Introduction
There are many different ideologies corresponding to different groups of individuals. These ideologies are based on different beliefs, values and habits that help shape our world. Even though there are many ideologies, do we, as a society, accept all of them? Capitalist companies and governments do not accept ideologies that are against or not with their own beliefs. Even though individuals have a right to speak their mind, they are not always heard. Capitalist companies and governments go against John Locke’s natural law principle, which states that people cannot violate other people’s rights to life. We are seen examples of this in the two documentaries If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (directed by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman) and L’erreur Boréale (directed by Richard Desjardins). Both of these films show different people’s ideologies about the environment and how the government and capitalist companies are not hearing their views. We hope you enjoy the blog.
Part 1 - If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
If a
Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front is
a documentary directed by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman and was first released
in January of2011. The film is approximately 85 minutes long and is based on a
radical environmentalist group called the Earth
Liberation Front. This documentary is different than most because it shows
the point of view of three different groups. The first and most documented group
is represented through the character Daniel McGowan who was an active member of
the Earth Liberation Front. Daniel is awaiting trial for his actions on behalf
of the ELF for multiple counts of arson on public buildings. The ELF began
burning buildings of the companies that profited from deforestation after a
string of peaceful protests went met with police brutality. The second group of
people in the documentary are the business owners who are the ones cutting down
the trees for profit. They get the chance to explain that what they are doing
is not necessarily affecting the planet to the extent that everyone believes
and that they also replace a lot of the trees that they cut down. The
documentary also does a great job of humanizing the business owners by showing
the damage as well as the personal responses to their buildings being
destroyed. The third and final group in the documentary are the Oregon state
police as well as the FBI agents who are attempting to stop the protests and
arsons. The police are shown both as instigators of violence and as peace
keepers throughout the film. We see the instigator side when they are forcibly
removing and pepper spraying the protestors who are not acting violent.
However, arson is still viewed as a crime and can also be viewed as extremely
dangerous which is why it was important for the FBI to catch those responsible.
Dan eventually left the ELF when he thought their ideas were getting too
radical. In the end, many members of the ELF were caught and sent to jail and
in Dan’s case; he was branded as a domestic terrorist.
Throughout
the entire documentary there is the question of the legitimacy of democracy in
the United States. Democracy states that every person is supposed to have an
equal say, yet in If a Tree Falls we
see only the rich and powerful people are the ones who decide the fate of the
forests. John Locke argued that society has the right to revolt when the law is
inadequate and violent and the ELF strongly believes that the government is
being unfair. It also brings up the debate of ecology versus capitalism or the
love of nature versus the love of money. The film shows the protestors trying
to save the trees and nature and then the businessmen who are attempting to
make a living. This ties in to the concept of ideologies that everybody has.
Ideologies are a set of beliefs or values that a person or a group of people
have. We see multiple ideologies throughout the film and many of them begin to
clash with each other. First of all, there is the clash between the protestors
and the business men, but there is also a clash of ideologies between the peaceful
and violent protests. Some of the protestors such as Daniel took more drastic
measures in order to get their messages heard. What comes with ideologies is
the idea of integrity. Integrity is when your personal values can change
depending on the situation in front of you.. The character which embodies this
concept would be Jake Ferguson who pretty much founded the Earth Liberation
Front. In an attempt to save himself Ferguson tricks his other members into
confessing to their crimes so he would get less jail time. He betrayed his
friends and dropped his personal values in a stressful situation.
Here is a link of an interview with
Marshall Curry director giving his input on the situation in Oregon. The idea
of the media is supposed to be to keep the people informed and do so in a
politically correct way. Today, many people feel that the media is doing an
inadequate job at being a public service.
Here is a link of an interview with Marshall Curry
director giving his input on the situation in Oregon.
Part 2 - L'erreur Boréale
L'Erreur Boréale is a documentary film produced by Québec singer
Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie in 1999. The documentary lasts 70
minutes and it was filmed in the Province of Québec. This film is about the
problem of deforestation that we are facing today in Québec. Most of the
province’s population might not know it, but the forest is a public place and
if we were to divide it, each individual would have the equivalent of 20
baseball fields of land. What is shocking in this film is that the Government
has sold these parcels of land to forestry companies without consulting the
population first. Since the birth of our country, forestry has been the
pillar of our economy. In the past, companies stayed close to the shore of
rivers, where they were working, because it was easy to cut trees and heave
them into the water. Thanks to the fact that trees are less dense than water,
the water would transport the trees to the mill and then transform them into
either paper or other wooden resources. With the constant evolution of the
market plus the lack of wood, companies had to move away from the shore and
created roads that go through the forest itself. Their main goal now was to
clear the forest to make the most profit. Richard Desjardins being curious
about the companies behaviour, he went to go see the minister of the
environment (Léopold Gaudreau) and learned that the minister has no control
over the forest because of Bill 150. Thanks to this Bill, companies can now
cut whatever they want in the condition that they plant trees in places where
they cut. This is paid with the money of the public. Some people would say that
it's a good deal but it's not. Indeed a forest has diversity and that makes it
possible for a complete ecosystem to live but if we cut all the trees down and
only plant some new trees, it would be impossible for all the animals to come
back. Animals live in these grown trees that are being cut down. When Richard
Desjardins goes to a forest companies meeting he asks a question about the
regeneration system used by the companies and the only answer that he gets is:
"Question niaiseuse" (stupid question). It shows us that companies
don't care about the threat that they're inflicting to forests because it seems
like all they care about is profit.
That's where the Ideology comes in. By living in a democratic
country, everyone should be on the same level and should be able to decide whether
or not selling our resources is a good thing for our province. Private
companies should not decide for the faith of our public goods because they only
care about their own interest. If we look at it more closely, the forestry
companies are breaking the natural law that
prevents people or industries to violate other people properties. As a society
it's our duty to make sure that those rights are not threatened. We can also
ask ourselves the question, is it more important to make money or to protect our
environment knowing that a small amount of people makes profit of our common
goods? The major problem would be the clash of the ecologist ideology against
the capitalist one. One promotes the protection of the environment at any price
and the other promotes the profit making.
Movie of L'erreur Boréale
Part 3 - Reflection of the Two Movies
These two environmental documentaries show us of individuals
who work nonstop to try and help the environment. These individuals only
represent a small percentage of people in our communities and countries that are concerned with environmental threats. We know that there are many environmental threats but
what are we doing to help our planet? We can ask ourselves what do we do
individually to help the planet. Do you recycle? Do you compost? Even if we do
these two things, are we doing enough? Can we do more? There are individuals,
like Daniel McGowan, who take of the labels from cans and recycle them. There
are individuals like Richard Desjardins who go to forest companies meetings and
bring up environmental issues. Environmentalists teach us that we could do more
than just recycle and compost to help our planet. You don’t have to do extreme
things to help out the environment but if everybody puts a bit more effort and
does a bit more work, then we would be able to help save our planet
significantly.
These documentaries teach us about tree cutting and how it
has a significant impact on the environment. Tree companies cut down thousands
of trees a year to help their businesses and industries grow. Based on the documentaries
L’erreur Boréale and If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth
Liberation Front, these companies do not care about how many trees they cut
down but they only care about how much profit they get. They teach us that
companies are more interested in capitalism and getting that extra money than
not cutting down as many trees. This doesn’t happen in one area of the world,
deforestation is happening all over the United States, Canada, the Amazon and many more places. Even when environmentalists
like Daniel McGowan and Richard Desjardins bring up issues of deforestation,
nobody listens to them.
Environmentalists try and transform our vision that our
environment and tree numbers are falling apart significantly. The news and
newspapers don’t bring up this issue like they should. Politicians and
companies make everything seem like what they are doing is ok and we believe
them because we are dependent on stuff made by trees. We are dependent on
material like paper, toilet paper and nose tissues. We do not think about
deforestation and tree issues more than we should because most people want
paper, chairs or other wooden materials made out of trees. Environmentalists
are trying to tell us that we have to change the number of trees we cut down
because next thing we know, there will not be enough trees to make our paper or
chairs.
The message that these two documentaries are giving us is
that we cannot look at environmental issues later in the future. We have to
look at them now. If individuals try harder to make a difference now, we may be
able to save our environment. “We won’t have a society if we destroy the
environment.” (– Margaret Mead). We have to act now.
Environmental quotes: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_environmental.html
Conclusion
Different Ideologies come from different individuals. We, as humans, all have the right to express our own opinion. Even if some people do not like your opinions and beliefs, do not let these people change who you are. In these two documentaries, we were able to see individuals fighting back in what they believe. Daniel McGowan and Richard Desjardins are great examples of people who fight back. We should all learn from these two gentlemen. We hoped you enjoyed out blog entry and we hope that you learned a lot about Ideologies and about the documentaries.
This was such an amazing blog; I really enjoyed the ideologies in comparison to the documentary. This documentary showed me the injustice and lack of democracy that still exists in our society today. After watching this documentary and seeing that scene with the pepper spray, I felt that the government still has much power over us but it is also important to not forget our rights as humans. It also taught me that we are a part of this planet; therefore we should take care of it to a certain extent. The other documentary seems interesting and I would be interested in watching it and learning more about people’s passion about the environment.
ReplyDelete-Katherine Vavaroutsos
Great job on the blog Matthew, Evan and Alex,your revision of "If a Tree Falls" was really well done and expressed all the main points of the movie, however it would have been nice if there was a rap up paragraph connecting the main points of the blog together. After watching "If a Tree Falls" it made me feel really sad that the law enforcement and government who is suppose to work for the community and nation, shut down free thinkers who want to see a change. It really makes you re-think how much citizens can do to change things they don't like, which is terrible! When looking at the eco-factors of this movie it makes me think of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", which is about how humans themselves have caused global warming.
ReplyDeleteI loved this blog very much it was very interesting. It covered all the notes that we went over in class. This movie was one of my favourites that we have seen in class. I loved how people were very focused on achieving their goals and that they had a love for nature and truly care about our environment. However, they should not have burned places down because that was a little extreme. They should have found other ways in order to save the planet. I love how Daniel and the others were very passionate and even though they might have failed because they went to prison. They changed the lives of many of us because this documentary wanted to make me a little more active in helping the environment. It showed me how important it is to take a stand for what we believe in. to They documentary had a great impact on me in general and i feel very lucky to have seen it. Society is very unjust towards people, and we have very little say in what goes on. We see that in the documentary and it makes me really sad to see.
ReplyDeleteGood entry! My point of view concerning ideologies is that no ideologies are bad. There have good points in each of them. The only thing that changes is the way you promote your ideology. In the documentary if a tree falls, the ELF tries to promote his point of view by burning and destroying buildings and companies down. It is not a good way to do. Peaceful manisfestions are much better then riots to help things change.
ReplyDeletePhilippe Leblanc
Very good blog! I found it very interesting. I would like to add a little bit of a personnal response to it. The problem with ideologies is that everybody thinks he has the right one and nobody thinks he does something bad or he doesn't want to admit it. People only see one side of what they are doing. Daniel saw the changes and the benefits of burnning down companies. The companies only think about their familly survival and the money from the buisness. There's no black or white solution. I would say that the best one is that the two groups sit together but in a capitalist solution time is money and the place for discussion and agreements is almost nonexistent.
ReplyDeleteGood Job
Marc-Olivier Cheney
I want to start by saying that you made a nice job with this blog entry. It is true to say that there are no bad ideologies but the thing that can become very bad with ideologies is how we interpret them. In fact, in the documentary "If a tree falls" we see that the ELF's protestations are not heard by the government. I can understand that they are angry about being ignored but this fact does not justify their radical actions. If we talk about the documentary "L'erreur boréal" it is true that there is nothing to justify the deforestation made by the forestry companies. We need to be aware that it is easy to blame the forestry companies for the deforestation and that being said we need to criticize ourselves as individuals about our part of responsibilities in this major problem. I work to "Matériaux Pont-Masson (Rona)" in the court outside and when I see all the wood we have, there is a question that comes in my mind. The question is how many trees was needed to make all the things which are present in the court.
ReplyDeleteJean-Dominique Gagné
This film was another great documentary I enjoyed watching very much in class because it really make me reflect upon what I was doing to help the environment's current state. There are so many different type of people that either care or don't care about the negative effects humanity has on the earth, and it's important that it improves. Some people may take things out of proportion like the activists in the film, but it was for good intentions since it is for the good of the planet. I believe that they didn't deserve that degree of punishment for what they did. This film made me question my lifestyle, and how I should do my part for the environment since so many other people are doing their best as well! Anyways, good job with your article guys!
ReplyDeleteThe film If a Tree Falls was summarized very well. The blog touched upon every view presented in the documentary. The bloggers talked about opposing ideas and tried to uncover which were the just and honorable ones, but life isn’t black and white. I liked that they questioned American democracy and they brought up many relevant points. They question us, the readers, and make us consider our role in helping to save the planet. I really enjoyed reading this blog. They also did a wonderful job of presenting the second film, L’erreur Boreale. I’d really like to see it and learn more about problems that exist in my very own province. Many conflicts happen far from home when you leave in a privileged country, but environmental issues are impacting the entire world, and Canada has to take action like everybody else.
ReplyDelete-Victoria Baylis
What I noticed with this film is that I surprisingly sympathized with the members of the ELF. Although I do not in any way support or condone violence, I began to almost believe that their actions were somewhat justifiable. This is because I found myself imagining how distressed they must have felt, when those in power chose to ignore their cause and to just push them aside. This demonstrates how different ideologies tend to clash, but as civilized communities, we must find peaceful compromises. This is a great movie for raising awareness about our planet and about how far some people will go to protect what they believe in and our bloggers managed to present this to us very well.
ReplyDelete-Parinaz Shafiei
Sometimes I like to think I understand the values and ideologies that come into play when it comes to the battle for the environment, but when I read your blog it made me understand that in some way both the ELF and other Environmentalist groups all want the same endgame. A world in which the earth is properly respected, but what changes is how far they were willing to go to achieve this endgame. I really like how you guys compared ideologies and reactions from all the parties involved and finished with a reflection of why these problems arise and therefor need to be addressed.It is of course a fact that we are all greatly dependent on trees and sometimes that dependence can cause serious problems in the long run. Overall Great job Matt, Evan and Alex!
ReplyDelete-Etienne Poulin
Somehow, these documentaries made me think about the film Home. At one point, the filmmakers talk about the deforestation in the amazonian forest and how it not only damaged the ecosystem, but also the supply of oxygen in the air. These environmental documentaries made me realize we are part of the ecosystem as much as the animals that have a habitat in the forests. Now, I must say that this blog was very enlightening and entertaining, and the authors did a good job. Well done guys.
ReplyDeleteVery good blog entry you guys! By far this was my favourite documentary but concerning with the content of the film, I believe that our judicial system and those who “serve and protect” aren't really doing what is right. After watching various scenes from the movie such as the pepper spray incident and the scene where some police officers are torturing some of the ELF members, I can’t say that our society approves on the opinions of others. Shouldn't our society be a democracy where everyone is entitled to their opinion and freedom of speech? In this case Daniel McGowan supported for what he believed in and in the end, his ideals labelled him as a Terrorist. So can we really follow for what we believe in or do we have to follow what everyone else believes? This film made me realise that our Earth is very precious and that we should do whatever it takes to preserve it for as long as possible!
ReplyDelete-Shashi Roy
You guys did a really good job on this article. After watching this movie I thought what can i do in order to cut down less tree? While after reading this article I connected this article with article number 10: Myth and Utopia because decreasing the cutting down of tress is Utopian, "It would be ideal, but it is in reality unachievable". The conversion of trees into paper, toilet paper and home furniture is pretty much essential to us. Everyone's house is made of wood. We can try to decrease it but in fact we will probably never fully stop using it!
ReplyDeleteOne thing that shocked me into the documentary "If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front" is the fact that for every five trees being cut down only one has to be planted back. Trees are not only essential to our own little consuming life, it is essential to everyone's lives. Trees are what purifies the air that we breath, the air that is crucial to our survival.
Keven Champigny
Well written blog guys, I really enjoyed readings your thought on the subject. I was surprised to see that there is a movement who use force to claim their position of an environmentalist. I do not support the fact that the ELF use violence for promoting their point of view. There is many other way to promote an idea, violence does not resolve things. In the end, we see that they are paying for their act of violence. In general, it is a great documentary on environmental issue. Well done again!
ReplyDeleteChristophe Bertrand
Great job on the blog! You guys did a great job of covering the topics discussed in class and connecting the two movies together. I really liked your entry on L'erreur Boreale it really made me want to watch the movie. After watching the movie in class it made me question a lot of the things I have always put faith in. When issues are happening I often find myself siding with the government because as we are brought up as children our parents and teachers always tell us to trust the people who run our country, trust the police. And although I do very much, by watching this movie I found myself having sympathy for the ELF. I would recommend this movie to anyone because I feel like it a really big eye opener and it can make anyone take a deeper look into what they have always stood by.
ReplyDeleteBut really good job on the blog!
Nathalie T
You guys did a really great job on this blog! I wish you guys would have explained more about why he was labeled a terrorist. I mean, the ELF only striked buildings with nobody in them! They were not harming anyone physically and it was all done to save the earth! The definition of terrorism according to the dictionary is: "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes." Although technically, that is what the ELF did, I find the labelling quite a bit extreme.
ReplyDeleteChloé L.
Well written blog entry, I found myself agreeing with your reflection section the entire time. I really liked that you guys touched upon the fact that these issues that we are facing with deforestation are not covered in the mass media nor do we know on our own that these issues are even occurring.
ReplyDeleteWhen we watched If A Tree Falls in class, at the beginning I was torn on whither Daniel is doing wrong or is doing what needs to be done. I was not sure if he was just radicalizing for the sake of rebellion but shortly after the film started I realized that in terms of the environment, especially in the states, these might have to be the way to go when it comes to having your voice heard. I think that we have enough harm being done to our earth so when things can be changed for the better of our planet, we should do what it takes to have those changes made.
Jacklyn Spencer
Great job on the blog guys! I really enjoyed this documentary and was impressed to see how the autorithy, which is supposed to protect us, can be so violent against us. It's normal to use violence when there's a caotic situation, but when people are peacefully fighting fot their ideas they shouldn't use violence on them. This movie made me understantd how useless we are against rich companies and how they rule the world. For me those people weren't terrorists. I liked how Daniel fought for his beliefs till the end while Fergurson and his ex girlfriend betrayed the ELF. One must fight for their values, thoughts and right of expression.
ReplyDeleteGustavo Alvites
I found it very interesting to see how the filmmaker showed different the different points of view surrounding this issue. While Daniel’s point of view and the points of views of the other activists were easy for me to guess, I never would have thought about the points of views of the police or the property owners. I found that it was a really good way to give a nuanced view of the issue, even if most of the focus was on Daniel.
ReplyDeleteKatie Polley
You guys did an amazing job on the blog! I found is very detailed and organized. I was very impressed with the part about the documentary "If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front." The way you explained the clashes between one group and the other, was very interesting, since it is true; it's not the groups that are clashing, it's their ideologies. Also, when you compared the love for money and the love for nature, it made me think which part of the group I belong in.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend this documentary to everyone, since it's an issue involving all of us. It makes us realize which group we are a part of, and if we even want to be a part of it. It has opened up my eyes, and I'm sure it will do the same for others as well.
Marina Aslam