Seaspiracy: a #Vegan Documentary Review. #Netflix

what do you want me to do here do you
want me to criticize the film do you want me to criticize the filmmaker like do we talk about this movie just as an artifact sitting on the shelf of a museum of our times as they unfold or do we deal with the fact that ali tabrizi is somebody i have known for years i know his story both as it is revealed by this film and as it is concealed by this film and that i am myself in myriad impalpable emotional ways linked to the creation of this movie and moreover moreover my 500 most regular viewers on this channel not all of you but about 500 of you you all also remember ali tabrizi from youtube before he deleted every trace of himself in his channel you remember the strange prequel to this film that was the c-spiricy youtube video that ultimately indirectly ended up inspiring and leading the creation of this film now that's available on netflix so what what am i supposed to address here when i tell you that this film begins with autobiographical reflections on the motivations of the filmmaker many of you at least 500 of you will right away say oh wow okay so he's going to talk about the fact that he used to hang out with dorian ryder and freeway right that he used to be a vegan youtuber amongst vegan youtubers before he got into this idea of making a documentary film about you know the fishing industry nope not at all this opens with a sort of parallel universe version of the life of ali tabrizi in which he was a big fan of jacques cousteau and was walking down the beach cleaning up garbage and in which he wasn't vegan at all he hadn't even thought about veganism until the shocking end of this film where there's a plot twist and he realizes the key that unlocks the door the solution to the riddle the big mystery it's veganism this is about as strange as if i asked you guys for money on kickstarter so i could make a documentary film about black american rappers who are vegan let's just say i did it's actually not that implausible i could go down to the detroit and start interviewing guys so i want to look at african-american hip-hop and then the vegan subculture overlapping with that emerging from i'm gonna do a documentary about that so you guys all donate 50 bucks yeah i can take my 200 camera and make this film and you guys know me from youtube you know you know you know my interest like i'm someone who grew up knowing hip-hop and then after a certain point in my life i knew about veganism and then i brought these interests together and instead this film begins with me saying like what is veganism i never even heard of this thing before but then one day when i was innocently listening to rap music expecting vivid imagery of gangsters robbing banks and drug dealers disputing who is gonna have sex with that hoe next to my surprise i learned that many of the vocalists were vegan like i decided to investigate and step by step as my journey took me to scenic detroit michigan i discovered like dude like am i gonna pretend that the shocking conclusion of this film is that me interviewing these guys convinces me to become vegan that it wasn't some kind of prior vested interest i had or that it wasn't the thesis for the film or the raison d'etre for the film before i made it yeah ali tabrizi's conspiracy takes the very very strange storytelling approach of completely fictionalizing the narrator fictionalizing the genesis of the film itself the raison d'etre for the film and then including all that information within the film when it really doesn't need to be there speaking of a parallel universe if i were in the position of editing this film before it was shown to a film festival audience let's say we have a documentary film festival in a small town in michigan wherever it doesn't matter what i would do to improve the film to make it more appealing to that audience is probably chop off the first 25 percent i mean roughly i did not count the number of minutes but something like the first 25 of this film i feel is terrible and then you get into kind of the main middle portion of the film which is as you should expect fact fact fact it's just an avalanche of interesting facts about how horrible the fishing industry is the whaling industry is the ecological consequences that's well presented as i said in my critique of cowspiracy in some ways the spiritual antecedent to this film and i'll come back to that because this film in many ways awkwardly imitates the formula of cowspiracy an earlier documentary film to frankly an embarrassing extent but you know uh i said about that earlier film also if you already know this stuff it's not going to be that interesting for you i watched this with my girlfriend and there were several points which was like oh that's interesting never heard about them before and i was like yeah well i've heard exactly that before i've read articles about that already 20 years ago there's nothing there's nothing wrong with that except when there's something wrong with it which is at several points i was saying it seems as though the filmmakers never made up their minds as to what extent they were presenting this to an audience of children and to what extent they were trying to reach out to sophisticated adults so to give an example the issue of floating plastic in the ocean comes up several times if you want to present that to an audience of sophisticated adults you could broach the issue by saying you know starting in the year 2000 this became mainstream news it was on the cover of time magazine it was on the cover of national geographic there was this mainstream advertising campaign with this famous movie star that drew attention the issue you could broach the issue as something the audience is likely to have already heard of or already ignored you could even present different controversial views on well some people accept it was a big deal and some people just whatever you want to do and this film instead while being completely inappropriate for children not being a children's documentary in any way whatsoever it talks about all these things the majority of the issues introduced in the movie are news like did you have any idea that there's floating plastic in the ocean you know i just heard about this i was shocked i was surprised when i for the first time heard there's floating plastic in the ocean and you know even if that were sincere and the film suffers because of the insincerity of the narrator as already hinted at but if that were sincere like if you were someone who just never heard this stuff before you're hearing about it the first time and you want to share your sense of shock and incredulity you have to think as a filmmaker about the position that puts the audience in because almost anyone who is gonna click to watch this film is gonna somehow pay to see this film under whatever circumstances there's someone who already has a pretty significant degree of ecological literacy right they are someone who has at least seen the stories on the cover of national geographic and time magazine they have been exposed so yeah i feel that the filmmakers chose to put themselves at a really strange disadvantage in this way now after that first 25 of the film which i feel is the weakest part and i would urge you like if you're watching this and you feel impatient skip ahead because there are some really good enjoyable parts of them later on but you might not enjoy the first part you might you know you might stop watching you might give up on it entirely whereas we get a lot of first-person reflections from a very insincere fictionalized version of the narrator in that first 25 then in the rest of the film there are no explanations for the very strange situations we see the filmmaker living through like why didn't you have a japanese translator when you were in japan why didn't you have a thai translator someone speaking tai for you why didn't you conduct these interviews in other circumstances if you wanted to get that interview with that corporate head why didn't you wear a suit and tie and present yourself and like like there are a lot of really obvious questions that come up in watching the remainder of the film and you have this incongruous contrast between the carefully crafted first person story that opens the film and the absence of any such narrative in the remainder now look my my original inspiration with ali tabrizi was actually a youtube video he made on a totally unrelated topic where he talked on camera about masturbation he got a question from the audience he was sitting here with another guy another vegan activist at the time who's now he ended up in a nut house literally he ended up in a mental asylum he's a holy sort but these two guys they're on camera doing a video together and the question from the audience is about watching porn and master vision and you know this is just a few split seconds long but i remember it as if it were an hour they get this question and they kind of look at each other and they look down at the floor and they look at the camera and you know they just waffle their way out they just there's just really no answer at all i remember sitting there watching and thinking that is the exact opposite of everything i want to do on youtube that is the exact opposite of everything i want to do as a filmmaker as a writer as an author as a creative person like no if you are getting on camera to talk about pornography and masturbation you commit and you go all the way you give it a hundred and ten percent you give it all the authenticity you have got to give right and there's got to be intensity and there's got to be feeling and there's got to be personal integrity and there's got to be a sense of personal risk too right like you know i don't know so ellie tabrizi again in that particular sense he got this question about masturbation porn he just backed off he just wasn't going to deal with it now you know i had my own conflict with him where i was like look dude this is what's happening with durianrider and we're going to court and it was a big conflict he was on durianrider's side a lot of you guys i've got he has to remember that he just backed off of that you could say i didn't hear from from a couple years as a result but um you know when i first got involved in youtube i had to think about it a lot and there is risk and there is sorrow and there is suffering and there is a personal cost i mean in some ways my life would be easier if i just never mentioned that i'm getting divorced if i just never mentioned that i have a daughter and i'm struggling to have custody and visitation rights for my daughter like in so many ways socially and in terms of my employability if i never mention any of my political views on any controversial subject like i could have come on youtube and i could have done fundraising to open my own uh vegan petting zoo animal sanctuary and people would have supported there was a way to play this game to win and i had to decide early on no what i'm committed to is my own sense of personal integrity and that's gonna produce content that has certain advantages and disadvantages shall we say right i'm gonna live with the consequences of my personal integrity and that includes being honest about my own ignorance being honest about the things i don't know being honest about my own motivations and then also being honest about whatever it is i have to share with you so as someone who is in some ways an insider to the creation of this film it's very strange to be able to say look it's not just that the narrative presented this film feels phony i happen to be in a position to say as a matter of fact that it is phony and that does a great disservice to what would otherwise be scientifically ecologically politically and ethically fairly interesting content