AliciaLin8

= **Human Footprint** =
 * Title, director and release year?**
 * Title:** Human Footprint
 * Director:** Malcolm Brinkworth
 * Year:** 2008

This film is about the impact that every person makes on this Earth. The U.S. is the most developed country, and we are a nation of consumer. Consumerism starts at an early age for the average U.S. citizen. For instance, a toddler uses 3,796 diapers in a life time. A diaper in general takes a lot of resources to produce, such as trees or chemicals. To make all those diapers that a person uses in his or her lifetime, it takes 1898 pints of crude oil, 715 lbs of plastic, 4.5 trees. In the U.s. 12 billion diapers are thrown away each year. The alternative, reusable diapers, are not extremely environmentally friendly as well since it takes on average 22,455 gallons of water to wash per baby. The film continues to portray similar statistics that relates to every stage of a humans life. For instance, a cow produces 6.5 gallons of milk per day, and 100 lbs of grass and 50 gallons of water are needed to feed these cows. An average person drinks 13,056 pints of milk in his or her lifetime. Each statistic is accompanied with a visual of the actual number of products, for instance, there will be 13,056 pints of milk laid out on a lawn.
 * What is the central argument or narrative of the film?**

Here are some other issues the film covers: As a nation, we eat 1.6 billion lbs of food per day. The average person eats 19,826 eggs, 9917 lbs of potato and 4376 loaves of bread in a lifetime. In general, fruit is brought in from all over the world, and they are packaged, packaged in a plastic bag to bring home, and dumped in a plastic bag.

Clothing takes excess resources to make, and the average person has many article of clothing.

Electronics take a lot of resources to make, and so does home goods.

I believe the sustainability the problems the film draws out is the idea that the U.S. is a nation of consumers, and as consumers we consume too much and the things we consume are non-biodegradable and unnecessary.
 * What sustainability problems does the film draw out?**

Obviously the parts where they showed the visual of a statistic because it was shocking to see how many eggs, for instance, a person eats per year.
 * What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?**

I was not convinced by the amount of food wasted to make this movie. It just made me feel disgusted that the film wasted what would have fed an average person in a lifetime. So, in a matter of 1.5 hours, they wasted 1 entire person’s lifetime worth of food. What the film did was much worse than what the average American does, because at least the average American eats the food versus throwing 19,826 eggs on the floor.
 * What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by?**

Additionally the film showed too many statistics at once, so the film was extremely boring. There was no break between statistics or more information on what the root of the problem was or how it could be solved. It was simply statistics after statistic for 1.5 hours. Of course at first it was shocking to see that the average person wastes so much, but this method of stating a statistic and showing a visual of it is done so often that it loses its momentum.

Also, I’m not convinced about some of the statistics, because I personally only eat maybe 20 hot dogs or hamburgers per year. Furthermore, some of the narration was odd. Like the way they introduced some of the statistics, for instance it seemed like the average person “really” showers once they become a teenager. In general, the film doesn’t offer any solutions, just a lot of numbers of the problem of what I suppose is consumerism, but once they mentioned that bats leave a footprint, I felt that the film was confused in its problem defintion. To me, a bat doesn’t leave a footprint, what ever is deemed as a “footprint” is simply a part of the natural cycle of life and the waste is returned back to nature for other animals or plants to use. To compare consumer’s non-biodegradable waste and overconsumption of food and products to a bat’s, is simply ridiculous.

This film compels me to seek out what they did with all the food once they laid it out in the sun. I couldn’t seem to find the answer online, but I assumed the food must have been thrown away because the pints of milk or loaves of bread must have been sitting out in the sun for hours, thus spoiling the food.
 * 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.?**

The film best addresses an audience that is unaware of how much he or she consumes and lives the average American life. Viewers get a visual sense of how much they consume, and can wrap their heads around what a figure like what 19,826 eggs looks like. I believe the film may make viewers think about what they consume, but may not really provoke any other thought process besides that because the film does not offer any solutions or context of where the problem started and why it is the way it is. Perhaps viewers may think twice about reproducing or apologize for being alive.
 * 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?**

The film does not offer any opinion on the actual problem. It simply offers one statistic after another, and leaves the viewer to form his or her opinion on what should be done to change the situation. I suppose the main idea of the film is to consume less, but I feel like even if we are a nation that consumes less, the statistics for how much a person eats in his or her lifetime would still be high because he or she still needs to survive and has a life expectancy of around 80 years. So, perhaps having a smaller population and shorter lifespan would be the actions the film suggests, because you see, the film states that even a fruit bat leaves a carbon footprint because it needs resources to survive. So perhaps to truly be environmentally friendly in this film director’s mind, perhaps all living creatures shouldn’t survive.
 * What kinds of action or points of intervention are suggested by the film?**

An opinion or a possible solution would have been nice and valuable intellectually. Having random statistics bombarding a viewer does very little in terms of educational value. Since the film does not offer a direction in terms of solutions, or what the root of the problem is, it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly needs to be changed or what is the issue the film tries to address. Is it that we are a nation that eats too many hot dogs, or is there too many people in the world? If all creatures leave a footprint, then is having them around unsustainable? Are homo sapiens especially bad and need to be eradicated? Some direction in terms of what should be done or what exactly the problem is would have been helpful in terms of learning what should be done on the subject matter.
 * What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental educational value?**