SullivanPatrick11


 * Sullivan Patrick Portfolio**

Affluenza, John de Graaf, Vivia Boe, 1997
 * 1. Title, director and release year?**

People are buying more, but feel emptier about their lives. People believe that owning things will make their lives more complete due to advertisements and other cultural factors, but they lose sight of people themselves.
 * 2. What is the central argument or narrative of the film?**

Materialism is taught to people especially children. Planned obsolescence.
 * 3. What sustainability problems does the film draw out?**

I was surprised by the statement that there are more shopping malls than high schools. This shows where we are currently putting our money and time. We care more about things than people. I also found it persuasive that more Americans were found to be happy with their lives in 1956 than any other year. As a society grows each individual is still in the same relative position. People always want more as other people have more. The children’s game where the winner was the person that bought the most stuff and made it back to the parking lot first was very surprising. This game is clearly trying to get children to buy more. The section showing how things children are learning in school are sponsored by companies who are getting advertisements into the learning material, was very surprising. People are spending money on products instead of giving it to schools, so the schools need to advertise in order to fund themselves, which causes students to want to buy more. This is a terrible cycle which leads to more and more spending. I enjoyed the section on family values, especially the example where everyone in the family was using some device which was connected to outside the house, but not interacting with each other within the house. This is a great example of how social networking tools are disconnecting people from the people physically around them. I thought that the montages of advertisements were an effective way of portraying our society and worked well to aid in the overall argument of the movie. The part showing how Jimmy Carter said that Americans have become to indulgent and then lost by a landslide showed how unwilling people are to accept change and take personal responsibility. It then said that no other presidential candidate has said anything close to what Jimmy Carter said because they know that people will not vote for them even though it may be good for people. This shows a deeper problem within politics where candidates must say what the public wants rather than what will help them, otherwise they will not win votes. The end of the movie showed many examples of steps being taken by people to reduce their consumption. By ending the movie with a positive attitude towards the problem it helps the viewer believe that they can do something about this problem and increases the chance of them doing something about it.
 * 4. What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?**

I was not compelled by the acted-out scenes trying to portray a doctor’s office and portraying affluenza as a disease. These scenes were not well produced and I think that the idea of Affluenza as a disease was better conceived through the rest of the movie.
 * 5. What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by?**

I would like to find more specific information on how many commercials there have been every year since 1956. I would like to see how commercials aided the dissatisfaction in people’s lives since then. I would also like to know if any president has done anything while in office to help reduce the level of commercialism within America even though they did not bring up that issue when running for office.
 * 6. What additional information does this film compel you to seek out? Where do you want to dig deeper and what connections do you want to make with other issues, factors, problems, etc.?**

This film is best for people affected by affluenza but do not realize it. They will hopefully realize that they do not need all the things they need or want. They will hopefully look at what they do have in terms of family and friends and enjoy their lives more rather than want more.
 * 7. What audiences does the film best address? What kind of imagination is fostered in viewers? Do you think the film is likely to change the way viewers think about and act on environmental problems?**

People should change their ideal of the good life. They should enjoy their lives and the people around them rather than the things they own.
 * 8. What kinds of action or points of intervention are suggested by the film?**

This movie could have given the environmental cost of producing products and also throwing them away to buy new products.
 * 9. What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental educational value?**