Bree'sFilmAnnotation1

Bree Mobley, Annotation #1 “The Blind Spot” 14 October 2011 1040 words

“The Blind Spot”, directed by Adolfo Doring, released in 2008

“The Blind Spot” is a documentary film that illustrates the world’s and our generation’s current oil and energy crisis. Our way of life would completely collapse without the excessive burning of fossil fuels that has defined and helped to build the world as we know it. The blind spot is that we can’t grasp what the fate of our future is because there is no immediate threat to our daily lives. The argument in “The Blind Spot” is made through a series of examples and accusations. The film highlights our modern culture and how the things we have come to assume are normal (large highways, skyscrapers, home-ownership, private car-ownership, computers, etc) are products of the use and refining of fossil fuels. It uses historical context to show the progression from the beginning of the industrial revolution to present day, 150 years later. One example used is the production line. The invention of the efficient production line was made possible by refining the fossil fuel coal, and later oil, to expedite the actions of machinery without the involvement of humans. There is not a whole lot of scientific information included in the film. It does not explain how fossil fuels are extruded or go into the process of refining crude oil. However, its lack of scientific evidence was made up for by its emotional appeal. The name of the movie itself, the blind spot, puts the blame on the individual viewer; that we are all responsible for living and allowing this dependency on a finite source to foster. The film also points out the ominous future: the world’s oil reserves are declining. The reason for offshore drilling and fracking by oil companies, which have caused serious health and environmental concerns among our current population, and newly formed foreign policies and relationships based on oil, is due to its depletion in other areas. The expansion of our oil-refining tactics runs deep in our cultural values: growth is normal; stagnation is a sign of bad times. Our modern culture has created an illusion that there is always another source, we can always get more. But fossil fuels are a finite source that our planet took millions of years to produce, and that we took approximately 200 years to completely destroy. Moving away from the world’s dependency would require intense lifestyle changes. “The Blind Spot” challenges its audience to take on a fundamental rethinking of what it means to be human. The film draws out Political, Cultural, Behavioral, Educational, Economic, Technological, and Ecological sustainability problems. The part of the film I found most compelling was how closely involved our political actions are tied to the exploration and refining of fossil fuels. The film highlighted how the efforts of providing fossil fuels (i.e. fracking, offshore drilling, foreign oil exploration) have led to major political decisions like invading another country or allowing dangerous actions to be performed on the environment for the sake of allowing growth, expansion, and our dependency on oil to continue to grow. It was also compelling to hear how we have reached the peak of the earth’s oil reserves and are now living in a period of oil decline. It will be something that today’s generation will have to learn to adjust to. When the film talked about coming to a ‘crossroad’ where one path is the continuation of burning fossil fuels and choking the life out of the planet and the other is our way of life collapsing. I feel this is a tad dramatic and pessimistic in thought. When our culture distances itself from the dependency on fossil fuels, our lives will not collapse. It was disappointing to think the film had not mentioned positive, constructive solutions or plans for the future to which we can begin to adopt. We all need to think progressively and forward when in comes to our dependency on the finite resource fossil fuels. I believe the audience that “The Blind Spot” most successfully reaches out to is people who are already concerned with the state of our finite natural resources dependency and pending energy crisis. The audience the film best addresses is any human living in the modern, industrialized world. The living generations are all products of an industrialized world; we have not seen a time any different than a time that was dependent of fossil fuels for expansion and daily living. To better enhance this film’s environmental education value, I would have liked to see examples of political policies addressing the current issue at hand. An analysis of their success or failure in relation to community support, lasting change, and broader education would have made change seem more feasible. The film made me feel hopeless in what sort of changes our culture can make as a group to reduce the use of our declining oil supplies. The film does suggest solutions on the individual level, however. It suggests we need to realign our population in location. People should be encouraged to think more locally and to live in a place that can self-sustain those that live there; where the biology of the environment can adequately provide all of life’s needs. This film has compelled me to look into the Jevon’s Paradox. This idea states that as technological progress increases the efficiency of something with respect to a delicate resource tends to increase the rate of consumption of that resource. I feel this idea can be applied to many sustainability issues in our modern culture and also issues in my individual habits and thoughts. This films has also encouraged me to look further into our infrastructure’s dependency on fossil fuels. The building of dams, bridges, highways, and mass transit systems would not have been possible without such resources. This would have completed halted any sort of expansion in the early days of America. "Jevons Paradox." // Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia //. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. . Greenstein, Irwin. "Fossil Fuels vs. Green Energy: What's a Better Investment? - Seeking Alpha." // Stock Market News & Financial Analysis - Seeking Alpha //. Seeking Alpha, 9 Nov. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. .