I watch a lot of documentary films; I use them often in my teaching of college sociology and I sponsor a student club at my college that hosts film-viewing events. At a recent club event, we watched Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers. It was the most substanceless film I have seen in some time.

The film’s central argument, so far as I can tell (more on that later), is that Americans live in a consumer-oriented society in which we are driven to consume, consume, and consume some more, and that this consumption is destroying the planet. It’s not a unique argument, but certainly one that we should think about and discuss more, and which a well-constructed documentary film could illuminate.

Unfortunately, Surplus is not that film. In fact, I’m giving the film quite a bit of credit that it doesn’t deserve when I state its argument so clearly. The film does not lay out this argument in any obvious fashion. Instead, the film is a fast-moving set of clips that more often than not use music video techniques to convey meaning. For example, President Bush’s famous statement after the September 11 attacks in which he said that we couldn’t let the terrorists stop us from shopping is not only included in the film, but is looped over and over. (Apparently, we are supposed to just watch this and all laugh at that ridiculous President Bush, instead of being led to analyze why he would choose that activity to advocate people resume and what that tells us about our society today.) Loud music is played over scenes of landfills and world poverty. In a few cases, interviews are shown, but they are brief and it is clear that only a small part of each interview is included.

It was annoying to spend an hour watching a film that included few, if any, facts. I kept waiting for the film to get past its gimmicky formatting to the substance of the issues, but it never did. There were a few interesting moments, such as an interview with a designer of $6000 sex dolls and a tour of his facility, but even those moments were left uninterpreted and decontextualized, so they didn’t do much to give the film the depth I was hoping for.

If the film had only lacked substance, I would not have been nearly as bothered by it as I am. But it went further and advocated some ideas that really bothered me. The one “expert” the film profiled was an author who advocates property destruction as a response to consumer culture. In the small bits of his interview included in the film, this author states that property destruction harms no one, that it’s the only real way to stop the consumer culture, and that other forms of activism, such as nonviolent protest, are pointless and never make a difference. I found this dismissive attitude toward nonviolent activism and other democratic political process to be disappointing. More importantly, I found it alarming because it was presented in the context of the casual, non-critical, music-video format of this film, thus encouraging viewers to accept it without really thinking about its implications.

I learned in our discussion after the film that many of the students who attended the club meeting really liked the film and weren’t particularly swayed by my pointing out to them the film’s lack of substance. For some people, at least, the film is effective and enjoyable, and to me, that is not only puzzling, but scary.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older