How much do you know about the products you consume? Where do they come from? How are they made? What happens to whatever is left over?
Consider the case of Teflon. It may make for non-stick pans, but its history is much stickier. In 1946, a DuPont Scientist accidentally invented PTFE, or Teflon. The product was a hit! It’s amazing nonstick properties appealed to manufacturers of both consumer goods and defense products. Seven years later and the multinational corporation Dupont was pumping out the highly desired Teflon pans to consumers across America. Dupont used the chemical PFOA to produce their product, a part of the family now known as “forever chemicals”.
In the 1990s the town of Parkersburg, West Virginia noticed that many residents and livestock were falling ill. Despite these patterns and their proximity to a local DuPont Teflon factory, government officials in the EPA found no evidence of unsafe levels of pollution. Instead, with little other explanation, they attributed the cattle’s death to their farmer’s own mismanagement. In desperation, members of the community contacted Robert Billot, corporate defense attorney and the grandson of a local long-term resident.
Billot’s decades-long struggle against Dupont was highlighted and retold on the screen by Mark Ruffalo, as Billot, and director Todd Haynes in his movie Dark Waters. The film is aptly named for the pollution and contamination that spread in Parkersburg in ways invisible to the human eye.
Characters in the movie use photographs to humanize the victims and tell their story, conveying the importance of human connection and visual imagery in communicating environmental threats. However, though Dark Waters has entertainment and informational value, the film can leave viewers anxious about the degrading environment with little direction on how to act.
Initially reluctant to help, only a call from his grandmother convinced Billot to visit. But when he stopped by a farmer’s house and saw firsthand the poor conditions of the townsfolk and their livelihood, he began to understand what was at risk for this community. The film compares old photographs of Billot at the same farm, a space where he once had happy childhood memories, transformed into a mass cattle graveyard.
After personally viewing this devastation, Billot committed to investigating the water for potential contamination. He used photographs of children born in Parkesburg with facial abnormalities to appeal to his partners’ sympathy and convince them to support his proposed case against Dupont. These acts emphasize the importance of visual imagery in raising awareness and demonstrating the urgency of an issue to people who cannot see it firsthand. As a lawyer, Billot also employs these techniques at work, asserting that to be successful “whatever happens to a client I have to make sure the jurors think ‘that could happen to me’”.
The film itself is another example of how visual imagery can be effective in combating environmental issues.
As a mainstream movie that stars well-known actors such as Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway, it reaches a broad audience. This promotes awareness in the public of the dangers of “forever chemicals” and the ineffectiveness of US governmental systems purported to help the American people. The movie’s inspiring narrative of an individual’s fight for what is right against powerful groups like Dupont demonstrates the importance of visual evidence to engage individual action and personal commitment.
Though the story of an underdog lawyer makes for an entertaining blockbuster movie, it takes agency away from the average person.
In the film, the only people with power are white lawyers and Dupont employees. The only “good guy” with power is Billot and even he is almost unsuccessful. The film portrays individual people as helpless. In a particularly emotional scene, a farmer attempts to protect his land and family by futilely yelling at a Dupont helicopter circling overhead.
That only a small group of people – all white and highly educated – have any power in this narrative is a realistic representation of issues of environmental justice worldwide. However, this portrayal can negatively impact viewers.
The issues introduced by the movie including invisible pollutants and systemic governmental problems are difficult to combat for the average citizen. The typical viewer lacks the agency to fight against industry pollution and the broader climate crisis–unless you have a corporate defense attorney grandson who you can guilt trip into helping.
Movies provide an interesting and possibly effective means of exposing the public to environmental issues. By humanizing the victims, viewers gain a better understanding of and sympathize with those that are experiencing the impacts of environmental degradation.
The movie Dark Waters does a great job at raising awareness about lurking environmental threats, and reveals the challenges of addressing them. However, the film’s focus on the actions of Billot make it more of an entertaining and educational film rather than a galvanizing environmental one. Audiences are alarmed by the hidden dangers that this film exposes but have little agency to make similar, sweeping changes in their communities.