Story of Stuff

The story of stuff is a documentary written and narrated by Annie Leonard. The documentary mainly criticizes America for its consumerism. In the documentary, Leonard describes the cycle of material goods. I think that she made some good points in the video. I knew how material goods were created, but I had not thought too hard about what actually goes on in between the steps that I knew of. Leonard made me think about the amount of labor that goes through almost all of the material goods I use today.
Out of all of the reading (watching in this case) I've done for this blog, I think that this documentary was the most thought provoking for me. Assuming every fact that Leonard stated in the documentary is true, I think that there is a real problem with how heavily America is consuming goods. However, the documentary did have some elements that heavily irked me. The tone that Leonard delivered her facts made her points seem biased and somewhat condescending. I think that the way Leonard wrote her lines gave it the tone that I disliked. Overall, I think that Story of Stuff was thought provoking and a good documentary to watch


In the documentary, Leonard claims that "of the 100 largest economies, 51 are corporations." I was interested to hear that more than half are not countries! I found that this claim was supported by a "The Rise of Corporate Global Power", a report written by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh. Leonard's claim is also supported in "Corporate Power in a Global Economy" by Brian Roach of Tufts University. I also found that unesco also supports Leonard's claim.

You can watch Story of stuff here.