January Movie of the Month

The Story of Stuff, by Annie Leonard

A film review by Peter Redington

This New Year, now that we’ve survived the holiday-hectic shopping mall traffic jams and overflowing checkout lines, let’s pause for a moment to consider the stuff of our seasonal celebrations. The stuff that we bought, the stuff that we couldn’t afford, where all of it comes from, and where it is going. A tall task, to be sure. Fortunately, a new short video, available on-line at (www.storyofstuff.org), can help us to do all of this.

The Story of Stuff, by Annie Leonard, is a concise investigation into all of the elements that make up our ever-burgeoning-burdening materials economy: from the extraction of natural resources in far-away lands to the production of “goods” on the banks of a polluted river near you. From the distribution of trinkets big and small throughout the mall landscapes we’re so familiar with, to the disposal, counted off by bag after bag of trash, in landfill after landfill.

Woeful tales of globalization gone bad tend to hit over the head with unbelievable facts, and The Story of Stuff has its share of incredible statistics, such as the fact that 99% of the “goods” that we buy end up in the trash after a mere 6 months. Which is a considerable sum, considering that we in the U.S. use 30% of the world’s natural resources, and create 30% of the world’s waste, even though we represent only 5% of the global population. But Leonard does a better job than most of going beyond the statistics, realizing they often fail to illuminate as clear a picture of our global economy as we’d like.

For it’s not just the stuff that’s in the story, it’s the people, and the communities, and their successes and struggles all over the world. Indeed, as Leonard points out, “one of the most important things that’s missing [from our materials economy] is the people.”

And this system is obviously affecting people at all points, even if we all tend to get a bit lost in the noble rhetoric. “Globally,” Leonard tells us, “200,000 people a day are moving, from environments that have sustained them for generations, into cities.” She continues by noting that this “erosion of [local environments] ensures a constant supply of people with no [better] options” than sweatshop labor.

And so we have working class people, working more and more, and having less and less time for what really matters. Some folks, Leonard tells us, estimate that we now have less free time than we’ve had since the days of Feudalism in Europe. And we have upper class people, who, while benefiting from corporate profits, often lose out in environmental impacts, and succumb to daily commercial pressures to “keep up with the Joneses,” because, as Leonard points out, “in this system, if you don’t own, or buy, a lot of stuff, you don’t have value.”

“That is why,” Leonard reminds us, “after 9/11, when our country was in shock, [and] President Bush could have suggested any number of appropriate things: to grieve, to pray, to hope … he said to shop. To Shop?!”

She continues, “We have become a nation of consumers. Our primary identity has become that of consumers. Not mothers, teachers, farmers; but consumers. The primary way that our value is measured and demonstrated is by how much we consume.”

This is the strange reality we now all share.

So how did this happen, that we were taught to be consumers first and foremost, when throughout our history, the essence of our humanity has proven time and time again to be so limitless? Meet Victor LeBow.

In the 1950’s, as America was looking to capitalize and continue upon the economic production that came from World War II, noted economist LeBow suggested a new strategy:

“Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life. That we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption … We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

The governmental and business leaders of our society accepted Mr. LeBow’s economic strategy. And our happiness index has been steadily declining ever since.

In the end, The Story of Stuff is the story of classism: on a global, local, and community level. And so it’s the story of us all, wherever we find ourselves on the class spectrum.

Also in the end, The Story of Stuff is only the beginning of another story. This is the story of people from all economic backgrounds working together to insure a sustainable world. A story where activists and leaders are looking into solutions like zero waste, green chemistry, local living economies, renewable energy, and closed-loop production. A story that is being written and will continue to be revised by people of all communities and from all classes, together.

View previous Class Action Book of the Month selections...

December Book of the Month: Graceful Simplicity: Towards a Philosophy & Politics of Simple Living

November Book of the Month: All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life

October Movie of the Month:The Milagro Beanfield War

September Book of the Month: Tearing Down the Gates

August Book of The Month: Staff Picks

July Book of the Month: Theory of the Leisure Class

June Book of the Month: Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons

May Book of the Month: Death in the Haymarket

April Book of the Month: Food Politics

March Book of the Month: Psychology and Economic Injustice

February Book of the Month : What's My Name, Fool?

December Book of the Month: Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming

November Book of the Month: Awol

October Book of the Month: Class Passing

September Book and Video of the Month: Beyond Silenced Voices and Declining By Degrees

August Books of the Month: Human Cargo and Gathering the Sun

July Book of the Month: The Overworked American by Juliet Schor

June Book of the Month: More Money Than God by Steven R. Leder

May Book of the Month: Global Class by Jeff Faux

April Books of the Month: Classified and Strapped

March Book of the Month: Welfare Brat, A Memoir by Mary Childers

February Book of the Month: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

January Book of the Month: Invisible Privilege: A Memoir about Race, Class, and Gender by Paula Rothenberg

View last year's Book of the Month selections...

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