By Michael Scoular (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 27, 2013
Movember’s platform (furthering awareness, tests, and funding for research related to prostate cancer and, more vaguely, “men’s health issues”) isn’t a problem. But despite its recent inception (2006), there’s a visible slippage in purpose, a disconnect between the words used to promote the month and what actually happens as a result. While a blanket assumption that Movember is superficial would be incorrect, for the most part the organization of efforts recognizes ordinary facial hair, made super with meaning as an advertisement for “Movember.” It’s a name that doesn’t suggest anything to do with cancer research to those who don’t care to look, the health and death side of things comfortably secondary.
The cause does raise money, and it’s mentioned whenever television news runs a higher-profile segment—usually either a soft human interest piece or something to do with the military or NHL—but it’s an already-reduced part of the campaign, when that part is one that should be the most prominent and the most critically examined.
A similar situation can be found in breast cancer causes, which are most prominent during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A couple of years ago, Québécois filmmaker Léa Pool’s National Film Board-produced Pink Ribbons, Inc. briefly made the rounds as an exposé of how little advancement actually comes out of the endless talk, fundraising, and charity marathons that are now a fixture of the cause.
Pool and her interview subjects focus on the word “research,” which, in a way, also draws attention to the inadequacy of most of our forms of taking in information, including the documentary. While you’re more likely to hear someone recommending a documentary (with all the slant implicit in that) than a news segment, right now the field of documentaries is flooded with middling or just not very good works. Pink Ribbons, Inc. is no exception, in that while it contains a fair amount of useful information (which its status as a movie helps share more widely) it isn’t very good as a 90-minute documentary, devoting almost half an hour to slow motion footage of pink-shirted smiling “run for the cure” type events scored to horror-esque drone.
The best points made by speakers from various activist groups or research centres during the rest of the running time actually point in the opposite direction. You can’t get people to listen by telling them they’re devoting their heart and time to something useless, feeding a corporate and pharmaceutical machine that counts on the existence of disease, sentimental opportunities for public relations, and customer goodwill. Accusation is just another marketing tactic. The only good work that can be accomplished by criticism is by bringing the focus back to what these events originally pledge to do: original research that will further understanding.
What comes up over the course of Pink Ribbons, Inc.is that the word “research” doesn’t exclude what is often the outcome of all the seven-figure donations: poor research. The list goes on: research that doesn’t take into account international studies, overlapping or redundant research, and ultimately research that hasn’t changed the way cancer is dealt with since the push for awareness began decades ago. Multiple activists point out the concept, alien to corporations, of how throwing money at a problem is not necessarily going to lead to a solution. But the idea is still important: where money is donated is not always the best place for it, and research isn’t always looking in the right areas.
The documentary itself isn’t exempt from this: it looks like research, has been researched, but is essentially another tool of awareness. And once it’s over, many documentary makers move on to another subject. Movember ends, and no one cares about cancer (if they did in the first place) until next year.
A more charitable view would say an end poses a question to an audience that must be answered, but it’s very easy to do the same without knowing anything about the subject – reporters do this all the time: “Where do Movember funds end up, and are they really helping? I don’t know, but I’ll offer up an unrelated sidebar for three minutes. Cue establishing shot of nondescript health facility.” Asking for agreement is what both sides essentially demand, in a passive and/or fun reinforcing way, but what both propose and are unable to follow through on is reading ahead of the list of what everyone is already doing. What Movember is unlikely to use in any of its marketing materials is: how soon do you want Movember to become obsolete?
