Pink Ribbons, Inc.

I was very eager to see this movie. I am a skeptic by nature and the barrage of pink the last few years has had me wondering. This movie has an agenda. The film wants to be the black in the pink parade. That is OK.

A valid point the film makes is that corporate America is making money on the "pink". Solid points are KFC making profits off selling dubious food under the "pink" banner. Estee Lauder selling cosmetics that may contain cancer causing ingredients under the "pink" logos. The NFL trying to refurbish their image with "pink" everything in October. Clearly most businesses involved have self serving motivations. I was happy to see that brought out.

They had some stage 4 cancer patients express their displeasure with the happy joyful pink parade. I sure respect the opinion of the ladies but I suspect their are an equal number of cancer patients that appreciate the attention of the pink awareness. We were not shown many differing opinions.

The film makes some great points about working on prevention instead of the phantom cure which may or may not come. This was a solid idea that should have been more fleshed out.

Where the film fails is making the environmental connection. It ventures into kooky junk science territory a bit here. They implied Ford should not be involved with breast cancer awareness because they make cars and cars pollute. OK.

We get to the end of the film and we are off the rails a bit now. We have to blame President Bush for "using" breast cancer awareness for his mid east policies advancement. (They must have missed Obama's use of breast cancer awareness 2009-2011) The movie was made in 2011.

Overall it is a bit of a mess in a cinematic sense. It is sort of hard to watch. It doesn't flow well. The people in the film all seemed a touch angry or just professional activists.

The film also seemed angry at the many and mostly good people trying to help other people and fight this horrible disease. I find it hard to fault people trying to raise money to help others in our communities even if the "pink" charities may have jumped the shark so to speak.

A great subject that is not popular to talk about. Too bad it wasn't done by competent people.

As the Founder and President of a non-profit organization which raises funds for breast cancer research I found Pink Ribbons, Inc. disturbing and unproductive. I was inclined to rattle off each offense and elaborate on why I disagree. After having settled down a bit I will, instead, express a concise reply.

I fear this film stigmatizes the business of raising funds for a worthy cause into something ugly and disingenuous. I fear movie viewers will be confused and demoralized by the film's ugly message. And, I fear past supporters may feel so degraded and shamed by this film that they will choose to direct their efforts and money elsewhere.

We at The Lynn Sage Foundation agree that a collaborative approach to medical research is ideal and that activism can be constructive. Transparency is essential. Research into environmental causes of cancer is also very welcome. Funding worthy projects is simply not possible without the aid of corporations and individuals. Government dollars are scarce and dwindling.

While their were some useful messages within the movie, the emphasis placed on sensationalism and inaccuracies is useless. We, and we presume many of our non-profits peers, would welcome the help of corporations, individuals and associates to collaborate on finding the causes, better treatments and a eventually a cure for this terrible disease.

Same old story: charities profiting from people's struggles with sickness. Whether it's big names like Ferragni and Balocco or small research institutions studying rare diseases, the scheme is always the same.

Does the cheerful image built around breast cancer really help ill women, or does it hide the harsh truth? We still don't know what causes it, treatments haven't changed in 50 years, and survival rates are the same. Where's the donated money going? How's it used? Before you join the next charity run, think about it. Donations often end up in basic science and flawed research models that don't help people. Big institutions, inclluding the health care industry, benefit, and those in it make a living from the funds. The main focus here seems more on cashing in for personal gain. The prevailing notion that a complex problem can be solved by simply pouring money into it is a quintessentially American capitalist mindset, albeit fundamentally flawed.

I went shopping at a local supermarket today, bought roughly forty items, and three of them bare a pink box supporting some breast cancer awareness fund. When does the ambition of creating awareness simply become lucrative glamorization? I hear more about walks, runs, jumps, and efforts to promote charities raising money to donate to a breast cancer organization, but scarcely hear about advances in science, technology, or medicines to try and prevent the disease. Is our money being put to use or is it put to fund another gimmicky public charity? Breast cancer is the leading cause of death of women in America, and cancer in itself is one of the most common diseases among both sexes. I know for a fact I'm personally at risk of developing prostate cancer because of the checkered history in my family. I've long thought if companies really would love to find a cure for cancer, or would that cease in the immense profits that charities continue to turn in? Recently, I watched a documentary on the pitifully disappointing American healthcare system called Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare. A rare documentary, seemingly lacking a specific political bias, the film featured a female subject that bluntly stated that it's almost as if the system doesn't want you die or get better, but just keep coming back and handing money over the counter.

Pink Ribbons, Inc., based on the 2006 novel by Dr. Samantha King, professor of kinesiology and health studies at Queen's University, explores the possibility and the stunning proposition that the "pink ribbon campaign," whose efforts are directed specifically at creating breast cancer awareness, is only a shameless cash-grab for companies to utilize while contributing very little of their profits to famous organizations. Some companies products that are donating towards breast cancer research include chemicals that possibly contribute higher risk of developing the disease. Not to mention, with so many organizations, big and small, and so many corporations shelling out products apparently with profits being donated to cancer research, it results in very disorganized money patterns. Millions being donated, with little rhyme or reason, and little coming out that is revolutionary.

There comes a point where we can seemingly define the sincerity of companies attempting to fund breast cancer research and some simply trying to bank off a serious disease. When Susan G. Komen and Avon commit to holding a charity event, you almost feel compelled to trust them because they've given millions upon millions of dollars in efforts to find cures. But when we begin seeing pink handguns, we question how we've drifted from sincerity to shallow consumerism. I've frequently seen teenagers walk around with thick bracelets proclaiming "I LOVE BOOBIES. KEEP A BREAST." Do they wear them because they believe in stopping breast cancer, or do they just love having something as provocative as "BOOBIES" on their wrist? The same can go for those brazen "Cancer Sucks" t-shirts. Why? Interviews conducted are with the author of the Pink Ribbons, Inc. novel Samantha King, Barbara Eherenreich, writer of many books around the cancer, who resents the idea of softening the disease into making it "normal and feminine," and my personal favorite, the sassy, shamelessly blunt Barbara Brenner, a health activist, diagnosed twice, and not afraid to attack some corporations' lucrative practices. She makes no hesitation to call out Yoplait Yogurt for their "Save Lids to Save Lives" campaign, where if one were to peel off a lid of their yogurt, clean it up, then mail it back to the company, a dime would be donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundations. Brenner states that if you were to eat three cans of yogurt, everyday, and send the lid back for four months straight, the time the event was going on that, you'd successfully donate only $34 to the Komen foundation. "Bottom line, write a check," she says.

Easily, the most intimate shot of the picture involves an obese African-American woman who struggles to walk at one of the sponsored breast cancer walks. We are unaware if she's diagnosed with the disease, knows someone who is, or simply walks out of the goodness of her heart. For about thirty seconds, we watch as she pursues on, through sweat and exhaustion; something about that scene made me want to help her along or sit her down and give her the resources necessary to complete the walk. It is one of the most affecting shots in any documentary I've seen, mainly because of the impressionistic prints it leaves on the viewer.

The speakers we see in the film are mostly women, understandably so. One thing I caught early on that, beneath their deep intelligence and their wide range of talents, lied an angry, seemingly bitter core, in someways throwing the documentary a curveball. These women are mainly angry at the glorification of a painful disease that deteriorates the energy and body of a woman, but it seems they occasionally talk down to those who participate in walks and runs for the charitable organizations of the disease when they appear to be doing nothing but trying to take part in a community event to raise money or simply partake in the activities to memorialize a loved-one. It seems unfair to pull the "you don't understand suffering" card to those who are benefiting those who are actually suffering, don't you think? Starring: Barbara Brenner, Barbara Enherenreich, and Samantha King. Directed by: Léa Pool.

[...]The film looks at the issue from many different aspects. It looks at the marketing of a disease, and what could be called the "breast cancer industrial complex," in which many corporations are profiting from women's pain. They, of course, look at the amount of money that Komen spends on marketing, legal battles, and executive salaries versus the comparatively small amount that it contributes to research. It also examines the environmental hypocrisies of the pink ribbon movement, including the fact that many of the corporate sponsors of the movement have historically used products linked to cancer, such as Yoplait using RBGH-containing dairy. It looks at the fact that so little funding is designated to examining potential environmental causes such as pollutants, and the clear conflict of interest that would involve given the industrial contributors to Komen.

The film also explores the problems with Komen's messaging. They speak to a support group of women living with stage four breast cancer, who talk about how it feels to have cancer paraded as something pink and pretty and normal. (The filmmakers typically juxtaposed these interviews with shots of people at Komen race events waving pink pompoms and streamers and cheering.) They spoke candidly about how they feel that there is not a place for them in the current dialogue surrounding cancer, as they are viewed as the "angel of death" in a typical group of people living with breast cancer. They also touch on the sexualization of the disease, speculating that one of the reasons that it receives so much media attention is that it affords people the opportunity to say "breast" on the news. All of these interviews were incredibly poignant, articulate, and at times heart-wrenching, and while in general I would have liked to have had interviews with more people overall, the subjects that were featured were chosen very wisely.

This is an exemplary work of activist documentary filmmaking. Unlike some other examples of the genre, it does not beat you over the head with emotional pleas (though some moments are incredibly emotional), but rather calmly lays all of the rational arguments out before the viewer. It is a difficult task to take down a giant like Komen, but this film firmly does so with elegance and grace.

Read the full review here: http://mattreviewsstuff.com/2012/04/28/pink-ribbons-inc/