‘Tis a Time for Reflections: Gasland and Emotional Engagement

Seong Im Hong

November 26, 2012

‘Tis a Time for Reflections: Gasland and Emotional Engagement

            I missed class on Monday before Thanksgiving due to oversleeping, so wasn’t sure what to write about. Hence, on Thanksgiving after dinner, I watched Gasland by Josh Fox, the documentary that was mentioned while we were talking about hydrofracking. It was a bit long but definitely fascinating and powerful. (Robin, my foster mom, found the documentary so convincing that she got up midway through to shut off our gas-operated fireplace.) Looking back, there were many things that made this movie powerful—the visuals were striking, as was the narrative the director used to give the documentary a sense of flow and purpose.

One of the most powerful effects, however, was the use of personal stories. There was story of a woman whose father died of Pancreatic cancer after he spent a whole summer drinking from a contaminated spring. (The companies told them of the contamination months after it actually happened.) There were stories of towns across America that complained of water contaminated enough to be flammable and allegedly be harmful to people, causing migraines and dizziness. Of course, correlation does not equal causation. Maybe those maladies were incidental and/or were actually caused by the nocebo effect, kind of like the so-called Wind Turbine Syndrome. But the flammable water, at least, is an indicator that these complaints ought to be taken seriously.

By emotionally engaging the viewers, Fox definitely helped to put this issue on the table. With this documentary, he helped to redistribute this concern toward hydrofracking from the bourgeoisie New Yorkers (I’m still hung up on the implications of that Mark Ruffalo video, sorry!) to all Americans, whether they are celebrities in New York or they are those strapped for jobs in Nevada. As the film says toward the very end, my land is your land through the intricate network of streams and rivers that connect us all to each other. Even if I lease my parcel of land to hydrofracking, we are still affecting those who live outside those arbitrary boundaries.

And this (not your land is our land thing, but the whole emotional engagement bit the paragraph before) made me think: the greatest thing I learned from this class is to be less skeptical and a bit more engaged.

I remember that in the very first journal, I criticized Professor’s choice in comparing McDonald’s burger to rainforest after showing us the nasty vomit clip from Supersize Me. I still think that was a very deliberate emotional engagement/manipulation, but I understand now that if we think of the first lesson as part of an arc rather than an isolated class, the comparison was an effective “hook”. How else do you engage a class of 20-or-so 20-or-so-year-olds and leave a lasting impact with a required seminar class? Obviously, I didn’t have the benefit of hindsight then, so in the very beginning, I was a bit miffed by the emotional aspect of the lessons. (Oh Professor, could you ever forgive me for such sins?)

I can think of various moments throughout this year when I realized my growing tolerance/acceptance of emotional engagement. (I don’t know why I had so much trouble accepting the role of emotion. I suspect, though, this may be a result of my search for an identity. The easiest way to be something is to NOT be the opposite. In this case, I may have mistakenly thought emotional engagement the opposite of logic. But I’m not sure if they are truly opposites. And even if they are, they are better served together than separately.)

For example, I read the New York Times feature on Rachel Carson a couple of months ago. I remember reading this paragraph:

Carson knew that her target audience of popular readers included scores of housewives. She relied upon this ready army of concerned citizens both as sources who discovered robins and squirrels poisoned by pesticides outside their back doors and as readers to whom she had to appeal. Consider this indelible image of a squirrel: “The head and neck were outstretched, and the mouth often contained dirt, suggesting that the dying animal had been biting at the ground.” Carson then asks her readers, “By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished as a human being?”

I think if I were reading this same paragraph a semester ago, I would have responded with distaste. Pshaw, I would’ve thought, emotions are cheap tools!

When I read it a couple of months ago, though, I was surprisingly more tolerant to the slightly purple hue to Carson’s prose. Emotions may be common tools, but they certainly don’t have to be cheap when it’s tempered by facts.

And, I think, this is the greatest and most lasting lesson I will take from this class so far. I may forget what RCRA stands for in another decade[*], but I doubt I will forget the value of emotional engagement any time soon.