Admittedly, when No Impact Man: The Documentary first popped up on Netflix, my first instinct was to watch it with the sole purpose of tearing it apart. Why? I’m not really sure. Perhaps I wanted to expose Colin Beaven as an advantageous entrepreneur whose desire to become an activist for a year better served his need to write a book that would help pay for his apartment on Park Avenue, but this animosity toward Beaven was allayed throughout the film as he acknowledged the contradictory nature that impelled a number of hate-filled sentiments toward his endeavor.
I soon got over my first hurdle and focused on the irony of making a movie about going green when Hollywood has one of the largest carbon footprints in the country. While this documentary certainly can’t be compared to a project like The Dark Knight, a film that is partially set in Hong Kong where residents kept their lights on for all hours of the day in order to illuminate the skyline that Christopher Nolan wanted to capture, or Iron Man, where John Favreau used a wealth of air conditioning units to chill Tony Stark’s cave-prison so that the audience could see his breath, the overall filmmaking process and subsequent transport of film to various theaters and rental houses still leaves an impact, though not one that can really be compared.
Moving forward, I also wanted to point out the sardonic nature of Beaven writing a book about this year-long experiment in product-attrition inasmuch as the number of trees cut down to produce this book leave another gigantic carbon footprint; this seems to be the best angle to take in ripping apart his project; however, deconstructing someone’s motives doesn’t really take away from his determination to use a cloth to wipe himself after using the bathroom as opposed to buying toilet paper that comes from forests that have also been dessimated. Nor does the published book take away from his family’s escape from Con Edison’s grid – something I bet all of us wish we could do to avoid the ridiculous surcharges and mysterious taxes. At the same time, escaping the grid also means escaping television, radio, and computer while home. Impossible? No. But we’ve become so accustomed to “access” – and excess – that a prolonged period of absentia seems a bit improbable for most of us.
In the end, the irony contained in the manufacturing of Beaven’s book addresses a larger issue: the difficulty of going green while in the labyrinth of a liberal-capitalist society.
As an immediate note: this is not a condemnation of our liberal-capitalist society; rather, it’s an illumination of the paradox that exists between keeping our society functioning without total, chaotic overhaul and going green. Take Beaven’s home for example, an apartment on Park Avenue – an area in Manhattan that can’t really ever be classified as the “rich section” and “poor section.” Park Avenue is Park Avenue and to divide the area into parts would be to create a Venn diagram consisting only of the upper class, all of whom can still afford three of my apartment. That said, Beaven’s “Activist Novel” is certainly a way to maintain the life that he, his wife, and his young daughter have become accustomed to, but isn’t this what is expected of a member in this society? Similarly, as a writer, Beaven is expected to introduce new ideas and take a stand by stating something provocative, and while an idea might be temporal, if a writer is temporal, his or her career becomes a stint or a hobby.
Ironically, Beaven’s wife is in publishing, writing for Business Weekly, a magazine that showcases the business ventures of companies and corporations, something that Colin’s experiment inherently clashes with by swearing off the purchasing of any new products. Instead, they are allowed to borrow items and products from neighbors, which while communal, directly conflicts with a capitalist society in which products are exchanged for fetishized value (money) as opposed to bartered for on goodwill or services to be redeemed at a later date.
What’s doubly interesting about this paradox is the class differentiation that is established, where Beaven and his family, ironically, become elitists by taking themselves not only off of the electrical grid, but out of the established market-driven system. In a sense, the bucking of this system simultaneously places them above everyone else in a sign of self-immolation, suggesting that the amount of pain / suffering they endure trumps those who moderately go green by buying new light bulbs (check), making sure lights are off in rooms that are unoccupied (check), biking to work as opposed to driving (check), and unplugging all appliances that are not being used (double check). Moreover, the Beavens are essentially declaring that they can exist outside of this system.
However, this detachment comes with a price in that that those residing in the system become reactionary, decrying Beaven as a hypocrite and using the perceived faux “elitism” as a means with which to disconnect them from society by castigating them on various websites with obloquies that denounce their phony activism.
Overall, this is the subtextual problem that No Impact Man explores. The Beaven’s plight is noble, even if they skirt their own rules by ducking out to Starbucks and various other places to acces wi-fi that is forbidden in their home, but their plight exposes a darker side to society: how the competitive nature of our market economy influence our levels of activism, and ultimately, instead of encouraging others to take the same route, impels a backlash to the endeavor, one that, while it can’t necessarily be called NO impact man because of the endemic contradictions, can certainly offer a blue print as to how society will not disintegrate if it is comprised of lower impact people.
