Surplus: Terrorized into being consumers
SURPLUS – TERRORIZED INTO BEING CONSUMERS is an award-winning Swedish documentary film on consumerism and globalization, created by director Erik Gandini and editor Johan Söderberg. Shot in the US, India, China, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Canada, and Cuba during three years, it looks at the arguments for capitalism and technology, such as greater efficiency, more time, and less work, and argues that these are not being fulfilled and that they never will be. It further argues that our economic model based on perpetual growth and excessive consumerism is bound to fail, creating bubble after bubble and crisis after crisis. The film is about our world—a modern civilization that consumes more than it needs to thereby exploiting both the environment and society —and leans towards anarcho-primitivist ideology, arguing for a simple and fulfilling life.
Surplus ranks among the best documentary films ever made about consumerism.
SURPLUS – TERRORIZED INTO BEING CONSUMERS is a great symphony of the complex web of relations facing the planet in the 21st century – consumerism, overpopulation, waste management and the fixation on economic growth. Some may argue that this film is more flash than message, but in SURPLUS flash is the message. The use of the music video style is very effective in getting the message across as it draws the viewer to watch and listen more closely. It shows the insanity that we have created for ourselves, and the realization of where the world is headed unless we stop to think about what we are doing to ourselves as a society and as a planet. SURPLUS offers a cinematic experience rare in a documentary.
Is consumerism good or bad?
Surplus – terrorized into being consumers is very straightforward in its message: consumerism is bad! A central figure in the documentary is John Zerzan, who is an outspoken anti-capitalist with anarchist tendencies, and likes to see us return to a hunter/gatherer society where everyone lives in ‘peace and happiness’. Most people are very much put off by Zerzan’s ideas. On the hand, these same people must realize that consumerism, through the effect it has on on air-pollution and climate change, may very well throw us back into stone age if the issue of climate change, consumerism and waste are not adequately dealt with.
