Hyland,+Dirt

Title: Dirt! The Movie Director: Bill Benenson and Gene Roscow Release: 2009

This movie is (pretty obviously) concerned with dirt as an indicator of the planets environmental distress. The film opens with a montage of the magic of dirt, how it is comprised of everything that has ever been on this planet – star elements, plants, animals, and people. The remaining time is spent touching on the magic of dirt and what it means to the human psyche as well as the planet, how we are ruining the dirt, and what we can do to bring it back.

This movie points out a large web of sustainability problems which both lead to the destruction of dirt and shows what issues dirt’s degradation leads to. Dirt’s downfall in America began at with the onset of the industrial revolution. Booming cities and the areas surrounding were tearing down the top soil to make room for roads, buildings, and city lots. In addition with populations growing exponentially, even in the Midwest and other areas where cities were not as large, agriculture was pressured to produce more and more for and resources for city dwellers which led to more demand on the land and exhaustion of the topsoil. The argument was then proposed that the destruction of the earth’s outer skin, especially in metropolitan areas, was leading to a decrease in people appreciation for soil as well as the environment in general. Crime rose in areas with less natural land, poverty increase, and people began engaging in less sustainable practices largely because the direct effects of their actions was hidden on the other side of a sky scraper horizon.

The film’s most persuasive quality was the sheer joy and excitement it displayed at all times. The music was happy, the experts were clearly enthusiastic and knowledgeable and it was a very welcome break from the doom and gloom of a lot of sustainability related documentaries display. The general tone of the piece was that we made mistakes and were in a bad place but there are myriad opportunities for us to improve our predicament. The wide variety of experts used in the movie was also very effective. The selection included social scientists who