Tonkel+Blind+Spot

1. Blind spot was directed by Adolfo Doring and released in 2008 2. The film is about the links between our society’s oil use, the way we run our economy and the way we treat our planet. It addresses the issues surrounding the end of oil use and how people are blind to the facts that we cannot infinitely expand on our finite planet. 3. The film touches on many sustainability problems. It talks about the sustainability issue involved with the way we consume our planets resources (mostly oil), the sustainability of our economy, sustainability of our food supply, how advertising and a generation of consumers is a huge sustainability problem and lastly the sustainability problem that is attached to constant expansion, both of our population and of the resources each person is “entitled” to use. On top of those large issues are many smaller sustainability problems. These include how the United States government is a reactive government and not a preventative government. Our country has pulled itself out of the ashes before and so everyone assumes it can be done again. No one bothers to look towards the future; we just deal with problems as they come. 4. There were a few very compelling little quotes from the film that I felt were very powerful. First of which was the idea of having time periods labeled as BPO (before peak oil) and APO (after peak oil), because of the massive effect that running out of oil will have on the world and the major changes that will have to take place with it. Everything is subsidized by oil and without it much of what we are accustom to would not work. The second most powerful would be that Americans are not citizens but are consumers, president bush told us to go out and shop after 911. Our country is powered by the trashing of old products and the purchasing of new ones. And just behind that is the idea that it is so easy to lie to someone when they prefer to hear a happy lie than the terrible truth. Our society is practically build on this principle, people want to only to be completely happy and doing so keeps them completely blind to sad and difficult news. If you ask me people need to realize that to know what happiness is you have to have sadness, and that often being sad, angry and passionate about things and using it in a productive safe way can be the most powerful. 5. This film was very diverse; it covered topics from oil use, to advertising, to the social battle involved with turning against the norm of one’s culture. I could not find any fault within the contexts of this film. Every part hit issues that I find incredibly important and interesting. 6. There was one issue that the film brought up that I thought would be cool to know more about. The film mentioned how for every dollar a car companies puts into politics the company gets one thousand dollars back. It sounds crazy but it must be true, if it wasn’t profitable for the car companies to invest in politics they wouldn’t do it. I think it would be very interesting to know where exactly this information comes from and how it is obtained. Also I want to know how the numbers work out for other industries, namely oil, tobacco, coal, drug, and chemical producers. 7. It is hard to say who the best audience would be for this film. I think that almost everyone could learn a lot from this film. Obviously, it will have a larger affect on Americans because it is geared towards us and our cultural habits. I think that it would create the most action in a young adult and then an elderly audience. The young have energy and passion and will have to deal with the future and the elderly have free time on their hands. It is very difficult for me to believe that this would provoke change in a middle aged adult that is busy with work, kids, and a spouse. 8. This film really does not offer any easy solutions to our worlds problems. Everything the film suggests and hints at is almost a complete overhaul of our current culture, economy and way of dealing and foreseeing future problems. We need to find a way to decrease our population because it will happen, it just depends on whether we do it voluntarily, or do we let the earth and its limited food supply do it for us. Overall, the film was more of a warning than a film suggesting specific actions to take. Of course things were hinted at, such as implementation of renewable energy, electric cars and mass transit, and a deceases in unnecessary consumption. 9. This film was a great educational tool. It was somewhat preachy but I think that is what made most of the points so strong. It laid out the truth in a very hard, scary way that most people don’t hear and then left the viewer hanging at the end because it didn’t offer many solutions to the problems we are having. This hit home for me because it shows the urgency of our problems and the fact that we all need to work together, get involved and find ways to fix issues of climate change, and this consumer culture of ours.