Tag: Encourage empathy

SHOW BAD & GOOD

FIND THE UNIONS

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

SHOW HOW TO WIN

END HAPPY

“Made In Dagenham“
A docu-drama directed by Nigel Cole and produced by Stephen Wooley & Elizabeth Karlsen for HanWay Films & Lipsync Productions.
Trailer embedded above. Available to watch in full on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here. Search online for streaming options here.

In 1968, a group of 187 women sewing car seat covers at a Ford factory in the UK go on strike for equal pay. The work they do isn’t considered by the company to be ‘skilled’. So they get paid less than their officially ‘skilled’ male colleagues doing the same kind of work. Their strike action leads to the passing of equal pay legislation in the UK and overseas. In 2003, film producer Stephen Woolley is in his car listening to a radio show called The Reunion. It brings together people who lived through important historical events to talk about them. The episode that’s on brings together the women involved in this strike action forty years after it took place. Now in their 70s and 80s, he finds the way that they tell their story irreverent, hilarious, colourful and inspiring. He laughs his head off and is hooked. He’s never heard this story before. And they’re such characters! He wants to make a film about their struggle. But is it possible to make a mainstream movie that celebrates women’s involvement in successful strike action and legislative change? Despite a lack of industry interest in funding a movie about such serious topics, the answer is yes. The timing is right in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis and with the UK’s new Equality Act passing into law. The filmmaking team meets and interview the women, and create a central character who sums up the spirit of them all. Made in Dagenham is a hit. It brings an important turning point in the UK’s labour rights history to public attention. Audiences are moved to tears. This strike ‘was the spark that lit a flame that burns to this day’ says one commentator. Another calls it ‘a political movie that’s full on fun’. Some complain that it waters down the politics and overemphasises the fun. But it inspires some women who watch it to make their own claims for equal pay. There’s still along way to go on this issue. The strikers appear in the film’s credits. The fact that it’s based on real events is very clear. But what can a docu-drama do that a documentary cannot? For one thing, it has unhindered ‘access’ to all of the people involved in the story. In real life, some may refuse to take part.

Page reference: Sarah Brown, Izzy Brunswick, Julia Nientiedt, Alistair Wheeler, Camilla Windham & Becky Woolford (2013) Made in Dagenham. followthethings.com/made-in-dagenham.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 40 minutes.

Posted on November 18, 2024August 1, 2025 by Ian Cook

Mangetout

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Grocery

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

FOLLOW THE PEOPLE

SHOW BOTH SIDES

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

“Mangetout“
A documentary film directed by Mark Phillips for the BBCTV Modern ‘Times’ series.
Screengrab slideshow embedded above. Documentary available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

In this landmark ‘follow the thing’ documentary, director Mark Phillips follows the simple magetout pea (also known as a snowpea) and connects the lives of its producers, retailers and consumers. He films a dinner party in the UK’s home counties where mangetout is a side dish. The guests talk about ‘third world’ lifestyles and exploitation. He films the farm where they are grown in Zimbabwe and introduces us to some of the farm workers and their boss. He visits a UK supermarket and asks shoppers if they buy mangetout. It wasn’t a common vegetable in 1997. And he asks them where Zimbabwe is. Not many seem to know. He films the person who sources Zimbabwe-grown mangetout for the Tesco supermarket chain. And he films this person’s visit to the farm in Zimbabwe where he’s treated like royalty. He’s visiting to monitor the processes that provide the identical size, shape and quality mangetout peas at the price he needs. That’s his job. He wants the farm boss to instruct his workers to improve the quality. The customers – who he says are his boss – will demand this. This is such a fascinating film. It jumps backwards and forwards between these different people talking about mangetout peas and the ways that big business and global capitalism works. From these different perspectives, everyone has an opinion to share. The film’s inclusion of so many perspectives is unprecedented. Everyone seems to speak quite frankly. The power that the Tesco supermarket chain, and the person who sources its mangetout, is enormous. Its visiting buyer talks to the farm manager using a language of partnership, but the farmers say they have to do what they are told. The diners talk about the exploitation of ‘third world’ farmers in casual and abstract ways, and the film cuts to the farm workers talking about the lives they can lead with the money they earn. The people at the top of the ladder are white. The people at the bottom are black. With all of these different stakeholders in it means that, as a viewer, you’re not positioned as a consumer who needs to act by changing your consumption – that’s quite a common trope. You could empathise with any and all of the film’s participants, in different ways. This film was made to educate it audience – carefully, empathetically, through the careful juxtaposition of scenes and voices from a supply chain – about how capitalism works. It’s many juxtapositions give you lots to think about. And, it had a huge impact that on the UK supermarket industry in the 1990s. This was a golden time in trade justice activism. So many campaigns were starting up, and corporations hadn’t yet learned how to respond. Tesco were embarrassed. To borrow a phrase from elsewhere, this film showed ‘capitalism with its clothes off’. They had to do something. They and their rivals didn’t want ‘another Mangetout’. It’s a shame it’s so hard to find now.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Mangetout. followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 52 minutes.

Posted on November 10, 2024January 8, 2025 by Ian Cook

Hugh’s Chicken Run

Hugh [sobbing]: "I really don't want to kill another bird this morning'.
Hayley: 'You can afford free range. I can't. This is what I can afford.'
Hugh: 'To my delight, the response has been amazing. People really do care about chickens.'
Hugh: 'So, you are selling out of free range chickens'. Supermarket manager: 'We are'.

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Grocery

TV DOCUMENTARY SERIES

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

“Hugh’s Chicken Run“
A three-episode TV series hosted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for Channel 4 TV’s ‘Food Fight’ season.
Screengran slideshop embedded above. Search online to watch episodes here. Channel 4 episode guide here.

Private School-educated celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall takes part in a season of actvist-themed ‘Food Fight’ TV programmes on the UK’s Channel 4. His Hugh’s Chicken Run series has three episodes. He wants to persuade the shoppers of his home town of Axminster in Devon to stop buying factory-farmed chickens. You can get 2 for £5. The animal welfare issues are horrendous. And he wants the UK’s supermarket chains to stock free range alternatives to give consumers a choice. But how can he do this? He tries all sorts of tactics. For different audiences. He educates consumers in a supermarket carpark about the cramped and unsanitary conditions for factrory farmed chickens. He can’t get access to film in a commercial chicken farm, so he sets up one himself, runs it for a while, and invites cheap chicken consumers to see where their food comes from. He works with residents on a low income housing estate in the town to keep rear their own chickens. This is where he meets single mum Hayley, who ends up being the ‘mother hen’ of the project. He lobbies the supermarkets throughout the series to improve animal welfare standards. At the end of the series, he bumps into Hayley at the supermarket. She’s just bought a couple of cheap chickens. Noooo. His experiment hasn’t worked. But she’s defiant. She can’t afford what he would like her to eat, even though she agrees with everything he’s doing. He has reached, some critics say, the limit of consumer-based and celebrity activism. He’s trying to appear to ‘ordinary shoppers’, but he doesn’t understand ‘ordinary’ realities. He’s a posh boy who went to Eton. But the supermarkets do respond to his activism. And to his activism documented in follow-up programme Hugh, Chickens & Tesco Too. There are more free range chickens in the shops as a result of this series. But is that enough? Surely anyone seriously concerned about animal welfare would be advocating veganism as the alternative? Wouldn’t that be better for the chickens? What we like about this example is what it does and doesn’t do, how it does and doesn’t work, what it includes and what it leaves out. It’s open about being imperfect.

Page reference: Ellie Beattie, Fliss Browner, Rose Hughes, Rosie Marsh, Joe Parrilla, Alice Raeburn & Maddie Redfern (2024) Hugh’s Chicken Run. followthethings.com/hughs-chicken-run.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 67 minutes.

Posted on November 8, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

McLibel

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Grocery

TELL THE TRUTH

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

FIND TWO CHARACTERS

FOLLOW THE PEOPLE

WORRY ABOUT ANIMALS

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

GO TO COURT

MAKE IT A MYSTERY

USE MYTHS & LEGENDS

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

“McLibel“
A documentary film written by Franny Armstrong and directed by Franny Armstrong & Ken Loach for Spanner Films.
First released in 1998, extended version released in 2005 (the trailer for the latter version is embedded above). Search online to stream the whole film here. DVD extras Youtube Playlist is here. Original protest leaflet is here. Campaign website here.

Gardener Helen Steel and postman David Morris hand out leaflets outside McDonald’s restaurants in London. They tell consumers what’s wrong with the company and its food. Especially the cruelty in its meat supply chains. McDonald’s sues them for libel. What follows is the UK’s longest libel trial. An extraordinary ‘David vs Goliath’ drama in which the defendents defend themselves against McDonald’s highly paid corporate lawyers. When it’s over, it’s called it the ‘biggest public relations blunder in the history of public relations blunders’. It’s the earliest example we have found of the ‘Streisand Effect ‘in trade justice activism: where efforts to silence a critique of corporate misbehaviour backfire so spectacularly that the critique is amplified! Millions of people around the world got to know about Steel and Morris’ leaflets because McDonald’s sued them in court and because Franny Armstrong filmed what happened! TV channels couldn’t show her film because they feared McDonald’s will sue them. But McLibel film became a ‘cult classic’, nevertheless. The 2005 remake – with added courtroom re-creations – was released on DVD after films like Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me focused mainstream criticism on McDonald’s. In 2016, Armstong’s production company released McLibel in full on YouTube. Everybody could see it now. In 2024 it gained renewed attention when the young lawyer who gave Steel and Morris legal advice became the UK’s Prime Minister: Keir Starmer.

Page reference: Hannah Doherty, Rosie Benbow, Philippa Day, Meike Schwethelm, Hannah Griffiths and Alice Nivet (2013) McLibel. followthethings.com/mclibel.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 59 minutes.

Posted on November 8, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Broccoli & Desire: Global Connections & Maya Struggles In Postwar Guatemala

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Grocery

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

FOLLOW THE THING

JOIN THE DOTS

“Broccoli & Desire: Global Connections & Maya Struggles In Postwar Guatemala“
An academic book by Edward F. Fischer & Peter Benson published by Stanford University Press.
Google Books preview embedded above.

There are shoppers in Nashville USA who are conscious about their health and shop for healthy vegetables like broccoli in their local supermarkets. There are farmers in Guatemala who are trying to hold onto their land and to make a living by growing vegetables like brocolli for export markets like the USA. Each has their own rich and fascinating story to tell about their lives, their work, their dreams and desires for a better future. In this book, their lives are seen as interdependent as the authors travel along Brocolli’s supply chain, connecting these worlds and lives through detailed ethnographic fieldwork and description. They find that shoppers’ and farmers’ lives, and the impacts that they have on one another, are bound together in complex geographical and historical webs of connection. Like the best ‘follow the thing’ work, this study of a commodity that many wouldn’t think twice about on the supermarket shelf. But, once you start to examine it, ask questions about it, and start following it, what you find is often staggering in its contrasts, connections, depth and feeling. For the authors, the concept of ‘desire’ is something that this vegetable’s farmers and shoppers have in common. Could shoppers’ desire for cheap food be re-aligned into a desire for more equitable relations with farmers (even if this might cost a bit more)? Can there be foods that are good for the health and wellbeing of everyone in their supply chains? This is an admirable intention, but we haven’t been able to tell if and how this book encouraged others to think this was and to act on this way of thinking. What impact can an academic book have?

Page reference: Keith DellaGrotta and Meredith Weaver (2011) Broccoli & Desire: Global Connections & Maya Struggles In Postwar Guatemala. followthethings.com/broccoli-desire-gobal-connections-maya-struggles-in-postwar-guatemala.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes.

Posted on November 8, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

B’eau Pal Water

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Grocery

MAKE IT META

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

REDESIGN THE COMMODITY

“B’eau Pal Water“
A spoof commodity-based activist campaign created by the Yes Men and the Bhopal Medical Appeal.
Video playlist embedded above posted on YouTube by the Bhopal Medical Appeal.

It’s the 25th anniversary of the Union Carbide chemical factory explosion in Bhopal, India. It’s the worst industrial accident in history. 3,700 people died immediately. Between 8,000 and 25,000 people had died since. And up to 200,000 were permanently injured and countless more continued to be affected by the leaching of toxic chemicals into the water table. Still, the factory’s owners (Dow Chemical, who bought Union Carbide) refuse to pay compensation. So the Bhopal Medical Appeal get together with pranksters the Yes Men to design a new brand of bottled water. It’s a mineral water. B’eau Pal Water. A taste of Bhopal. “Bottled at source”, they say. Presented in a beautifully designed bottle. The Yes Men travel to Dow’s UK HQ to challenge its executives to drink it, just as Bhopal residents have for the past 25 years. When they arrive, the building is empty. Why won’t they drink this? When they offer it to passing members of the public , everyone understandably refuses once they know what’s in it. So is this campaign a success? Does it draw renewed attention to this long-running scandal? Is it OK that what they’re doing is ridiculous, funny, and that people are disgusted but also laughing about this prank? The Bhopal explosion wasn’t funny. So is this prank in poor taste? Is it offensive? Or can its humour embarrass Dow and bring the Bhopal factory explosion back into the news cycle? Can offering people a fancy bottle of toxic mineral water that they would never drink bring them closer to the people living in Bhopal who have no choice but to drink it? What’s the logical response to this? What has to happen to make this situation right? This bottled water later becomes a potent symbol of the compensation campaign at the 2012 London Olympics – where Dow is a corporate sponsor and a Bhopal survivor challenges the chair of its organising committee to drink it – and in Bhopal itself, when the victims and their families invite the Indian politicians and scientific advisors who had dismissed their complaints about contamination to a buffet of toxic delicacies including bottled B’eau Pal Water.

Page reference: Jack Parkin (2018) B’eau Pal Water. followthethings.com/beau-pal-water.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 44 minutes.

Posted on November 4, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Big Boys Gone Bananas!*

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Grocery

CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

INCLUDE A BOYCOTT

INCLUDE EMOTION

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

“Big Boys Gone Bananas!*“
A documentary film directed by Fredrik Gertten for WG Film AG, Sweden
Free trailer and on-demand stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here.
The second of two films on this topic. The first is “Bananas!*”. See our page on this here. See the films’ website here.

Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten and his small film company team are looking forward to the premiere of their courtroom documentary Bananas!* at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It follows a class action case in the California courts where a group of Nicaraguan Banana farm workers hold the Dole corporation accountable for their sexual impotence by making them use an agrochemical that had been banned because it caused it. Their case is put together by a California-based attorney, and the documentary includes grainy in-court testimony not only by the farmers but also by the Dole bosses who made the decision to continue using that agrochemical. The film documents a success story, more or less, with significant financial compensation being awarded to the workers. This is a test case. The first of its kind. So more cases will follow. More costs for Dole. More embarrassment. So Dole fights back, mounting a sophisticated public relations campaign to discredit the case (charging its lawyer with fraud) and the film (claiming it’s uncritically promoting this lawyer’s fraud). This campaign starts before the film has been screened. By people who have not seen it. News articles appear reporting that the film is a fraud. The festival is forced to withdraw it from competition, to show it at a remote theatre, and the festival director has to read out a disclaimer before it’s shown there. Then negative reviews start to appear as soon as it’s seen. Can this seemingly coordinated effort to silence corporate critique succeed? What would you do as a filmmaker if this happened to you? Gertten does what he knows best. He turns his camera on and makes a film about Dole’s attempts to discredit his film. He steps out from behind the camera to become its central character. Unbelievable things are happening to him, to the people he works with, and to the film they made together. But his film company had taken out an insurance policy that allowed them to pay for expensive legal help to fight back. They cleverly coordinate an counter-information and crowndfunding campaign. And a surprising international collection of allies come to their aid. Dole’s efforts to censor Bananas!* are a complete failure and, more than anything, make it and this Big Boys sequel a 100% must see double-bill for anyone interested in trade justice actvism. Read below to see how this story unfolds. It’s a genuine ‘David vs. Goliath’ story. You could never make this up! There’s so much to learn from this. Buckle up.

Page reference: Camilla Muirhead, Katie Lambert, Katie Joyce, Will Sensecall, Izzie Snowden, Matt Creagh & Harry Cousens (2020) Big Boys Gone Bananas!*. followthethings.com/big-boys-gone-bananas.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 1 hour 53 minutes.

Posted on October 23, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Cicih Sukaesih’s North America Nike Tour

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Sport & Fitness | Fashion

PUT YOUR BODIES IN THE WAY

IMPROVE PAY & CONDITIONS

FIND THE UNIONS

FIND A CHARACTER

HUMANISE THINGS

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

ADD TO THE MIX

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS

“Cicih Sukaesih’s North America Nike tour“
A speaker tour of North America by sacked Indonesia Nike factory worker Cicih Sukaesih, sponsored by Global Exchange, Working Group on Nike, Press 4 Change, Campaign for Labor Rights, Canadian Auto Workers, Operation PUSH, Jobs for Justice, Amnesty International, Frontlash (a branch of the AFL-CIO) and the Alberta Federation of Labour.
Newspaper report reproduced above. Search for a 2017 BBC interview with Cicih Sukaesih about this tour here.

Indonesian Nike factory worker Cicih Sukaesih is sacked for organising a successful strike action for minimum wages and better conditions. So North American anti-sweatshop organisations recruit her to front a multi-city tour with stops in New York City. Chicago, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto … She wants Nike CEO Phil Knight and basketball star Michael Jordan to explain the price of the shoes she has made, their astronomical pay and her colleagues’ extraordinarily bad pay and conditions. She visits Nike’s HQ, leads protests at its Nike Town stores, describes the working conditions she has experienced, urges supporters to write to Jordan to persuade him to use his celebrity power to help factory workers and urges Nike to reinstate her and her sacked colleagues. She sometimes tries on a pair of Nike shoes in store. Wearing them makes her feel distinguished. But their price tag would eat up two or three months of her salary. Where does all that money go? Her removal from a store by Nike security staff after trying on the Nike shoes she makes is quite a spectacle. A perfect scene for media coverage that can make Nike’s sweatshop problem a public concern. We love this example of trade justice activism. Conventionally it’s a Western consumer who travels to the Global South to meet their makers. Sukaesih goes in the opposite direction. She’s looking to connect with others in the worlds of retail and consumption who care about trade justice, to act together in solidarity. She’s doing this by working with campaigning NGOs and public relations, media-savvy activists, working together on a new kind of trade justice activism. But what should the protestors who join them do? Put pressure on the company by boycotting it? Sukaesih say no. Don’t do that! That’s going to harm her friends and former colleagues back home. Let them keep their jobs, but with much better pay and conditions, paid for by Nike. The company can afford it. There’s lots of Nike sweatshop activism taking place at this time. And the company does act. Or gives the impression that it’s acting. You decide.

Page reference:Alex Fanshawe, Lorian Douglas Dufresne, Frances Nicholson, Josh Perkins, Oscar Cator & Charlie Beere (2024) Cicih Sukaesih’s North America Nike tour. followthethings.com/cicih-sukaesihs-north-america-nike-tour.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 68 minutes.

Posted on October 16, 2024March 3, 2025 by Ian Cook

Ghosts

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Grocery

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION