A Critical Zooming in on the Fast Fashion Industry: Focusing on the Documentary Films The True Cost (2015) and RiverBlue (2017)

Introduction

Consumption is one of the most important activities in economics. Smart and reasonable consumption rewards hard work; thus, buying clothes is a way for ordinary consumers to relieve stress and express themselves, as well as being a trend of the times that emphasizes social contributions through industrial activities. As if to reflect this, the fashion industry has grown even more with the emergence of so-called “fast fashion”, in which seasonal changes occur every week of the 52 weeks of the year, rather than twice a year as they would traditionally have done (Ozdamar-Ertekin, 2017). Also known as “cheap fashion”, the fast-fashion trend has made a big difference in the lives of consumers. Global fast-fashion brands have begun to market their products and the process of shopping in general as if it were the right and responsibility of consumers to boost consumption by purchasing many low-cost clothing items and by thinking of shopping as a way to relieve stress (Hokins, 2014, p. 56). Amid this trend, the social responsibility of these companies has slipped behind excessive price competitiveness. “Shopping-happy” adverts (Hokins, 2014, p. 63) have further spurred consumers’ addiction to shopping; as a result, the fast-season shift, combined with the fashion industry’s cost-effectiveness, has been a fashion-industry pattern since the 2010s.

A turning point in this trend was the collapse of Rana Plaza, a major sweatshop plant in Bangladesh, in April 2013. According to Hapke (2004, p. 17), the term ‘sweatshop’ comes from the end of the 19^th century, replacing the earlier term ‘sweated labour’ or ‘sweated system’. It has been noted that the word ‘sweater’ has entered the English language as a word used to describe one who works hard—a toiler—or a tailor who works overtime at home for an employer. Zwolinski (2006) understands this term on the basis of its historical, legal, social, and moral meaning; it is a commonly used term, but one that is understood in different ways by different people, depending on the context in which it is found (Rouge, 2016, p. 8). Bangladesh, with its 7,000 clothing manufacture plants that employ over four million workers nationwide (80 percent of whom are women) is the world’s second-largest clothing manufacturer after China (Alamgir & Alakavuklar, 2017; Epatko, 2018). It is the leading industry in Bangladesh’s economy, accounting for 80 percent of all exports. According to contemporary BBC reports (2013), the occupants of the Rana Plaza, which had been constructed to accommodate shops and offices, but actually housed many clothing factories, were told by the factory owners to return to the workplace despite the gold cracks found on the wall a day before the collapse that revealed the poor construction of this Bangladeshi clothing manufacturing plant. The accident killed 1,133 employees at five of the building’s clothing factories and injured another 2,500 (Schlossberg, 2019). Media reported this accident in Bangladesh and abroad, raising global awareness of Bangladesh’s clothing factory workers, who had been forced to work in poor conditions in order to secure competitive pricing for the fast fashion offered by global brands. This has led to a growing sense of the problems within fast fashion, as well as a heightened scrutiny of the fashion industry (which exploits developing countries to produce low-priced products) as a whole. Excessive price competition has led to demands for greater social responsibility from the global fast-fashion brands that outsource production to developing countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, and India, where labor costs are low.

Attention has also been focused on the cheap labor in Rana Plaza, where the outsourced manufacture of clothing by world-class fashion brands was undertaken with the aim of seeking maximum profit at the minimum fair cost. It seems clear that the perceptions of both the public and of fast-fashion industry leaders have begun to change due to this incident. Fashion Revolution, the most representative and the largest fashion-activism movement, was founded the wake of the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster by people within the fashion industry and by consumers who were concerned about the working conditions in sweatshops and the environment (Fashioninnovation, 2021; Fashion Revolution, 2021). Every year, Fashion Revolution organizes Fashion Revolution Week in the week surrounding April 24—the anniversary of the Raza Plaza disaster—in order to evoke a period of conscientization. In addition, self-reflective voices in the industry have become louder, while environmental and human rights organizations have accused brands of engaging in low payment and environmental pollution practices that they are forced to choose between. In addition, groups have formed that urge smart and conscious consumption by calling attention to the high social costs of low-cost fashion.

By analyzing two documentary films—The True Cost and RiverBlue—this paper follows the global problem within the fashion industry as observed through a camera lens, focusing on how they play a role as acting media. The films reveal and depict problems in order to encourage audience participation in social improvement.

Method

This paper analyzes how The True Cost and RiverBlue deal with environmental pollution, the devaluation of female workers’ rights by the fast fashion industry in developing countries of Southeast Asia, and what these social changes have led to.

The way the target film deals with critical social topics was analyzed based on film sociology. The problem recognition and social influence of movies, including the relationship between movies and society, socio-critical documentary films, the direction they pursue and their relationship with audiences were all studied. By examining the two film analyses as well as media articles and academic papers related to fast fashion, the diverse perspectives of fashion, economics and Asian research have been included.

The True Cost, RiverBlue and socio-critical film

The True Cost (D: Andrew Morton, Ross & Morgan, 2015) and RiverBlue (Williams, Mazzotta, & McIlvride, D: Divid McIlvride & Roger Williams, 2017) are both documentary films produced amid the societal criticism brought about by the collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh. This paper discusses the attempt by these films to promote a greater consciousness of these problems. It describes the cinematic techniques used by the directors to expose the unknown practices within fast fashion and the repercussions of such practices on society, as well as their approach to examining how change can be effected.

The True Cost, which was released at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, is a film that charges the clothing industry with both human rights abuses of low-wage workers and the pollution of the environment in developing countries. This film sheds light on this high level of inequality and addresses the fact that we are increasingly disconnected from the people who make our clothes (Ozdamar-Ertekin, 2017). The film, produced with $80,000 in crowdfunding, is a director’s interview that persistently questions the true costs of low-cost, fast-fashion clothing (Aust, 2015). Morgan, the film’s director, traveled to 13 countries over two years, collecting information and conducting interviews with actors and influencers within the fashion industry, as well as with environmentalists, garment workers, factory owners, and supporters and promoters of fair trade and sustainable clothing production (Morgan, 2015). This film is a story about greed and fear, power and poverty, and it examines the connections between fashion, consumerism, mass media, globalization and capitalism (Siegle, 2015).

Released in 2017, RiverBlue is a film that chronicles the impact of the fashion industry on major river pollution worldwide. According to Bauck (2017), this film asks the audience one simple question: No one wants to buy a shirt that a person died to make, but what about a shirt that a river died to make? Over the course of three years, Angelo, as narrator, travels and calmly reports on the serious extent to which the pollution of rivers has been caused by the limitless production and consumption that accompanies the fast-fashion industry.

In 2019, the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom published 25 case studies that examine the regional effects of climate change on women in 11 Asian and African countries. The report concluded that disasters such as droughts, floods and extreme weather have a greater impact on vulnerable communities, including on 70 percent of women worldwide, identifying climate change and environmental stress as common factors in the persistence of gender inequality (Cho, 2020). Data released in September 2020 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reaffirms this conclusion. Competition due to climate change and a lack of resources intensifies the existing gender imbalance; this, in turn, leads to the use of sexual violence as a means to strengthen privilege and increase control over resources. Pain and Rezwana (2020) provide examples of the interrelationship between cyclones and increased sexual violence; sexual violence increases both vulnerability to disasters and their social and economic impact in the form of structurally rooted oppression. In other words, environmental destruction, poverty, and patriarchal traditions lead to the worsening of sexual violence and natural disasters, as well as exacerbating the mismanagement of those disasters. Eastin’s (2018) paper on climate change and gender inequality in developing countries argues that income and asset inequality inevitably drive women into the capital markets; these women have increased familial burdens due to the absence of men and a lesser ability to generate independent profits. This creates a vicious cycle of vulnerability to climate change for women in low-income countries, as they have little capability to achieve economic independence but are required to expand their human and social capital while only having access to low-wage jobs. Southeast Asian clothing factories are typical sites where the exploitation of low-cost labor sacrifices women’s welfare to price competition in the global fashion market that exists behind the colorful and convenient façade of fast fashion.

Why do we need films that represent social issues? In order to answer this question, an understanding of film sociology, which studies the relationship between film and society, is first needed. Cinema is universally considered to be one of the most effective cultural messengers, due to the way that it is able to capture scenes, make them come to life, and give them back to people. In line with Kracauer’s (1960) film theory that states that film provides an open window to society, film can also be seen as a social product that is able to convey the wishes and emotions of the public. We might ask, then, how films can take a neutral and universal stance on problems such as environmental pollution or the still-widespread inequality between genders. From a sociological point of view, films have performed various functions according to the times in which they were produced. In the early days of film, the medium attracted its audience’s attention as a novel form of entertainment; before and after war (for example, in South Korea and Germany) films served the respective regimes’ political ends by shaping public opinion and informing the process of warfare. They also acted a means of analyzing the audience’s interests.

Among these films are those that offer social criticism; these encourage audiences to participate in active social change by capturing social issues on film. They have grown widely in terms of their themes, narrative style, and genre. Movies about Asian social problems have focused, to a great extent, on historical events or social problems faced by contemporary society; there has been much academic research into them. In particular, films portraying the historical and social events in the East Asian countries of China, Korea, and Japan have attracted much attention from their respective societies and have caused much social discourse (Sung, 2018; 2020). These films’ themes have included the Nanjing Massacre and the Coronavirus Crisis in China, the Gwangju democratization movement and labor inequality in Korea, and the great East Japan earthquake and the collapse of the family in Japan. These are the representative themes found in socio-critical films. Joint productions by directors from Asian countries such as Taiwan and the Philippines, led by China and Korea, are also actively taking place around the issue of Japanese sexual slavery, which is a historical event that has affected all four countries. As such, documentary films have presented a point of symmetry to feature films, as they have focused on social issues and demanded social change, while declaring their independence in terms of how they generate their capital and are distributed.

This is, of course, a rough summary of the changing trends in the Asian socio-critical films produced by Asian directors. The True Cost and RiverBlue both reflect the perspectives of Asian countries that are being damaged by capitalist logic; they do so by turning their cameras on the boundaries between Asian and non-Asian regions and exposing environmental pollution and human rights abuses. These two directors’ views are not limited to Asia but appeal to audiences worldwide. They encourage social participation while maintaining an objective that is not biased toward one place and which encompasses both Asian and non-Asian countries. The shift from a passive to active audience is significant in film sociology. Yoon-jung Choi and Yu-rye Kim (2017) state that the ultimate meaning of active audiences is to create another social discourse by deciphering and reflecting their social position, rather than accepting the content at face value. Furthermore, such active audiences’ questions about social issues can be shared with others and, as serious discussions are held on the issue, they can serve as a force to bring about social change (Choi & Kim, 2017).

This paper will now examine how these two films communicate the problems on the screen and what social changes they have caused by doing so.

Results

Discussion

The two films discussed in this paper resulted in a heightened sense of responsibility in the fast-fashion industry and among individual consumers with regard to the poor working conditions and pollution in developing countries. The films delivered a message that encouraged consumer activities for better conceptual consumption, using the language of documentary film.

While writing the paper, I analyzed several articles and books (Afrin, 2014; Boudreau, 2020; Hokins, 2014; Minney, 2012) in various fields related to fast fashion, confirming that the relevant papers were concentrated in economic policy and Asian research papers. In addition, I reviewed a number of movie reviews and newspaper articles (Friedman, 2015; Gustafson, 2015) that refer to these two documentaries, as they highlight the seriousness of the problem. Unsurprisingly, since the collapse of Raza Plaza in 2013, research papers on the poor working conditions in Southeastern Asian garment factory workers have proliferated, detailing the improvements made both in Bangladesh and abroad (Anner, 2020). However, it was difficult to find research projects and academic papers on this subject matter that were combined with any field of film studies. Particularly in the case of RiverBlue, I could only find interviews with the director and simple movie reviews; thus, not many articles exist that can be cited academically. It is regrettable that such a lack of prior research may cause the purpose and results of this paper to be seen as my own arbitrary interpretation. Starting with this paper, I hope that more academic activities will be undertaken that study the relationship between media and society with regard to social issues.

World Rivers Day creator Mark Angelo, who appeared as a narrator in RiverBlue, said in an interview that “the film would like to play a positive agent for change and make this issue known more. We want to press the issue” (Kelly, 2016). I agree that Angelo’s intention was for this film to play a prominent role in informing audiences of the social costs of fast fashion. While some social change has been visible in the media, one might ask if the conceptual consumption and improvements in working conditions in Southeast Asian clothing factories demanded by the film have occurred to the extent that Angelo hoped. In response to this question, I have no choice but to acknowledge the comment by Prentice (2016) that the influence of these two films on the creation of practical problem-solving guidelines and any real policy change has been quite small. In light of the fact that Zara founder and fast-fashion innovator Amancio Ortega became the world’s second-richest man, it is difficult to confirm the nature of any specific contributions by these two films in terms of how they address the social inequality created by the fashion industry. In fact, some reviews of The True Cost argue that the only solution suggested by this film is to reorganize the current fashion industry and the global capitalist system—nothing specific is proposed as a means to accomplish this (Prentice, 2016; Scherstuhl, 2015). In addition, millions of consumers addicted to low-cost clothing consumption are unlikely to change their buying habits in response to the film (Scheck, 2015). Friedman (2015) also pointed out that the film oversimplifies several aspects of the fashion industry and that the director overlooked many gray areas in his attempts to describe the problem from multiple angles.

These points once again remind us of the limitation that the medium of film, like other artistic activities, in that it may be only ‘visual entertainment’ and cannot instigate direct measures such as social laws and legislation. Despite sympathizing with these critical reviews, I do not agree with Prentice (2016), in particular, who said that, if the film changes consumers’ shopping habits, it puts a burden on consumers by showing that they have the power to change the entire system. The reason why I paid attention to these two documentary films that point out and criticize inequality in the capitalism of fast fashion is not because of how clearly these films provide solutions to the problem, but rather because of how these two films, as Siegle (2015) and Morgan (2015) as well as Blanchard (2015) said, seek to raise awareness and interest in the problem and provoke more controversy in society.

Hobson (2013) also raises some fundamental questions; namely, can we blame the clothing industry alone, or do we all, as purchasers of cheap clothes, bear responsibility for the disaster in Bangladesh and the numerous other such incidents that afflict the clothing industry worldwide? Do we really want fast fashion for which workers must give their lives for? Michael Albert, an anti-capitalism activist, said that “our negative or critical messages don’t generate anger and action but only pile up more evidence that the enemy is beyond reach” (Albert et al., 1998, p. 7). However, these films do not stop at merely arousing the audience’s anger and expressing their concerns. Both films faithfully perform their role as acting media that can contemplate solutions (Hobson, 2013). The idea “Change minds first, then change the law”, which is advocated by films as acting media to criticize social issues and bring about positive changes in the audience, is also confirmed in these two films. Looking at the impact of these films on society in this respect, it is apparent that they have successfully raised awareness among an unspecified number of consumers and have encouraged those who are involved to become more sensitive to the issues the films cover. This is because the starting point of a documentary that deals with social issues is to recognize the truth; we can expect real change only when there are more popular movements. In this regard, the relationship these two films have with society can be found in their performance as positive agents for change.

Of course, I, as a researcher who has been analyzing socio-critical films for many years, do not see movies as synonymous with politics either. These films serve as a loudspeaker that can amplify social problems and contribute to the creation of a new society by shaping public opinion and drawing sympathy from their audiences.

Hence, it is important to see the significance of the two films analyzed in this paper as eye-opening documentaries that have made experts in the fashion industry and smart consumers aware of the real costs behind fast fashion (Olsen, 2017). Bearing in mind that The True Cost was produced through the crowdfunding of $80,000 and that the audience’s interest in and response to the topic was already significant even before its production, one could say that the starting point for a true systematic change had already been established (Gustafson, 2015).

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