Gaslands Documentary Summary

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The documentary Gaslands (2010) is directed and single-handedly narrated by Josh Fox. Living in Pennsylvania, right at the Upper Delaware River Basin, he faces an emotional crisis as he receives a letter from a natural gas company, as they want to lease his land and would willingly pay him $100,000. He is confused and left questioning the purpose and intention of this letter, which leaves him to search out and connect with other people who are facing this issue. He becomes aware that his land sits on top and among many people, natural gas for drilling. He sets out to investigate and latter become a single hand detective in other neighborhoods that are affected by these natural gas drilling companies. The goal of these companies, such as Halliburton, …show more content…
In order to environmentally construct a problem, there needs to be a combination and collection of culture, people, value, history, evidence and social understandings. The issue of fracking is assembled by local residents, scientists, and activist groups. As Fox determines to explore and seek explanations based through his own direct experience, he is encountered with many local residents in neighboring states. The director goes around filming drilling sites to portray to the audience that this is the cause of the problem. He found patterns of contaminated water and correlations to health problems. As a result, people and children were facing detrimental health effects. He accumulated some part of his knowledge and assembled claims through local residents situated around the drilling sites and collected samples of water from each house, as evidence of data. Environmentalists and scientists collect data from people’s contaminated water. Fox mostly uses imagery, narrative and framing to portray to assemble to the audience what is happening. He presents these claims through environmental activists, especially people with data and the right facts. In the film, the narrator and the people in the communities itself did most of the presenting. Theo Colborn, an environmental activist, speaks for the people, collecting scientific data. The United States Environmental Protection Agency and Clean …show more content…
There is a limited public participation in decision-making processes to discontinue hydraulic fracking in the neighborhood. There is also differential law enforcement, as environmental agencies take longer to respond to the complaints the people are having with their water in the outskirts of America than they were if it were happening in cities. These people seem to not have equal access to justice to pursue legal action since they seem like they belong to the low-middle class of America. It seems to be more like the capitalist economy, where the production of natural gas and fracturing continues to create environmental problems. It accumulates wealth at the top and environmental problems at the bottom. All the decision-making is in the hands of these industrialized gas companies and not in the public’s hands. The people are affected by this, but have no say in anything. Land inequality is present, as people in the land neighboring these fracking sites don’t have a say in decision-making. As mentioned in the Australian Gas article (2016), “Social impact assessments should be participatory and take into account the unequal distribution of the impacts among local populations”. The residents don’t have a say in any decision-making even though it is affecting their own water supply. They are not being heard nor are the industries trying to accept and solve the matter. The citizens are

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