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Movie Review
Thomas Doherty
Contributing Editor
Individuals who wish to propose films for review in the Journal should communicate with Thomas Doherty, American Studies Department, Brandeis University, 415 South St., Waltham, MA 02454-9110; doherty@brandeis.edu
| Milk in the Land: Ballad of an American Drink. Dir. and prod. by Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollum. Icarus Films, 2007. 90 mins. (http://www.icarusfilms.com/new2008/milk.html)
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| Milk in the Land challenges viewers to rethink the meaning of milk and to add sadness, outrage, or fear to thoughts of its American-style consumption. The film is an earnest, artsy alternative to comedian Lewis Black's routine about good old "moo cow fuck milk." Anecdotes and images showcase overproduction, overprocessing, and over-the-top promotion of an unnatural product. To blame one penny-pinching, shortsighted consumers, agribusiness moguls, and corrupt public officials, in league with militaristic white supremacists and misogynists. We and they are the villains in Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollum's lyrical account. Insofar as there are heroes, they hail from the insurgent, low-budget, low-tech, local food avant-garde. |
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This take on American "Frankenfoods" will hardly surprise viewers who shop in college towns. Campus commerce hypes countercultural foods almost as much as happy hours. In the past decade, the notion that Americans are "overfed and undernourished" has become commonplace, as has the advocacy of organic, raw, and free-range remedies. Since the time when Prohibitionist Carrie Nation wielded her hatchet and Upton Sinclair published The Jungle (1906), there has been a steady flow of such diet-centered populism. It was harnessed in the Progressive Era to foster government regulations and, more recently, to promote international fair trade and domestic community-supported agriculture (CSA) as well as fashionable niches for agribusiness chameleons. Witness the popularity of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006) and In Defense of Food (2008), and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (2001). They frequent U.S. best-seller lists, even while Anthony Bourin and Food Network associates wax ironically about comfort "food porn." |
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In this respect, in the tradition of scholarship such as Andrew Szasz's Shopping Our Way to Safety (2007), Milk in the Land might be better considered a primary source than a secondary one—more a ready subject for cultural criticism than an instance of it. |
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But the film's creators and distributor assert that Milk in the Land is itself a contribution to American history. Their online promotions categorize the film as a documentary: It "surveys" and "examines the relationship between the popular drink and culture" since the early nineteenth century. The Organization of American Historians (OAH) has credited this claim. Milk in the Land was among fewer than two dozen selections for the first exhibition of the "American History Documentary Library" at the 2009 OAH annual meeting. Moreover, the filmmakers McCollum and Gerstein have a proven record of producing award-winning, indisputably documentary historical work. In particular, their collaboration on the film Hybrid (2000) yielded an original, compelling, and multidimensional interpretation of the scientific, political, and personal stories surrounding Milford Beeghly (McCollum's grandfather), who championed genetically enhanced crops in the 1930s. So it seems fair to assess Milk in the Land as a work of history. |
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