Ding! Ding! Ding! The Dow Jones Industrial just closed. Stocks are up. America is headed for recovery.
Not so fast, says acclaimed Seattle filmmaker John de Graaf.
Graaf’s recent endeavor, “What’s the Economy for, Anyway? A Tragic Comedy with 13 Acts,” presents a vision of a better economy and challenges how the United States measures economic success. Co-produced with ecological economist David Batker, the film shows that even though the U.S. is an economic giant, it is behind the curve in other ways internationally.
There will be a screening of the film at Northlake Unitarian Universalist Church in Kirkland March 20. De Graaf will also participate in a Q & A with the audience.
“I hope the film invokes a great discussion of the economy, it’s not there for anyone to agree or disagree with,” De Graaf said. “People need to see how it’s not working over the long run … We really need to compare the performance of western European countries and how they provide life. If we could only get over the idea that we are number one in the world in everything. We have a lot to learn.”
De Graaf believes economic success cannot be measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or stock prices alone. De Graaf said that in almost every area of quality of life, health outcomes, economic fairness and sustainability, the U.S. has fallen behind.
“People can go around and say we have the best health care system in the world, but they would be laughed out of the room,” De Graaf said. “We don’t base decisions on data anymore … we base it on emotion.”
De Graaf claims the troubles began with Richard Nixon’s landslide 1972 victory, when “extreme conservatives reduced the responsibilities” of wealthy Americans, while cutting back on public services for the poor and average working Americans.
Now, in the era of bank bailouts, a national debt problem stretching as far as the eye can see and an unemployment rate of 10 percent, the film seems more relevant to show, he said.
“Some of the things we have done (with the economy) are so crazy,” De Graaf said. “We have been ripped off by big corporations and a terribly misguided (conservative) ideology that has gotten us into terrible trouble. There are some who say that what we’ve been doing for the past 30 years we should do more of … (but) I think government is our way of acting democratically to shape the economy.”
De Graaf maintains that the film is not anti-Republican. He cited Gifford Pinchot, the first director of the U.S. Forest Service and Republican governor of Pennsylvania, as an inspiration to the film’s theme. Pinchot once said the economy’s job is to provide “the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest run.”
Economists, business leaders and figureheads in academia have given De Graaf’s “What’s the Economy for anyway?” rave reviews. One film review described it as, “Al Gore meets Stephen Colbert.”
“That’s the strategy of the film that it is not as wonkish as Al Gore and it is not as humorous as Stephen Colbert, but there are a lot of facts,” De Graaf said.
Batker guides viewers through the 13 acts in a monologue, adds a “humorous, edgy, factual, timely and highly-visual” presentation on the economy. The number 13 wasn’t just chosen at random, either.
“We thought it was an unlucky number because the tragedy is how poorly the economy has done in meeting our needs,” De Graaf said.
The film, which was shown this year at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in Denmark, was inspired by classes that De Graff taught at the Evergreen State College in Olympia and the University of Washington of the same name, asking students to get into the discussion about their economy. De Graaf said he tries to balance the work of being a good journalist with his concerns of his social issues when producing a film.
De Graaf is also co-author of the best-selling book, “Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic.” More than 15 of his programs have been broadcast in Prime Time nationally on PBS. De Graaf worked with KCTS-TV, the Seattle PBS affiliate, for 26 years as an independent producer of television documentaries. He is also the Executive Director of the “Take Back your Time,” an organization challenging time, poverty and over-work in the U.S. and Canada.
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The Northlake Unitarian Universalist Church is located at 308 Fourth Ave. S. Kirkland.
