Tag: Make the hidden visible

CREATE SOME CHARACTERS

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

SHOW FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

MAKE IT FUNNY

MAKE IT SNAPPY

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

PROMPT GOOD CITIZENSHIP

“Teleshopping AK-47“
A spoof teleshopping channel promotion directed by Dougal Wilson and post-produced by MPC for Mother, commissioned by Amnesty International.
Full video embedded above. Search online for versions with other titles here.

Amnesty International is trying to get 1 million people involved in their campaign to tighten loopholes in international arms trade legislation. To demonstrate how easy it is to buy weapons like AK-47 assault rifles, how cheap they are, and how they end up being used in armed conflicts (often involving child soldiers), they commission some culture jamming. Its a short video that imagines that these weapons can be sold by cheery presenters on TV shopping channel’s chintzy pastel-coloured set, just like ice-cream makers and his ‘n’ hers dressing gowns. They’re perfect for child soldiers, the presenters say, like those in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They give one to a child to demonstrate on set, who cheerfully shoots a mannequin to pieces. Amnesty commission this darkly comedic, camp and chilling 135 second film to show in cinemas, alongside the real ads. They publish it on YouTube. Later, it’s included as an extra on the DVD of Nicholas Cage’s Hollywood arms trade blockbuster Lord of War [see our page on its Life of a bullet opening credits here]. Amnesty can’t advertise on UK TV because they’re a political organisation. And the use of pastiche / parody / humour is a novel approach in human rights campaigning in 2006. But Amnesty really go for it. On top of the cinema ad, there’s a viral email campaign, spoof arms shopping catalogues are delivered through people’s doors, and pop-up high street weapons shops open around the UK with live shooting demonstrations. Commenters are shocked by this disgusting, deeply sinister but informative campaign. One says these weapons are beautiful and every American should have one. Another pretends to agree, saying that guns don’t kill people, people do and, if guns were taken away, people could just as easily kill eachother with knives or rubber ducks. Some say humour is inappropriate for such a serious topic. Others say the ad and the catalogue is so light, so beautifully done, so plausible, that it’s perfect for generating conversations about the international arms trade and its (lack of) regulation.

Page reference: Daisy Livingston (2024) Teleshopping AK-47. followthethings.com/teleshopping-ak-47.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 30 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Made in Dagenham

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Home & Auto

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

HUMANISE WORKERS

FIND SOME CHARACTERS

CREATE SOME CHARACTERS

TELL A STORY

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

SHOW BAD & GOOD

FIND THE UNIONS

BRING MANAGERS 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 22, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Luckiest Nut In The World

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Grocery

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

TEACH ECONOMICS

KNOW YOUR HISTORY

BRING REGULATORS INTO VIEW

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

TELL A STORY

MAKE IT FUNNY

“The Luckiest Nut In The World“
An animated film written, produced & Directed by Emily James for Fulcrum TV, broadcast in the UK on Channel 4’s Alt-TV series.
Film embedded in full above. Search online for shorter versions and versions with subtitles here.

Who better to explain the rules of international trade than a commodity that has seen it all? An American peanut who wears a stetson hat, plays the guitar, and sings songs about the rules of world trade that work in his favour. Along the way he enlists help from experts and from public information films. Yes, he’s the ‘luckiest nut in the world’ and, as he learns about other less lucky nuts around the world (groundnuts in Senegal, cashew nuts in Mozambique, and brazil nuts in Bolivia), he finds out that it doesn’t have to be this way. All of the world’s nuts – and the people and economies that could benefit from growing and selling them – could be just as lucky is the rules governing world trade weren’t stacked against them. Filmmaker Emily James uses animation to do the impossible: to make these rules, and the inequalities they help to create, not only understandable but entertaining. The film becomes a hit with school teachers. Some of their students say they’re bored with its content, but others say they can’t help humming the songs, mouthing their WTO lyrics. It’s a catchy way to learn some pretty boring but important information about hope the world works (and years before Horrible Histories began). This is an early example of animated film doing what and academic cook or a documentary films cannot. In this case, making abstract content accessible, making the hidden visible, and explaining trade injustice to wider publics in an engaging – funny, weird, you name it – way. ‘What would commodities tell us about their lives if they could talk?’ is an intriguing question that’s answered in some of the earliest follow the thing ‘it-narrative’ writing [see our page on a 1760 travel novel written by a coin here]. ‘What would a commodity sing about its life if it could … um … sing?’ is a question answered, in our experience, only by this film. Thank you Emily.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2011) The Luckiest Nut In The World. followthethings.com/the-luckiest-nut-in-the-world.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes.

Posted on November 22, 2024January 7, 2025 by Ian Cook

Darwin’s Nightmare

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Grocery | Security

DISTRIBUTED FROM TANZANIA

SHOT IN AFRICA

DOCUMENTARY FILM

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

JOIN THE DOTS

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

FIND SOME CHARACTERS

HUMANISE WORKERS

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

INCLUDE EMOTION

MAKE IT PROVOCATIVE

WALK THE WALK

“Darwin’s Nightmare“
A documentary film directed by Hubert Sauper for Mille et Une Productions.
Trailer embedded above. Search online for streaming options here.

Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper examines the effects of a fish that’s been introduced to the African Great Lake Victoria for commercial reasons. They’ve displaced other fish that local people rely upon for their diet and are farmed and flown away on cargo planes to be eaten by Northern consumers. More controversially, some of those planes (allegedly) return full of weapons that fuel civil wars in neighbouring countries. Here, capitalist and colonial logics create a place where Tanzanian fishermen, homeless children, prostitutes, government minsters, Russian pilots, World Bank officials, European Union commissioners live and work together in an ‘ungodly alliance’. Viewers say the film is clever, damaging and racist, and/or artfully depressing. Its director calls it a ‘feel bad’ movie. It’s nominated for an Oscar but loses to a penguin documentary. Northern consumers who love the Omega 3 in fish like Nile Perch start to boycott it, and sales are affected for a while. Darwin’s Nightmare makes Tanzania look terrible. Its government denounces the film, accuses its director of fabricating storylines (e.g the role of this arms trade plays in the spread of HIV), demands that he apologies and pursues the subjects of his film to punish them. Western governments learning about this arms trade from the film put pressure on Tanzania to stop it, and to stop silencing African journalists who have let the world know about it. One journalist criticises the film’s one dimensional portrayal of the hell caused in Tanzania by this fish trade. It’s a mixed picture. So much of its positive effects aren’t included. One critic is sued for calling the film a hoax. There are unprecedented personal attacks on the director, accusing him of acting unethically, threatening him with death and posting fake photos online of him with Saddam Hussein. The main criticism of his film is that it plays to centuries-old Western stereotypes of African savagery and backwardness. Critics say it reveals – but also helps to do – damage to the people of Tanzania. Sauper says he’s not found anything new. All he’s done is joined the dots between well known issues. Between the global arms and food trade, for example. It’s not an out and out activist film. It’s more of a film noir. No solutions are offered. So what responsibility do you have for the impacts of your film noir? Discussions of this film are super-heated.

Page reference: Aparupa Chakravarti & Jeff Bauer (2014) Darwin’s Nightmare. followthethings.com/darwins-nightmare.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 93 minutes.

Posted on November 15, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

King Corn: Your Are What You Eat

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Grocery

APPLE & CRANBERRY JUICE

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THINGS

TAKE THEM TO PIECES

FLIP THE SCRIPT

CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

INGREDIENTS SOURCED WORLDWIDE

MAKE IT FUNNY

STREISAND EFFECT

“King Corn: Your Are What You Eat“
A documentary directed and starring Ian Cheney & Curt Ellis for Mosaic Films (US)
Official trailer embedded above. Search online to watch the full movie here. Movie website here.

What better way to find out where your food comes from than growing it yourself and following where it goes? That’s what college friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis do by growing an acre of corn in the US state of Iowa. This isn’t the corn you’d eat on the cob, though. This corn tastes horrible. It’s inedible. It’s a starch crop that ends up as an ingredient in countless other industrial foods: like burgers, twinkies, apple juice. Corn is ‘the raw material for an overweight society’, a major cause of obesity diabetes. You can’t get away from it. Americans are all part corn (test your hair!). But who controls this trade? And who is if good for? The consumers who eat all that junk food? The corporations who dominate its growing and processing? The government who could (maybe should) change the nation’s farming policy? Ian and Curt’s ‘grow your own’ approach to supply chain activism is innovative. They present themselves as a couple of naive, funny ‘guys’, just out of college. They have no farming experience. They move from Boston to Iowa and buy some land. Plant some corn. Watch it grow (not much work is required). They ask for help from other farmers. They follow corn from production to consumption by producing and trying to sell it to processors. But they don’t want to help, so these two guys try to process it themselves, making High Fructose Corn Syrup (the sweetener in so much junk food) in their kitchen. The film is a hit. It exposes a truth about US agriculture which the ‘Corn Producers of America’ trade body does not appreciate. They hope it will inspire audiences to act politically to chabge the health of their society for the better. Its not about shopping for different products, because corn is in everything. To counter the film’s message, the CPA invest in an advertising campaign – including an iconic TV ad – about the harmlessness of corn. The filmmakers produce a parody ad about the harmlessness of tobacco. Then iconic satirical US TV show Saturday Night Live gets in on the act, making its own parody ad about the harmlessness of corn. So much sarcasm! This is another example we have found of an industry’s attempts to silence – in this case quite a mild – critique of how things are made. As we might expect, this critique draws so much attention to the original film, that it means more people know about it. For the filmmakers, it’s free publicity.

Page reference: Yahellah Best, Melanie Garunay, Melissa Logan & Andrea McWilliams (2024) King Corn: You Are What You Eat. followthethings.com/king-corn-you-are-what-you-eat.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 40 minutes.

Posted on November 10, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Chewing Gum

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Grocery

TAKE IT TO PIECES

JOIN THE DOTS

MAKE IT A MYSTERY

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

MAKE IT SNAPPY

MAKE IT META

“Chewing Gum“
Undergraduate coursework written by Lucy Mayblin, published in the Teaching Geography journal.
Full text below.

The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Birmingham is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, their lecturer (now followthethings.com CEO) Ian tells them. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and the properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming it’. And write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives. One student – Lucy Mayblin – ends up writing about being an accidental consumer. She’s walking to class. She steps in chewing gum recently spat from someone else’s mouth. It’s stuck to her shoe. But what exactly is stuck to her shoe, and why? She buys some gum and inspects the ingredient list. She searches the internet to find out more. What she finds out is shocking. She had trodden in the ‘war on terror’?! But is it true? To add to the stickiness of her work, she prints it out, rolls it into a tube, puts it into a shoe, and hands it in with some fresh gum on the sole. It sticks to the hand-in desk.

Page reference: Lucy Mayblin (2004) Chewing Gum. followthethings.com/chewing-gum.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes.

Posted on November 10, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Fruits Of Our Labour: An Avocado’s Story

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Grocery

“The Fruits Of Our Labour: An Avocado’s Story“
A dissertation by Freddie Abrahams, submitted as part of their BA Geography degree at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Sample pages from Introduction, Methodology & Findings in slideshow above. Click them to read the dissertaion.

Undergraduate student Freddie Abrahams is shocked to discover that the Carmel-branded, ‘Produce of Israel’ avocados he eats may be grown on illegally seized Palestinian land. There’s a campaign in the UK to boycott these fruits. So he contacts Agrexco, the Israeli company that supplies them, and asks if it’s possible to find out for himself. He travels to Israel and ends up on kibbutz farms. They’re not on Palestinian land. And they’re not farmed by Palestinian people. The people he meets are migrant workers from Ethiopia, Thailand and other countries. He’s baffled. The boycott protestors are so angry. They say that all Israeli avocados should be boycotted. But the Agrexco managers he’s met have helped him so much with his research. They have been so open. He hasn’t seen any avocados being grown on Palestinian land. But Agrexco wouldn’t help him to see that, would they? His research does throw some doubt on facts of the boycott. So what’s his dissertation about? Following acovados? And/or the politics of knowledge in following avocados. What research are thing-followers allowed to do? What access can they gain to what spaces? Who gives permission? Who shapes what they learn to see? Freddie’s research was unusually easy to do.

Dissertation reference: Freddie Abrahams (2007) The Fruits Of Our Labour: An Avocado’s Story. BA Geography Dissertation: University of Birmingham, UK (followthethings.com/the-fruits-of-our-labour-an-avocados-story.shtml last accessed <insert date here>)

Page reference: Freddie Abrahams (2011) The Fruits Of Our Labour: An Avocado’s Story. followthethings.com/the-fruits-of-our-labour-an-avocados-story.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 60 minutes.

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

McLibel

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Grocery

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

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

FOLLOW THE THING

JOIN THE DOTS