Owned and Operated
Relic (2012)
Film Review
Owned and Operated is a documentary about dismantling corporate rule. This non-ideological film features dissidents across the political spectrum, among them John Oliver, George Carlin, Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Rifkin, Rob Hopkins, Ron Paul, Ray McGovern, James Corbett, Alex Jones and Brian Wilson. In addition to the film’s touchy-feely ending, I was also disappointed in the filmmakers heavy promotion of technology as the solution to the world’s urgent political and ecological crises.
In my view, the best part of the film is Part 1, The Freak Show. This is a humorous but surprisingly accurate depiction of modern corporate culture and the dangerous and bizarre effect of systematic corporate indoctrination on human behavior.
Part 2, Class War and Organized Greed, concerns the obscene greed of the 1% and their systematic takeover of our supposedly democratic political systems.
Part 3, Freedom vs Security concerns the systematic loss of civil liberties that has accompanied the War on Terror.
Part 4, The Awakening, concerns recent mass movements triggered by the 2008 global economic meltdown, including Occupy, the Arab Spring, Anonymous and the Zeitgeist, Transition and Open Source Ecology movements.
Part 5, the Future, heavily promotes Jeremy Rifkin’s views on the role of the Internet and mass connectivity in solving mankind’s most pressing problems. I tend to agree with Ronald Wright’s analysis (in A Short History of Progress) that humanity’s eagerness to rush into new technologies has tended to create more problems than it solves.
That being said the film ends on an extremely positive note by scrolling the web addresses of scores of social change movements for viewers to explore.
The Most Revolutionary Act 
Haven’t watched it yet, will watch it over the next week.
But I more than agree with you here:
“I tend to agree with Ronald Wright’s analysis (in A Short History of Progress) that humanity’s eagerness to rush into new technologies has tended to create more problems than it solves.”
We need to move backwards, not forwards, and retrace our steps over the last three to five hundred years, in particular. We need to fix what has been broken for ages now, and then we can begin to think about “moving forward”. We are always putting the cart before the horse, if you ask me!
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Shared an reblogged. Brilliant.
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Thanks for reblogging, fauxcroft.
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Pleasure.
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Sojourner, in my experience, women especially have benefited very little from technological advances. I’m not able to find any information about who Relic is. Given their strong attachment to Jeremy Rifkin, I suspect the filmmakers are male. Most of the so-called “experts” quoted are. There is a distinct absence of female opinion makers in the film.
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Reblogged this on An Outsider's Sojourn II and commented:
If nothing else, just take the time to watch part 1 of this video!
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