Copyright Alternatives, Incorporated Winter 2003BLUE VINYL, Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold, directors, New York: Toxic Comedy Pictures, 2001. 95 min.
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WHAT could be more banal than the vinyl siding on the suburban home? Co-directors Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold expose the toxic legacy of this ubiquitous plastic in a hilarious and multiple award-winning new documentary called Blue Vinyl. Blue vinyl is what Helfand's parents have decided will replace the rotting wood siding on their Long Island home. Unable to convince them not to go ahead, Helfand journeys across the United States, camera crew in tow, to investigate the health impacts of polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
The trip begins in Louisiana where many of the factories making PVC in the US are concentrated. Helfand visits Mossville, one of the communities surrounded by petrochemical and vinyl facilities, where the mostly poor or working-class, and often African-American residents face air and water pollution so severe that entire neighbourhoods are no longer livable. Helfand also meets with workers disabled by vinyl chloride, scientists who can explain the links, smooth-talking industry representatives, and bucket brigades testing the air quality around the vinyl factories.
Carrying a piece of blue vinyl wherever she goes, Helfand manages to turn this tale of environmental devastation into a "toxic comedy" as she goes to extraordinary lengths to find an eco-friendly alternative that will also satisfy her mother's wish for the house to continue to fit in with the neighbourhood. Laugh-out-loud funny yet deadly serious, Blue Vinyl brings environmental justice into everybody's home.
- Cheryl Lousley
Alternatives Journal (AJ): What audience are you trying to reach with Blue Vinyl?
Judith Helfand (JH): [co-director] Dan [Gold] and I like to say that our sought-after audience are the tired, "I heard it already," paralyzed-from-all-the-bad-news cynics. They are the most challenging and the most important people to reach. Sure we want to reach policy makers, and sure we want to reach the converted, but it's really important to include a lot more people who would normally say "that's not my thing," or "you can't do anything about it."
AJ: What role does humour play in that?
JH: There's nothing like making someone laugh. And there's nothing like making somebody laugh in the face of something so scary, and so ubiquitous, all-powerful. Every time an audience laughs at something, they do it out loud. It's collective and they hear and see each other. So they feel like they're a chorus, they feel like there's power in unison, they feel less afraid. The message is if you can laugh in the face of toxic exposure, horror and heedless corporate behaviour, then you can change it.
It's also so disarming. Nobody expects a film about persistent organic pollution, vinyl siding and bioaccumulation to be funny. They expect to be bludgeoned. They expect people who call themselves environmentalists to be angry, fist-wielding, furious people. But I don't think anger on screen necessarily begets the transformation of cynicism into action that's really human and compassionate and hopeful.
AJ: There's one scene in the film where you show an African American family moving into a Habitat for Humanity home sponsored by the Vinyl Institute for America. You feel compassion for the family who needs a home but want to ask tough questions of the vinyl representatives. How do you balance your compassion with your hard-hitting questions?
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JH: It helps that the science [in the film] is supported. We turn to experts who are incredibly well-respected, both by environmentalists and by their peers in the broader scientific community. We not only included them in the film, but we put together an 18-pound book that supports every assertion in the film with two or three studies - that gives you license to learn and to laugh.
A little self-deprecation also helps. There's no time to be self-righteous. You want to get an audience to a place where they can make decisions. You can't make decisions for them. You can't point the finger and say, "I'm really good, you have to be good too."
Our movie is more like, "We're all really bad, are you really bad too?... We bought this. Did you buy it too?... Well, I found out that my purchase is at the centre of this global toxic problem. Do you know that your purchase and my purchase link us to the people who live across the street from where they made it, or downwind from the incinerator where they burn it?... Do you know that we're connected to people we don't even know via our purchases. Vinyl leads us to the people we're not supposed to know."
AJ: What do you mean by the "people we're not supposed to know?"
JH: One of the underlying themes is that we're all connected: the consumer, the resident who lives across the street from the factory, the vinyl worker, the family of the vinyl worker, the resident who lives downwind. We're all connected, but race and geography and class often separate us by huge differences, intellectually and spiritually. So we're not necessarily supposed to know each other or see each other as connected. And, most importantly, our narratives are not supposed to be seen as connected. Once you attach the narratives to the life cycle of a product - where it's been, who made it, where it's going, what happened to it, and who bears the burden of it - it becomes very different. It's alive and it has heart.
AJ: You said that your goal is to enable the audience to take action, make decisions, but how do you reconcile that with your acknowledgement that replacing vinyl siding with reclaimed wood as you do in the film is a really expensive option most people cannot afford?
JH: Because we weren't telling people to use reclaimed wood. We set up what we think should be the industry standard for making building materials. We wanted something that could be recycled, that hadn't hurt anybody at any step of its life cycle, and that the average consumer could afford. That is not an elitist manifesto.
We set up a standard and said, "let's try to meet it." If we couldn't do it - it was to go the distance and show where we had to stop or the lengths we had to go to get there. How wacky is it that most middle class people can't afford to buy a material that doesn't harm anybody? Isn't that the ultimate in toxic comedy?
AJ: When Blue Vinyl was screened at the 2002 Planet-in-Focus Film Festival in Toronto, you mentioned how pleased you were that the Toronto Jewish Film Festival co-sponsored the film. How important is it that this film be recognized as Jewish?
JH: It's not just a Jewish film, it's a faith-based film. I think that real change happens at home and starts at home and the most effective thing you can do about environmental racism is to find an authentic way for your community and your home or family, in the broader sense, to see themselves connected to it.
For instance, we are launching an effort called "Building in Good Faith," which links faith-based institutions that are building or renovating - it could be Judaic schools, it could be hospitals, it could be synagogues, churches, mosques, it could be old-age homes, it could be community centres or recreation centres.
I can't tell you how many Jewish buildings have inscribed on the outside, "Justice, justice, shall you pursue." Most of the rooms inside these buildings will be having life cycle events. You're going to have a babynaming or a wedding or a funeral on a material that really doesn't essentially, cumulatively care about life? You can't do it.
Our motto is don't just build a building, build a just building. If you're going to [comparison shop], compare the cost of vinyl floor tile to the externalized cost that will be meted out to children and grandchildren in the form of environmental degradation and health problems.
Follow up
Order the film and join in the campaign to phase out vinyl at:
www.myhouseisyourhouse.org
For information on the Toronto International Environmental Film and Video Festival and links to other environmental film festivals:
www.planetinfocus.org
If you can laugh in the face of toxic exposure, horror and heedless corporate behaviour, then you can change it.
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