by LEE PARSONS
Surviving Progress
Currently playing in theatres across Canada, the documentary film Surviving Progress has attracted a good deal of media attention and accolades from both the official “left” and the right, if for rather different reasons. This feature-length film is inspired by the best-selling A Short History of Progress, itself drawn from the 2004 Massey lectures by Canadian author and historian Ronald Wright.
Surviving Progress continues collaborations developed in previous productions between Harold Crooks, co-director with Mathieu Roy, and executive producer Mark Achbar. Crooks was a co-writer on the well-known documentary The Corporation (2003), which Achbar co-directed and co-wrote. Achbar also co-directed Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992).
The new film, which debuted at the 2011 Toronto Film Festival, is largely made up of interviews with experts and celebrities, including scientists, economists, artists, activists and historians—Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood, Vaclav Smil, Daniel Povinelli, Gary Marcus, Marina Silva and others.
While the film has been praised for its startling photography and imagery, which lend it a certain commercial appeal, the generally positive reception it has received may reflect a wider anxiety regarding the fate of human society, particularly among those who see no viable alternative to the current set-up.
Using a format developed in previous works of this type, an especially unpopular particular evil of modern society (corporation malfeasance, the mainstream media, etc.) is singled out and treated in such a manner that the spectator is led to believe that if only this were remedied, the existing order could otherwise be salvaged.
Taking a disapproving look at the very notion of progress, Surviving Progress offers the concept of “progress traps” as the explanation for the failure of various civilizations, up to and including our own. The film cites as evidence the early example of Wooly Mammoth hunters who learned they could kill more of their prey by driving them off a cliff, possible contributing to the animals’ extinction.
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