Response #8

Tom, Tom, Haley and Seong’s presentation left me impressed, amused and thinking.  First of all, I enjoyed their individual performances, I found the video to be entertaining throughout.  I especially liked the ways in which they had adapted the original Shakespeare text to fit their project, definitely an interesting and unique means of getting their points across in the time allotted.  The ways in which they switched roles with limited actors, found extras, and maneuvered around the constraints was well done.  The only problem I had with the presentation was the length of the video, which I think could have been shortened, if not for the required length of the presentation.  I would have liked to have heard more from the presenters in person, with a more active discussion with the class.  Alas, you cannot always get what you want.  The greater point of the movie, to me, was the corruption of the government and business leaders who can play a large role in the welfare of the environment.  I liked that the group had selected to focus in on a lumber company, as that industry is probably the most commonly known and depicted violator of environmentalism in media.  Historically, many movies and television shows, as well as a large amount of attention from news media have focused on lumber companies tearing down trees for personal gain or profit.  A trope that comes to mind is a group of protesters (most often hippies, or “tree-huggers”) chaining themselves to trees in a forest as the large corporation’s bulldozers come in to rip out the trees from their roots.  This video highlighted the man behind the bulldozers, and gave a unique perspective on the corruption of businesses from the eyes of the man in charge himself.  There have been protests and organizations attempting to bring awareness to the status of our ecosystem and the forest areas for decades, so I enjoyed seeing a theatrical adaption of Macbeth to gain a new outlook on the issue.  The portions of the film that were dedicated to faux-real interviews of people affected by the lumber industry was reminiscent of media we have seen in class, and definitely added to the power of the presentation in hearing how companies are affecting American citizens for the sake of a dollar.  This had me wondering, is another dollar really worth the suffering of the animals in their ecosystems, or the way it can affect humans who live in those areas?  I do not believe so, as there are many alternatives to what we saw Tom D. do in the video.  For instance, Haley’s main character showed an initiative that has been seen from the aforementioned “tree-huggers,” but even as I type it out I can sense the negative connotation that is attached with that phrase.  Perhaps it is time that we change our perspective and not consider tree-huggers to be bad, but maybe we should all be tree-huggers.  For the sake of our ecosystems.