to the best sushi in the world—that gives us all a reason to wake up and punch in.” Nicolas Rapold of The New York Times declares Jiro is “a god among men.” Roger Ebert calls the film “a documentary about a man whose relationship with sushi wavers between love and madness. He is a perfectionist, never satisfied, and if you go to work for him as an apprentice, you will have to spend weeks learning how to squeeze out a towel properly before moving on to learn how to slice a hard-boiled eggs.”

What they don’t note is the different focus Jiro’s son Yoshikazu brings to the film during his trip to the fish market. The scene is the market is reminiscent of segments in anti-fishing documentaries such as The End of the Line (2009) and We Feed the World (2005). Huge tuna and other ocean fish lie in rows on a massive concrete floor ready for bidding. After Yoshikazu purchases tuna, shrimp, and other seafood for the day at the restaurant, he speaks reflectively into the camera, mourning the loss of rare ocean life and promoting the need to conserve the fish that remain for future generations. The film shows us plates of sushi items no longer available because of the overfishing Yoshikazu laments.

Although the film leaves this scene quickly to return to Jiro and his amazing restaurant, it portends a possible change when the now 85 year-old Jiro passes the restaurant onto his son. This brief scene offers hope that preserving the excellence of Jiro’s restaurant may also help save the sea.

Ice Age and Redefinitions of Animal Families

The newest installment of the Ice Age animated film franchise, Ice Age: Continental Drift, focuses on both extended and nuclear definitions of family, but it also extends the family structure beyond blood relatives to different animal species. In this Ice Age installment, Manny, a Woolly Mammoth; Diego, a Smilodon or Saber-Toothed Cat, and Sid , a Ground Sloth, are cast adrift on an iceberg after the earth opens up, separating landmasses into the seven continents. Their journey back home to Manny’s wife Ellie  and daughter Peaches  provides laughs and conflicts with both natural forces and anthropomorphized animal pirates, but it more importantly serves to redefine family, a definition Diego explains when asked about the difference between a pack and a family. In a family, he explains, “We have each other’s backs.” To illustrate this definition, the film explores a variety of family dynamics using effective and sometimes spectacular 3-D animation. The film first highlights conflicts between Manny and his teenaged daughter Peaches in their traditional nuclear family.

More importantly, however, the film also amplifies the importance of Manny’s extended family and their relationships. Manny, Diego, and Sid grow even closer during their struggles to return to their home. But they also serve as a positive counterpart to the pirate pack they outmaneuver. The contrast between the pirates and the Manny-led extended family ultimately lead to an addition to their group and a partner for Diego when Shira, a female Smilodon, chooses their strong connections over the dysfunctional pirate crew that willingly abandons her.  Sid’s Sloth family also plays a role in the film, again providing a stark contrast to the interdependent family unit Manny has built with his multi-species clan. Whereas Sid’s Sloth family abandons him, leaving him to care for an aging Granny, his Manny clan “has his back.” Sid also contributes to the family group when he builds an alliance with the Hyrax herd, which helps steal the pirates’ ship. To her credit, Granny becomes less of a burden when her pet whale helps them return home and escape the pirates. These different illustrations of the ideal family build toward the film’s climax, when Manny reunites with Peaches and Ellie, recreating  the multi-species herd. Although Ice Age: Continental Drift certainly has many weaknesses, it successfully redefines the structure and purpose of family. 

Fashion Industry Films and the Move to Fast Fashion

Most clothing industry films concentrate on individual designers, who rise from obscurity to fame. For example, Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008) grounds its hero’s journey by connecting it with that of the protagonist of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), who struggles to make a life for himself as an artist in the decadent world to which he is attracted. Unlike Marcello, Valentino meets and pairs up with Giancarlo Giametti for more than 45 years, both in business and life, building both a vital domestic relationship and a vibrant business career with Giametti’s strengths focused on his mind for money, as well as his role of protector and life partner. Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum notes that the Nino Rota’s score for the film “provides a Fellini overlay,” reinforcing the connection between the 1960 film and Valentino’s life. The documentary, however, primarily highlights preparations for one of Valentino’s couture shows and culminates in a climactic commemoration of Valentino’s 45^th anniversary in the fashion industry, a striking acknowledgment of his ability to overcome bankruptcy and succeed for the long term as a multi-millionaire designer.

            But the film also reveals another reason for Valentino’s retirement, according to Stephen Holden of The New York Times: “Swallowed up by big business, the great fashion houses of Europe are now mass-market franchises with designer names attached to all manner of clothing and accessories.” The documentary primarily concentrates on the spectacle, first of the final show, and then of Valentino’s 45^th anniversary event. Here the extravagance includes spectacular fireworks. For Valentino, the world of fashion was once a world of “floating fairies” in red. In the hands of Italian millionaire Matteo Marzotto, that is sure to change, the film shows us, and the fairies will be missed. Here the rise of the individual Valentino is aided by a partner, Giametti, who, perhaps, finds a way to shield Valentino and his fashion line from multinational bankers and the inevitable changes they will require.

            One of the most provocative examples of a design artist succeeding in spite of poverty and lack of support is Anne Fontaine’s biographical drama, Coco Before Chanel (2009). The film highlights Chanel’s (Audrey Tautou) rise from dire circumstances to success as “France’s famous mademoiselle,” exploring the journey Gabrielle (Coco) takes from an orphanage where her father leaves her and her sister and never returns to fashion design fame. Beginning as a seamstress for performers and a part-time singer at a cabaret where she earns her nickname, Coco, from a song she sings with her sister to opportunities to design hats, the film portrays Chanel as a fighter who overcomes adversity with help from her relationships with Baron Etienne Balsan (Beoit Poelvoorde) and Arthur Capel (Alessandro Nivola), who dies tragically in a car accident. In spite of these forays, in the context of the film, “she’s elegant in relation to the extravagant luster of the rich.” 

            The story, according to Roger Ebert, is “not about rags to riches but about survival of the fittest,” and provides a single vision of Chanel’s rise in the fashion world, a vision that glosses over her diminished popularity during and after World War II due to collaboration with the Nazis and ends with her death in 1971, when she was still working, as the film says, “on a Sunday.”  Although the film’s portrayal of Chanel is unsympathetic and suggests her decisions to create fashions that “liberated women from the hideous excesses of the late 19^th century” was based more on her own preferences for sailor suits than any feminist leanings, it demonstrates well how an individual artist can overcome adversity and become an unlikely hero, at least in the fashion world. As Ebert asserts, “To the winner belongs the spoils, even if in life, you started pretty far back from the starting line.”

            Ebert’s claim aligns well with the fictionalized version of fashion show preparation found in Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear, an illustration of the behind-the-scenes activity before and during Paris Fashion Week 1994. The film provides a uncomplimentary portrayal of the fashion industry, a “hate letter” according to Richard Corliss, but a “comedy crossed with a home movie,” according to Roger Ebert. What stands out, however, amid the personal injustices and competitions, is a nod toward the environment missing from most films. At the ready-to-wear show, one reporter asks a designer, “How do you feel that fifty percent of the world’s pollution comes from textile mills,” shocking the designer and prompting the viewer to wonder if she’s right. Do the fashion and clothing industries contribute this significantly to everyday environmental disasters such as air and water pollution? And of course the answer is yes.